Intensifying the Assimilation of Indians in the Сontext of Implementing the Indian Act

The article examines the policy of Canadian authorities toward the indigenous population (Indian policy) within the framework of implementing the Indian Act. The analysis concerns the policies from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century and the long-lasting effects of those, which remained existential in the second half of the 20th century, the Oka crisis in particular. The literature shows it is necessary to identify the whole range of the factors that determined the implementation of assimilationist policies and to trace the influence they had on subsequent events in the historical perspective. To provide a comprehensive outlook, taking into account such processes as territorial consolidation, colonization and demographic tendencies, the research is based on inductive assumptions. The central assumption why such policies arose is the demographic factor, being the key cause of the inter-racial and inter-ethnic imbalance. This, in turn, provoked the assertive stance taken by the political elites toward the indigenous. It is due to the Anglo-Saxon chauvinism that shaped the attitudes of the Canadian elites and thus became the ideological trend of the late 19th ‒ early 20th century Canada. The Anglo-Canadian nationalists’ intention to ensure the predominance of the Britishness element in the emerging Canadian society is demonstrated to have stemmed from the transatlantic ties with the former metropole. The discriminatory measures taken under the Indian Act that were explored in the text demonstrate that the processes of the Canadian state’s evolution and the ideological tendencies were marred by innate discrimination. The connection between the political measures implemented in the past and the current situation is considered. The Indian policy laid down the foundation for the inter-ethnic tensions that can manifest themselves in modern Canada. The Oka crisis of 1990 serves as the example. The scientific discussion of the effects of the Indian policy and of that particular case that involved the indigenous population and the military was analyzed, and alternative perspectives perceiving the Canadian soldiers as peacekeepers were scrutinized. The dominant scientific position based on criticizing the assimilationist Indian policy, discriminatory measures against the First Nations and ethnic intolerance is concluded to be justified. And therefore the study is politically and historically relevant: it is important to understand that the discriminatory ethnic policy is often integral to the development of seemingly respectable political regimes, which maintains the effects, sometimes hidden, of such discrimination on modern social (dis)integration.

1. Fedorowich, K. (2016) ‘Restocking the British world: Empire migration and anglo-Canadian relations, 1919–30’, Britain and the World, 9(2), pp. 236–269. doi: 10.3366/brw.2016.0239.

2. Akimov, Y. G. (2010) Severnaya Amerika i Sibir’ v konce XVI–seredine XVIII v.: Ocherk sravnitel’noj istorii kolonizacij [North America and Siberia in the late 16th — mid 18th Centuries: An Essay on Comparative History of Colonization]. Saint Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta.

3. Timofeev, V. V. (2020) ‘Faktor chislennosti nacional’nyh men’shinstv v politike Kanady po otnosheniyu k nim: analiz problemy na primere indejcev i franko-kanadcev [The Factor of the Size of Ethnic Minorities in the Relative of Canada: The Case of Indians and French Canadians]’, in Shiryaev, B. A. et al. (eds) Rossija i Amerika v sovremennom global’nom mire [Russia and America in the modern global world]. Saint Petersburg: St Petersburg State University, pp. 316–328.

4. Leslie, J. F. (2002) ‘The Indian Act: An Historical Perspective’, Canadian Parliamentary Review, 25(2), pp. 23–27.

5. Stelmakh, V. T., Tishkov, V. A. and Cheshko, S. V. (1990) Tropoyu slez i nadezhd: (Kniga o sovremennyh indejcah SShA i Kanady) [The Trail of Tears and Hope: (A Book about Contemporary Indians of the United States and Canada]. Moscow: Mysl’.

6. Borodavkina, N. V. (2010) ‘Rol’ publichnyh shkol v obshchestvenno-politicheskoj zhizni viktorianskoj Anglii: Iton [The Role of Public Schools in the Social and Political Life of Victorian England: Eton]’, Izvestiya of Saratov University. New Series. Series: History. International Relations, 10(1), pp. 77–81.

7. Harris, C. (2012) ‘The Native Land Policies of Governor James Douglas’, BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, 0(174), pp. 101–122. doi: 10.14288/bcs.v0i174.182681.

8. Green, A., Mackinnon, M. and Minns, C. (2005) ‘Conspicuous by their Absence: French Canadians and the Settlement of the Canadian West’, The Journal of Economic History, 65(03). doi: 10.1017/ S0022050705000306.

9. Stanley, T. J. (2004) ‘The Aryan Character of the Future of British North America: Macdonald, Chinese Exclusion, and the Invention of Canadian White Supremacy’, in Dutil, P. and Hall, R. (eds) Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies. Toronto: Dundurn Press, pp. 116–140.

10. Kaufmann, E. (2004) ‘The Decline of the “WASP” in Canada and the United States ’, in Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 61–83.

11. Belshaw, J. D. (2016) Canadian History: Post-Confederation. Victoria: BC Campus Open Education.

12. Hartley, G. (2007) ‘The Search for Consensus: A Legislative History of Bill C-31, 1969–19851’, in Aboriginal Policy Research: setting the agenda for change. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, pp. 5–34.

13. White, J. and Peters, J. (2009) ‘A Short History of Aboriginal Education in Canada’, in Aboriginal Education: Current Crisis and Future Alternative. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, pp. 13–31.

14. Lackenbauer, P. W. (2008) ‘Carrying the Burden of Peace: The Mohawks, the Canadian forces, and the Oka Crisis’, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 10(2), p. 71.

15. Conradi, A. (2009) ‘Uprising at Oka: A Place of Non-identification’, Canadian Journal of Communication, 34(4), pp. 547–566. doi: 10.22230/cjc.2009v34n4a2133.