21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act – Part 1

Today we go on a journey to study the book, 21 things you may not know about the Indian Act by Bob Joseph.

We are going to go through each one and make a blog post about each of the 21 things to help educate people around Canada and beyond about the Indian act and hopefully help with reconciliation with Indigenous people.

In 1876 the Indian act was created to treat Aborigines as wards of the state.

I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that this country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. That is my whole point…Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian department, that is the whole object of this Bill.

Duncan Campbell Scott

In 1970s the word First Nations came to replace the word Indian. There has been a great deal of focus to define who is an Indian within the Indian Act.

#1- Impose the Elected Chief and Band Council System

This has displaced our original way of governing ourselves.

Long before European contact, each nation had it’s own institution, economy, control of territory and resources within.

The impose system is like a municipality leadership system.

The role of a Chief on a reservation is to administer the Indian act and is no way a style of governance our people had before colonization.

Imposing settler style of leadership system was to assimilate the Indian.

This system totally went against our original way of governance and overlooked Indigenous people’s traditional and political structures, means, and values.

The federal government put Indigenous people in a box, and didn’t realize each nation had it’s own specialized skills, tools, authority, governance systems, and capacity developed over centuries.

The whole system imposed through the Indian Act was to impose an Settler Idea of the way Indigenous people should live their lives.

The Federal government wanted to replace an irresponsible system with a responsible system in their minds.

Initially the government wanted elections on reservations to be held on an annual basis. In 1898 it was changed to every 3 years a new Chief would be elected.

In the 1951 Indian Act, it was changed to every 2 years.

Originally only males over the age of 23 were allowed to vote, while Indian woman were not given the right to vote in Indian elections until the 1951 Indian act.

The Department of Indian Affairs Controlled:

• Finance
• Land
• affairs
• Bylaws
• Resources

The reason why Indian Affairs controlled these things was because they felt Indigenous people were not sophisticated enough to handle their own affairs.

The Indian act itself emasculated Chiefs in leading their nation because of all the control they had and what little the actual Chief had in leading it’s tribe.

The Chiefs main role was to administer the Indian Act on the reservation.

Here is what Chiefs could decide on for their tribe:

1. The care of public health
2. The observance of order and decorum at assemblies of the Indians in general council, or on other occasions;
3. The repression of intemperance and profligacy;
4. The prevention of trespass by cattle;
5. The maintenance of roads, bridges, ditches and fences;
6. The construction and repair of school houses, council houses and other Indian public buildings;
7. The establishment of pounds and the appointment of pound-keepers;
8. The locating of the land in their reserves, and the establishment of a register of such locations.” 

The two year electoral process imposed by the Indian Act has made it hard for tribal communities to grow.

Plans and ideas can be different when a new Chief & Council is elected which makes it hard for economic development, the development of resources, and creates a backlog of projects that either go unfinished or take a very long time to complete.

Because of the short leadership time within a community, it creates conflict within community members within a tribe to fight amongst each other for the power positions of Chief and Council.

Not all elected Chief’s will share the same mindset about how resources should be distributed amongst the community.

The Indian act’s goal was to undermine traditional governance systems and to assimilate the First Nation’s peoples.

In Closing…

This is not our system and it just does not work for First Nation’s Peoples. This system was and still is designed to hurt and assimilate our people. Within North America we had tribes that had 40,000+ members and it took a sophisticated system to make that work.

Stay tuned as we dive into more about the 21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act

Resources

• Grab the book – 21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act – Click Here
• Foundational Knowledge – Weekly Indigenous Teachings – Click Here
• Learn Cree Language – Click Here