Native Peoples In The Twentieth Century
For the native peoples the opening of the twentieth century ushered in a far from happy time. Herded onto small reservations under the authoritarian paternalism of the ministry, they were subjected to a concerted campaign of Europeanization - ceremonies such as the sun dance and the potlatch were banned, and they were obliged to send their children to boarding schools for ten months of the year. Deprived of their traditions and independence, they lapsed into poverty, alcoholism and apathy. In the late 1940s, the academic Frederick Tisdall estimated that no fewer than 65,000 reservation aboriginals were "chronically sick" from starvation. In addition, the Inuit were drawn into increasing dependence on the Hudson's Bay Company, who encouraged them to concentrate on hunting for furs rather than food, while the twin agencies of the Christian missions and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police worked to incorporate the Inuit into white culture. All over Canada, a major consequence of the disruption of the traditional way of life was the spread of disease, especially TB, which was fifteen to twenty times more prevalent amongst the aboriginal population than amongst whites. In 1951 a new Indian Act increased the autonomy of tribal bands, but despite this and increased federal expenditure, aboriginal people remained well behind the rest of Canadian society. In 1969, the average income of a Canadian family was $8874, whilst 88 percent of aboriginal families earned $3000 or less, with fifty percent earning less than $1000. In recent years, however, native peoples have begun to assert their identity. "Status Indians" are now represented by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), which has, since its foundation in the early 1980s, sponsored a number of legal actions over treaty rights. Many of these cases are based on breaches of the 1763 proclamation, whose terms stated that native land rights could only be taken away by direct negotiation with the Crown. One recent Grand Chief of the AFN, Ovide Mercredi - a lawyer and former human-rights commissioner - announced that the objective of the AFN was to secure an equal status with the provincial governments, a stance indicative of the growth in native self-confidence, despite the continuing impoverishment of the reservations. The political weight of the AFN was made clear in the constitutional talks that took place over the establishment of an Inuit homeland in the Northwest Territories, a complex negotiation resulting in an agreement to create two self-governing territories in 1999 . But not all of Canada's natives see negotiation as their salvation: the action of armed Mohawks to prevent a golf course being built on tribal burial grounds at Oka in Quebec displayed an almost uncontainable anger against the dominant whites, and divided sympathies across the country. Partly as a reaction to the brinksmanship of the Oka militants, a new and more conciliatory leader of the AFN, Phil Fontaine , was elected in 1997, but he was replaced in 2000 by Matthew Coon Come, who favours a more aggressive approach.
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