Reserves
In 1637, with a Jesuit settlement at Sillery in New France, the establishment of " reserves " of land for aboriginal peoples (usually of inadequate size and resources) began. Designed to "protect", they instead led to isolation and impoverishment. In 1857 the Province of Canada passed an act to "Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian tribes" - Indians of "good character" could be declared "non-Indian" by a panel of whites. Only one man, a Mohawk, is known to have accepted the invitation. Confederation in 1867 was negotiated without reference to aboriginal nations. Indeed, newly elected Prime Minister John A. Macdonald announced that it would be his government's goal to "do away with the tribal system, and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitants of the Dominion". The British North America Act , young Canada's new constitution, made "Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians" a subject for government regulation, like mines or roads. Indians became wards of the federal government and Parliament took on the job with vigour - passing laws to replace traditional aboriginal governments with band councils who had insignificant powers, taking control of valuable resources located on reserves, taking charge of reserve finances, imposing an unfamiliar system of land tenure, and applying nonaboriginal concepts of marriage and parenting. These and other laws were codified in the main Indian Acts of 1876, 1880 and 1884. The Department of the Interior (later, Indian Affairs) sent Indian agents to every region to see that the laws were obeyed. In 1884, the potlatch ceremony , central to the cultures of west-coast aboriginal nations, was outlawed. A year later the sun dance , central to the cultures of prairie aboriginal nations, was outlawed. Participation was a criminal offence. In 1885, the Department of Indian Affairs instituted a pass system . No outsider could come onto a reserve to do business with an aboriginal resident without permission from the Indian agent (a sort of government official with law-enforcement powers). Occasionally all aboriginal persons could not leave the reserve without permission from the Indian agent, either. Reserves were beginning to resemble prisons. In 1849, the first of what would become a network of residential schools for aboriginal children was opened in Alderville, Ontario. Church and government leaders had come to the conclusion that the problem (as they saw it) of aboriginal independence and "savagery" could be solved by taking children from their families at an early age and instilling the ways of the dominant society during eight or nine years of residential schooling far from home. Attendance was compulsory. Aboriginal languages, customs and native skills were suppressed. The bonds between many hundreds of aboriginal children, their families and whole nations were broken. During this stage Canadian governments moved aboriginal communities from one place to another at will. If aboriginal people were thought to have too little food, they could be relocated where game was more plentiful or jobs might be found. If they were suffering from illness, they could be sent to new communities where health services, sanitary facilities and permanent housing might be provided. If they were in the way of expanding agricultural frontiers, or in possession of land needed for settlement, they could be removed "for their own protection". If their lands contained minerals to be mined, forests to be cut, or rivers to be dammed, they could be displaced "in the national interest". The result of centuries of mistreatment is that by almost every statistical indicator the aboriginal population is highly disadvantaged compared to all other Canadians. The problems affecting aboriginal peoples are grim, as alcoholism, drug use and sexual abuse continue to plague reserves. Infant mortality is twice as high among natives than nonnatives, suicide rates among young people are five times higher among Indians than other Canadians, and life expectancy is seven years less for natives. Native peoples are also vastly overrepresented in jails across the country.
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