Indigenous Canadians

SIGNIFICANCE: The ancestors of First Nation, Inuit, and Métis peoples lived in North America long before explorers arrived on the continent. They enjoyed their own forms of government, language, culture, and spiritual beliefs. Attitudes of racial and cultural superiority led to a suppression of Indigenous cultures and values.

For several thousand years, Indigenous peoples, descendants of the original inhabitants of North America, occupied what is now Canada as hunters and gatherers. Indigenous peoples—initially referred to as “Indian” peoples—prefer to be known as Indigenous or First Nations. This term came into common usage in the 1970s to replace the word “Indian.” The Inuit (meaning “people” in Inuktitut, the Inuit language) and Métis are the two other Indigenous peoples recognized by the Canadian Constitution. Inuit are Arctic people who have lived above the tree line in the Northwest Territories and in Northern Quebec and Labrador for thousands of years. Inuit has replaced the traditional term “Eskimo.” Métis are of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry and identify themselves as distinct from First Nation people, Inuit, or non-Indigenous people. Their unique culture draws on diverse ancestral origins such as Scottish, French, Ojibwa, and Cree.

Indigenous peoples share a deep spiritual relationship with the land and the various life-forms it supports. They believe that humans participate in a world of interrelated spiritual beings. Before the arrival of Europeans, the First Nations had developed systems of government that reflected their different cultures, spiritual beliefs tied to ancestral lands, social structures, and economies. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, contact with Europeans and the introduction of firearms and diseases changed Indigenous ways of life. By the 1940s, First Nation leaders began fighting to preserve their cultures, forms of self-government, and rightful place in Canadian society. In November 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples proposed a twenty-year agenda to develop a new relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people based on values of mutual recognition, respect, sharing, and responsibility.

Indigenous peoples and their Nations must be understood in historical relation to six major cultural regions. A Nation, sometimes called a Tribe, is a large group of First Nation individuals who share a common language, environment, and culture. These cultural groupings and regions include the Woodland First Nations, the Iroquoian First Nations of southeastern Ontario, the Plains First Nations, the Plateau First Nations, the First Nations of the Pacific Coast, and the First Nations of the Mackenzie and Yukon River Basins.

The Woodland First Nations is the easternmost cultural area characterized by dense boreal forest and bordering in the north on a tundra-like land. The eight principal Tribes, who spoke languages belonging to the Algonquian family, include the now-extinct Beothuk (Newfoundland), Mi’kmaq (Nova Scotia, Gaspé in Quebec, Prince Edward Island), Malecite (southwestern New Brunswick and Quebec), Montagnais and Naskapi (Quebec and Labrador), Ojibwa (from the north shores of Huron and Superior Lakes north, to the edge of the prairies), Algonquian (Ottawa Valley), Odawa (Manitoulin Island), and Cree (flanking the Ojibwa on the north and west).

The nine principal Iroquoian Tribes (and languages) of southeastern Ontario include the Huron, Petun, Neutral, Erie, and the confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora south of Lake Ontario and extending to the upper St. Lawrence River.

Eight principal Tribes of First Nations inhabited Canada’s plains. The Blackfoot, Blood, Peigan, Gros Ventre, and Plains Cree spoke the languages of the Algonquian family. The Assiniboine and Sioux spoke Sioux and the Sarcee spoke Athapaskan.

The First Nations of the Plateau area of interior British Columbia include the Interior Salish Tribes (Lillooet, Thompson First Nation, Shuswap, Okanagan, Lake First Nation), the Kootenay, and three main Athapaskan Tribes, the Chilcotin, Carrier, and Tahltan.

The six principal Tribes of the Pacific Coast First Nations include the Haida (the most northerly Tribe), the mainland coast Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga’a, and the southernmost Nootka and Coast Salish. Modern-day British Columbia contains seven of Canada’s eleven indigenous language families within its borders.

The twelve Tribes of the Mackenzie and Yukon river basins (Chipewyan, Beaver, Slaveys, Yellowknife, Dogrib, Hare, Kutchin, Han, Tutchone, Kaska, Mountain, and Sekani) all spoke Athapaskan. Their vast homeland occupied more than one-quarter of Canada’s total land mass.

Although no precise statistics exist, it is believed that the West Coast languages of Haidan, Tlinglit, and Kutenaian have only a few hundred speakers. The only languages that seem assured of survival are the Cree, Ojibwa, and Inuktitut languages.

Demographics

The Canadian Government’s Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs maintains census and demographic information concerning Indigenous peoples. According to their data, approximately 2,370 parcels of reserve land are divided among 608 First Nations, representing fifty-two cultural groups (such as Haida, Cree, and Mohawk) and over fifty languages. The estimated Indigenous population in 2016 totaled 1.6 million, or 4.9 percent of the population of Canada. However, this population was the fastest-growing group in Canada between 2016 and 2021, increasing by 9.4 percent to over 1.8 million individuals. Ontario was the province with the most Indigenous people, with other Indigenous groups living in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. The total registered population of First Nations people in Canada, referred to as "Registered Indians" or "Status Indians" by Canada’s Indian Register, was 1.05 million in 2021. Most Indigenous people live outside reserves, but less than half of the registered population live outside reserves.

Administrative History and Legal Status

In 1755, the British crown established the Indian Department, a branch of the military set up to foster good relations and cultivate military alliances with the First Nations. In 1867, the year of confederation, the new federal government gave itself legislative authority over “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” through the Constitution of 1867. In 1876, the Canadian parliament passed the Indian Act, which set out certain federal government obligations and regulated the management of First Nation reserve lands. A key provision of the act was the concept of “enfranchisement” or the total assimilation of First Nation populations as citizens. In 1869, government surveyors plotting routes for incoming settlers met opposition by the Métis under the leadership of Louis Riel, Jr. The Manitoba Act of 1870 provided some land rights for resident Métis families, but the provisional Métis government was suppressed.

A 1933 amendment to the Indian Act extended enfranchisement of First Nation members who met the qualifications set out in the act. Any First Nation man over the age of twenty-one, literate in English or French, educated to an elementary level, of good moral character, and free of debt could be declared enfranchised or “no longer deemed to be an Indian.” In this way, the distinction between him and other non-Indigenous citizens would be removed. Under the act, an Indian woman who married a non-Indian was no longer considered an Indian, nor were her children. The reverse was not true for non-Indian women who married Indian men. This blatant gender discrimination lasted until 1985 with serious consequences for dignity and well-being. Without their Indian status, women were no longer allowed to reside on or own land on their reserves. Often unaware that they would lose their status when they married non-Indians, these women were no longer eligible for housing and education benefits and programs available to Status Indians.

For more than one hundred years, the government was empowered to order the enfranchisement of First Nation people. It kept the First Nations in a state of wardship by regulating all aspects of their existence both on and off the reserve, such as an 1884 ban of the Pacific Coast potlatch ceremony. Until the mid-1950s, federal government "Indian" agents had effective control over such activities as reserve leave privileges and the residential school system, which denied children the rights to speak their own languages and practice their spiritual beliefs and rituals. The system frequently separated children from their families and communities. Tragically, some children were victims of physical and sexual abuse. Until 1960, when First Nation peoples were given the right to vote in federal elections, First Nation members could vote only if they became enfranchised. First Nation members were also involuntarily and automatically enfranchised when they joined the clergy or completed university. From 1867 to 1966—the date of the establishment of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), presently known as Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) and Indigenous Services Canada (ISC)—Indigenous and northern affairs administration was handled by various departments, including the Office of the Secretary of State, Citizenship and Immigration, Mines and Resources, and Northern Affairs and National Resources. Effective changes in the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians would come only after 1966.

The Constitution Act of 1982 recognized existing Indigenous and treaty rights of the First Nation, Inuit, and Métis peoples of Canada. In June 1985, Parliament passed Bill C-31, which became the Act to Amend the Indian Act, ending more than one hundred years of discrimination in the Indian Act. The major impact of Bill C-31 has been the elimination of gender discrimination. Since its passage, about 105,000 individuals have successfully regained their legal status. In 1985, 29 percent of Status Indians lived outside reserves, but by 1991, 40 percent lived outside reserves. This statistical change of relationships is most likely due to the reinstatement of Status Indians under Bill C-31.

Self-Government and Land Claims

In August 1995, the government of Canada launched a process to negotiate the inherent right to Indigenous self-government that exists within the Canadian constitution. Indigenous groups have a right to develop health care, child welfare, education, housing, and economic programs in negotiation with federal, provincial, and territorial governments or jurisdictions. The First Nations’ rights in self-government take many forms because self-government arrangements for peoples without a land base differ from those for peoples with a land base. Self-government agreements have been negotiated in conjunction with land-claims settlements such as the Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act (British Columbia), the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act and the Yukon Self-Government Act. In 1996, DIAND had negotiated self-government arrangements with ninety Indigenous groups throughout Canada. In addition to the new territory of Nunavut and the self-government aspirations of the Inuit, the Yukon has signed six self-government agreements, and eight more are being negotiated with Yukon First Nations. Self-government processes for Métis and “off-reserve” Aboriginal groups (groups that are not part of a reserve but related to the First Nations) exist in most provinces. Enumeration is one of the key building blocks of Métis and off-reserve self-governments. The federal government and the province of Saskatchewan planned to share the development cost of an enumeration proposal with the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan in spring 1999. Self-government institutions, devolution of programs and services, and public government are initiatives that provide opportunities for Indigenous input into program design and delivery. These should ultimately lead to direct control of programming and new approaches to negotiation.

In 1993, after years of negotiations, the Nunavut land claim was settled. This was the largest land claim ever settled in Canadian history. It gives the Inuit control of more than 350,000 square kilometers of land, of which 36,000 square kilometers include mineral rights.

In February 1996, a group of thirteen First Nation chiefs (leaders from the Westbank, Musqueam, Lheit-Lit’en, N’Quatqua, Squamish, Siksika, Muskoday, Cowessess, Opaskwayak Cree, Nipissing, Mississaugas of Scugog Island, Chippewas of Georgina Island, and Chippewas of Mnjikaning) signed the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management. This government-to-government agreement ensures that First Nations can pass their own laws to develop, conserve, protect, manage, and use their lands.

Social and Economic Development

CIRNAC and ISC's First Nation and Inuit programs seek to improve living conditions on reserves and in northern Inuit communities. In 1997-1998, DIAND’s total budget was $4.4 billion with $3.8 billion allocated for education, social services, and community infrastructure such as roads and sewer systems. During this same period, the First Nations managed more than 83 percent of DIAND’s total expenditures on these services. In the late 1980s, the First Nations managed only 62 percent of program expenditures on community services. The data reveal that the relationship between the government and the First Nations is changing from one of service provider to one of an advisory funding agency.

Although living conditions in First Nation communities have markedly improved since the 1960s, living standards still fall far short of what other Canadians assume to be basic. According to Canadian government figures, the average income for Status Indians in 1997 was about $10,000, half the Canadian average. Moreover, of the approximately 73,000 families living on reserves, only 35,000 had adequate housing. The total number of housing units on reserves increased from 60,509 in 1989-1990 to 80,443 in 1996-1997. The demand for basic services such as education, social services, and health care in First Nation communities continued to grow in the late 1990s. This is partially because the on-reserve First Nation birthrate is more than double that of the Canadian population as a whole (twenty-seven births per thousand compared with thirteen births per thousand).

The gap in life expectancy between First Nation members and other Canadians was seven years in 1997. Suicide rates of Registered Indian youth age fifteen to twenty-four were eight times higher than the national rate for women and five times higher than the rate for men. Indigenous people were more likely than other Canadians to have hearing, sight, and speech disabilities. Alcohol, drug, and solvent abuse among youth was a problem, and the reported incidences of AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) and HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infections were increasing in relation to the mainstream. Incarceration rates of Indigenous people were five to six times higher than the national average.

The Indigenous labor force (3 percent of the Canadian labor force) was young and growing at twice the Canadian rate in 1997. It was concentrated in government services (15.2 percent), wholesale and retail trade (14.6 percent), manufacturing (10.3 percent), and accommodation/food and beverage (9.4 percent). As a whole, Indigenous people were underrepresented in manufacturing and financial and insurance services but well represented in construction and natural resource industries. The lag in labor force participation was greatest for on-reserve Indians (participation rates were 47 percent for Status Indians living on reserves, 57 percent for off-reserve Indians, 57 percent for Inuit and 59 percent for Métis, compared with the national rate of 68 percent). On-reserve Indigenous youth participation rates were 30 percent compared with 59 percent for off-reserve Indigenous youth and 65 percent for all Canadian youth. The income gap between First Nation and non-Indigenous communities widened since the late 1980s.

Access to equity and debt capital, markets for their products and services, suitable work experience, access to lands and resources, and innovation in the workplace pose formidable challenges. Jobs and wealth creation are vital to prosperous Indigenous communities and meaningful self-government. Yet, in 1997, less than 1 percent of all Canadian businesses were owned by Indigenous people, and half of these were located on reserves. Community-owned enterprises averaged ten employees. Large enterprises such as Cree Construction International in Quebec and the forestry companies owned by the Meadow Lake Tribal Council in Saskatchewan were significant players.

Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, released in January 1998, set forth a five-year Indigenous human resources development strategy meant to create a broad-based partnership involving groups, governments, the private sector, and other relevant institutions. As part of its approach to strengthening economic development, the government was to participate in sectoral, national, and regional economic development forums to help identify priorities and shape new initiatives. Partnership was to be the basis for a new chapter in Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people. Since 1998, the Canadian government has implemented the Aboriginal Economic Action Plan and the Action Plan to Address Family Violence and Violent Crimes against Aboriginal Women and Girls.

Bibliography

Canada. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. First Nations in Canada. Minister of Public Works and Govt. Services, 1997.

Canada. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Implementing Canada’s Economic Action Plan: Impacts for Aboriginal People and Communities. Indian and Northern Affairs, 2009.

Canada. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Indians and Inuit of Canada/Les Indiens et les Inuit du Canada. Indian and Northern Affairs, 1990.

Canada. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. The Inuit of Canada. Inuit Taparisat of Canada, 1995.

Canada. Status of Women. Action Plan to Address Family Violence and Violent Crimes against Aboriginal Women and Girls. Status of Women Canada, 2014.

"Canada’s Indigenous Population." Statistics Canada, 21 June 2023, . Accessed 20 Oct. 2024.

"Indigenous Peoples of Québec and Eastern Canada." Library of Congress, guides.loc.gov/quebec/indigenous-peoples. Accessed 20 Oct. 2024.

Sands, Jenna Rose. Introducing Atrocities against Indigenous Canadians for Dummies. Assiniyiskew Press, 2018.