Reserve system of Canada

SIGNIFICANCE: Until well into the twentieth century, Canada’s First Nations reserve system assumed that lands not specifically defined “surrendered” to White settlement were for traditional Indigenous use; reactions to abuses in “surrender” arrangements brought more protective self-government and ownership provisions in the 1990s. Later designations also distinguished between the reserve system inhabited mainly by First Nations people and the separate communities of many Inuit and Métis people.

The history of First Nations reserves in Canada began at the end of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), when French claims on Canada were abandoned to British imperial control. A British royal proclamation in 1763 forbade governors of both the Canadian and the American colonies from issuing any land grants to colonists unless it was clear that the land in question was not “traditionally occupied” by Indigenous people. This act began the so-called policy of protection, which stipulated that only the Crown held ultimate responsibility for protecting or acquiring traditional Indian lands. Such acquisition, or “surrendering over,” was to be with the consent of tribes; what was not “surrendered” to the Crown was presumed to remain Indigenous property.

Ideal and Reality of Traditional Reserve Policy

When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the influx of Loyalists into Canada caused pressures for colonial land grants to rise. In response, the Crown initiated a series of treaties and purchase agreements, particularly with tribes in Ontario. What was not turned over by sale or treaty agreement would from that date be called Indigenous “reserves.” What appeared to be benevolent recognition of the Indigenous peoples' traditional lands, however, was not always that generous. In a few extreme cases, such as the Chippewa (Ojibwa) agreement to surrender their Chenail Ecarte and St. Clair lands, only a very small portion was left for exclusive tribal use (in this case, some 23,000 acres out of a total of 2.7 million acres).

For a number of years there was no specific definition of what responsibilities the British might accept with respect to Indigenous rights within their reserves. This changed by the 1830s, when it became obvious that Indigenous people even farther west were going to be affected by expanding White settlements and that, as their traditional way of life would no longer be possible in areas left as reserves, government assistance would have to be part of the land surrender process. Thus, an agreement concerning the Manitoulin Islands near the north shore of Lake Huron became, in 1836, part of a “new” attitude toward reserves: Indigenous people there were to receive, free from “the encroachments of the whites . . . proper houses . . . and assistance . . . to become civilized and to cultivate land.”

At the same time, it became increasingly apparent that the “traditional” reserve system would have to involve higher degrees of Indigenous dependence on Crown authorities to intercede between them and aggressive settler communities anxious to gain access to the natural resources on Indian land. In 1850, a decade and a half before Canada’s federal/provincial arrangement (the Constitutional Act) placed the authority of the Crown across the entire width of the Atlantic, troubles broke out over settler access to minerals in the Lake Superior area. William Robinson was appointed treaty commissioner in order to define how Indigenous hunting and fishing rights could be preserved while sale and development of mining rights on the same land passed to outside bidders.

With the coming of Canada’s independent status after 1867, it became apparent that a specific Indian act would be necessary and somehow should be binding on all provinces of the federal system. Neither the first Canadian Indian Act of 1876 nor later acts, however, provided for the establishment of new reserves. The object of all Canadian Indian acts (into and through the twentieth century) was supposed to be to improve the management and developmental prospects of reserves that already existed. Nevertheless, the traditional but in many ways manipulated concept of what constituted a reserve in Canada continued, for nearly a century, to allow for “surrender” of lands considered to be in excess of tribal needs. Thus, in Quebec Province, some 45,000 choice acres considered Indian reserves in 1851 would be given over to White settlement between 1867 and 1904. The most spectacular case of additional surrenders occurred in Saskatchewan, the source for nearly half of the nearly 785,000 acres of Indian lands taken in the early twentieth century. In addition to formal acts of surrender, amendments in 1895 and 1918 to the Indian Act allowed the superintendent-general of Indian affairs to recognize private leases of reserve land that was not being exploited economically by the tribes.

Perhaps the most striking example of consequences that could come from application of these and other amendments occurred in the 1924 Canada-Ontario Indian Reserve Lands Agreement, which would stand, despite challenges, into the 1990s. The 1924 agreement essentially acknowledged Indigenous rights to exploit nonprecious minerals on their land, but provided for separate conditions to govern (external) the exploitation of, and revenues from, precious mineral mines in Ontario (and by extension, elsewhere in Canada).

Post-1930 Trends Toward Self-Government on Reserves

The year 1930 was a watershed, for after that year, federal, or Dominion, approval for surrenders would become the exception rather than the rule. In the same year, the Dominion transferred public land control rights in the Prairie provinces to the provincial governments of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba, with the express condition that existing Indian reserves would be maintained unchanged under federal control. The 1930 agreements nevertheless recognized the applicability of the 1924 precious metals “exception” (the Canada-Ontario Reserve Agreement) to any Indian reserves in the Plains provinces.

The 1876 Indian Act received a comprehensive revision with the Indian Act of 1951, which took steps against discrimination. Rising governmental and public attention to Indian affairs came in the early 1960s, partially in the wake of the government’s Report on Reserve Allotments (published in 1959) and partially following the publication of a major study by Jean Lagasse on native populations in Manitoba. Lagasse’s findings brought the beginnings of community development programs on Indian reserve lands, but they remained limited mainly to Manitoba itself. By 1975, a specific scheme for self-management and community government was legislated in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, but this again had limited geographical scope. Further national-scale policy revisions were made with the Indian Act of 1985, which expanded the ability to claim Indian status.

Substantial change in conditions affecting life on reserve lands across Canada would not come until passage of the 1989 Indian Act. A good portion of the local legislative precedents that formed the bases for the 1989 Indian Act were drawn from key decisions ranging from the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement through the Municipal Grants Act of 1980 and the much broader 1986 Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act. When legislators extended such precedents to define the status of the totality of Canada’s Indian population, the government in Ottawa granted for the first time several essential principles of self-government to tribes throughout the country. They now included the right to hold full title to property formerly considered their “reserves” (but ultimately controlled by Dominion authorities) and to dispose of that property legally as they might see fit (through sales, leases, or rentals) through procedures they would determine via the autonomous channels of their own councils.

Although in 2005 over half of all registered Indigenous peoples lived on a reserve, the growing population of Aboriginal peoples in large cities reversed this statistic by 2011. By 2011, according to the National Household Survey, over 360,000 people lived on reserves, over 320,000 of whom identified as a First Nations member. According to the 2021 census data, less than 40 percent of registereed Indigenous people live on reserves.

Although the increased self-control of lands by Indigenous peoples established in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries brought some positive effects to reserve communities, people living on reserves still faced challenges. Many reserves are rural and isolated, magnifying economic hardships. Rates of poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, and suicide are on average higher on Indigenous reserves. Other problems, such as health related issues caused from unclean drinking water plague reserves and are often left unresolved. The rate of water-borne illnesses among First Nations people is twenty-six times higher than the Canadian average. These challenges and others have helped the reserve system remain a controversial and divisive issue, both among Indigenous peoples and the general community.

Bibliography

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