First Nations
First Nations refers to the diverse indigenous peoples of Canada, comprising approximately 900,000 individuals organized into 634 bands. Historically, prior to European contact, there were six distinct First Nations groups: Woodland, Iroquoian, Plains, Plateau, Mackenzie and Yukon River basins, and Pacific Coast. These groups inhabited various environments across Canada and maintained social structures typically consisting of around 400 people, often living either nomadically or in settled communities.
European interactions began as early as the 11th century, with more significant contact occurring in the 16th century as European settlers expanded into North America. This led to complex relationships involving trade, alliances, and conflicts, notably during the French and Indian War. Over time, the arrival of settlers resulted in significant land dispossession and shifts in policy, leading to the establishment of reserves and the implementation of the Indian Act of 1876, which aimed to assimilate First Nations peoples into European-Canadian society.
Throughout the 20th century, various policies and treaties were introduced, some leading to the restoration of rights and land claims for First Nations. The latter part of the century saw the emergence of indigenous nationalism, a movement advocating for the recognition of First Nations as distinct nations with specific rights. Contemporary discussions around First Nations involve ongoing debates about self-governance, land rights, and the legacy of historical injustices, including the impact of residential schools. While progress has been made, challenges and differing perspectives continue to shape the relationship between First Nations and broader Canadian society.
On this Page
Subject Terms
First Nations
Variously known as Native Americans, Amerindians, Indians, and so on, the 900,000 indigenous people of Canada in 634 bands are known collectively as the First Nations. Before European contact, there were six First Nations groups—Woodland, Iroquoian, Plains, Plateau, Mackenzie and Yukon River basins, and Pacific Coast. All lived in relative harmony with their natural environment, be it eastern forests, prairie grasslands, or the Pacific coast, in fertile agricultural regions, swamps, or harsh deserts. The social structure of the First Nations tended to be an independent group of around four hundred people. The groups were sometimes nomadic and sometimes sedentary.
Europeans first made contact with First Nations peoples in the eleventh century when Scandinavians from Iceland and Greenland settled for a short time in Newfoundland. After a hiatus of five hundred years, European fishermen began trading with the Micmac and Maliseet, and Europeans began to settle the eastern seaboard in the sixteenth century.
Background
Europeans used long-developed trade routes to the North American interior to create a large-scale beaver pelt trade that was then expanded to the Great Lakes basin, to the prairies, and down the Mississippi River. As Europeans expanded their presence in North America, they allied with various indigenous peoples.
As French and English colonies expanded into the interior of the continent, the colonies and their respective indigenous allies fought that the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763 with the loss of New France to Britain. Britain established an Indian Department during the war, signed treaties of friendship with allies of the French after the war, and set the Proclamation Line of 1763 to keep whites and First Nations separate. The line proved insufficient to control land sales or trade, but it did acknowledge for the first time that First Nations had land-ownership rights.
After the American Revolution, the British Indian Department purchased lands in Canada for the settlement of Loyalist whites and reserves for Iroquois refugees. The First Nations military alliance proved its worth during the thwarted US invasion of Ontario in the War of 1812.
After the war ended the threat of invasion, the First Nations were seen less as military allies and increasingly as an impediment to the white settlement of Upper Canada. Settler pressure intensified as the military threat waned after 1812. By the 1830s the area was largely free of First Nations after settlers dispossessed them. The First Nations had a choice between living on reserves on wastelands or within religious mission areas or squatting on small plots. Life for them was bleak, and First Nations lands further west were ceded as Canada’s white population expanded. Fewer than fifty years after the first lands were surrendered to European settlers in Upper Canada, the European population surpassed that of the First Nations. Settler pressure led to dozens of land sales and cessions, and eventually all of Upper Canada from the farmlands of the south to the resource-rich lands of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior were claimed by the Europeans.
Overview
When white Canadians outnumbered the First Nations, Canadian policy changed. Government policy for the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth was to acculturate the First Nations to bring them the benefits of “superior” European civilization. Laws were passed to classify reserve lands as crown lands, which made the government responsible for evicting squatters on reserve lands. First Nations peoples became tax exempt, received protection from creditors, and in 1857 received an offer of fifty acres and financial compensation if they were literate, free of debt, and willing to abandon their traditional way of living for a “civilized” citizenship. In 1860 the crown gave the colonies control of First Nations affairs, and establishment of the dominion in 1867 made that a federal responsibility.
Between 1871 and 1921 Canada enacted eleven numbered treaties disallowing land title in the new territories in order to establish Canadian sovereignty and open land to settlement while meeting obligations under the transfer, and attempting to minimize First Nations–settler friction. Reservations, annuities, access to hunting and fishing on unoccupied land and hunting and fishing equipment, schools, and clothing were given to First Nations peoples. They were on occasion the instigators of treaties because they were confronting disease, famine, and the extinction of buffalo herds and needed assistance for the short term and for long-term adaptation. The First Nations were under pressure to settle as agriculturalists on the reserves after losses of massive amounts of land and the buffalo hunt.
The Indian Act of 1876, as amended over half a century, was the basis for assimilating the First Nations, and the act became increasingly stringent, outlawing traditional practices and eventually enfranchising assimilated natives without their requesting it. A 1927 modification ended the right of First Nations members to pursue land claims. The government also instituted residential schools for First Nations children, and 150,000 attended between the 1850s and 1990s. Under the act, the First Nations peoples struggled but demonstrated their patriotism by serving in both World Wars and the Korean War.
By the late 1940s new leadership and new social and political attitudes led to the decline of paternalism. After 1946 assimilation slowly declined, bringing an end to involuntary enfranchisement and bringing about the return of traditional native customs. In the 1960s they were granted federal voting rights and economic improvement began on the reserves. The First Nations rejected a paternalistic 1969 white paper, drafted without consulting tribe members, which sought to end treaties and special status and make First Nations people equal to other Canadians. Indigenous nationalism grew to safeguard First Nations’ special status, rights, and benefits. Land-claim negotiations returned, and the First Nations received sizable settlements and the return of unrestricted fishing and hunting rights. There were twenty-two agreements made between 1975 and 2009, one of which created the Territory of Nunavut in 1999. First Nations members also received the right of self-government, the retention of First Nations citizenship for women who married European Canadian men, and an apology for the forced removal of children to residential schools.
Not all First Nations were satisfied. In 2013, charges were raised of genocide. These included early Confederation policies such as starving the First Nations to free land for Europeans; taking children to residence schools, where dozens died of a known tuberculosis epidemic; depriving First Nations schoolchildren of food in the name of medical experimentation; and forcibly removing children from their homes in the 1960s.
The growth in the last quarter of the twentieth century of the idea that aboriginal Canadians are nations with specific rights that should receive encouragement and support in developing their nations as coequal partners with Canada has alienated some conservative Canadians. Among the dissenters is Tom Flanagan, who contends that the policy exacerbates First Nations misery while enriching an elite of activists, administrators, politicians, and others with a vested interest in perpetuating bad law. Another critic, Alan Cairns, argues that the switch in the 1960s to parallel development, from the belief that the First Nations would become extinct or be absorbed, was a move from one bad concept to another, with parallelism inevitably leading to self-government. Instead, Cairns believes that the focus should be on commonalities such as social assistance and relations with the world and that parallelism ignores the reality that First Peoples are becoming urbanites. Both groups are evolving toward one another, so there is no more need for parallel development than there is for assimilation.
Bibliography
Cairns, Alan C. Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2000. Print.
Dickason, Olive, and David McNabb. Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
“First Nations in Canada.” Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Government of Canada, 21 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Dec. 2013. Flanagan, Tom. First Nations? Second Thoughts. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2000. Print.
“First Peoples before European Contact.” Firstpeoples.org. First Peoples Worldwide, 2007. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
Fontaine, Phil, and Bernie Faber. “What Canada Committed against First Nations Was Genocide: The UN Should Recognize It.” Globe and Mail. Globe and Mail, 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Dec. 2013.
Krauthamme,Charles. Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes, and Politics. New York: Crown Forum, 2013. Print.
Muller, Peter. Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts. Hoboken: Wiley, 2013. Print.