Genocide, Indian Policy, and Legislated Elimination of Indians in Canada

Abstract

The primary objective of early Indian policy was to ensure the eventual disappearance of Indians – a goal which has not changed in hundreds of years. The registration provisions in the Indian Act will achieve this goal through entitlement criteria, which ensures legislative extinction after two generations of marrying out. This has resulted in two separate legal categories of federally recognized registrants: status and non-status Indians, where membership in one group or the other determines access to essential services, band membership and more. The denial of federal recognition to non-status Indians has also resulted, in some cases, in the erosion of Indigenous identity, culture and communal connection. Court-based remedies have done little to address these ongoing injustices and Canada has shown little interest in a significant policy change.

Settler Colonialism and the Contemporary Coerced Sterilizations of Indigenous Women

“…Negative eugenics 2 was the practice used by these provinces to "alter" societies by controlling which people, namely women, were able to reproduce (Stote 2015, 26). These racist practices highlighted the state's focus on creating a settler-colonial society, where white mothers were the ideal mothers, and "other" mothers, in this specific case, Indigenous mothers, were "unfit" because their bodies were the "wrong" race and they reproduced the kind of children the settler-colonial policies and practices were trying to "eliminate" (Stote 2015, 27;Palmater, 2014). Specifically under this western ideology of creating a perfect state the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta introduced their own Sexual Sterilization Acts, where both provinces encouraged and legalized the sterilization of peoples whom the provinces saw as "unfit" (Pegoraro 2015, 167).…”

“…There have been apologies issued by the Alberta Government on this issue (CBC News 1999), but the futility of these apologies, without any action on the part of the government shows the cyclical nature of the settler-colonial state. Cyclical, in that enforcing the premise of settler-colonial policies which have the goal to "eliminate" Indigenous peoples on the land, have a tendency to occur even without the legislation of the state (Palmater 2014). Although in the cases Lombard is defending the sterilizations occurred where there was no formal legislation that encouraged it, the racist ideals of Indigenous women as being "unfit" mothers still occurs, this is especially shown in the case of M.L.R.P.…”

Contesting the Nation(s): Haitian and Mohawk Women’s Activism in Montreal

“…"While Canada is not the only state to have ever used blood quantum, " as the legal scholar argues, "It has the dishonor of being the last. " 53 Although the Native Women's Association of Canada conducted extensive advocacy work in order to assist those who wished to apply for Indian status, the organization nevertheless maintained a critical perspective, arguing that the Indian Act "remains an oppressive piece of legislation and only further entrenches discrimination and, in fact, threatens our future generations. " 54 Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, gender confl icts were exacerbated once reinstated women and their children returned to the community.…”

Dr. Peter Bryce (1853–1932): whistleblower on residential schools

“…Put simply, Bryce "exposed the genocidal prac tices of governmentsanctioned residential schools, where healthy Indigenous chil dren were purposefully exposed to chil dren infected with TB, spreading the dis ease through the school population." 4,5 Importantly, it was not only the Canadian government but the broader population that learned of Bryce's report; for example, on Nov. 15, 1907, The Evening Citizen (an earlier edition of the The Ottawa Citizen) ran a frontpage story with the headline "Schools Aid White Plague -Startling Death Rolls Revealed Among Indians -Absolute Inattention to the Bare Neces sities of Health." 6 As MaryEllen Kelm explained, Bryce then "called for a major overhaul in the sys tem of residential schooling, demanding that each student be considered a poten tial tuberculosis case and be treated accordingly."…”