By Katie Carson, Sarah Kittilsen, and Sean Carleton
Canada 150—the sesquicentennial celebration of the nation’s confederation—was marked with pomp and circumstance, because the Federal Authorities inspired Canadians throughout the nation to commemorate what it referred to as “one in every of Canada’s proudest moments.” April 12, 2026 will mark one other sesquicentennial: 150 years because the Canadian authorities handed the Indian Act, the cornerstone of the legislative equipment that continues to manipulate Indigenous-settler relations within the nation at present. Whereas the Act doesn’t maintain the identical delight of place inside Canada’s historic narrative, it too has performed, and continues to play, a elementary position within the trajectory of this settler-colonial state. Its a hundred and fiftieth yr also can present an impetus for consideration and reflection.
Indian Act 150 is a year-long sequence that calls consideration to the anniversary of a bit of formative laws, one which at present’s liberal state would reasonably ignore. It invitations students, public intellectuals, graduate college students, and group members to contemplate the 150-year-long historical past of the Indian Act, the histories which have been produced about it, and the way forward for Indigenous-settler relations in Canada.
Bob Joseph—authour of two1 Issues™ You Could Not Know Concerning the Indian Act and most not too long ago, 21 Issues™ You Must Know About Indigenous Self Governance—will kick off the sequence on the finish of January. In the present day, Sean Carleton, a contributing editor with Lively Historical past, will supply some introductory feedback on the historical past and historiography of the Indian Act in Canada.
Katie Carson & Sarah Kittilsen, sequence editors.
The Indian Act at 150: Historical past and Historiography
150 years after its implementation, the Indian Act stays a major and controversial a part of the Canadian authorities’s authorized equipment. The legislation is likely one of the most essential parts shaping Canada’s settler colonial statecraft. The Indian Act’s results for First Nations have been – and proceed to be – wide-ranging, restrictive, and largely detrimental.
As an amalgamation of earlier colonial legal guidelines, the Indian Act grew to become a cornerstone of Canada’s answer to the so-called “Indian Downside.” It launched quite a lot of coercive measures designed to undermine and assault the group lifetime of the unique peoples of the lands at present referred to as Canada.
Canada’s “Indian Affairs” equipment – together with its burgeoning paperwork composed of civil servants in Ottawa and Indian Brokers and subject workers throughout the nation – was reorganized to supervise and implement the legislation’s deliberate assault on the group lifetime of Indigenous Peoples to facilitate assimilation/elimination, settler capitalist improvement, and Canadian nation-building. On the identical time, Indigenous Peoples navigated the Indian Act’s imposed and infrequently paternalistic energy to defend sovereignty, Indigenous lifeways, and more-than-human relations, even when in more and more circumscribed methods.
Coming into energy on April 12, 1876, the Authorities of Canada was fast to make amendments. Beginning within the Eighteen Eighties, the federal authorities tightened Canada’s management of First Nations by, for instance, limiting the agricultural energy of First Nations; banning essential cultural and ceremonial practices such because the Potlatch and Solar Dance; imposing enfranchisement; making the attendance of kids at colonial colleges obligatory; and prohibiting the forming of political organizations (such because the League of Indians) or the hiring of authorized counsel to pursue land claims, amongst many others. That is to say nothing of the imposition of the band council system, which the Indian Act legitimizes, as a method of undermining and changing Indigenous governance techniques and imposing Canada’s settler capitalist rule. Within the mid-to-late twentieth century, the federal government amended the Indian Act to take away a few of its extra draconian parts, however the legislation continued to immediately form the lives of First Nations.
Within the Nineteen Sixties, the federal authorities thought of eliminating the Indian Act altogether earlier than backtracking because of First Nations’ protest – given the federal government’s assimilationist ambitions – and there are some Indigenous leaders at present who argue it’s time to eliminate the Indian Act, although for completely completely different causes. The Indian Act is a double-edged sword, and there’s little consensus on what’s to be carried out.
Regardless of its ongoing significance to the lives of many First Nations, the Indian Act has obtained considerably scant and intermittent consideration from historians. There are, in fact, many wonderful students who’ve examined its intricacies and nuances as they relate to varied subjects, resembling agricultural and welfare insurance policies, colonial education, and gender discrimination; nevertheless, there’s surprisingly not a defining scholarly historical past of the Indian Act and its penalties. As an alternative, the historiography consists of a sequence of wonderful research – outlined within the choose bibliography beneath – that every one name consideration, typically in oblique methods, to completely different elements of the Indian Act’s affect.
This sequence, then, seeks to push the Indian Act – throughout its sesquicentennial, its 150th anniversary – additional into the general public highlight and to indicate that there’s nonetheless a lot to know.
As Canada and Indigenous Peoples replicate on the longer term forward, reckoning with the colonial previous and current – together with the continuing results of the Indian Act – shall be an essential a part of making an attempt to construct a respectful and reciprocal relationship of reconciliation.
Sean Carleton is a settler historian and affiliate professor of historical past and Indigenous research on the College of Manitoba.
This put up was edited beneath the auspices of the challenge Historicizing Our Instances: Histories of Migration and Local weather within the Digital Area, which is supported partly by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council.
Choose Bibliography[1]
Brownlie, Jarvis. A Fatherly Eye: Indian Brokers, Authorities Energy, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918–1939. College of Toronto, 2003.
Boldt, Menno. Surviving as Indians: The Problem of Self-Authorities. College of Toronto Press, 1993.
Cannon, Martin J. Males, Masculinity, and the Indian Act. College of British Columbia Press, 2020.
Cardinal, Harold. The Unjust Society. M.G. Hurtig Publishers, 1969.
Carter, Sarah. Misplaced Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Authorities Coverage. McGill-Queen’s College Press, 1990.
Gehl, Lynn. Gehl v. Canada: Difficult Intercourse Discrimination within the Indian Act. College of Regina Press, 2021.
Joseph, Bob. 21 Issues You Could Not Know concerning the Indian Act: Serving to Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Actuality. Indigenous Coaching Company, 2018.
Kelm, Mary-Ellen and Keith D. Smith, eds. Speaking Again to the Indian Act: Vital Readings in Settler Colonial Histories. College of Toronto Press, 2018.
Leighton, Douglas. “A Victorian Civil Servant at Work: Lawrence Vankoughnet and the Canadian Indian Division, 1874–1893.” In As Lengthy because the Solar Shines and Water Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Research, edited by A.L. Getty and Antoine S. Lussier, 104-119. College of British Columbia Press, 2000.
Leslie, John and Ron Maguire, eds. The Historic Improvement of the Indian Act, 2nd version. Division of Indian Affairs and Northern Improvement, 1978.
MacDonald, David B. The Sleeping Big Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Faculties, and the Problem of Conciliation. College of Toronto Press, 2019.
McCallum, Mary Jane Logan. Indigenous Girls, Work, and Historical past, 1940–1980. College of Manitoba Press, 2014.
Miller, J.R. Skyscrapers Conceal the Heavens: A Historical past of Native-Newcomer Relations, 4th version. College of Toronto Press, 2018.
Milloy, John S. “The Early Indian Acts: Developmental Technique and Constitutional Change.” In Candy Guarantees: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada, edited by J.R. Miller, 145–154. College of Toronto Press, 1991.
Murdoch, Chandra. “Inheritance and the Indian Act: Political Motion and Girls’s Property on Southern Ontario Indian Reserves, 1857–1900.” In Household and Justice within the Archives, edited by Peter Gossage and Lisa Moore, 43–61. Concordia College Press, 2024.
Nickle, Sarah A. Assembling Unity: Indigenous Politics, Gender, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. College of British Columbia, 2019.
Palmater, Pam. Past Blood: Rethinking Indigenous Id. College of British Columbia Press, 2011.
Pettipas, Katherine. Severing the Ties that Bind: Authorities Repression of Indigenous Non secular Ceremonies on the Prairies. College of Manitoba Press, 1994.
Reynolds, Jim. Canada and Colonialism: An Unfinished Historical past. College of British Columbia Press, Purich Books, 2024.
Shewell, Hugh. ‘Sufficient to Preserve Them Alive’: Indian Social Welfare in Canada, 1873–1965. College of Toronto Press, 2004.
Smith, Keith D. Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous communities in Western Canada, 1877–1927. College of British Columbia Press, 2009.
Stonechild, Blair, and Invoice Waiser. Loyal until Demise: Indians and the North-West Riot. Fifth Home Ltd., 1997.
Titley, E. Brian. A Slender Imaginative and prescient: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada. College of British Columbia Press, 1986.
Titley, Brian. The Indian Commissioners: Brokers of the State and Indian Coverage in Canada’s Prairie West, 1873–1932. College of Alberta Press, 2009.
Tobias, John L. “Safety, Civilization, Assimilation: An Define Historical past of Canada’s Indian Coverage.” In Candy Guarantees: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada, edited by J.R. Miller, 127–144. College of Toronto Press, 1991.
Venne, Sharon Helen. Indian Acts and Amendments 1868-1975: An Listed Assortment. Native Legislation Centre, College of Saskatchewan, 1981.
Vogt, David. “‘Within the Greatest Curiosity of the Indians’: An Ethnohistory of the Canadian Division of Indian Affairs, 1897–1913.” Ph.D. dissertation, College of Victoria, 2020.
[1] I want to thank Jack Nestor, MA scholar in Historical past on the College of Manitoba, for analysis help and for serving to to assemble the chosen bibliography.
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