Lecture 5 - Assimilation

Question 1

Assimilation

Answer 1

referred to the cultural and behavioral change of Indians such that they would be culturally indistinguishable from other Canadians. The charge of ‘cultural genocide’, while serious in its implications, is not inappropriate

Question 2

Assimilation and Government - Indian Act

Answer 2

• Adopted into law in 1876
• Despite having multiple amendments made to the policy, it has an “explicit goal to control every facet of life on reserves”, and control and assimilate Indigenous peoples into Western culture (Fast & Collin-Vezina, 2019, p. 168).
• Some of the ways the Indian Act achieves its goals by:
• Controls Indigenous status
• Land displacement
• Limits trade
• Oppresses cultural practices

Question 2

The Indian Act defines indianness

Answer 2

• Between 1876 and 1985 one’s “Indianness” was traced through the male line.
• Indian women who married non-Indians ceased to be Indians under the Act. These women were not Indians according to the Act, but neither were they considered to be Canadian citizens between 1876 and 1960.
• Indian men could not lose status through marriage, in fact, if they married non-status women, those women GAINED status under the Act.

Question 3

In 1985, a revision to the Indian Act (Section 12(b)) was made

Answer 3

as this policy conflicted with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Question 4

The revision, Bill C-31, allowed for

Answer 4

Indigenous women (who married non-Indigenous men) to reapply and regain their status.

Question 5

Many women and families who regained their status were

Answer 5

not necessarily welcomed back to their communities (many were unknown to their communities as a result of having lived off reserves for many years).

Question 6

Bill C-31 was developed to ensure that

Answer 6

eligible children and grandchildren of women who lost their status become entitled to registration (Indian status).

Question 7

It was estimated that approximately ________ people would become entitled to registration.

Answer 7

45,000

Question 8

Section 86(1), sought to disenfranchise

Answer 8

any Indian who obtained a degree, or became a doctor, lawyer, or clergy member

Question 9

Any Indian person wishing to pursue higher education risked losing

Answer 9

his/her status as an Indian, including all benefits such as living on the reservation, inheriting property, or even being buried on the reservation.

Question 10

Another way that one’s Indigenousness was determined was through the ________________, a complex formula outlined in the legislation of the Indian Act.

Answer 10

Blood Quantum Formula

Question 11

Assimilation and Government - Residential Schools

Answer 11

• Used to destroy cultural values, beliefs, and languages.
• Chronically underfunded, contained unsanitary conditions, caused health epidemics and hundreds of child deaths
• Extensive physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
• “Kill the Indian in the child.”

Question 12

___________________ pressured the federal government to fulfill the educational clauses in the numbered treaties as quickly as possible.

Answer 12

The Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches

Question 13

______ , ____________________ government assigned Nicholas Flood Davin to report on the Industrial Schools in the United States.

Answer 13

In 1879, Sir John A. Macdonald’s

Question 14

Nicholas Flood Davin recommendations

Answer 14

called for four centrally based industrial boarding schools that would teach the arts, crafts and industrial skills of a modern economy.

Question 15

The so called ‘problem’ was not so much about the First Nations people themselves, but

Answer 15

about the responsibility the Crown had in terms of its treaty obligations and fiduciary duty to protect and act in the best interests of First Nations people.

Question 16

As long as First Nations people remained tied to their culture and traditions, the Crown

Answer 16

and later the Federal Government would have to uphold its obligations and duties to First Nations descendants.

Question 17

The removal policies are seen in the compulsory attendance policy at the residential schools, introduced in

Answer 17

1894

Question 18

After ______, the Government and church worked together, enforce this policy by ensuring children of school age were going to the schools.

Answer 18

1920

Question 19

Pedagogy

Answer 19

change learning and education from holistic to western

Question 20

Paganism

Answer 20

needed to be christianized

Question 21

Culture

Answer 21

needed to take on “white western’ values

Question 22

Appearance

Answer 22

needed to “look” more like white people

Question 23

Language

Answer 23

needed to learn English or french; weren’t allowed to speak Indigenous languages

Question 24

Between 1800 and 1990 over ____ residential school

Answer 24

130

Question 25

1 out of 6 children between the ages of _________ attended these schools

Answer 25

6 and 15

Question 26

By 1940s about 8,000 children were enrolled in _____ schools

Answer 26

76

Question 27

Assimilation and the Canadian government – The “Sixties Scoop”

Answer 27

refers to a time when thousands of First Nations children were removed from their parents and placed into the foster cares system

Question 28

Through changes in the Indian Act, social workers received a legal

Answer 28

mandate to enter reserves and remove Indigenous children from their parents.

Question 29

Justifications were made to warrant the removal of children from a family. Two common justifications were on the basis of:

Answer 29

• Income
• Christian beliefs

Question 30

Assimilation and the Canadian Government – Sterilization

Answer 30

In the US, between 1973-1976, 3406 involuntary sterilizations occurred in just 3 Indian Health Services hospitals.
- Performed through coercion, force, and sometimes without the patient’s knowledge.

Estimated between one third and one half of Native American women who were of child-bearing age were sterilized during this time in the United States

Question 31

“Genocide” United Nations (1994) definition

Answer 31

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Question 32

How much of the UN genocide condition did Canada’s policies meet

Answer 32

All of them

Question 33

“Purpose” of the Residential Schools System

Answer 33

Pedagogy
Paganism
Culture
Appearance
Language