The Aboriginal People Of Canada

The Attawaspiskat Cree and Ojibwa are a first nations group living in parts of Canada, mainly northern Ontario. The main languages spoken by these first nation groups are Mushkegowuk Cree and Ojibway. I will compare and contrast the experience of the Attawapiskat Cree to Ojibwa in relation to the Canadian Government. This will include analyzing the treaties introduced by the government towards the Cree and the Ojibwa: in particular, treaty 9 will be discussed. In addition, to these treaties the government has divided the first nation community into two different groups: status-Indians and non-status Indians. Within these two groups further division has been accomplished by the allocation of lands know as reserves to status-Indians and

The Indian act was an oppressive way to assimilate First Nations and their land, to in a way, make them more civilized and fit for the “upper class” society, the act was implemented in 1876 by the Canadian Government and is still in place today. This act, that so blatantly takes away First Nations’ rights and identities, is in direct contradiction to the Royal Proclamation, that in contrast established the protection of First Nations rights and protected their specific and traditional territories from being used and inhabited by settlers. The Indian Act, however, created reserves, a piece of land “set aside” that were given to the First Nations by the government, which then they were forced into. Not only that, but First Nations did not have ownership over the land, “Reserve land is still classified as federal land, and First Nations do not have title to reserve land” this quote from BCcampus, “The reserve system”

The Indian Act document signed in 1876, resulted in the first nation people to give up their land, religion, culture, and rights. The government wanted the first nation people to give up their Indian status and be them, follow their culture.

Politics, education, culture, and personal lives, were all in the destructive hands of the government. The Indian Act was created in hopes to assimilate First Nations into mainstream Canadian society. This act restricted them to small reserves, it banned them from their cultural practices and forced many children into residential schools. The devastation created by the Indian Act is still prominent today.

As the colonies continued to expand, in 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal act. This act granted Indians rights to the unsettled land out west in exchange for the tribe settlement land along the east coast, mostly Southeast, to continue to grow the colony. This basically allowed the English to push the Indians off their tribal land so the English could colonize the property for a growth of the New World.

Since the colonization of Canada First Nations people have been discriminated against and assimilated into the new culture of Canada through policies created by the government. Policies created had the intentions of improving the Aboriginal people’s standard of living and increasing their opportunities. Mainly in the past hundred years in Canadian Society, policies and government implemented actions such as; Residential schools, the Indian Act, and reserve systems have resulted in extinguishing native culture, teachings, and pride. Policies towards the treatment of Aboriginal Canadians has decreased their opportunities and standard of living because of policies specified previously (Residential schools, the Indian Act, and reservation systems).

Over the past decades, Aboriginal people (the original people or indigenous occupants of a particular country), have been oppressed by the Canadian society and continue to live under racism resulting in gender/ class oppression. The history of Colonialism, and Capitalism has played a significant role in the construction and impact of how Aborignal people are treated and viewed presently in the Canadian society. The struggles, injustices, prejudice, and discrimination that have plagued Aboriginal peoples for more than three centuries are still grim realities today. The failures of Canada's racist policies toward Aboriginal peoples are reflected in the high levels of unemployment and poor education.

Collectively, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples constitute Aboriginal peoples in Canada, Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or first peoples. "First Nations"' came into common usage in the 1980s to replace the term "Indian band" in referring to groups of Indians with common government and

Aboriginal Contributions to Canadian Society Aboriginal peoples have been living on this land since the very beginning. Then came the Europeans, who conquered the Aboriginals and took away their land. The Aboriginal peoples fought with what little they had, but they were defeated. The Aboriginals continued to contribute to the land they belonged to; they were mistreated yet they still made political efforts and vast environmental and cultural changes.

They used ‘every other means’ a lot. The kidnapped children off reserve lands from their parents so they could send them to christian school and ‘force the indian out of the child’. This was how they started to assimilate the aboriginal people. Not only did they take these kids away from their parents, their communities and home. They tossed them into a new culture: language, religion, food, clothes and many more new things. At these schools if they spoke or practised their own culture they would beat these kids severely. A lot of the kids that attended these schools were raped by the priest or the nuns. Some of them were even ‘adopted’ into european homes. If parents began to speak up about the issue they were severely beaten or put in jail. In June of 2015, the Canadian government has apologized publicly and has called this culture genocide. (CAN) This admission speaks a lot about the severity that the aboriginal people faced under the ruling of the

After the strangling claws of the Indian Act were felt, the Canadian government began to issue more laws that intruded with the aboriginals lives and took away their rights. The first of these was the “Potlatch Law” (Hanson, n.p.). It banned potlatches and other ceremonies of the aboriginals, all for the purpose of forcing the

The Canadian government has great control of where the aboriginals are situated and what resources and services are made available to them. In 1876 the Indian act was created by the Canadian government (Indian Act). “The Indian act is a Canadian federal law that governs and matters pertaining to Indian statuses, bands, and Indian reserves”(Indian Act). A part of the Indian Act made the government give some crown land to the Aboriginals; the

Aboriginal peoples in Canada generally represents people who are the Indigenous habitants of Canada constituting of First Nations, Inuit and Metis (Etowa, Jesty, & Vukic, 2011). The First Nations people are referred to as Indians (status or non-status), the Inuit people traditionally live in northern regions including the Arctic and Subarctic areas and previously referred to as Eskimo while the Metis are Aboriginal people with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestors as a result of intermarriage with Europeans (Caron-Malenfant, Simon, Guimonnd, Grondin, & Lebel, 2015). Also, urban Aboriginal people are those who migrated to the urban areas in search for better opportunities and employment in the 1960s and 1970s and may include status and

Indigenous peoples who were suffering a lot in the past in Canada, now it is from their rights to have the freedom to practice their culture and traditions on the Canadian lands. These rights that should some Aboriginal peoples of Canada hold as a result of their ancestors' longstanding use and occupancy of the land. The rights of certain peoples to hunt, trap and fish on ancestral

The first inhabitants of North America arrived in Canada many centuries ago and built settlements which developed a variety of distinctive cultures, values, customs, and beliefs. During the Age of Discovery, European explorers grew interested in the unknown of a new world in the west, and thus began the arrival of invaders from previously unrevealed continents. This mass immigration of European settlers in Canada resulted in internal colonialism where they placed Aboriginal peoples in a subordinate position through economic and political exploitation to acquire control over this land (Steckley, 2017). Internal colonialism culminated in deep rooted cultural oppression of Aboriginal peoples through residential schools, Aboriginal reserves, and internal racial discrimination; these legacies contributed to the destruction of Aboriginal identity and continue to influence contemporary Canada’s perspective on Aboriginal peoples.