history short answer

HSTR 324B Powerpoint Notes 26 July

Lecture 25 July

Final Exam

• Part 1 – map section (5%)

• Part 2 – identify (5%)

• Part 3 – short essay response (2 x 25%)

  • Fraser River Gold Rush

  • Smallpox

  • Missionaries and Indigenous responses to Christianity

  • Pre-emption system

  • Industrialization

  • Confederation and the Terms of Union

  • The Canadian Pacific Railway and impacts on Victoria and Vancouver

• Part 4 – longer essay (40%)

  • Douglas Treaties and changing Native land policies

  • Gender relations in nineteenth century British Columbia

  • Chinese immigration, rights and labour

Course Experience Survey

• Feedback is valuable

• Time in class tomorrow – please bring electronic devices

Indian Act and the Pursuit of Rights and Title

Federal “Indian” Policies

• Confederation: “The charge of the Indians, and the trusteeship and management of the lands reserved for their use and benefit, shall be assumed by the Dominion Government…”

  • Indian Act

  • Residential Schools

  • Banning the Potlatch

Indian Act, 1876

• Act defined Indian status, who could live on reserves

• Made “Indians” wards of the state, instead of citizens

• Organized education of Indigenous children

• Goal: assimilation

• In practice: kept Aboriginal people separate

To achieve citizenship: An “Indian” “could not be accorded the rights and privileges of European Canadians until he could prove that he could read and write either the French or English language, was free of debt, and of good moral character.”

What double standards at work?

Gender and Indian Status

1876: Indian Act

• “The term “Indian” means

  • First. Any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to a particular band;

  • Secondly. Any child of such person;

  • Thirdly. Any woman who is or was lawfully married to such person.”

  • How is Indian status passed down?

• How was a woman’s status determined?

Residential Schools

• 1870s: federal government setting up residential school system run by Christian denominations

• Government motivations

• Interests of parents?

• Risks of a low-cost education?

Father McGuckin, St. Joseph’s Mission, 1878

“In a few years hence all our young boys and girls will speak English, mix with the whites and lose all of their original simplicity. To resist them the temptations that will be placed in their way nothing less than a thorough religious education will suffice. This they will never acquire in their own language… Not durng boyhood or girlhood, for then they are too busy and can only be found for a short time in the winter, and often then unwilling to occupy their spare time at religious instruction. Hence if we will preserve the faith amongst them, and provide them with arms to resist temptation, we must endeavor to get them into school and keep them for a number of years.”

What rationale was being used to support a residential school?

Williams Lake Residential School, St. Joseph’s Mission, est. 1891, in Shuswap territory

• Shift in style of learning

• Academic learning and trades/domestic labour (gendered)

• Training students for rural life

• Selling products made by students

• Abuse

Images: Students learning knitting & needlework at St. Joseph’s Mission, ca. 1900; St. Joseph’s Mission, Williams Lake, ca. 1910

Children running away from Williams Lake Residential School, ca. 1900

Ellen Charlie, age 16:

• “I ran away four times because the Sisters and Fathers did not treat me good; they gave us bad food which was fit only for pigs, the meat was rotten, and had a bad smell and taste… when I did not eat it they gave it to me again for the next meal… They would sometimes lock me in a room and make me kneel down for half an hour or an hour. They once kept me locked up for a week… They sometimes whipped me with a strap on the face and sometimes stripped me and whipped me.”

1894: attendance mandatory

Dept of Indian Affairs, 1895:

“If it were possible to gather in all the Indian children and retain them for a certain period, there would be produced a generation of English-speaking Indians, accustomed to the ways of civilized life, which might then be the dominant body among themselves, capable of holding its own with its white neighbours; and thus would be brought about a rapidly decreasing expenditure until the same should forever cease, and the Indian problem would be solved.”

What did it mean to “solve the Indian problem”?

Consequences of Residential Schooling

• Loss of language and culture

• Breakdown of families

• Loss of parenting skills

• Cycle of abuse

On residential schools in Canada, Brandon recommends:

Where the Spirit Lives (1989)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103244/

Banning the Potlatch

• 1884: potlatch ban added to the Indian Act

• Incompatible with missionary goals, capitalism

• Largest potlatches held in years up to 1900

Image: Quamichan Potlatch, photo by Methodist missionary Charles Tate, 1913

Potlatch law amended 1895:

• Any person who celebrated or assisted or encouraged another to celebrate “any Indian festival, dance or other ceremony of which the giving away or paying or giving back of money, goods or articles of any sort forms a part, or is a feature, whether such a gift or money, goods or articles takes place before, at, or after the celebration of the same” was guilty of an indictable offence.

Title and Treaties in Twentieth-Century BC

Image: Highway 113, Nisga’a Highway

Federal-Provincial Indian Reserve Commission, 1876

• Dissatisfaction of Indigenous people, Dominion government

• 1876 Commission: Alexander Caulfield Anderson, Archibald McKinley, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat

• Sproat: Indigenous people should have enough land to support themselves

Image: Gilbert Malcolm Sproat’s camp at Spuzzum

Maps: Okanagan reserves before and after the Joint Reserve Commission

Peter O’Reilly

• Reserve commissioner, 1880-98

• Brother-in-law of Trutch

• Created small reserves, rejected Aboriginal title

• 1887 – Tsimshian and Nisga’a to Victoria with Crosby

• Premier William Smithe denied Prairie treaties

• Sept 1887: Federal-Provincial Commission to North-West Coast

Image: Peter O’Reilly (BC Archives, G-01065)

Organizing for change

• 1906: Nisga’a leaders travel to London

• 1907: Nisga’a organize Land Committee

• 1910+1911: Nisga’a meet with Laurier in Ottawa

• 1913: petition to Privy Council

• 1913-1916: McKenna-McBride Commission

• 1916: Allied Indian Tribes of BC

Image: Nisga’a men at Aiyansh, Nass River

“A time of darkness and despair”

• 1927: Amendment to Indian Act

  • Prohibition on raising money, hiring lawyers, pursuing land claims

  • Ban on Potlatch to include most gatherings

  • No travel off reserve without permission

• 1949: Status Indians gain provincial vote in BC

• 1951: Indian Act revised

  • Ban on Potlatch and Sun Dance lifted

  • Ban on hiring lawyers lifted

Lecture July 27

British Columbia in the Early Twentieth Century

Party Government

• Lieutenant Governor:

  • Ensures the continued existence of government in the province

  • Selects a First Minister as Premier of the Province

• 1898-1903: 5 premiers

• 1903-1915: Richard McBride as Premier

Images: Thomas Robert McInnes (LG 1897-1900), Richard McBride, and Sir Henri Joly de Lotbiniere (LG 1900-1906)

Nature Tourism

Revelstoke, BC:

Est. 1886

1902 – interest in local mountains for recreation

1908: trail built up the mountain

1909: Revelstoke Mountaineering Club formed

Railway only way in and out

Images: Eva Lake; Revelstoke in 1905

Automobile in Revelstoke, 1911

1908: 263 automobiles in BC, Ministry of Public Works formed

1914: 6,688 automobiles in BC

1912: 7 people registered vehicles in Revelstoke

Creating a White Province

• 1908 – Japanese immigrants limited to 400 per year

• 1908 – “continuous journey” amendment

• 1913 – Panama Maru arr. Victoria

- 38 passengers allowed to enter Canada

• 1914 – Komagata Maru incident

  • Organized by Gurdit Singh http://komagatamarujourney.ca/node/4348

  • 376 immigrants, mostly Sikh

  • Forbidden to land

  • 2 months in the harbour, then turned around

• 1923 – Exclusion Act

Image: Komagata Maru

Review for Final Exam

• Part 3 – short essay response (2 x 25%)

  • Fraser River Gold Rush

  • Smallpox

  • Missionaries and Indigenous responses to Christianity

  • Pre-emption system

  • Industrialization

  • Confederation and the Terms of Union

• Part 4 – longer essay (40%)

  • Douglas Treaties and changing Native land policies

  • Chinese immigration, rights and labour

• What are some broader questions you could ask about these topics? What lectures and readings could you use to answer them?