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In precontact Canada Amerindian societies were predominantly agrarian and hunter-gatherers. The two economies facilitated extensive trade routes and military alliances that were readily penetrated by European imperial rivals with the introduction of the fur trade.

Although neither Europeans or Amerindians needed lessons in the waging of armed conflict against an enemy, precontact hostilities were largely limited to blood feuds, which resulted in relatively few casualties when compared to European conventional warfare. Trade and alliances with European nations brought access to wealth and firearms that increased hostilities among Amerindian nations to unprecedented levels due to competition for furs and threats to sovereignty.

Trade in Furs and European Imperial Rivalries

Speculation that the Iroquois may have committed genocide against the Huron, who ceased to exist as a confederacy in 1649, is based on the hypothesis, first proposed by George T. Hunt in 1940, that the war between them was fought over the right to be the middlemen in the fur trade. Bruce Trigger, who dismissed Hunt's hypothesis as a "major dis-service" to scholarship argues that the Huron, because of their precontact allies and relationship with the French, represented a military threat to Iroquois sovereignty. The intent of the Iroquois was to break the Huron-French alliance. After the defeat of the Huron, the Iroquois made no attempt to replace them as middlemen. At the end of conflict the Iroquois compelled the Huron to join the Iroquois Confederacy. Many Iroquois were dispersed among the Onondaga and Mohawk, while one entire tribe and some of their allies were adopted by the Seneca Nation. This tribe was allowed to maintain its own language, culture, and customs.

A second possible case of genocide during the Huron-Iroquois conflict involves the Jesuits. In 1640 the Iroquois met with then Governor Montmagny of New France in an attempt to procure a treaty allowing them to kill Algonquin, allies of the Huron, without French interference. In return, Iroquois would no longer attack French or Huron furriers. Montmagny at first declined, but was persuaded by Jesuit priests to agree, provided the Iroquois promised to attack only non-Christian Algonquin. The Algonquin were never informed of the treaty. Trigger contends that the Jesuits, who were dependent on the fur trade, feared losing their missions if trade was cut off and recognized this as an opportunity to encourage Algonquin conversion. While the Iroquois' intent was to attack Algonquin randomly, Jesuit intent, inflicting conditions that aimed to annihilate non-Christian Algonquin, may have qualified as a genocide; however, Trigger points out that the treaty was only temporary.

Impact of European Infectious Diseases

Although there is a divergence of opinion as to the numbers of Aboriginal peoples who perished from the seventeenth century onward after contracting European infectious diseases, most notably smallpox, a consensus exists among historians that the spread of disease was one of the leading factors in the destruction of Amerindian societies. The primary debate centers on the issue of intent. Did the carriers of infectious disease deliberately facilitate its spread to Aboriginal peoples with the intent that Amerindians should die?

Jesuit missionaries, who first came into contact with the Huron Nation in the early 1600s, estimated the Huron population to be roughly 20,000 to 35,000. After a wave of epidemics, particularly smallpox, the Huron were reduced to about 10,000 by 1640. Many Huron observed that epidemics had occurred after visits from the black-robed missionaries. This led Huron to believe the Jesuits were practicing witchcraft. Jesuit ceremonies, such as the burning of incense and the priests' obsession with baptism (it did not go unnoticed that most Huron baptized while on their death bed with smallpox failed to survive), were interpreted as spell casting, or worse, soul stealing. Events culminated with a Huron attack on a Jesuit settlement in modern Midland Ontario, which resulted in the annihilation of its inhabitants.

While the Huron may not have understood the science behind the spread of European infectious diseases, in all probability they were likely correct in identifying the Jesuits as the carriers of disease. The Jesuits believed in the existence of two worlds after death. Heaven, which represented all they deemed holy, and hell, or purgatory, which represented all that was evil and feared. Better to risk the death of Amerindians after baptism, they reasoned, than not to baptize and risk eternal damnation for those unfortunate enough to die without having been baptized.

Intent and Implementation of British/Canadian Amerindian Policy

British Amerindian policy followed three discernible paths: protection, civilization, and finally assimilation. With the introduction of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the British Crown recognized Amerindian land rights and forbade European settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. Amerindian lands could only be surrendered to the Crown. The exception was the colony of British Columbia, where the colonial government favored what it called "peaceful penetration." However, after confederation, the Canadian government put an end to this policy and proceeded to invoke the tradition born out of the Royal proclamation where only the Crown could purchase land. The Crown, in turn, was the sole proprietor of land sales to settlers. Although this policy advanced British economic interests in the fur trade, it conflicted with the interests of American settlers, ultimately contributing to the American Revolution.

Between 1815 and 1841 Upper Canada accepted an influx of European settlers, creating demands on Amerindian lands. Sir Frances Bond Head, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, as U.S. President Thomas Jefferson before him, advocated the relocation of Amerindians. Bond Head proposed moving all Amerindians from central and southern Ontario to Manitoulin Island. While Bond Head's proposal was never actuated, all Indians were eventually isolated on reserves, opening land for settlement. Christian converts who originally built and maintained their own community of log houses, barns, and fields at the present-day site of Owen Sound, Ontario, were not spared. Bond Head told the Amerindians that they could not be protected from settlers unless they agreed to relocate and relinquish their lands.

In 1830 the Indian Department was transferred from military to civilian control. With this change, the Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in the Canadas was introduced. Favored by white settlers and politicians, Governor George Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Company warned that policies undermining Amerindians societies would become a political issue in Britain. As J. R. Miller contends, "Assimilation through evangelization, education and agriculture would have to be the policy after 1830, because more coercive methods of achieving the 'Euthanasia of savage communities' were inimical, expensive and politically dangerous" (1996, p. 75). Miller appears to be correct in his estimations. From 1837 to 1861 Englishman Herman Merival, rejecting the notion of the physical extermination of Natives as unthinkable, openly advocated utilizing both the church and state to prepare Amerindians for assimilation, while isolating them from settlers until such time that they might be deemed "civilized." The Civilization Act of 1857 was precisely what Merival had advocated. The Crown went further in 1866, with the introduction of policies that "adjusted" reserves. Amerindians were expected to live on 10 acres per family, whereas whites were permitted to claim 160 acres and purchase an additional 480.

Recognition of a Nation

The introduction of the British North American (B.N.A.) Act of 1867 recognized Canada as a nation and entrenched Amerindians in Canadian law as wards of the Crown; however, Amerindians were encouraged under the act to pursue enfranchisement, which entailed full assimilation into white society.

In 1868 the Indian Act was passed into law. Its principles were once again protection, civilization, and assimilation. As Robert Surtees stresses, the "general framework" of policy was inherited from preconfederation:

It became increasingly legalistic in its orientation. Emphasis was directed toward enfranchisement, toward the meaning of Indian status, and toward eradicating all remnants, aspects, or symbols of tribal background or Indian heritage. The imposition of elected local governments on reserves and the proscription by federal statute of such customs as the Sun Dance and the potlatch were instances of the latter emphasis. And to promote the program, extended powers were accorded the Indian agents through an increase in the authority of the chief superintendent, who, after Confederation, was a minister of the federal government (Surtees, 1982, p. 44).

The creation of the Enfranchisement Act of 1869 authorized the federal government of Canada under the Indian Act to relinquish the status of anyone legally recognized as a "Status Indian" whom the government deemed fit for assimilation. The Indian Act was again amended in 1876 to clarify that Indians were minors, wards of the federal government, subjects, not citizens. Brian Titley explains, "It was designed to protect the Indians until they acquired the trappings of white civilization. At that point, they were supposed to abandon their reserves and their special status and disappear into the general population" (1986). John Milloy notes that it was tribal councils that first decided policies on agriculture, schools, and other forms of cultural change. Under the Indian Act of 1876 the Canadian government controlled the reserves.

After the collapse of the fur trade in western Canada, the Plains Cree made overtures to the federal government, aimed at the creation of a Cree homeland within the confederation. The Cree insisted on the inclusion of a commitment to providing schools and farm equipment in treaties. Federal promises either fell short or were neglected altogether. Successful farming operations were reduced in size after settlers complained of having to compete with Amerindians. Living conditions became deplorable, forcing some women into prostitution in order to acquire food. The government blamed the perceived immorality of Amerindian culture. Hostilities boiled over in the communities of Battleford and Frog Lake, at roughly the same time the Metis rebelled against federal subjugation. According to Robert Tobias, Edgar Dewdney, a senior bureaucrat with Indian Affairs, used the opportunity to publicly cover up the results of federal policy by claiming that Cree hostilities were part of the Metis Rebellion of 1885. Privately, Dewdney admitted the two were separate incidents. After 1885 Dewdney refused to honor treaties with the Cree. The Cree were eventually forced onto scattered reserves, their leaders wrongfully imprisoned, and the farming equipment promised in treaties never delivered.

In 1894 the Canadian Indian Act was amended to allow for the lease of so-called idle reserve lands to the growing numbers of settlers. Reserves were increasingly viewed as a hindrance to assimilation. In 1903 the Oliver Act became law. It was designed to make the seizure of allegedly surplus Indian lands for settlers easier. (At the beginning of the early twenty-first century Amerindians occupy less then 2% of the land in Canada below the 60th parallel.) Education also became compulsory under the Indian Act of 1894. The intent was to utilize day and residential schools to prepare Amerindian children for assimilation into Western society. Children were forbidden from practicing their own culture, language, and religion; the vacuum created was filled by Western culture, the English language, and Christianity. This policy remained unchallenged until the drafting of the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Genocide concluded in 1948. Canada, among other UN member nations, successfully lobbied for the removal of most of the references to cultural genocide in favor of limiting legislation to cases of "physical destruction." The Canadian government feared that the residential schools or forced education in its country might be seen as genocidal institutions.

Seven years after the ratification of the Genocide Convention, in response to external threats to her sovereignty in the high Arctic, Canada engaged both the Hudson's Bay Company and Royal Canadian Mounted Police to relocate Inuit, predominantly from Port Harrison, Quebec, to Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay. They were to select Inuit deemed "inefficient trappers." For the most part the Hudson's Bay Company ignored the fact that Inuit who were dependent on relief payments received this government assistance, in part, because some of the tribe's best hunters were too busy trapping for Hudson's Bay to hunt for their own people; furthermore, a number of self-sufficient hunters and at least one prominent carver who maintained a respectable income by southern standards were sent to the high Arctic.

In the 1960s Canadian policy toward its Native population underwent a radical change with the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling in Nishga, which confirmed the rights of Amerindians. This ruling legally quashed the 1969 White Paper that proposed the abolition of reserves and Amerindian rights as recognized by the Crown in earlier treaties. Although the 1960s bore witness to improved Canadian-Amerindian relations, Canada did not, as Micheal Asch asserts, shift policy from assimilation to negotiating Amerindians into the confederation. Contemporary land claims assert Crown sovereignty over unceded lands while recognizing some rights in return for the extinction of others and Amerindian recognition of Canadian sovereignty. All modern treaties contain a clause stating that Amerindians must "cede surrender and extinguish all Aboriginal claims." The agreements offer Amerindians financial considerations on a per acre basis, generally well below market value, and an agreed upon percentage of royalties for resources.

Although there is general consensus among scholars that the Canadian government pursued an ethnocidal policy toward Amerindians, Miller underscores the frustration of this policy, as a result of Amerindian resistance, lack of government finances, and the overall failure of government agents to fully cooperate in the implementation of ethnocidal policies. However, Miller's work fails to take into account the agents who did cooperate or were overzealous, as demonstrated by Robin Brownlie and Mary-Ellen Kelm. Nor does Miller address the plight of Amerindians on the West Coast who were imprisoned if they participated in a potlatch or those who were released from prisons only after surrendering their religious regalia to museums. Brownlie and Kelm's findings are further validated by Chalk and Jonassohn, who state that few genocides are ever entirely successful. It is only logical that the same principle applies to ethnocide.

SEE ALSO Beothuk; Residential Schools

David King