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Institutional racism can be described as racial discrimination that derives from individuals carrying out the dictates of others who are prejudiced or of a prejudiced society. Some forms of systemic racism may be more explicit or easier to identify than others: examples include the Indian Residential School System in Canada and the way that "universal suffrage" did not include Indigenous women (Indigenous men did not receive the vote until 1960, except those who gave up their identity as Indigenous under the policy of voluntary enfranchisement).

In looking at the history of Canada’s state building process and the institutional racism which followed, sub-texts will examine four areas that negatively built that legacy: Treaties and the Reserves, The Indians Acts and Scrip, Enfranchisement, and Residential Schools.

The difference in socio-economic conditions between indigenous and non- indigenous in Canada can be seen as the consequences of history; in particular the processes of colonialism, state building, territorial conquest, westward migration and economic development, and the accompanying institutional racism which followed. Since 1998, Canada has taken steps to address issues of inequality faced by visible minorities & racial discrimination against the indigenous population, including those of all the First Nations.

The living standard of indigenous peoples in Canada falls far short of those of the non-indigenous, and they, along with other ‘visible minorities’ remain, as a group, the poorest in Canada. There continue to be barriers to gaining equality with other Canadians of European ancestry. The life expectancy of First Nations people is lower; they have less high school graduates, much higher unemployment rates, nearly double the number of infant deaths and significantly greater contact with law enforcement. Their incomes are lower, they enjoy fewer promotions in the workplace and as a group the younger members are more likely to work reduced hours or weeks each year.

Today racism in Canada a more covert act, the inclusion taught in schools describes a tolerant society akin to ‘a salad bowl’ where ethnic self-identification and cultural diversity are promoted. It’s most distinguishing characteristic appears to be the vigour with which racial intolerance is consistently denied. Visible minorities reported in 2002 that most acts of discrimination took place in the workplace and a 2005 survey found 17% of Canadians had experienced racism at some point.

History, however, cannot be so kind to the actual facts that occurred on the ground beginning in the 19th century. European diseases, as happened elsewhere among Aboriginal peoples, particularly smallpox and tuberculosis, devastated the indigenous peoples, killing upwards of 50% of the native populations. This was aided by official policies that removed health care from being available to ethnic minorities whom were official wards of the government.

Many in Europe during the 19th century, (as reflected in the Imperial Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines), supported the goal put forth by colonial imperialists of ‘civilizing’ the Native populations. This led to an emphasis on the acquisition of Aboriginal lands in exchange for the putative benefits of European society and their associated Christian religions. British control of Canada (the Crown) began when they exercised jurisdiction over the first nations and it was by Royal Proclamation that the first piece of legislation the British government passed over First Nations citizens assumed control of their lives. It gave recognition to the Indians tribes not as first Nations, but as first Nations living under Crown protection.

It was after the treaty of Paris In 1763, whereby France ceded all claims in present day Canada to Britain, that King George III of Great Britain issued this Royal Proclamation specifying how the Indigenous in the crown colony were to be treated. It is the most significant pieces of legislation regarding the Crown’s relationship with Aboriginal people. This Royal Proclamation recognized Indian owned lands and reserved to them all use as their hunting grounds. It also established the process by which the Crown could purchase their lands, and also laid out basic principles to guide the Crown when making treaties with the First Nations. The Proclamation made Indian lands transferred by treaty to be Crown property, and stated that indigenous title is a collective or communal rather than a private right so that individuals have no claim to lands where they lived and hunted long before the British came.

Indian Acts

In 1867, the British North America Act made ” land reserved for Indians” a Crown responsibility. In 1876 the first of many Indian Acts passed, each successive one leeched more from the rights of the indigenous as was stated in the first. The sundry revised Indian Acts (22 times by 2002) solidified the position of Natives as wards of the state, and Indian agents were given discretionary power to control almost every aspect of the lives of the indigenous. It then became necessary to have permission from an Indian agent if Native people wanted to sell crops they had grown and harvested, or wear traditional clothes off the reserves. The Indian Act was also used to deny Indians the right to vote until 1960, and they could not sit on juries.

In 1885 General Middleton after defeating the Metis rebellion introduced the Pass System in western Canada, under which Natives could not leave their reserves without first obtaining a pass from their farming instructors permitting them to do so. While the Indian Act did not give him such powers, and no other legislation allowed the Department of Indian Affairs to institute such a system, and it was known by crown lawyers to be illegal as early as 1892, the Pass System remained in place and was enforced until the early 1930’s. As Natives were not permitted at that time to become lawyers, they could not fight it in the courts. Thus was institutional racism externalized as official policy.

When Aboriginals began to press for recognition of their rights and to complain of corruption and abuses of power within the Indian department, the Act was amended to make it an offence for an Aboriginal person to retain a lawyer for the purpose of advancing any claims against the crown.

The Métis

Unlike the effect of those Indian treaties in the North-West which established the reserves for the Indigenous, the protection of Métis lands was not secured by the scrip policy instituted in the 1870’s, whereby the crown exchanged a scrip in exchange for a fixed (160-240 acres) grant of land to those of mixed heritage. In most cases, the scrip policy did not consider Métis ways of life, did not guarantee their land rights, and did not facilitate any economic or lifestyle transition. Most Métis were illiterate and did not know the value of the Scrip, and in most cases sold them for instant gratification due to economic need to speculators who undervalued the paper. Needless to say, the process by which they applied for their land was made deliberately ardous. There was no legislation binding Scrip land to the Métis whom applied for them, Instead, Métis scrip lands could be sold to anyone, hence alienating any Aboriginal title which may have been vested in those lands. Despite the evident detriment to the Métis, speculation was rampant and done in collusion with the distribution of scrip. While this does not necessarily preclude a malicious intent by the federal government to consciously ‘cheat’ the Métis, it illustrates their apathy towards the welfare of the Métis, their long-term interests, and the recognition of their Aboriginal title. But the point of the policy was to settle land in the North-West with agriculturalists, not keep a land reserve for the Métis. Scrip, then, was a major undertaking in Canadian history, and its importance as both an Aboriginal policy and a land policy should not be overlooked as it was an institutional ‘policy’ which discriminated against ethnic indigenous to their continued detriment.

Enfranchisement - Sufferage to become canadian

Until 1951 the various Indian Acts defined a ‘person’ as ”an individual other than an Indian”, and all indigenous peoples were considered wards of the state. Legally, the Crown devised a system of enfranchisement whereby an indigenous person could become a ”person” in Canadian law. Indigenous people could gain the right to vote and become Canadian citizens, ”persons” under the law, by voluntarily assimilating into European/Canadian society. It was hoped that that indigenous peoples would renounce their native heritage and culture and embrace the ‘benefits’ of civilized society. Indeed, from the 1920s to the 1940s some Natives did give up their status in order to receive the right to go to school, vote or to drink. However, voluntary enfranchisement proved a failure when few natives took advantage. In 1920 a law was passed to authorize enfranchisement without consent, and many Aboriginal peoples were involuntarily enfranchised. Natives automatically lost their Indian status if they became professionals such as doctors or ministers, or even if they obtained university degrees, and with it, their right to reside on the reserves.

The enfranchisement requirements particularly discriminated against Native women, specifying in Section 12 (1)(b) of the Indian Act that an Indian status woman marrying a non Indian man would loose her status as an Indian, as would her children. In contrast non Indian women marrying Indian men would gain Indian status,ref> openparliament.ca/bills/41-1/C-31. Duncan Campbell Scott, the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, neatly expressed the sentiment of the day in 1920: “Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question and no Indian Department” This aspect of enfranchisement was addressed by passage of Bill C-31 in 1985, where the discriminatory clauses of the Indian Act was removed, and Canada officially gave up the goal of enfranchising Natives.

Residential Schools

With the goal of civilizing and christianizing Aboriginal populations, a system of ‘industrial schools’ was developed in the 19th century which combined academic studies with ”more practical matters” and schools for Natives began to appear in the 1840s. From 1879 on these schools were modelled after the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, whose motto was ”Kill the Indian in him and save the man.”. It was felt that the most effective weapon for ”killing the Indian” in them, was to remove children from their Native supports and so Native children were taken away from their homes, their parent, their families, friends and communities. The 1876 Indian Act gave the federal government responsibility for Native education and by 1910 residential schools dominated the Native education policy. The government provided funding to religious groups such as the Catholic, Anglican, United Church and Presbyterian churches to undertake Native education. By 1920, attendance by natives was made compulsory and there were 74 residential schools operating nationwide. Following the ideas of Sifton and others like him, the academic goals of these schools were ‘dumbed down’. As Scott Campbell stated at the time, they didn’t want students that were ”made too smart for the Indian villages” : “To this end the curriculum in residential schools has been simplified and the practical instruction given is such as may be immediately of use to the pupil when he returns to the reserve after leaving school.”

The funding the government provided was generally insufficient and often the schools ran themselves as ”self-sufficient businesses”, where ‘student workers’ were removed from class to do the laundry, heat the building or perform farm work. Dormitories were often poorly heated and overcrowded, and the food was less than adequately nutritious. A 1907 report, commissioned by Indian Affairs, found that in 15 prairie schools there was a death rate of 24%. Indeed a deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs at the time commented: “It is quite within the mark to say that fifty percent of the children who passed through these schools did not benefit from the education which they had received therein.” While the death rate did decline in later years, death would remain a part of the residential school tradition.

The worst aspect of Canada’s residential schools, and that which anthropologists Steckley and Cummins said ”might readily qualify as the single-worst thing that Europeans did to Natives in Canada” was the endemic abuses ; emotional, physical and sexual, for which they are now known. Punishments were often brutal and cruel, sometimes even life threatening or life ending. Pins were sometimes stuck in children’s tongues for speaking their Native languages, sick children were made to eat their vomit, and semi-formal inspections of children’s genitalia were carried out to name but a few crimes.

Most residential schools closed in the 1970s. Criminal and civil suits against the government and the churches began in the late 1980’s and shortly thereafter the last residential school closed. By 2002 the number of lawsuits had passed 10,000. In the 1990s, beginning with the United Church, the churches that ran the residential schools began to issue formal apologies. And in 1998 the Canadian government issued the Statement of Reconciliation, and committed $350 million in support of a community-based healing strategy to address the healing needs of individuals, families and communities arising from the legacy of physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. The money was used to launch the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

Conclusion

The overt institutional racism of the past has clearly had a profoundly devastating and lasting effect on visible minorities and Aboriginal communities throughout Canada. European cultural norms have imposed themselves on Native populations in Canada, and Aboriginal communities continue to struggle with foreign systems of governance, of justice, of education, and of livelihood. Visible Minorities struggle with education, employment and negative contact with the legal system across Canada.

Perhaps most palpable is the devastation caused by residential schools. Many of those who attended residential schools have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, suffering from such symptoms as panic attacks, insomnia, and uncontrollable or unexplainable anger. Not surprisingly, many also suffer from alcohol or drug abuse, sexual inadequacy or addiction, the inability to form intimate relationships, and eating disorders. Three generations of Native parents lost out on learning important parenting skills usually passed on from parent to child in caring and nurturing home environments, and the abuse suffered by students of residential schools has begun a distressing cycle of abuse within many Native communities. However, the legacy of residential schools is only one facet of the problem.

Aboriginal children continue to struggle with mainstream education in Canada. For some Indian students, English remains a second language, and many lack parents with sufficient education themselves to support them. Moreover, education in Canada is premised on a written tradition, quite different from the oral tradition of Native communities. For others, it is simply that they are ostracised for their ‘otherness’; their manners, their attitudes, their speech or a hundred other things which mark them out as different. Aboriginal populations continue to suffer from poor health. They have seven years less life expectancy than the overall Canadian population and almost twice as many infant deaths. While Canada as a nation routinely ranks in the top three on the United Nations Human Development Index, it’s on-reserve Aboriginal population, if scored as a nation, would rank a distant and shocking sixty-third.

As Phil Fontaine National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, points out, racism in Canada today is for the most part, a covert operation. Its central and most distinguishing characteristic is the vigour with which it is consistently denied. There are many who argue that Canada’s endeavours in the field of human rights and its stance against racism have only resulted in a "more politically correct population who have learnt to better conceal their prejudices". In effect, the argument is that racism in Canada is not being eliminated, but rather is becoming more covert, more rational and perhaps more deeply imbedded in our institutions. That racism is alive is evidenced by the recent referendum in British Columbia by which the provincial government is asking the white majority to decide on a mandate for negotiating treaties with the Indian minority. The results of the referendum will be binding, the government having legislatively committed itself to act on these principles if more than 50% of those voting reply in the same way. Moreover, although it has been revised many times, "the Indian Act remains legislation which singles out a segment of society based on race". Under it, the civil rights of First nations peoples are "dealt with in a different manner than the civil rights of the rest of Canadian citizens".

The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba, the Donald Marshall Inquiry in Nova Scotia, the Cawsey Report in Alberta and the Royal Commission of Aboriginal People all agree, as far as Aboriginal people are concerned, racism in Canadian society continues institutionally, systematically and individually.

External links: The visible minority population in Canada: A review of numbers, growth and labour force issues Snapshot of racialized Poverty in Canada www.esdc.gc.ca/eng/communities/reports/poverty.../snapshot.shtml

Scrip: For discussions on this topic, see Gerhard Ens, Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of the Red River Métis in the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); "Métis Scrip," in S. Corrigan and J. Sawchuk, eds., The Recognition of Aboriginal Rights (Brandon: Bearpaw Publishing, 1996), p. 47-57; and Thomas Flanagan, "The Market for Métis Lands in Manitoba: An Exploratory Study," Prairie Forum 16, 1 (1991), p. 1-20.

CANADA CONSOLIDATION Indian Act R.S.C., 1985, c. I-5 Current to June 9, 2015 Last amended on April 2, 2015 Published by the Minister of Justice at the following address: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca