To vote, get a degree or keep children out of residential schools, Indigenous men gave up Indian status for themselves, their wives and their children. Now, a constitutional challenge aims to get it back
The Narwhal: To expedite assimilation, Indigenous people were pushed to accept enfranchisement, which meant renouncing Indian status in order to gain Canadian citizenship. If a man was enfranchised, his wife and children lost their status too.
In 1876, Canada adopted the Indian Act. The legislation established which Indigenous people were legally recognized through the Indian status system and implemented colonial structures like the reserve system, which restricted First Nations people to lands “reserved” for them to live on, a fraction of their ancestral territories.
The Indian Act still dictates much of Indigenous people’s lives, including many land rights. Only a status “Indian” has the constitutionally protected right to hunt, fish, harvest and live on reserve lands, the last of which is no longer mandatory.
The more status “Indians” there are, in other words, the more people for whom Canada is legally obligated to uphold treaty promises, including to share lands and resources. Which is why, from the beginning, “Canada was very clear that the goal of the [Indian Act] was ultimately to assimilate all First Nations individuals,” Vancouver lawyer Ryan Beaton says.
To expedite assimilation, Indigenous people were pushed to accept enfranchisement, which meant renouncing Indian status in order to gain Canadian citizenship. Although enfranchisement was framed as voluntary, coercive policies outlined in the Indian Act would suggest otherwise. Status holders couldn’t own property off reserve, buy alcohol or vote. Indigenous men were automatically enfranchised if they got a university degree or became priests.
And enfranchised Indigenous people — usually men — had a choice in whether or not to send their children to residential schools. These institutions were designed for “Indian” children; there was no need for a non-status child to attend.