Breaking the rules

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/10/2023 (780 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many Canadians are aware that as a new nation Canada, anticipating a rush of western settlers, signed Treaties 1-7 with Prairie First Nations in the 1870s. But how many of us knew that over 20 per cent of the reserve land allotted in the 1870s was surrendered, most of it under pressure from the Department of Indian Affairs, just a few years later? The subtitle of Bill Waiser and Jennie Hansen’s book Cheated says it all: The Laurier Liberals and the Theft of First Nations Land.

In 1998 the Indian Claims Commission reported that 34 Prairie reserves surrendered land between 1896 and 1911. Cheated traces the course of each of those surrenders to see how and why they occurred and who benefitted. The book makes it clear that numerous rules were broken under pressure from prominent politicians, civil servants and their Liberal supporters. Often land was sold to speculators with inside information and First Nations ended up getting a fraction of what the land ultimately sold for.

Waiser is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan. He has written a number of books including A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905, which won the Governor-General’s Literary Award for non-fiction in 2016. Hansen is also a Saskatchewan historian who studied under Waiser as a graduate student.

The authors have scoured the files of Indian Affairs, Hansard and newspapers, as well as the report of the Indians Land Claims Commission (First Nations land surrenders on the Prairies 1896-1911), to document how each land surrender occurred, often after many attempts. In Manitoba, for example, the St. Peter’s reserve near Selkirk was finally surrendered in 1907 after at least half a dozen meetings in which the band had rejected a surrender. The vote at that final meeting was 107-98. It is likely that the offer of an immediate cash payment of $90 to each band member tipped the balance.

In the case of the Swan Lake reserve southwest of Winnipeg, a partial surrender was negotiated in 1908 by using the services of a missionary named John McDougall who spoke several Indigenous languages. In this case the inducements appear to have been $100 in cash plus a false promise that the band could once again hold sundances. The band later appealed directly to the Governor General about being misled: “He made a lot of nice promises on behalf of the government… and we believed everything he said was true.”

Frustrating for readers — and likely for the authors as well — is the spotty reporting to Indian Affairs of exactly what occurred at each surrender meeting. Often the Indian agent, or whatever government official conducted the meeting, only reported the final vote. Regulations required that a majority of male band members support a surrender, but time and time again this requirement was ignored — only a majority of those who attended the meeting often sufficed (possibly while others were out hunting or hunkering down in the cold).

There is far more detailed information here on how the cheaters benefitted when the surrendered land was tendered or auctioned off. The list of culprits includes two deputy ministers of Indian affairs, James Smart and Frank Pedley, as well as Frank Oliver, minister of Indian Affairs and the Interior between 1905 and 1911. Clifford Sifton, Minister of Indian Affairs and the Interior from 1896 to 1905, seems not to have been involved, but he did let the scams happen while he concentrated on immigration schemes.

The only positive note to this story is that First Nations groups have been working for compensation since the 1970s and some are finally receiving it. In 2008 Peguis First Nation received $126 million for surrendering St. Peter’s in 1907.

Faith Johnston is a writer and former teacher who is constantly being reminded that she still has a lot to learn.