by Victoria MacDonald

In writing this essay, I will not pretend to be unbiased; as someone whose grandmother fought for the right to vote, and is forced to regularly argue against the centuries old racist stereotypes created by early European settlers; it is impossible to be impartial. Hidden by my dyed blonde hair, my genealogy is not easily perceived. Both sides do not hold equal guilt. Hopefully, by now, the Canadian population is aware of the atrocity that was the treatment of the indigenous people of Canada, and their treatment by the government.

The history of the Mi’kmaq people is not a singular story, but one of diversity. When European settlers came to British North America in the seventeenth century, the aboriginal world was profoundly transformed. Prior to contact, the Mi’kmaq were nomadic people; seasonal migration patterns provided them with a “bountiful, dependable, and extremely healthy diet.”[i] Consequences are still being felt by early assimilation efforts – obesity rates are ten percent higher than non-indigenous people.[ii] The Mi’kmaq were never in need of resources as the land provided plenty, they were not “uncivilized,” and did not need the assistance by the colonial English, by way of culture or religion. With no desire in converting the new comers to their own religion, they only wanted to live in peace and be free to enjoy their own. There were many contrasts of the two societies, one of which was the democratic method of resolving disputes. Parties were brought together and the community helped mediate. This helped them reach a final agreement addressing all concerns by the people involved. This method of justice holds a stark difference from the justice system held by Europeans, which maintained a totalitarian approach informed greatly by Christianity. This system was a patriarchy, where maleness was associated with “civilization, superiority, the enlightened soul, and rationality.”[iii] It was declared that if aboriginal people were not Christian they were not civilized[iv], and by extension their justice system could not be trusted. Aboriginal women were considered not only uncivilized, like their male counterparts, but furthermore were associated with “untamed wilderness, inferiority, vulnerability to the devils temptations, and emotion.”[v] They were forced into belief systems and customs that were not theirs. For many years their justice system was lost, as Europeans were unwilling to accept their democratic justice system, built by the “uncivilized” people they wished to eradicate.

In the Mi’kmaq culture the modesty of Mi’kmaw women was extremely important. They were unwilling to put themselves in situations that could compromise their sense of dignity. This was something notable to European settlers. European culture based on Christianity held very strict codes of modesty and morals for women, a similarity between the two groups. Though modesty was important to the Mi’kmaq they believed that sex was natural, however, should be conducted in private. While having children outside of wedlock was frowned upon, there was no long-standing social stigma attached to these women, unlike unwed European mothers. Unwed mothers were sought out by Mi’kmaw men, who would then adopt their new wife’s children and raise them as their own. Mi’kmaw women were not required to remain virgins until marriage, though modesty was promoted. A woman’s sexuality was her choice, free from social stigmas. The Mi’kmaq had no issue with nudity; it was seen as the most natural form, with no shame associated with ones body. Clothing was worn only to protect against the elements, and for fashion. These stark cultural differences furthered Euro beliefs that the Mi’kmaq were uncivilized, as Christianity called for modesty of both dress and sexuality, particularly for women. Historical materials show that Christian missionaries believed that the Mi’kmaq’s nonpartisan attitude towards sexuality was evidence of their “heathen depravity.”[vi] This is where modern stereotypes concerning perceived promiscuous Mi’kmaw women stems from.

At encounter, the Mi’kmaq had customs and laws governing relationships between men and women. There were marriage ceremonies with great celebrations (if a man wanted to court a women he had to first ask her father’s permission — the father would then ask his daughter if she agreed with this match, if all parties approved, courting could commence. [vii]) Prior to European settlers and for a brief time during early settlement, marriage for Mi’kmaw people was based on love and not economics. To the Mi’kmaq it was the Europeans who were uncivilized in making their children marry for fortune instead of love. Later, however, Mi’kmaq people saw the benefits of marrying for reasons other than love. They adopted this European practice of marrying for enhancement of trading opportunities, class, and other possible benefits.[viii] In adopting these new marriage techniques women both lost and gained power; Mi’kmaw daughters who were promised to white settlers lost their power of choice; but it gave them power to help the socio-economic status of their community. Some aboriginal women chose to marry European men, as they were able to improve their own status in becoming translators. This would improve their status in the European community, and their status in their own community.

Unlike European settlers, both genders were involved in setting agendas and dispersing responsibilities. While men engaged in typical male roles of providing food by means of hunting, fishing, and chores involving great strength, women had equally important roles such as cleaning game, farming, collecting, and preserving food.[vix] Duties were divided by which gender seemed most able to best preform each duty. Competitive spirit was instilled in both genders, men engaged in hunting competitions, while women competed to produce the best clothing, and any other item needed to improve the lives of the community, or its members. Both gender’s roles and responsibilities were considered of great significance to the success of their community, and women were viewed with respect and adoration. While European females played crucial roles in both developing the fur trade, and ensuring the economic growth and prosperity of their communities; their European husbands largely overlooked the importance of their wives work, and gave little respect or credit for their efforts. They were branded as the “nagging wife.”[x] These opposing opinions on the importance of women’s work show a stark difference between the two groups; which perpetuated poor relations and understanding between Indigenous and European people.

In the Mid nineteenth century the colonial government in the Maritimes viewed the Mi’kmaq as a problem— something with a possible solution. While the Mi’kmaq were adjusting to the new economy they were still maintaining many of their own traditions, such as living a flexible and mobile lifestyle. The colonial government viewed their transience with distaste and believed they should instead become farmers. The Mi’kmaq were soon considered “wretched,” and “desperate,” people, who were uncivilized and needed guidance; however, not without potential threats. The colonial government saw them as a threat to the European culture in the colonies.[xi] The colonial government’s fear of the aboriginal culture produced a society with vital misconceptions about portions of its citizens; creating a marginalized environment for Canada’s original inhabitants.

Hoping to eradicate aboriginal culture, the new Canadian government took charge of educating aboriginal children in the 1870’s. Believing that their best chance for success lied in complete emersion into Euro-Canadian customs and beliefs, the government forced aboriginal children to abandon their first language to speak only English, and adopt Christianity as their religion. Aggressive assimilation was directed on children instead of adults as children were less likely to fight back, were easier to mold, and the concept of boarding school was easier to sell to the general public and the parents as it fit into mainstream society. These children would pass on Christian, Euro-Canadian customs learned at school to future generations; successfully diminishing aboriginal traditions while simultaneously producing homogenous citizens.[xii]

The Shubenacadie residential school was open for almost 40 years; in these years there was a diversity of experiences. Some former students believed residential schools were wonderful opportunities; others were not so fortunate in their experience. Several children knew only residential schools, leaving became a traumatic experience; others were orphaned with nowhere to go. Betsey Paul was dismissed at sixteen; given a train ticket to somewhere she had no memory of, with no family and no money.

I got off the train and sat on a bench at the train station which was closed. It was late in the evening and I didn’t know what to do so I just sat there. A car drove by with some Indians in it, and they looked at me then drove past. I just watched them. Then they came back and stopped. They asked me my name and where I was from. I told them I was from the Indian residential school in Shubenacadie and that the Indian agent, Mr. Rice, sent me here with not even a change of clothing, and that I didn’t know anybody. So they took me home.[xiii]

Newspapers referred to these schools as “fine institutions [with] humanitarian and democratic principles.”[xiv] The official story given to press was very different from the truth; many former students say they were abused physically, sexually and/or mentally. Authority members wore disguises, parading children during outings in fine clothes, quickly stripping away these acceptable clothes upon reentry of the school. Made to tell false stories of their treatment, with fake smiles. Behind the walls of the schools, lectured on loyalty, banned from discussing the abuses of these schools, children were coaxed into engaging in these fabrications.[xv]

Enormous amounts of institutionalized racism, political isolation, the loss of land and resources truly stifled Mi’kmaw people’s opportunity for economic prosperity. Silenced by political and legal regulations, the Mi’kmaq were unable to fight against the federal and provincial governments. Status-Indians were unable to vote in federal elections until 1960[xvi], leaving them with little to no political power. Once pushed to the fringes of their territories by Loyalists and European immigrant populations, they remained unable to change their circumstances based on legalized racism for a number of years. It was not until after the Second World War that they had the opportunity to voice their grievances to the government,[xvii] leading to one of the common misconceptions that aboriginals were submissive in allowing their rights to be taken away. To this day they continue to fight for federal and provincial governments to recognize their entitlements. In 1876 the Canadian government introduced the Indian act; this act regulated reserve life and defined who was legally an Indian, and what it meant to be an Indian, based not on Indigenous values, but instead on what the colonial government placed value.

Status is extremely important to indigenous people; , as it protects some of their rights, including: cultural burial rights, voting rights within their council, opportunity to live on reserve, among other things. The Indian Act took status from indigenous women who married a non-indigenous man, but if a white woman married an indigenous man she was given status. Mavic Goeres experienced this,

I’d married out, you see, so when I came back I was considered “non-status.” But I didn’t know anything about it until 1975. Well, I was gone away so long, huh? I leave in 1949, come back in 1975 and all of a sudden somebody tells me, “You know, you’re not an Indian any longer.” I say, “I’m not?” I find out that white women are Indians now, but I’m not.[xviii]

Having their cultural birthrights taken away based on whom they chose to love would have been a traumatizing experience. Perhaps this is why women became the driving force behind reparations, protests, and the pursuit of a new Indian act and better economic situation.

In the 1960’s aboriginal women were tired of the sexist act that isolated them from their culture and communities and began to publicly condemn the Indian Act by means of protest or letters.[xix] Aborignal women began to ban together to create change. An aboriginal woman by the name of Shirley Bear discusses these meetings: “We realized the government wasn’t going to reinstate everybody. We wanted women reinstated who were born with status and lost it through marriage, plus their children, the first generation.”[xx] In the 1970’s both Jeannette Lavell and Yvonne Bedard separately took the issue of sexism in the Indian act to the Canadian court system, unfortunately the Supreme Court ruled against both Lavell and Bedard arguing that the “Indian Act could not be superseded by the Canadian Bill of Rights.”[xxi] Insufficient housing on reserves was another focal point of aboriginal women’s protests. These protests started in band houses and were local issues, but indigenous women in Canada are known for their large-scale collective efforts and soon grew. Through July 14th-21st, 1979 the Native Women’s Walk to Ottawa took place in protest of the housing conditions on reserves on a much larger scale, this protest ended on July 21st with a large rally on parliament hill.[xxii] This three-day protest displays aboriginal women’s strength and determination; by gathering as a group they became a force the government could not ignore.

Bill C47: An Act to Amend the Indian Act was first read on June 18th 1984, addressing sexist laws in the original Indian Act and those it had oppressed; unfortunately this was denied by the senate a few days later. In early 1985 Bill C31 was tabled, which would successfully eliminate sexual discrimination from the Indian Act, The Tobique women presented this act in Ottawa to the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development, within a year this bill was passed. It offered full reinstatement to those born with Indian status but lost it through marriage. This longstanding fight for gender equality lasted over twenty years; if not for these incredible, relentless groups of women the Indian act would have gone unchanged. Bet-te Paul reflects on this long struggle in Enough is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak Out, in her passage:

It’s been mostly the women the women that are the strongest here. Like the men’s reaction when we first started out protesting—their reaction was shock that the women had the gall to stand up and say, “This is wrong,” when the men themselves didn’t, yet they knew it was wrong too. I think in a way it humiliated them, and that is why they were so angry with us at first. But how long can you let something that is wrong continue?[xxiii]

At first aboriginal women had no help from their husbands; it was their rights, and their children’s rights they fought for. Adequate access to one’s culture should not be decided based on marriage, but instead on upbringing, and cultural birthrights.

Indigenous women in Canada are victims of physical and sexual violence more frequently than any other racial or ethnic group.[xxiv] In 1996 the Canadian government conducted a study which reveled that not only are Aboriginal women more likely to be assaulted but they are five times more likely then any other group of Canadian women to be murdered; and men who kill these women believe that the police will look the other way.[xxv] This circumstance was created by the sexist, racist beliefs of the European Christian missionary’s and colonial leaders. Religious lessons portrayed aboriginals as being associated with the devil; and British law allowed men to exert physical force to control or punish a disrespectful wife. This extreme way of maintaining male authority was considered an essential exercise for “ensuring orderly households and, by extension, the social and political stability of the community.”[xxvi] Using the Bible to ‘prove’ women were ‘inferior beings,’ women who attempted to access power were considered to be under Satan’s influence. ‘Evidence’ used to justify these assessments was aboriginal peoples casual attitude toward nudity and sexuality. Prior to contact, aboriginal women were not subjected to such strict, violent gender constructs. The racist foundation created by Christian missionaries and colonial leaders, produced “stereotypes which remain embedded in Canadian social attitudes toward Native women framing them as deserving targets for disciplinary violence.”[xxvii]

Over 500 Aboriginal women in Canada have disappeared in the last 25 years; some have been murdered, while other cases are left unsolved. Until recently police have failed to acknowledge that this is a disproportionate amount of women to go missing. It is because many of these women were addicts, or prostitutes; people living in the fringes of society that they had been so easily, and unforgivably forgotten. These women were in these troubling positions because of social and economic marginalization, which forced them into extreme poverty. Early European settlers and missionaries created these racist and sexist stereotypes. In 2014 the RCMP released a new report called, RCMP Violence Report, this report showed the extreme imbalance of violent acts against indigenous women.[xxviii]

All groups of Indigenous people in what is now Canada experienced abuses by recognized colonial, federal, and provincial governments. It is important to keep in mind, however, that each group holds their own distinct beliefs and cultural practices, and therefore have their own specific stories. The Mi’kmaw people are classified as First Nations, one of the three distinct groups of Indigenous people recognized in the Canadian constitution. European settlers in contact with the Mi’kmaq created the racist attitudes still visible in Canadian culture, specifically in regards to Mi’kmaw women. Wanting the Mi’kmaq to completely assimilate to Euro-Canadian culture, they forced aboriginal youth into residential schools, stripping away centuries old practices and customs. Appropriating culturally important land and forcing them to the fringes of their seasonal homes, Europeans restricted aboriginal women with gender specific laws, stealing status away with outdated legal regulations. Mi’kmaq women, like all other Canadian indigenous groups of women, had to fight for their birthrights, and continue to do so.

References

i. Daniel N. Paul, First Nations History: We Were Not the Savages. (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2006): 18.

ii. Stats Canada, Health at a Glance. (2015).

iii. Andy J. Johnson, "“Sexual Savages:” Christian Stereotypes and Violence Against North America’s Native Women." In Religion and Men's Violence Against Women, (Minnesota: Springer, 2015), 63.

iv. Daniel N. Paul, First Nations History: We Were Not the Savages, 9.

v. Andy J. Johnson, "“Sexual Savages:” Christian Stereotypes and Violence Against North America’s Native Women," 63.

vi. Daniel N. Paul, First Nations History: We Were Not the Savages, 24.

vii. Daniel N. Paul, First Nations History: We Were Not the Savages, 15.

viii. Daniel N. Paul, First Nations History: We Were Not the Savages, 15-16.

vix. Daniel N. Paul, First Nations History: We Were Not the Savages, 19.

x. Mona Gleason, et al., Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History. 6th Edition. (Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2011), 27-34.

xi. Andrew Parnaby, “The Cultural Economy of Survival: The Mi'kmaq of Cape Breton in the Mid 19th Century”. Labour / Le Travail 61. (Edmonton: Canadian Committee on Labour History, 2008), 72.

xii. CBC News, "A History of Residential Schools in Canada." (CBC, 2014).

xiii. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, (Toronto: Women’s Press, 129.

xiv. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, 143.

xv. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, 144.

xvi. Joanne Naiman, How Societies Work, Power, and Change, (Concord, Irwin Publishing, 2012) 173.

xvii. Ken Coates, “Breathing New Life into Treaties: History, Politics, the Law, and Aboriginal Grievances in Canada's Maritime Provinces”. Agricultural History 77:2 (Berkeley: Agricultural History Society 2003), 334.

xviii. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, (1987): 89-99.

xix. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, (1987): 249.

xx. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, (Women’s Press, 1987): 202.

xxi. .Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, (Women’s Press, 1987): 249.

xxii. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, (Women’s Press, 1987): 251.

xxiii. Janet Silman, Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak out, (Women’s Press, 1987): 226.

xxiv. Andy J. Johnson, "“Sexual Savages:” Christian Stereotypes and Violence Against North America’s Native Women." In Religion and Men's Violence Against Women, (Springer, 2015): 63.

xxv. Priya Verma, “Canada: Hundreds of Aboriginal Women Disappear”. Off Our Backs 35. (2005).

xxvi. Andy J. Johnson, "“Sexual Savages:” Christian Stereotypes and Violence Against North America’s Native Women." In Religion and Men's Violence Against Women, (2015): 63.

xxvii. Andy J. Johnson, "“Sexual Savages:” Christian Stereotypes and Violence Against North America’s Native Women." In Religion and Men's Violence Against Women, (Springer, 2015): 63.

xxviii. Elizabeth Berton-Hunter, New RCMP Violence Report Highlights Need to Hold Government and Police Accountable for failing Indigenous Women and Girls, (Amnesty, 2014).

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