Reduction of Department of Indian Affairs Funding

Indigenous groups already facing lack of game, harsh winters, poor crop yields, and disease in the 1870s and 1880s, now had to cope with reduced federal funding to support their transition to agriculture and new forms of subsistence. Lack of funding made it harder to gain government assistance, despite the fact that the crown had a fiduciary obligation to assist Indigenous peoples. Funding and aid however, was at times limited or withheld because the government saw it either as unnecessary or limiting the assimilation of Indigenous peoples. Lack of funding has and continues to be a pervasive issue between the government and Indigenous relations.