Indian Act Amendment

These amendments represent a trend in amendments to the Indian Act in which bureaucratic surveillance and control of Indigenous affairs increased over time. No accountability structures or system of checks and balances were simultaneously applied to compensate for the powers afforded these expansions of bureaucratic oversight. This is indicative of the belief that it was Indigenous peoples who posed a threat to societal order, and from whom settler society needed to be protected, obscuring the abuses of state-imbued power and vulnerability to harm from unelected Indian Agents or other colonial officials. There does not appear to have been discussions of rights that applied to First Nations people or potential routes of advocacy in cases of corruption, such as unjust accusations of criminality. For more information, please see related entries on Indian Act amendments.