Indian Policy and Legislation: Aboriginal Identity Survival in Canada

Author's Abstract:

"This article examines the socio‐historical construction of Indian policy and legislation as the processes set out to making the ‘Indian’ population legible to its rulers during the pre‐ and post‐confederation periods in Upper Canada. I aim to demonstrate how Indian policy and legislation materialised into concrete actions that attempted to assimilate, civilise, and protect the ‘Indians’ by deploying different instruments of control or governmentalities, such as the residential school and reserve system. Nonetheless, resistance and political positioning of Indigenous people is present, and post‐confederation Indian policy making in Canada is a much more negotiated process."

This is first and foremost an analysis of legislation.