On Home Ground Now. I'm Safe:’ Saskatchewan Aboriginal Veterans in the Immediate Post-War Years, 1945-1946

Excerpt from Introduction, Page 686-687:

"Between 1945 and 1960 Saskatchewan Aboriginal veterans’ social and political activism was in a transitional phase. Aboriginal veterans in the immediate postwar years can be characterized as passive participants in the social and political changes. Passive participation means that the veterans did not guide the changes that occurred but were a powerful image of the “progressive Indian” portrayed by the media. The image of the “Indian warrior” popular before and during the war was transformed into “progressive Indians” after the war. Although in the immediate postwar years Aboriginal veterans concentrated their efforts on readjusting to civilian life, their symbolic stature as “progressive Indians” brought public awareness about Indian rights, which in turn helped to shift the public’s attitude about Indians. The existing Indian leadership took advantage of the shifting attitudes to build support for their agenda of Indian rights, which they had been pursuing for a number of years. As a result, even though the veterans were passive in the social and political arena, their existence as a group was crucial in the social and political change of Aboriginal people in Canada in the immediate postwar years.

This article is divided into four sections. The first section provides an overview of the Aboriginal participation in the Second World War. The number of and reasons for Aboriginal enlistment and Aboriginal protest to compulsory conscription will be discussed briefly. An analysis of Aboriginal veterans’ experiences in the immediate postwar period in Saskatchewan will be conducted in the second section. Employment opportunities in the postwar period are contrasted with those in the prewar period, and the impacts of CCF Aboriginal policies on Aboriginal veterans and community response to Aboriginal veterans are all included in this section. The next section will scrutinize how the image of Indians in the media, though based on nineteenth-century stereotypes, shifted from being negative in the prewar era to being positive during the war. After the war, however, the image of the Aboriginal veteran shifted again to that of the “progressive Indian.” In the last section I will show that although the image of veterans as progressive was crucial in placing Indian rights discourse in the public arena, veterans themselves had little direct impact on the Indian rights movement in the immediate postwar period." (686-687). 

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