Integration & Mobility

In 1949, CCF attempts to undermine Métis sovereignty and leadership ultimately disintegrated Métis political organization within Saskatchewan with few funds or attention being allocated to the SMS (Saskatchewan Métis Society); along with Douglas’ focus on the newly formed Union of Saskatchewan Indians, Métis leadership and concerns were often overshadowed or ignored altogether. In this way, the CCF were able to proceed implementing their Aboriginal policy reform in Saskatchewan without having to recognize Métis perspectives.

During the 1940s, the CCF created Métis ‘colonies’ at Crooked Lake, Lestock, Crescent Lake, BalJennie, Willow Bunch, Duck Lake, Glen Mary, Green Lake, and Lebret of which contained about 2500 Métis residents. These colonies were introduced by Tommy Douglas’ CCF government as a colonization project that they felt would ‘deal’ with socioeconomic struggles Métis, particularly Métis in the southern part of the province, were facing as a result of westward expansion and land loss. Colonies were intended to integrate and assimilate Métis peoples into western social and economic ideals that embraced the free market and prepared them for settler society. Schools established in Métis colonies were used to prepare Métis children for the ‘workforce,’ instill a community identity that based itself upon the cultural collective (White society), while simultaneously undermining cultural Métis knowledge and identities.

In 1952, after pressure from the CCF on the Federal Government due to their failure in providing adequate services to Indigenous peoples across the province, the Federal Government transferred jurisdiction of welfare services for off-reserve Indigenous peoples in their entirety. The Department of Indian Affairs now claimed that any person living off reserve for more than a year were under the obligation of the provincial government. However, the transfer of welfare services was not accompanied by any financial assistance for the new responsibilities of the CCF. This meant that the new duty of delivering welfare services to a considerable population would be made ever the more difficult; without funding, services could not be fully implemented, adequately staffed, and resulted in under-serving communities the transfer meant to serve. The complex and confusing process of accessing provincial welfare services often discouraged Indigenous applicants and they frequently ran into uncooperative municipal employees.

To the federal government, in theory, once a status-Indian lived off reserve for over a year they would be assumed by provincial welfare, and incidentally, lost their status. This led to many of those living off reserve (who sought wage labour) in Saskatchewan to move back to their reserves in order to retain access to services provided by Indian Affairs, despite their inadequacy. The loss of status also posed great concern, as access to land and the right to live on their reserve would be threatened after the 12-month mark; undermining access to land directly harmed Indigenous peoples, while the government benefited as they would no longer have a fiduciary duty to any of these persons. These new changes to provincial welfare services, as has been continuously seen in service implementation, failed to address the needs of Indigenous peoples within Saskatchewan due to the paternalistic approach taken. Instead of allocating funds directly to Indigenous peoples, governments continued to fail in directing Aboriginal welfare services.

This essay provides a brief analytical introduction to the impact of colonialism in terms of undermining social determinants of health, thereby contributing to the proliferation of disease epidemics on the Prairies (please see "additional notes" below for bibliography): From 1492 onwards, disease epidemics resulted in Indigenous mortality rates ranging in upwards of eighty five to ninety five percent, causing tremendous suffering and wreaking devastation on the social and political organization of Indigenous nations (Daschuk 2013, 12; Kelton 2007, 37; Sundstrom 1997, 306). Although North America was not completely disease-free prior to Contact, European trade exchanges and practices of colonization introduced sociocultural change and heightened vulnerability to deadly pathogenic infections (Daschuk 2013, 1-2). Currently, the most widely accepted explanation of disease-emergent mortality rates within the disciplines of history, anthropology and archaeology is virgin soil epidemic theory (VSE) (Jones 2009, 197). First argued by Alfred Crosby in The William and Mary Quarterly in 1976, Crosby posits that much like the “virgin soil” of the largely agriculturally uncultivated Americas in 1492, Indigenous populations were inexperienced with the contagious bacteria that Europeans carried (Kelton 2007, 1). This theory, therefore, is used to explain the severity of Indigenous mortality rates as having derived from a lack of developed immunity due to a population’s first exposure to infection or because all members of the community who had been exposed to the disease have died (Daschuk 2013, 11-12).--- Crosby’s focus on biology is problematic, however, in its invisibilization of factors like nutrition, methods of subsistence, migration patterns and trade practices, thus ignoring the impacts of colonialism and capitalism in terms of altering these variables through land invasion and dispossession as well as sociopolitical disruption of Indigenous nations (Kelm 1998, 55; Kelton 2007, 1). To illustrate, as it relates to Saskatchewan, archaeological evidence dating to the 1670s reveals that the fur trade had already begun to shape the Northern Great Plains region, and that less than one hundred years later, the introduction of commercial hunting practices had resulted in a shortage of fur-bearing animals along the North Saskatchewan river, as reported by HBC employees (Daschuk 2013, 11). Although Europeans perceived Indigenous diets to be a cause of disease, in truth, the high-protein and nutrient-rich diets of Indigenous peoples had provided them with relatively stable health for millennia, particularly in comparison to their European counterparts. The erosion of these diets, therefore, in addition to the introduction of European nutrient-poor foods such as flour and sugar, increasingly contributed to their susceptibility to disease, particularly after the near-extinction of the buffalo in 1870 (Kelm 1998, 36; Kelton 2007, 2; Daschuk 2013, 10).--- The VSE theory also neglects to acknowledge the motives of colonial actors in terms of acquisition of land and wealth, thus exercising detachment from the moral sphere and reinforcing western imperialism by affirming the superiority of positivism and rejection of metaphysical discussions of morality. In fact, Daschuk writes “the spread of foreign diseases among highly susceptible populations comprised a tragic, unforeseen, but largely organic change. Those who place human agency and greed and the expansionism of colonial powers at the centre of the decline of indigenous nations in the western hemisphere are missing half of the story; the role played by biology cannot be ignored” (pages xv-xvi). And yet, Daschuk uses the majority of his book to argue the predominant role of pathogenic factors in Indigenous rates of mortality. While there is validity to VSE as it relates to the role of a lack of immunological defences, as a philosophical perspective, positivism is highlighted by Indigenous scholars like Linda Tuhiwai Smith as being closely interconnected to imperialism and one means through which colonizing nations assert their superiority over Indigenous peoples. By choosing to perceive disease epidemics primarily in impersonal and positivistic terms, VSE perpetuates the western imperialist scientific detachment of European medicine (Kelm 1998, xvi-xviii; Smith 2012, 92-116; Daschuk 2013, xvi).--- Aside from these flaws, it is ahistorical and anachronistic to impose a biological model such as VSE on non-Indigenous understandings of the severity of disease epidemics on Indigenous people. This applies both before, during and after the period of 1870-1906, an important transitional time frame for the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Saskatchewan marked by the near-extinction of the buffalo, the numbered treaty era, the establishment of the settler state, the introduction of residential schools (framed as “Indian education” within the Indian Act) and the beginning of significant settler encroachment. The era of 1870-1906 is also marked by the introduction of medical care to Indigenous peoples. Yet, the provision of medical access was delayed in comparison to that offered to non-Indigenous peoples, resulting from colonial attitudes in which Indigenous people were largely blamed for their own pathologies. That is, there existed a prevailing belief that the supposed cultural backwardness of Indigenous people, when combined with their physical weakness, were determinants that encouraged sickness and would eventually lead to their extinction (Daschuk 2013, x; Kelm 1998, xvi & 101-6). The widespread acceptance by non-Indigenous interlopers of the gradual and unavoidable disappearance of Indigenous nations had generated a broadly-accepted belief in the futility of offering medical aid (Jones 2004, 139; Kelm 1998, xv-xvii & 100). Disease epidemics were therefore seen as a natural result of this ethnic inferiority, after which non-Indigenous colonial actors would exploit the losses of Indigenous people by apprehending newly depopulated territories and assets (Lux 2001, 13; Jones 2004, 2-3).--- For example, although written records indicate the occasional speculation of colonists regarding the role of Europeans in contributing to the deaths of Indigenous populations, for the most part, health disparity rationalization explicitly reinforced ethnic hierarchies through portrayals of Indigenous peoples as possessing enhanced genetic susceptibility to the contraction of diseases. Other common rationalizations include victim-blaming references to uncivilized behaviors and/or detrimental individual choice - reflecting a tendency of Euro-Canadians to moralize and pathologize Indigenous people and their actions. To illustrate, one example of the Crown’s assimilatory logic is that it was the laziness or “indolence” of agriculturally-averse, migratory Indigenous peoples that led to poverty and slovenliness, and in turn, disease. To discipline a perceived tendency towards “work-avoidance”, the government exercised tight economic control over reserves, including minimal food rations. On many reserves, the government broke treaty promises to provide aid, farming implements and livestock - resources that would have prevented malnourishment, illness and death. Before and after the creation of the Canadian state, however, the states of physical and psychological stress caused by intense malnutrition and starvation, geographical displacement, crowded reserve living conditions, the questioning of spiritual beliefs and the loss of community leaders, Elders and family members all enhanced vulnerability to disease and diminished chances of recovery (Lux 2001, 4 & 20-59; Jones 2003).--- Historic and contemporary explanations of disease pathologies are not transformed into neutral or objective facts by virtue of the use of scientific rhetoric. Rather, philosophical biases and racial ideologies of authors are revealed in the utility of the health disparity theories in question, particularly in relationship to preserving or dismantling the social, economic and political privileges and advantages accorded to non-Indigenous people within colonial states (Jones 2004, 3 & 7; Lux 2001, 13). As previously discussed, explanations such as those used by the government to justify assimilation fail to de-centre the inevitability or justifiability of colonialism, and neglect the impact of colonial and capitalistic systems on Indigenous lifeways, including the means through which personal autonomy and choice were constrained through the sociocultural breakdown of Indigenous nations, and later, through policies of assimilation (Jones 2003, 3 & 41-3 & 83 & 134-5 & 223-4; Kelm 1998, 39; Lux 2001, 151).

The following essay provides a brief introduction on the effects caused by housing insecurity and poor quality housing, with attention paid to the disproportionate impacts for Indigenous peoples (see bibliography below):

The result of one hundred and fifty years of colonial government oppression has been the large number of Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) who live in poverty at levels below the LICO (Low Income Cut-Off). Indigenous peoples have been systematically disadvantaged by frequently being given the least productive reserves and farmland, being hindered by the pass system from selling the products of their labour, to work away from reserves for extended periods of time without losing their status, road allowances which kept Métis people impoverished, and the denial of economic and political self-determination due to paternalistic government policies. The cumulative effects of these and other assimilative government policies has been barriers to socioeconomic instability including unemployment, inaccessibility to education, poor health outcomes, addictions, and lateral violence.

Inaccessibility to affordable housing is fundamental to understanding these disparities, and creating access is imperative to establishing equity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples alike. Limited access to safe housing is something that affects multiple and frequently overlapping populations: immigrants, people with disabilities, working class people, Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, people with addictions, people who have criminal records, youth who do not live with a parent/guardian, the elderly, queer and transgender people, single parents, and of course, people who are unhoused. In their pre-budget submission to the Department of Finance in 2003, the Assembly of First Nations noted, “The lack of quality housing contributes to social problems such as child poverty, suicide, low educational attainment, alcoholism, and family breakdowns” (Barnsley 2003).

Incidentally, aforementioned factors of poverty, unemployment, educational inaccessibility, lateral violence, and addictions are frequent experiences of those caught within the Canadian criminal justice system. This underscores the necessity for adequate and affordable housing for Indigenous peoples, and others who are prevented from it due to the value placed on ‘whiteness’ or lack thereof (“Aboriginal Housing Needs in Saskatoon: A Survey of SaskNative Rentals Clients” 2004, 2; La Prairie and Stenning 2003, 187).

Indigenous peoples in comparison to white settlers, statistically, are significantly more likely to experience trauma due to systemic factors such as the experience of racial discrimination in employment, education, policing, and acquisition of services/resources. Often, Indigenous peoples experience racial discrimination causing barriers to resources and services; this not only has immediate effects on a person’s state of wellbeing but may prevent them from accessing support in the future due to fear the discrimination will happen again. Example, an Indigenous single mother applies for a house rental, but she is denied during a viewing and the property owner is racist towards her. Going forward, the fear and anticipation that something will happen could prevent her from reaching out to support services, going places, applying for housing, etc.

For Indigenous persons trying to get out of poverty, they may experience a lack of financial resources or assistance in urban and rural areas, accompanied by increased policing in Indigenous communities (e.g.: the neighbourhoods of Riversdale and Pleasant Hill in Saskatoon have higher police surveillance than Evergreen or Avalon; according to former Judge Harold Johnson, northern Indigenous communities experience a high presence of RCMP surveillance). One example is existing provincial programs such as Social Housing, which have long waiting lists and are insufficiently equipped to accommodate the number of people in need. According to Campaign 2020, “For children in First Nations families, the poverty rate in 2016 was 49.4 per cent. Among those families indicating they were Métis, 28.4 percent were in low-income households.” (Campaign 2000, Saskatchewan Child and Family Poverty Report, 2020). As of 2021, over one quarter or 26.1% percent of children within Saskatchewan live under the poverty line, the highest representation of these come from single-mother households (Global News, https://globalnews.ca/news/7722857/saskatchewan-children-poverty-report/, 2021).

Individuals living in poverty who are able to find housing may be limited to options that are overcrowded, or in poor repair. Young members of these groups may not have a sufficient number of safe spaces to spend their time, as community organizations and safe spaces that do not require money have limited funding, staff, and operating hours (e.g.: libraries, community halls and centres, EGADZ, shelters, The Lighthouse). For many of these community organizations, sobriety is mandatory for admittance creating another barrier to safe spaces for youth and adults. These difficulties can combine to create an overall sense of stress and frustration in surviving within urban surroundings, and in struggling to financially survive. The lack of support and resources can contribute to criminal justice system contact / re-contact. That is to say, the cumulative effects of settler colonialism and the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous lands resulting in impoverished conditions leads to a higher rate of Indigenous peoples in contact with the criminal justice system. (“Saskatoon Aboriginal Neighbourhood Survey: A Survey of Aboriginal Households in City Neighbourhoods” 2004, 12; Newhouse 2003, 245; Trevethan 2003, 195).

In the late 1940s, Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) Minister of Natural Resources and Industrial Development Joe Phelps enacted a relocation of First Nation and Métis populations to combined settlements further south. These actions were part of a broader CCF philosophy of economic and social development in Northern Saskatchewan. An essential part of this effort included large-scale forced movement to settlements where the CCF professed they could teach Indigenous peoples to live as settlers and better deliver its various programs to northerners. This would facilitate assimilation into Canadian settler society, while still affording them the ability to practice minimal traditional activities preapproved by the government. In addition, it facilitated the delivery of provincial services to some remote communities. This was initiated through the use of the Family Allowance. This money could only be accessed by First Nations and Metis people if their children were enrolled in the school system; therefore, to qualify for assistance parents would be forced to send their children to colonial schools and away from their family and community knowledge.

Although movement towards implementation of a permit system began in the House of Commons in the 1870s with amendments to the Indian Act, it was not fully implemented until 1885. This policy prohibited Indigenous people from selling anything they had "owned, grew, raised, cut, dug, caught, were given, found, or otherwise acquired" (Smith 2009, 99 - see relevant resources below).

According to the testimony given by Myrtle LaFontaine in an interview for the Metis Oral History Project, in the year 1949, her family, and the residents of the Chicago Line, or Little Chicago, were relocated by the government to Northern Saskatchewan. This was a road allowance community outside of Lestock, Saskatchewan. As per Myrtle, the Chicago Line was “…on the municipality road allowance they used to call in those days and it is about eight or nine miles from Lestock, Saskatchewan…” Also according to Myrtle, there were about fifteen families that lived on the road allowance until the relocation. As explained by Myrtle “…we lived in Lestock till 1949 and then at that time the government saw fit that they relocate us like, you know. So there were, that was to, while we were sent up north, you know, to Green Lake where they had a population of like, you know, Metis people. And we were promised in those days that we would get better housing and jobs and that. And yet when we got there there was, you know, it was really discouraging because we couldn't find, like I think they were worse off than we were, you know.” When the interviewer Margret Jefferson asks how Myrtle and her family survived in the North, Myrtle responds “Mrytle: No, we lived in Lestock till 1949 and then at that time the government saw fit that they relocate us like, you know. So there were, that was to, while we were sent up north, you know, to Green Lake where they had a population of like, you know, Metis people. And we were promised in those days that we would get better housing and jobs and that. And yet when we got there there was, you know, it was really discouraging because we couldn't find, like I think they were worse off than we were, you know.”

The North-West Mounted Police was established in 1873 by the government of John A. MacDonald. The Cypress Hills massacre as well as the increasing number of conflicts on the U.S border due to alcohol smuggling are often cited as the main reasons the MacDonald government passed the bill creating the new military-style police force. However, most historians agree that the primary reason for establishing the force was to control First Nations and Métis populations, as the government sought to populate the West with settlers. Under the central authority of Ottawa, the NWMP marched West in 1874. The NWMP served as an arm of colonial control for politicians and lawmakers in Ottawa. For Indigenous communities in the Northwest, it represented an additional source of repression. The newly formed para-military style force was entrusted with wide-ranging powers and duties. Officers acted as Justices of the Peace, able to apprehend and sentence offenders, as well as impose Indian Act polices such as the Pass System. Since western courthouses did not exist at the time on the Prairies, NWMP barracks were often used for court proceedings and as temporary prisons. The NWMP assisted Indian Agents with the ration system, as well as enforcing laws obliging Indigenous students to attend residential schools. Government policies such as the Residential School system, the Sixties Scoop and gender discrimination in the Indian Act subjected Indigenous families to violence, cultural dislocation and land dispossession. The NWMP was successful in instituting a system of surveillance and curtailment, restricting Indigenous people to their reserves, regulating their land use and criminalizing livestock theft to benefit settler farmers and ranchers.

In 1939, representatives from the Metis Society of Saskatchewan approached the provincial government for assistance in petitioning the federal government in recognition of outstanding and unresolved land claims. Please see "Relevant Resources" below for complete details.