How you view the past can colour your vision of the future
To the Expositor:
Canada 150! Across the country we celebrate the achievement of the Fathers of Confederation with festivities, remembering that Canada was created through the British North America Act of 1867 which they negotiated. The anniversary of Confederation is a good time to look at history, not just the parts we are proud of, but history unvarnished too. Because there is a racist side to our history, and the prejudices of our forefathers still hang over us like a dark cloud. It’s time to acknowledge the unsavoury side of our heritage, to recognize the harm the white man inflicted on indigenous people, and to turn the page with greater understanding.
One of the Fathers of Confederation is a figure who looms large in our local history on Manitoulin Island. He was William McDougall. Sir William McDougall. He had credentials. Distinguished lawyer, Commissioner of Crown Lands in the Province of Canada West. There he is in the famous photo taken in front of the Government House at the 1864 Charlottetown Conference. He’s third from the right, next to the guy holding his top hat in the air. These men all look serious and sober, even Sir John A. MacDonald sitting casually on the step. Outstanding men forging a new nation. It was a man’s world back then. Frankly, a white man’s world.
Did they care about the original inhabitants of the land, the First Nations whose land they were earnestly reshaping? If so, they had a strange way of showing it.
First Nations weren’t invited to the Charlottetown Conference, nor were they consulted as the negotiations proceeded over the next three years. They weren’t entirely forgotten, though. In the British North America Act of 1867 that created Canada, they appear in Section 91 (24), sandwiched between (23) Copyrights and (25) Naturalization and Aliens. It’s the section that lists the responsibilities of the federal government. Canada was created without the First Nations, who were sidelined, powerless.
For the most part, the Fathers of Confederation believed the immigrants were superior to the indigenous people. Their attitudes had roots going back to Columbus, who landed in the Caribbean in 1492. They called it the New World, even claimed they had a right to seize it for themselves. The Pope himself issued the Doctrine of Discovery in 1493, a Christian document indeed. He declared that the “Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.” In other words, any land not inhabited by Christians was fair game for conquest. That was pretty much the whole world, aside from Europe. Bible and gun. Pope Alexander was really just authorizing invasions by the Spanish and Portuguese, but other monarchs, starting with King Henry IV of France, found the concept helpful.
Maybe some people still think that’s okay. Certainly in the 1800s, few people in British North America wondered about the justice of it all, although the argument morphed because by then many indigenous people had converted to Christianity. The indigenous populations had dwindled with starvation, sickness and wars, so the new argument became that they had too much land, too much forest. The whites could make better use of the land, with farming, timbering and mining, and since they could make better use of it, they should have it. In Upper Canada alone there were 374,000 whites by 1836, many of them impoverished, new immigrants, hungry for their piece of the North American pie.
1836. That was the year the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head, met with Chiefs of the Ojibwe, Odawa and Saugeen First Nations. His objective was to get them to agree to leave their homeland in the Georgian Bay area, to make way for immigrant settlers. Manitoulin would be their home, forever reserved for them. The Ojibwe and Odawa agreed.
An island 160 kilometers long in Lake Huron, covered with bush and lakes, away from the encroaching settlers, may have seemed like a good deal. Sir Francis even threw in the neighbouring islands.
Now the Odawa and Ojibwe had a treaty and they could occupy Manitoulin unmolested.
But the wave of immigration became a tsunami. More settlers arrived, my own ancestors from Ireland among them. Another generation of whites grew up, swelling the population to 1,400,000 by 1861. Think of it. In 25 years or so the population more than tripled, and the settlers wanted land. The indigenous population on Manitoulin was only several hundred, Odawa and Ojibwe from the Georgian Bay area, and Pottawatomi refugees who had fled persecution in the United States. They didn’t need all of Manitoulin. Sir Francis had been too generous.
1862. Saturday, October 5. A fateful day. Enter William McDougall, Commissioner of Crown Lands, at Manitowaning. His objective is to get a new treaty. He threatens them. “At the present time,” he warns, “the whites fill the land. That is what shall take place here. You will not be able to prevent them, despite all your efforts…They will come here to pitch their tents, in spite of you.” His words were quoted in the Toronto newspaper ‘Canadian Freeman.’
The whites want more land, and they will take it. They will take it. The previous treaty means nothing. Don’t bother reciting it, it wasn’t a real treaty. Sign this one. Give up.
The Chiefs from Wikwemikong argue against it. At the end of a day of heated debate, the future Father of Confederation sends the objectors away. Two days later he has eighteen signatures.
It must have felt like the weekend from hell. When it began, all of Manitoulin was reserved for the Odawa, Ojibwe and the Pottawatomi. By Monday, the whites had taken more than three quarters of the Island.
Two years later, there was William McDougall, a skilled and successful politician, standing proudly for the group photo in Charlottetown. Three years after that, Queen Victoria knighted him, and he became the Honourable Minister of Public Works of the new country. The Honourable Sir William McDougall.
We don’t like the implications of this part of Canada’s history. It’s uncomfortable to think that our forefathers might have been unscrupulous bullies, even racists. We look for excuses. We say it’s wrong to judge our forefathers by the moral standards of today, as if morality is relative.
In Canada, south of the 60th parallel, the land reserved for First Nations is less than one half of one percent of the country, mostly land that settlers didn’t want. The government made sure they didn’t get the best parts. On Manitoulin, for example, the Abbotossoway family and others living at Little Current in 1862 weren’t allowed to stay there, because Little Current had strategic value as a lucrative fueling station for ships travelling the North Channel. The government made them relocate, and they moved to what is now Aundeck Omni Kaning. The forefathers of today’s indigenous people of Manitoulin paid dearly on that fateful weekend in 1862.
History can be viewed from many different angles, not just the viewpoint of the victors. And how you view history can change your view of the present. In 2017 it’s time to recognize our true history, including the moral failures of our forefathers in their treatment of indigenous people and the effect of those failures today.
A shift has begun. Indigenous authors like Thomas King, in his book, ‘The Inconvenient Indian: A curious account of native people in North America,’ are shedding light on racism. In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Chief Justice Murray Sinclair revealed the injustice of residential schools and issued calls for action. The answers are here, at least some of them, if we are willing to look. It’s time to move forward with greater understanding.
Jan McQuay
Mindemoya
