First Nations history
The history of the First Nations , the ethnic groups living in Canada and not quite appropriately referred to as Indians , goes back at least 12,000 years. The term First Nations is relatively young and describes the Canadian natives , but without the Métis and Inuit . The official designation from the state side is Indians , the self-designation of the well over 600 groups called tribes is predominantly First Nation , more rarely nation or Indian band .
Its history is characterized by strong adaptation to the natural environment, especially in the earlier phases. Accordingly (according to Alfred Kroeber ) in North America ten cultural areas are distinguished, five of which are at least partially in the area of today's Canada: The subarctic , which includes central Canada to the northwest coast and the coast of Labrador , the (north) west coast on the Pacific , then the plateau, i.e. above all the Fraser Plateau, finally prairies and plains , i.e. the dry grasslands east of the Rocky Mountains , as well as the north-eastern woodland around the Great Lakes to Newfoundland .
The history of Indian-European contacts begins in North America with the hunt for fish and whales and the trade in fur . The conflicts resulting from the exploitation of natural resources continue to this day. Initially, forts and settlements only served to secure trade, so the number of settlers remained small. In addition there were first mission attempts. Even if the French and British colonial policy was comparatively less violent than that of the USA , it has radically changed cultures. This is all the more true for Canada, which has been increasingly sovereign since 1867 and which has given up its policy of forced assimilation and cultural extinction since the 1970s in order to give priority to an attitude of multiculturalism .
Demarcation
For the phase of European domination and that of Canada, it makes sense to separate the history of the First Nations from that of the USA, because the two states and their societies have developed very different relationships with their natives . However, this approach is problematic for the previous epochs, which can be better understood in a spatially and temporally broader overview at least of the history of the North American "Indians" - for this huge group of well over 1200 indigenous peoples today there is otherwise no overarching name is fair. A certain spatial and temporal blurring of the delimitation cannot be avoided.
Introductory overview
Basic features up to around 1500
Archaeologically comprehensible and often culturally coherent groups, which often extend into the present, were often identified as "peoples" or "tribes", which were often traced back to a common ancestor, spoke a common dialect and, above all, were understood as genetically connected. Above all, however, they were linked by a common way of life that was less genetically determined than through trade networks, connecting cosmological views, through marriage contacts and thus the exchange of cultural elements, but also through relationships between the leading groups.
From the beginning of human settlement until the 19th century, a pronounced nomadism prevailed on the North American subcontinent , which was only replaced by sedentarism in the south of the USA and on the Mississippi . In addition, there was an annual sequence of seasonal migrations along the coasts and some inland waters, followed by vegetation phases and animal migrations. Therefore, among the First Nations there was never a form of priestly rule, apparently tied to sedentarism , as can be demonstrated for the high cultures of South America and some parts of the USA. In the area of today's Canada, shamanism prevailed among all peoples , which is mainly characterized by the establishment of contact with ancestors or other powers in exceptional psychological situations.
Myths determined the world order. The indigenous religions were not based on a history of salvation , but on the sanctity of places, rituals or associated objects, of beings, powers, knowledge and stories, dances and music that were in the possession of related groups. Religions were therefore location and kinship-specific and had no universal claim to validity. In addition, there was only a vague idea of the belonging of a certain area to a certain tribe , especially since even the idea of firmly established tribes was brought up more by Europeans. Instead, the relationship was by far in the foreground, which to this day ensures extensive, overarching relationships, so that an individual had ancestors from several “tribes”. Therefore, the idea of collective rights dominates to this day (however, through long practice, increasingly based on the tribe) over individual rights.
The typical productions of permanent sedentarism, including cattle breeding, were largely absent. Men were probably associated with hunting from an early age , women with gathering and plucking, cutting and digging up nutritious parts of plants. This also eliminated the need for irrigation and the regulation of rivers, which made larger organizational agglomerations unnecessary. These were rather triggered by joint rituals or campaigns for a limited period of time. But there were extensive and permanent alliance systems and settlements , for example at the Great Lakes .
The rudimentary beginnings of a writing system can be shown, but (works of art) that are loaded with symbols played a prominent role. Overarching languages emerged only in the form of dealer languages, such as the Chinook , which only gained regional importance. In the Plains, a sign language was used to bridge the communication barriers between the numerous languages and dialects. The wheel , which is so important for other cultural areas , as in all of America, played no recognizable role. Metalworking can only be proven for copper (albeit very early), so the rare substance was of great value and very popular as a barter.
The wigwam, made from a framework of curved branches covered with bark or woven mats, is a mobile dwelling that is adapted to the lifestyle of the hunter and is easy to dismantle and reassemble. The same applies to the tipi , the leather-covered pole tent used by bison hunters on the prairie. The peoples of the north-west coast built houses that were permanently inhabited in winter from wooden planks, in the eastern woodland mainly from wood and clay, covered with grass roofs.
European influence (16th to 19th centuries)
The colonial phase from the end of the 15th century began on the east coast with increasing trade, which soon turned into violent conflicts, especially when settlers claimed the land or when conflicts between the tribes met those between the European states. The result were real coalition wars, several times as secondary scenes of European wars. In addition, there were attempts by the indigenous peoples to monopolize trade contacts, with new tribes constantly forming around the forts, some of which still bear the fort's name today. Serious epidemics ( smallpox , measles , flu, tuberculosis , etc.), against which the indigenous peoples practically had no immune defense, repeatedly occurred throughout the epoch . Once the Indians had become dependent, the conquerors tried to push them into areas that were unfavorable for settlers or - as is usually the case in Canada - to force them into reserves and to adapt them to their own ideas of a decent way of life.
There were mainly seven European powers that appeared in this way: Spain (1769 to 1810 on the west coast), France (about 1604–1763), England and Great Britain (1607–1867 and 1931) and Russia (1741–1763). 1867, especially Alaska ), to a lesser extent the Netherlands (1624–1664 around New York or Nieuw Amsterdam ), Sweden (1638–1655 around Delaware ) and - in Greenland - Denmark (from 1721). Ultimately, the conflict between the French and British erupted during the Seven Years' War , while possible conflicts between the colonial powers on the west coast were negotiated with the sale of Fort Ross in 1841 and Alaska in 1867 , as was the “near war” of Great Britain Spain (1789-1794).
The USA played a special role, acquiring Louisiana in 1803 ( Louisiana Purchase ), and fighting a war with the British and French and their Indian allies in Canada from 1812 to 1814 ( British-American War ). A first demarcation was established that cut the continent beyond the Great Lakes from 1846 along the 49th parallel ( Oregon Compromise ). The USA had already played a certain role in the Spanish-British conflict on the Pacific coast. In the north, the acquisition of Russian Alaska by the USA in 1867 separated the zones of very different Indian policies from one another.
While French colonial policy was mainly dominated by trade interests and the settlement served more to develop trade hubs, that of the British was initially more characterized by settlement interests and religious disputes between Protestant power groups.
In Canada, in contrast to the USA, land grabbing by settlers played a minor role, apart from the few metropolitan areas. In the north and west, for example, the crown took over administrative control of the indigenous peoples through the monopoly Hudson's Bay Company , whose business interests suggested a more peaceful understanding with and between the Indians. It was only the immigration of numerous gold prospectors (mainly from the USA) that caused Great Britain to promote its own immigration as a counterweight. Marrying into indigenous communities created new leadership layers within these tribes among matrilocal ethnic groups, i.e. groups in which the couple lived at the place of residence of the woman, who nevertheless had access to the world of the “whites”.
Canada, assimilation attempts
In the former French area, the French language dominates to this day , which has also produced its own mixed languages such as the Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi Indians) Labradors . The Indians there speak it (often in addition to English) and are mostly Catholic . Further west, it depends on innumerable coincidences which creed was enforced by the missionaries. In addition, eclectic forms emerged that sometimes became a means of resistance. There are special forms to this day, but they have, in a sense, only superimposed a distinctly regional substrate and often appear as a revival of traditional spirituality .
The phase of missionary work and instruction in reservations (up to approx. 1840 or 1880) - in contrast to the USA, however, there were probably never any demands to physically destroy the indigenous peoples - followed an epoch spanning several generations in which, through economic marginalization , forcibly enforced bans on central elements of culture and finally by forcing all children into specially set up boarding schools (see Residential Schools ), the entire culture should be wiped out. The last attempts ended in the 1980s. It is not yet foreseeable whether the predominantly ongoing negotiations about treaties between Canada or the provinces and the tribes will ultimately be just another step towards the dissolution of the independent identity, or, on the contrary, support it.
The assimilation of the indigenous people is well advanced. Most of them no longer speak their original language, and many languages are only spoken by a few people. Many indigenous people live in cities and have more or less lost access to their culture. Nevertheless, there are strong efforts for economic recovery paired with approaches to revitalization - especially in the reserves, where an enormous amount of cultural knowledge can still be accessed. Language and rituals are cultivated again, in some tribes the restoration of their own social systems is discussed and the demand for self-government, as well as free access to the resources of the natural environment, which is only bound by tradition. There are also approaches to establish contact with all indigenous peoples who have found themselves in a similar situation due to the colonial era. Against the opposition of the Canadian government, but also that of the USA, Australia and New Zealand , the UN passed a resolution on September 13, 2007, in which not only the elimination of all discrimination against indigenous peoples and the right to have a say in matters that affect them is demanded, but also the right “ to remain distinct” . On 19./20. February 2008 organized the AFN and the BC First Nations Leadership Council in Chief Joe Mathias Center in Squamish First Nation in North Vancouver , a symposium entitled "Implementing The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" (The United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples). The Justin Trudeau government announced in May 2016 that it would sign the declaration with immediate effect; its contents should be included in the constitution of the country.
Independent development
From the first traces to the archaic phase
The oldest traces of human life in the north of the continent can be found in Alaska . They go back around 12,000 to 14,000 years and are culturally related to Northeast Asian cultures . The cold phase that lasted for more than ten millennia probably did not allow any residence. In addition, the huge block of ice that blocked Alaska and the Yukon to the south may have prevented the residents from spreading in that direction. In addition, it can be proven that the so-called ice-free corridor between the Rocky Mountains and Hudson Bay only began around 13,000 BC. Gradually from south to north emerged.
Genetic studies seem to show, on the one hand, that all Indian peoples descend from one root, and on the other hand, that they spread relatively quickly along the coast and only migrated into the interior from there. This is supported by studies of the history of the climate. Other research suggests that the continent was settled almost simultaneously by two different groups from Beringia , who lived between 15,000 and 13,000 BC. Took place. The authors suspect that one group followed the west coast route, the other the ice-free corridor. Genetic studies on 92 individuals from the period 8,600 to 500 years ago in South America and Mexico showed in 2016 that the coastal group grew from 14,000 BC. Spread to Chile within 1400 years . It could also be shown that the ancestors of the immigrants maintained contact with the Siberian population between 23,000 and 16,400 BC. Chr. Lost.
Some of the oldest artifacts were discovered in the Yukon region , in the two Bluefish caves . This early Arctic culture - known as the Siberian-American Paleo-Arctic tradition, the Beringian tradition or the Denali complex , depending on the focus - was isolated for several millennia and only spread further south along the coast under more favorable conditions, possibly also along the Yukon , probably along the said ice-free zone. In the Charlie Lake Cave , a cave near Fort St. John in northern British Columbia to tools found from the period from about 10,500 v. At this time, herds of bison ( B. bison antiquus ) migrated from the south into the emerging grasslands, with them hunters who used spearheads of the Clovis type, similar to those from Indian Creek or Mill Iron in Montana . These findings suggest a south-north migration. Two buried ravens - one with grave goods - were also found in Charlie Lake Cave, which were buried 9,000 and 10,000 years ago, respectively. Also at the Vermilion Lakes in Banff in the upper Bow Valley (. 8900 BC.) And at the Niska Site - with site to sites designated - in the southwestern Saskatchewan (8,000 to 9,000 BC..) There were vorarchaische even paleo-indian called remains. Similar old finds could only be made in Québec in 2003, in Nova Scotia in 1996 at Debert . The oldest human remains in the north were discovered in 1996 and date back to around 7800 BC. Dated. They come from the On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island, discovered three years earlier .
The time after this early phase is often referred to as the archaic phase and is divided into two sections. These are the early (approx. 8000 to 6000 BC) and the middle archaic phase (approx. 6000 to 4000 BC). Then a distinction is made between the archaic phase in the west and the Plano phase in the east. These include cultures around the Ohio , around Niagara, and in southern Ontario . The number of finds is small, however, as the landscape was still subject to major changes, which mostly destroyed cultural relics. Presumably the Plano people followed herds of caribou east, always along the icy border. Without them, no human life was possible in the Northwest. Esker sometimes offered excellent paths through the impassable landscape. Around 7500 BC BC Archaic people from the west also reached southern Ontario. Spear throwers were found there , a technological innovation that probably dates back to around 8000 BC. Started in the southern USA.
A projectile point from New England is dated 6000 to 5000 BC. Dated. It probably belongs to the same culture as that in Vermont (John's Bridge Site, approx. 6000 BC), where drills and especially house tracks appeared. The cultures near the coast are not easy to distinguish archaeologically. The focus was on the lower St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes . The first larger monuments are burial mounds, the Burial Mounds . Apparently, a more or less stable hierarchy had developed within these societies along Lake Erie , the southern Lake Huron , Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River above what is now Québec . Whether this was a contiguous cultural region (also called Proto-Laurentian ) can only be guessed. Their artifacts range from around 5500 BC. Until 1000 BC Chr.
The group of the Plano cultures, whose name is derived from the Great Plains, was clearly distinguishable and exposed to a completely different environment . The name is too narrow, because the cultures encompass the vast space between the coastal areas of British Columbia and the Northwest Territories and the Gulf of Mexico . Shortly before 8000 BC BC shows a change in the weapon system that is characteristic of these cultures. The tips of the projectiles are no longer clamped in split shafts, but sunk into the shaft. At the same time, it was the phase in which extensive forests gave way to grasslands. The raw material for some stone tools and weapons came from areas far south.
The early Plano cultures comprised the area between the North Saskatchewan River and the foot of the Rocky Mountains , as far as British Columbia to the Peace River . Manitoba was still under a huge ice lake, but the first refugia and habitable elevations similar to settlement chambers developed that protruded beyond the ice line (Nunatuks or Nunataker ), such as in southern Alberta (Agate Basin culture) . In one of these refuges south of Calgary, small horses were found in 2001, apparently around 8000 BC. Chr. Were hunted.
New techniques came west through a narrow corridor south of the ice line. It was only later that the huge cultural area was clearly divided into two large areas, the Early Shield and the Early Plains Culture . Copper discoveries were made at South Fowl Lake on the border between Ontario and Minnesota , which indicate metalworking as early as 4800 BC. Indicate. Only the Middle Shield Culture (4000 to 1000 BC) offers richer finds .
In the west it was probably at least until 9000 BC. Settlement dating back to BC was superimposed by the early plateau culture . It is controversial whether it was immigration over the Fraser River or from inland - a corpse from Gore Creek, about 8,500 years old, suggests. The possible immigration from the coast is believed to have been around 4250 BC. Have started. But there does not seem to be any connection with the increasing salmon migration on the west coast.
The coastal cultures ( Southwestern and Northwestern Coastal culture ) on the west coast can be traced back to at least 8000 BC. Prove. It is unclear from which direction the settlement took place, although they could also come from a common root. The linguistics tend to be more immigration from the north. Even the oldest find on Vancouver Island , Bear Cove , indicates a very strong focus on hunting marine mammals such as dolphins and seals . What is striking is the division into more seaward-oriented groups with ocean-going vehicles, and those who prefer to hunt for salmon in a relatively comfortable manner . However, many coastal remains have been swallowed up by the sea, which has existed since 6000 BC. Has risen by 10 to 15 m. This flooding of settlement chambers is likely to have increased the pressure to migrate to the interior. The northwest coast took a slightly different development. Here, too, the rising sea level has destroyed traces, apart from Haida Gwaii . This archipelago was founded no later than 7500 BC. Settled in BC, and with the Haida it has one of the oldest localized populations in the world. Dundas Island, east of the coast near the coast, shows even older traces of settlement with the Far West Point site , which has dated finds of 9690 ± 30 BP , and thus the oldest on the British-Colombian coast.
The oldest traceable trade, obsidian , dates back over 10,000 years and was based on a deposit on Mount Edziza (2787 m) in northern British Columbia.
In the north-west the found situation is so contradicting that all attempts to determine different cultures have failed. The extreme north, including Greenland, is only around 2500 BC. Was populated selectively, the north of Ontario only around 2000 BC. Chr.
From about 4000 to 1000 BC Chr.
From 2500 BC Chr. Can be in the West settlements using numerous shell mounds ( shell middens ) demonstrate to the first signs of social differentiation. Traces of settlement indicate house associations that seasonally formed tribal groups for hunting. Houses and villages can be captured in the plains. Apparently bow and arrow hunting was spread in the north from Asia. It made its way swiftly from the northwest, where it paused for a long time, to the east coast, before reaching the far west in an arc.
Burial sites can also be found on the east coast, such as a cemetery in northwest Newfoundland (Port au Choix), which dates from 2400 to 1300 BC. Was in use and contained 56 dead. The burial mounds there represent the earliest monumental structures in Canada. The groups assigned to this culture are called Maritime Archaic People (an early - 6000 to 4000 BC - and a middle period - 4000 to 1000 BC) or Red Paint People refers to what goes back to the use of red ocher . Between 2000 and 1500 BC Labrador cooled down considerably, which affected the northern coastal cultures in what is now Canada. The before 4000 BC Groups resident in central Labrador evacuated the area. Around 2250 BC Chr. Subjected Inuit who by 3000. B.C. from Asia had reached North America as far south as these regions, and hunters from inland also reached the coasts. The area north of the St. Lawrence River appears to have been abandoned. Around 2000 to 1700 BC In addition, peoples seem to have moved north from the south to New Brunswick ( Susquehanna Archaic People ), but perhaps only techniques were passed on northwards here.
At the Great Lakes the water levels rose and the conditions for the fish improved. Dogs can now be found there that were buried, as shown, for example, by a find on Lake Huron . The Middle Great Lakes-St. The Lawrence culture (or Laurentian Archaic ) centered around what is now Québec and Ontario, and lasted until 4000, perhaps until about 5500 BC. BC back. The Ottawa Valley is considered a center of copper production, a metal that was used for arrowheads, awls, etc. Apparently holy places, initially burial places, were also cared for, cremation can be proven. Periodontal disease , arthritis in the elderly, and broken bones were the most common diseases. Peoples probably advanced from the south, but the Laurentian , like the Middle Archaic complex, is initially difficult to grasp archaeologically. A crescent-shaped knife, the ulu , is characteristic here. Denser populations and more complex cultures, however, lead to an increase in the number of finds and a greater clarity of assignment. On the other hand, the region is used for agriculture, so that numerous finds that come from plowed earth cannot be assigned to a specific time, such as around Niagara Falls .
The cultures of the Canadian shield did not develop until around 6000 BC. From the Plano cultures of the southwestern Keewatin district and east of Manitoba, with a subsequent expansion process that lasted around four millennia. The Cree , Ojibwa , Algonkin , Innu and Beothuk , which can be found in the early European written sources, probably go back to these groups of the Shield culture . Around 2000 BC Complex burial rituals with copper additions, tools and ocher already existed here, and trade relations reached as far as Dakota. Since the settlements were not of great continuity, find layers are very rare. However, seasonal migration cycles of millennia-long continuity are recognizable.
The plains cultures are elusive and so one has to refer to weapon types. However, the information they can provide is often vague. Changes in the projectile tips may indicate displacement of the forests by grasslands and corresponding prey. At the Cactus Flower archaeological site in Alberta , a tubular pipe was found that is approximately 4,700 years old. Many arrowheads come from chalcedony sites on the Knife River in North Dakota . A total of between about 6000 BC. Chr. And the turn of the ages in their entirety determine five serious changes: The dry phases became milder, the bison species that still exists today prevailed, dogs were used as carrying and draft animals and thus increased mobility, the tipi prevailed and finally allowed the cooking technique with hot stones the production of pemmican, which in turn made it easier to survive phases of deficiency.
The middle plateau culture between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coastal mountains developed around 2500 BC. The so-called pit house , which was partially buried in the ground. At the same time, the diet was increasingly based on salmon, although the entire spectrum from mussels to skunks was not spurned. Today's Salish tribes can be closely associated with this culture. Exceptions in this area are the Nicola as Eyak - Athapaskish speakers and the Kootenay . The most important cultural change is the transition from being sedentary to being semi-sedentary with permanent winter villages and summer hiking cycles, according to hunting and collecting requirements, as well as visiting places with high ritual relevance around 2000 BC. Chr.
A similar development took place on the west coast, whose cultures increasingly varied regionally (cf. Coastal Salish ). The social hierarchy became clearer, some groups had better access to resources, wealth accumulated and trade increased. Salmon, candle fish and shellfish became the most important foods, accordingly numerous mounds known as shell middens appear, in which less permanent artifacts have survived. Towards the end of the era, plank houses can be identified for the first time. However, the Salish were not just hunters and gatherers, but at the latest since 1600 BC. Also farmers - as we know about the katzie since 2007.
In contrast, the Yukon and Mackenzie with their huge catchment areas maintained a culture of long-range hunting with extreme mobility of small groups. Therefore the archaeological sources are very thin. The often found speculation about invaders from the Plains around 4000 BC. BC can be explained more easily with the advance of the spear thrower (Atlatl) , which required other projectile points. Between 5000 and 2000 BC There was a southern migration of the Inuit cultures. The Athabasque languages probably go back to the regional culture .
Until the first contact with Europeans (around 1500)
The three most noticeable changes in the period from around 1000 BC The climatic stabilization is at about today's level, as well as the introduction of two new technologies. One, the manufacture of clay pots, reached what is now Canada probably on the long journey from South America via Florida . The other, bow and arrow, came from Europe or Asia and was probably first used by the Paleo-Eskimos. With the advent of these two techniques, there are also other ways of gaining knowledge about this period from archaeological finds.
The East: Woodland Periods
The ethnic groups behind the artifacts of the later cultural phases are believed to be the ancestors of today's Mi'kmaq , Maliseet (in Canada Welastekwíyek , people of the Saint Lawrence River) and Passamaquoddy (who are not recognized as First Nation in Canada) . From an archaeological perspective, numerous ceramic vessels from the time before 500 BC provide A considerable increase in features and finds. This ends the archaic phase on the east coast, which is replaced by the woodland periods . On the basis of their decorations, vessels are distinguished between those that were applied by a kind of stamp in the north and those that were created by pressing a ribbon in the south (e.g. between Trois-Rivières and Québec). In New Brunswick , which has been better researched, it shows that sedentariness had prevailed in the cold season (in the shell midden sites ), some villages were probably inhabited all year round. The importance of shellfish increased significantly, although some finds show that they were of great importance much earlier. The region took over some of the burial practices from the Adena culture , which is around 1700 km away , but also participated in its development itself, as the Miramichi River site shows, which was considered sacred to the Mi'kmaq until historical times. This would mean that their oral tradition would go back 2500 years.
The Early or Early Woodland Period also extends to the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River from about 1000 BC. Chr. To 500 AD. The term refers to the spread of pottery, a previously unknown technique. The Iroquois go back to this culture , but also some of the Algonquin tribes. For a long time, the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a horticultural society was emphasized too much. Nevertheless, the importance of the pumpkin increased more and more. It turned out, however, that pumpkins were already around 4000 BC. In Maine . Nevertheless, there are aspects of fundamental changes. Between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie and New York, individual groups brought the flint sites under their control. They acted very widely with specially produced basic forms. These Onondaga flints were made from 1000 to 500 BC. Mainly used for the new weapon, which consisted of a bow and arrow. In addition, the Burial Mounds from the Ohio Valley , numerous mounds of earth that contained the deceased, spread out. Finally developed a reuse technology , with which one in rapids fish could catch.
The Canadian shield
The cultures on the Canadian shield are divided into a western and an eastern culture group, both of which go back to the Middle Shield culture . The two groups differed only in their tools and less in their way of life, even if the eastern branch took over clay vessels very late. However, this can also be attributed to the fact that the soundless areas were more like tail areas for groups of hunters. Here, too, the influences of the Adena culture can be seen as far as central Labrador . Their typical mounds also appear in the western shield culture ( Laurel ), for example on the Rainy River in southern Ontario, which is now a listed building as part of the Manitou Mounds Provincial Park Reserve . So far, the hills piled up from river debris, which may have served as shamans as retreats, remain a mystery. Since rock paintings, which are assumed to be similar, cannot yet be dated, questions about their function can hardly be answered.
Birch canoes were the main means of transport for goods and people. On them, the groups extended their tailing areas into former plain areas west and south-west, which between 1500 and 500 BC. Were considerably wetter and more wooded. With that, the bison herds disappeared there. Long-distance trade in chalcedony from Oregon and obsidian from Wyoming also depended on river transport. The only known human remains come from 39 individuals from two as Mound designated grave hills , Smith Mound 3 and 4 in northern Minnesota . It could be that the tribes of the Northern Algonquin Culture in southern Manitoba, Minnesota, and adjacent Ontario are genetically derived from them. Probably due to the domestication of water rice, there was a prominent class of landowners who also culturally differentiated themselves from the rest of the population. Southern Ontario was involved in the long-distance trade relations of the Hopewell culture . High- purity copper was found in the vicinity of Lake Ontario and was used as a material for jewelry throughout eastern North America.
Plains and prairies
The late Plains culture lived to a large extent on buffalo ( American bison ), with pemmican becoming increasingly important. Place names such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump or Old Women's Buffalo Jump indicate the driving technique used in buffalo hunting, but such places are rare. The prairies appear to be around 650 BC. To have shrunk in favor of forests. During this time, at the latest approx. 500 BC. BC, the bow replaced the spear thrower, which, however, existed side by side for a long time. In addition to buffalo meat, as a find at Pelican Lake shows, elk , beaver , pike , pikeperch , but also roots, were of great importance. Here mounds occur only in the two Dakotas. In Montana , tented villages of considerable dimensions (100 hectares) and a useful life of around a thousand years have been found that used stone rings around the tipis . Long-distance trade in obsidian, flint, and other materials was widespread, extending westward to the Fraser River and the Pacific. Apparently there were sacred places where shamans invoked metaphysical powers. There is evidence that at least some of the deceased were dried on scaffolding before being buried. The dead were also left in tents. Some finds show relatively tall people, who often suffered from arthritis and other diseases.
plateau
The late plateau culture was characterized by small spaces - corresponding to the landscape. Nothing had changed about the change between winter villages and summer camps. Stocks were stored in holes in the ground, hot stones were used for baking and cooking, and the salmon provided the lion's share of the nutritional value. Animal carvings appear to have increased, as has trade with the coastal peoples, but mainly on the Middle Fraser and Thompson. The villages became significantly larger and the population increased, but some of these large villages were only inhabited for a short time, others for over a thousand years (e.g. Keatly Creek Site). The pit house is characteristic, although this has been questioned by the Kootenay . With them the influence of the plains cultures only became stronger with the introduction of the horse. This type of house enabled more extensive stockpiling and thus better food security (from approx. 2000 BC). Eyak Athapaskan speakers, like Chilcotin and Dakelh , may not have migrated southwards until around 500.
The late plateau phase is again divided into three phases, the Shuswap horizon (2500 to 500 BC); Plateau horizon (500 BC to 800 AD) and Kamloops horizon (800 to 1800). The bow and arrow appeared very late. The containers with human heads were probably ceremonial works of art. A society also developed that was based on family associations, cross-tribal relationships and hierarchy. Access to resources depended on reputation, which was becoming increasingly hereditary.
West Coast
The coastal culture on the Pacific was approaching what the Europeans found at the end of the 18th century. It was already used between 500 BC. and approximately reached 500 AD. The hereditary hierarchy was stricter from south to north, the hierarchy steeper. A class of leading families ruled trade, access to resources, and political and spiritual power. The simple tribesmen by no means had to make up the bulk of the people, just like the slaves, who were mostly prisoners of war.
In many places it is extremely likely that local finds can be attributed to certain tribes in the same region, such as the Tsimshian , who died no later than 2000 BC. Around the later Prince Rupert Harbor. Regional differentiations exist for the groups around the Strait of Georgia and the Frasertal. There, a distinction can be made between Locarno Beach Complex and Marpole Complex , which are based on salmon fishing (cf. Coastal Salish ), or Yuquot , which indicates a culture of deep sea hunting, especially whales. In the north, Namu, Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii are key sites, and there are sites on the Fraser River that point even more to salmon fishing. Burial mounds also appear here for the first time. The arch did not reach this region until around AD 400.
Here, too, the villages became more numerous, and apparently larger, except for those on the Strait of Georgia. Today's coastal Salish can be traced back to the Marpole culture, but presumably much further back. It was already characterized by the same social differentiation, from plank houses in which several families lived, from salmon catching and preservation, rich carvings of sometimes monumental dimensions, complex ceremonies and probably even potlatches . The forms of winter storage described later by Europeans can be seen on the Hoko River in Washington. In Namu, as early as 7000 B.C. A variety of cultural elements of the later coastal Salish and their northern neighbors, such as the Nuu-chah-nulth . On the Hoko River in particular, in contrast to Musqueam Northeast, which is not very far away, the cultural differences between groups living relatively close to one another are more reflected in the area of ephemeral "arts", such as basket weaving, than in the area of the much earlier traditional ones (Stone) weapon technology, which tends to react comparatively monotonously and sluggishly to always the same needs - but it is by far the bulk of the finds.
Between 500 and 1000 AD, funeral customs changed again. The dead were now more and more often given their final resting place in trees, stakes, burial houses and caves. Around 500 to 700 AD, fortified villages increasingly appeared - especially in the south with dug moats, further to the north with palisades. This warlike phase extended into the time of the first contact with Europeans, through which it was further intensified.
The northwest
The early history of the northwestern interior, where the Athabasque language group dominated , is particularly poorly researched . Some sites in the drainage area of the Mackenzie are connected to them from approx. 700 BC. The Taye Lake complex can be traced back between 4000 and 1000 BC. While the Taltheilei complex is believed to be due to immigration from British Columbia and the Yukon region, a migration that extended beyond Hudson Bay and possibly displaced the predecessors of the Inuit there.
Sites in the drainage area of the Mackenzie from 1000 BC are connected with the athabasques . To approx. 700 AD. The Taye Lake Complex in the Yukon region dates from 4000 to 1000 BC. It is assumed that the phase called Old Chief Creek on the northern Yukon was close to this and produced the later Gwich'in , while the Taye Lake phase on the southern Yukon produced the Tutchone . Characteristic are lance-shaped projectile points, double-edged knives and the absence of tiny blades called microblades . Whether the two main archaeological groups represent more than conceptual constructs is uncertain in view of the extremely poor state of the art.
European influence
Around 1000 AD, Icelandic settlers from Greenland settled on Newfoundland , but this was short-lived. Further to the north, on Baffin Island , contacts that could not be traced back to mere trade appeared to have been established several centuries earlier. Everyday objects indicate longer stays. The Icelanders called the residents Skraelingers , although it is unclear whether they were Beothuk or Inuit of the Dorset culture . In the springs, the discovered areas are called Helluland , Markland and Vinland , probably areas on the Clyde River, in South Labrador and on Newfoundland. Apparently, Vikings and the regional groups were already trading furs for metal goods and fabrics at that time.
Contacts without colonies in the east (1497–1604)
Mi'kmaq and Beothuk were probably the first to have contact with Europeans, with the latter being considered extinct since 1829. In all likelihood, fishermen from the Basque Country and England started fishing around Newfoundland as early as the 15th century , and between 1530 and 1600 Basques were still cutting whales in Red Bay on the coast of Labrador. The first European whose landing in North America is tangible in the sources was Giovanni Caboto (known as John Cabot). He landed in 1497 at a point on the east coast that could not be determined with certainty and took three Mi'kmaq with him to England. From 1501 at the latest, when the Portuguese Gaspar Corte-Real kidnapped 59 Beothuk who drowned with the sinking ship, the Mi'kmaq had frequent contact with Spanish, French, British and Irish fishermen who visited the coast every summer. By 1578, nearly 400 fishing boats were counted on Canada's east coast every summer.
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From 1519 the fur trade began and the coastal tribes exchanged fur for European products, especially metal goods such as knives, axes, hatchets and kettles. The report by Jacques Cartiers , who anchored in Chaleur Bay in 1541, where his ship was surrounded by a large number of Mi'kmaq canoes, whose crew waved beaver pelts, is indicative of this interest in exchange . This tribe was afflicted by diseases unknown to them in 1564, 1570 and 1586. The tribes of the east coast began to change, soon they were to be at war among themselves because of the trade contacts. Cartier had also exchanged furs with the Iroquois on the upper St. Lawrence (1534/35) and for a long time trade flourished despite the lack of infrastructure in the sense of trading bases. A network of rivers and paths on which Indians traded had existed for a very long time. They traded in copper, walrus ivory, various types of stone for tools, weapons and jewelry, on long paths with the buttery fat of the candle fish , covering dog hair , etc.
The East - First Colonies, Wars, Epidemics, Furs (1604–1763)
A quarter of a century before the first permanent colony, the Breton Troilus de Mesgouez, Marquis de la Roche (1540-1606) received a corresponding order in 1578 , but his ship failed in 1584 in a storm. In 1598–1603, convicts established a short-lived colony on Sable Island , where they found the remains of an older colony. In 1604 a naval expedition, in which Samuel de Champlain also participated, built the first settlement on Saint Croix Island at the mouth of the St. Croix River . However, it was relocated to Port Royal a year later . Other fortified structures soon followed, such as Fort La Tour on the Saint John River, where the Maliseet now also exchanged European goods. But the relocation of the colony to Port Royal in the Mi'kmaq area had consequences. As early as 1607 there was a war between the Penobscot under their Sagamore Bashabes , who had gained great power through French weapons, and the Mi'kmaq. This Tarrantine War , which was an expression of their rivalry in the fur trade, lasted eight years. The victorious Mi'kmaq moved on to Massachusetts , but became infected with a devastating epidemic that killed around 4,000 of the 10,000 Mi'kmaq between 1616 and 1619. Other tribes were hit even harder. As the Pequot War of 1637 showed, the southern colonies were also a serious threat to bare existence, because for the first time an entire tribe was deliberately wiped out here.
In 1608, Champlain founded the city of Québec . In 1613 the traders from Port Royal had to retreat to the more northerly Tadoussac because the English had burned their colony. In the same year there was a bloody confrontation with the Beothuk, who were defeated by the Mi'kmaq, who were allied with the French and were equipped with rifles by them.
Coureurs des bois (rangers) were soon sent out to live among the Indians, while the trading agents turned their forts into centers of exchange. The few navigable rivers, such as the Ottawa, played an important role. Tribes like the Kichesipirini claimed a monopoly on them as early as 1630. In addition, as early as 1660, large quantities of fur came from the Upper Lake area and from the Lakota . In 1669 a station on James Bay delivered the first furs to London , a trade that gave rise to the Hudson's Bay Company . The rivalry between the French and English escalated. In 1686 the French tried to burn down the trading post. A few years later, the French advanced as far as the Gulf of Mexico and founded the Louisiana colony . Although the search for the western border of the continent failed, contacts were made with Indians as far as the upper Mississippi , and for a short time even as far as Santa Fe in the Spanish region. The trading companies continued to dominate events, but the Seven Years' War in North America (1754–1763) brought about the end of the French era. The French remaining in Canada successfully demanded to be allowed to keep their denomination, so that numerous Indians converted by Catholic missionaries also remained Catholic. In addition, the competition continued unreservedly at the mission level and still contributes to a denominational patchwork quilt among many First Nations. The links between French men and Native American women were so numerous that their descendants formed a nation of their own, the Métis .
Remote effects
Meanwhile, horses ( mustangs ), which came from European, especially Spanish, herds, radically changed the culture of the prairie. The ability to hunt buffalo on horseback and thus comparatively comfortably ensured, on the one hand, that more Indians moved into the prairie, and on the other hand, the horse allowed colonization and crossing of previously inhumane areas. To do this, they used special carrying frames, so-called travois , that the horses could pull. Large-scale migrations became possible, as did wars.
Mighty tribes of the east initiated entire migrations that drove tribes like the Dakota westward. The fur trade with the French resulted in a confederation with the Anishinabe that existed from 1679 to 1736. After that, the Dakota were expelled from the northern areas by their former allies and some found a new home in what is now southern Minnesota by 1780 . A part split into Lakota and Nakota . Thanks to French rifles and horses from the south, the Lakota in particular rose to form a powerful tribe that conquered the Black Hills in 1765 .
The fur trade also caused rivalries around the Great Lakes and weapons with which to fight them. But the Iroquois , who joined together in a tribal league around 1570, became enemies of the Wyandot and Algonquin , who were allied with the French , even earlier . Missionaries maintained the Sainte-Marie-au-pays-des-Hurons mission station there from 1639 to 1649. Between 1640 and 1701 the five, later six, tribes of the Iroquois League destroyed the Wyandot, Tionontati and Erie with arquebuses that they had received from the Dutch fur trade. Only when the Dutch, represented by a fur trading station called Fort Orange since 1623 , withdrew - probably because the beaver populations south of the Great Lakes collapsed after 1640 - the clashes subsided. Nevertheless, the Iroquois continued to migrate westwards and the French settlements were in serious danger. As a result, all French between 16 and 65 had to do arms service from now on, Montreal was at times completely isolated. In 1682 St. Louis was founded. It was not until 1701 that the English and French and 39 chiefs signed a peace treaty ( Great Peace of Montreal ).
With the Ohio- based Fox , too , the French, who wanted to control their fur trade route towards the Mississippi, were drawn into local hostilities which they used to their advantage. In 1701 they founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit . In 1722 the Fox besieged the fort, but the French allied tribes like Wyandot and Ottawa almost completely destroyed the Fox and the Mascouten .
With the French and Indian War (1754–1763), which both the French and the English waged with numerous Indian allies, France lost control of North America, first in 1758 in the Ohio Valley, then in 1761 in Québec. The short-lived rule over Louisiana from 1800 to 1803 did not change that.
English colonial rule (from 1756/63)
After Great Britain assumed sole colonial rule in Canada, the entire east of North America was British territory for a few decades. But in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the colonists were forbidden to settle beyond the Appalachians . The ban was increasingly ignored, however, and brought settlers and colonial power into conflicting interests. In addition, there was the largest Indian uprising from 1763 to 1766. Its leader was Pontiac (actually Obwandiyag), a descendant of the Ottawa , of which he became chief in 1755, and the Anishinabe (of which sub-tribes live in Canada today). His defeat opened the land on the Ohio and its tributaries to the Lake Superior to the settlers . With the independence of the USA, the settlers no longer got in the way of the proclamation of 1763.
In the remaining colonial area in the north, the situation was different. Here the royal proclamation had created an area reserved for the Indians that stretched from the Great Lakes to Rupert's Land , which was under the Hudson's Bay Company . Between their territory and the province of Québec there was also a buffer zone between Newfoundland and Lake Nipissing on the Indian reservation. But already in the Québec Act of 1774 this buffer zone was drawn in and the Indians were expected to give up their rights to the land on a large scale in order to make way for European settlement. However, they were viewed as contractors and allies, and the land was bought from them in contracts. Only the crown was allowed to act as buyer. The impetus for this law had been the concern that the unrest that developed in the later United States could spill over to Québec and its French-speaking population, which still formed the majority.
With the consolidation of British control, this policy was slowly replaced by that of assimilation by the Indians. After the American War of Independence and the British-American War from 1812 to 1814, the Indians in Canada (still called Quebec at that time ) were separated from those in the United States . This included above all the areas on the upper Mississippi and Ohio , which had become Quebec with the Quebec Act in 1774. The areas of the Mi'kmaq, the Abenaki and Anishinabe , the Seneca and Ottawa, later (1846) the Blackfoot etc. up to some coastal Salish groups on the Pacific were cut up. From the perspective of London, tribes like the Mohawk were important allies in the fight against the American rebels after they had to flee the United States.
The development and settlement efforts were now directed again - under completely different interests, conditions and with different means - to the west. At the end of the 18th century, research expeditions and in the course of a race between Spain, Russia - the Russian trading company maintained its southernmost fort in what would later be Fort Ross in California (1812–1841) - and Great Britain, the Pacific coast came into focus. There, too, the fur trade, with its enormous profit opportunities, led to a surge in the trade in otter and beaver pelts. In 1790/94 an agreement was reached with Spain not to set up any trading colonies. But modern weapons and the riches from the fur trade changed both the structures within the tribes and the regional balance of power. Some chiefs such as Maquinna or Wickaninnish managed to establish a trading empire on the west coast of Vancouver Island . The tribes of the Kwakwaka'wakw and the Haida further north fell into the hands of numerous slaves on their raids, while the tribes of the coastal Salish suffered from severe epidemics, especially smallpox, as early as 1775 (see smallpox epidemic on the Pacific coast of North America from 1775 ).
With the almost complete extermination of the fur animals, the merchant ships left the region again and moved further north. They didn't return until the 1820s when the Hudson's Bay Company built a few forts on the Columbia River , then in Oregon and later British Columbia, and finally founded Victoria in 1843 . It was she who maintained numerous forts inland, especially since she was forcibly united with the North West Company in 1821 . Eventually it was granted a license for the Northwest Territory , the largest area and largest number of peoples ever to come under a private, monopoly trading company. With the border treaty of 1846 , which cut the continent along the 49th parallel and assigned the Indians to the British sphere of influence or the USA, numerous tribal areas were cut up, trade and migration became increasingly difficult.
The Hudson's Bay Company tried under Governor James Douglas , after they had already evacuated Oregon and Washington, to enforce British rule in the north against the massive immigration of gold prospectors. Thousands of adventurers, some of them completely unscrupulous, headed for Klondike and the Cariboo gold areas . The First Nations along the route to the north suffered mainly from the diseases that were introduced, such as smallpox ( especially in 1862 ), but also from the ruthless behavior of travelers mainly from California . Douglas, however, signed 14 contracts with tribes on Vancouver Island that are still valid today. In 1858 the island became a crown colony , then in 1866 with British Columbia.
But as early as 1857 the province of Canada abandoned the line pursued since 1763 of recognizing the Indian nations as principally equal contractual partners with the law on gradual civilization , with which the government determined who "Indian" was for the first time, and the goal was to assimilate Indians as far as possible.
Basic cultural misunderstandings
The unexpected encounter and the inexplicable strangeness, their technological superiority, and later their astonishingly large human reservoir often led to the whites being thought of as supernatural beings. So it was obvious, as the Nuu-chah-nulth apparently did when meeting James Cook , to offer them, the man-eating supernatural beings, body parts to appease and to perform the gesture of eating. In the same way, in order to be able to protect themselves from the supernatural forces in the "floating houses", they asked to be allowed to bring wooden ancestral symbols with them.
The largely peaceful reaction cannot simply be interpreted as approval of the civilization programs that have been imposed. It was rather selective and often a form of cultural resistance. This is complemented by revitalization movements in which the colonists turned their back on foreign infiltration, which was perceived as a threat, while at the same time integrating parts of their value system.
In the epidemics (especially smallpox , but also measles and flu, especially the Spanish flu ), many saw a tremendous damaging magic of the strangers, and at the same time it shook trust in their own religion. The healing aspect increased in indigenous ceremonialism, Christianity was viewed as a form of religious healing and enriched with ceremonies. For the colonists, the massive deaths of the Indians was a kind of fate they had weighed in, if not a hint from God.
Even the contract negotiations with their almost protocol-based sequence of speeches, the exchange of wampums , gifts and finally the sealing of contracts, interpreted the contracting parties completely differently. While for Europeans the ceremonial only served the purpose of obtaining a contract, for the indigenous peoples the ceremony itself was the political act. Logically, the content on paper meant little to them, apart from the fact that tribal property was often not alienable to them and often no concept of this type of property ownership of land existed at all. This in turn was interpreted as a lack of contractual loyalty. Similar conflicts arose in connection with the question of property, mostly from cultural misunderstandings.
Canada (since 1867/71)
Since the British North America Act and the founding of the Canadian Confederation in 1867, the treaties were no longer negotiated with Great Britain, but with the Canadian federal government. There was relatively little bloodshed in Canada compared to the Indian conflict in the United States . However, due to the decline in the buffalo herds (especially between 1875 and 1879), which formed their food source, Indians were often forced to sell their land for little consideration. This land was to be given to settlers, who were mainly wooed in Great Britain.
Treaties, Indian law, reservations, resistance (around 1871–1930)
From 1871 to 1875 the first five of the eleven so-called Numbered Treaties (numbered contracts) in which they gave up land rights were negotiated with the affected Indians of the prairie . In return, they received reserves as living space, compensation and, above all, hunting and fishing rights in the ceded areas. In addition, there should be help with the conversion to agriculture.
The Indian Act of 1876 defined who was considered an "Indian" and made Indians a wards of the state. In addition, the tribes were subjected to the decisions of the Indian Agents , who assigned them reservations in the following years. It depended on countless coincidences how “generous” these reserves turned out to be. The area allocated to a family could differ between barely 20 hectares and several hundred hectares.
The Indian agent and lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, Edgar Dewdney (1879 / 81–1888), was supposed to force the Sioux who had fled to Canada under Sitting Bull (Tatanka I-yotank) to leave Canada. Numerous Cree and Assiniboins encamped around Fort Walsh in Saskatchewan . The Blackfoot was even worse off . In 1881, Chief Big Bear encouraged the Indians of Treaty Number 4 and Number 6 to gather in the Cypress Hills . But Dewdney refused to improve the contract and hunger forced them to withdraw.
Finally, under his direction and with the help of the churches, the establishment of schools for the Indian children outside the reservations began. Thus began a policy of compulsory inclusion in Canadian culture. Boarding schools ( residential schools ) were soon set up, to which Indian children were forcibly taken, where they were no longer allowed to speak their own language if punished in order to alienate them from their ancestral culture and family. The teachers, who usually consider themselves to be racially , culturally and socially superior, often led to sexual and other physical and psychological attacks on the students and to indoctrination of the only decisive values of Europeans.
Dewdney also pursued the goal of distributing food only for work. But in the harsh winter of 1884/85 there was fear of violent outbreaks, and the Métis actually rebelled in March 1885. The lieutenant governor had tobacco and food distributed to prevent Indians from joining the Northwest Rebellion . Wandering Spirit (1845–1885), however, led a Cree crowd to Frog Lake on April 2, where nine men were killed, including the Indian agent . After the uprising, the last fighting act of which was the Battle of Loon Lake on June 3, 1885, efforts for greater autonomy were suppressed, schools expanded, controls tightened and insurgents severely punished. Wandering Spirit and seven other Indians were executed. In addition, individual farms should now finally undermine the "Indian system". When Dewdney became Minister of the Interior in 1888, he was the superintendent general of Indian affairs until 1892 .
The Indians increasingly tried to defend themselves on the level of the imposed powers, no longer through passive resistance or small skirmishes, as in the Chilcotin War of 1863/64 or in the larger skirmishes under Chief Big Bear. Squamish chief Joseph Capilano , for example, traveled to London in 1906 to present a petition to King Edward VII .
Nevertheless, additions to the Indian law (1905 and 1911) made it easier to dispossess reservations. Around half of the Blackfoot's reservation was sold in 1916/17. The resistance of the Kainai, who are part of the Blackfoot, was broken by hunger. In British Columbia , reservations were downsized between 1915 and 1920 (see McKenna-McBride Commission ) and the provincial government repeatedly approved expropriations for road construction, industrial plants, power lines, reservoirs, etc. It turned away numerous negotiators who had come to Victoria. Around this time, two new numbered treaties were negotiated for the last time , as gold and other raw material deposits were discovered in the areas of western Canada. The 1923 William Treaties referred to area in Ontario . After all, anyone who wanted to leave their reserve for a long time had to have a passport with them. In 1930 the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement gave the provinces access to crown land. But the Indians should continue to have all the rights to hunt, trap and fish for self-sufficiency. This should apply all year round and on unoccupied crown land, as well as everywhere where the Indians had access rights.
The policy of assimilation, as the poet and head of the Indian Ministry (1913–1931) Duncan Campbell Scott put it in 1931, would not end until “the Indians advance into civilization and finally disappear as a separate and different people, not through racial extermination but through gradual alignment with their fellow citizens ”. It was continued until the late 1960s. The Indian Act of 1927 prohibited Indians from forming any political organization to advance their interests. The residential schools existed until around 1970, the last one closed in 1996.
Struggle for equal rights (since World War I)
Precedence of tribal councils, separation of Métis and Inuit
As early as during the First World War, regional attempts were made to organize the resistance to the downsizing of reservations without, as in the USA, pan-Indian attempts at organization ( Brotherhood of North American Indians ). In 1916 the Allied Tribes of British Columbia (ATBC), a connection of 16 tribal groups between the Indian Rights Association and the Interior Tribes of British Columbia , was created to defend itself against the decisions of the McKenna-McBride Commission . But with the 1927 ban on raising funds to finance court proceedings, the organization disbanded. 1919 founded the Mohawk chief and war veteran Frederick Ogilvie Loft (1861-1934) analogous to the League of Nations ( League of Nations ) the League of Indians in Canada in Ontario. You even managed to temporarily include Indians of the West, although the responsible ministry tried to revoke Loft's status as Indian .
In December 1926, the Six Nations Defense League , later the Indian Defense League of America , came into being as a reaction to the difficult border crossings between Canada and the USA . The organization, initiated by the Tuscarora chief Clinton Rickard , is committed to this day for the tribes whose traditional area has been cut up by the border.
Even after 1945, attempts such as the North American Indian Brotherhood , which was founded in 1946, failed due to a lack of support and repression (especially in Saskatchewan), there were also organizational problems, and after 1950 the brotherhood split into regional factions. In contrast, the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council (1974) and the Nisga'a formed the first tribal councils , a form of organization that has meanwhile covered the entire country.
Increased assimilation pressure
Although research has found the destructive consequences of the policy of assimilation, respected anthropologists such as Diamond Jenness in 1947 called for greater efforts to bring those treated as minors into the Euro-Canadian lifestyle. Saskatchewan started this in the late 1940s. Integration into gainful employment and emigration to the metropolises were considered progressive goals, also against the resistance of the indigenous people. This also included the granting of rights, initially the right to vote at the provincial level (British Columbia 1947, Manitoba 1952, Ontario 1954), for status Indians who did not live in the reservation in 1950 also at the federal level. In 1951, the ban on potlatch and sun dance was lifted. In 1960, all Indians were allowed to vote for the first time in the Canadian House of Commons , a right that the US Indians had had for almost 40 years. In 1969 the then Minister of Indian Affairs , Jean Chrétien , called for the repeal of the Indian law and the confiscation of all reservations. The worldwide decolonization deprived the government of the argumentation ground for the maintenance of colonial patterns, but the indigenous people resisted the cancellation of their rights without replacement.
In 1961 the National Indian Council was formed , which represented three of the four main groups of Indians, the treaty and status Indians (treaty and status), the non-status Indians - there were over 126,000 of them in 2007, compared with six years earlier only 104,000 were - and the Métis - which counted just under 300,000 and 291,000 respectively. The unity of the peoples mentioned had the highest priority. But in 1968 the diverging interests burst the organization and the National Indian Brotherhood emerged as a representative of the contract and status Indians , while the other two groups joined together in the Native Council of Canada . This resulted in the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples , (CAP) , which sees itself as the spokesman for the non-status Indians, but also for the off-reserve Indians living outside the reservations and the scattered Indians, including the Métis. During this period, calls for full assimilation continued.
In 1962 a group of anthropologists first criticized the concept of assimilation (Dunning). The study carried out by Harry Hawthorne on behalf of the government in 1966/67 called for its withdrawal, which Hawthorne had already requested in 1958. However, he called for integration in the form of all rights and duties of a non-indigenous Canadian plus certain indigenous rights (called Citizen plus ). A dual strategy should support the reserve Indians integrating the urban ones. The chiefs of Alberta supported him from 1970. After Trudeau's failure in indigenous politics, a change of direction began. The tribes were given more rights, the schools were first given into their hands (from 1971).
Land Claims, First Nations Assembly
In 1973, Indians, more precisely Frank Calder of the Nisga'a , succeeded for the first time in asserting land claims before the Supreme Court of Canada , which were converted into a treaty in 2000. The Court of Justice declared the provisions of the Royal Declaration of 1763 still binding. There was also a successful campaign against the discrimination of marriages between Indian women and non-Indian men. The Indian women and their children lost loud Indian law their status as Indians. However, if Indians married non-Indian women, the men did not lose their status. This was changed in 1985 when the Indians and their children could keep the status upon application. However, their children only retained this status if they in turn married registered Indians. On the one hand, these provisions ensure that this group known as "Bill C-31 Indians" will largely disappear after two generations, on the other hand, the decision contradicts fundamental rights, as the Supreme Court found in June 2007 (McIvor Decision). The name "C-31" goes back to the fact that in 1985 the corresponding bill was called "Bill C 31". It ensured about 117,000 re-entries in the lists of recognized Indians. In April 2009, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that all discrimination from the Indian Act should be removed within one year, and in early June the head of the relevant ministry promised to implement it.
Within the Indian organizations, too, it was only after the Second World War that the understanding of roles between the sexes began to change. Agnes Fontaine, the mother of Phil Fontaine , was elected band councillor in 1952 as the first woman in Canada . Additional campaigns raised awareness of educational, health and economic issues among the Canadian public. The First Nations University of Canada , which emerged from the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College founded in 1976 , and several private educational institutes also contributed to this.
The movement for the rights of the First Nations took off in the late 1970s when the Canadian government planned a constitution independent from Britain . Fearing that First Nations rights would be overlooked, over 300 Indians went to London in 1979 to protest.
But at the end of the 1970s there were pronounced regionalization tendencies within political organizations. In 1982, a new general representation of the Indian peoples of Canada, the assembly of the First Nations , was formed, which was better adapted to the needs of the numerous groups . She no longer represented the regions so much as the leading political forces of the tribes and their organizations. To put it bluntly, it is the coordination office of the chiefs, who in turn are determined in very different ways by their tribes. In the Constitution Act, 1982 , the rights of the First Nations have been recognized, but they themselves were involved until 1983 in the constitutional process. In 1982, Section 35 of the Constitution stated that First Nations rights, whether or not under a separate treaty, were in effect. But it was and is the uncertainty in the details that hinder investment and economic development. In this respect, the contract negotiations are of the utmost importance for legal security.
Dr. David Ahenakew was elected the first National Chief to the Assembly of First Nations in 1982 . Still, the process made little headway. Several conferences were held with the Prime Minister, the provinces and the representatives of the indigenous peoples (four First Ministers Conferences on Aboriginal Rights alone from 1983 to 1987). Despite an improvement in relations, the governments of Canada and the provinces , especially Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Newfoundland, ultimately rejected the First Nations' right to their own government. Nonetheless, the French Canadians achieved special rights for their territory that could hardly be withheld from other nations ( Meech Lake Agreement in 1987, Charlottetown Agreement , rejected by a referendum on October 28, 1992) - at least not in the long term. The land claims received the same constitutional protection as the treaties, and Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick supported the claim to self-government. In 1991, the Ottawa-based Indian Claims Commission was set up to determine the exact land claims .
A certain form of recognition was achieved supranationally through the free trade agreement with the USA , and there was also harsh criticism from the UN with regard to the policy towards indigenous people. Against the opposition of the Canadian government, but also that of the USA, Australia and New Zealand , the UN passed a resolution on September 13, 2007, which not only called for the elimination of all discrimination or the right to have a say in matters that affect them, but also the right “ to remain distinct ”. The Canadian ambassador was particularly bothered by the passages that concern soil and raw materials and in which a say is demanded. In the extraction of raw materials in particular, indigenous rights are not taken into account - despite the case law of the Supreme Court - especially at the provincial level, as the arrest of the Ardoch Algonquin chief in the province of Ontario in February 2008 showed. Australia and New Zealand have since revised their position, Canada followed in November 2010.
Rebellions and self-government, first nation-to-nation treaties (since around 1990)
From July 11 to September 26, 1990, there was a Mohawk uprising near the city of Oka in Québec . This Oka crisis was sparked by arguments with citizens of the city. After a year, a commission published a report confirming the existence of the First Nations' problems. These mainly included poverty, poor health, alcohol and drug problems, the breakup of family structures and a high rate of suicide. The commission recommended that the government create a fair and lasting basis for coexistence with the First Nations, including material support to improve their living conditions and the creation of a separate parliament to represent their interests. Apparently, the Oka crisis was the first violent confrontation that also featured in the national media. Earlier clashes, such as at Fraser in British Columbia around 1970, only filled the local leaves. In 1995 riots broke out again, this time in Ontario. Dudley George, a member of the Ojibwa, was killed in the Ipperwash Crisis .
In 1990 the Canadian government under Brian Mulroney was in distress due to problems with the French-speaking areas, which felt left out in the constitutional process. Mulroney therefore sought the support of the First Nations and promised to set up a commission that would become known as the Erasmus-Dussault commission . In 1996 she proposed Indian self-government. The government should negotiate on a nation-to-nation basis . She also proposed up to 2 billion Canadian dollars to bring living conditions into line with the national average.
1993 saw the first treaty negotiations with the First Nations in British Columbia, of which the Nisga'a in the north of the province were the first to receive a final treaty. In the Yukon Territory, most tribes began negotiations with the governments in Whitehorse and Ottawa after 1973 , which resulted in complicated treaties. This contained regulations on the settlement land that the tribes should be entitled to; in many cases they were given hunting rights in the entire traditional area, in a smaller area they were involved in the use of the surface, in an even smaller area also in the mineral resources. However, Indian labor should be used when exploiting them. There is separate legislation within the narrower tribal area, and improved representation in the territory. Protected areas and historical sites were also incorporated into the regulations, plus the promotion of regional cultures (as an example ).
In early 1998, the Canadian government formally apologized to the Aborigines for the way it had treated them in the past. The churches have also apologized for the conditions in the residential schools , a development that has recently spread to the United States. In January 2007, the Anglican Church of Canada first appointed a bishop for all indigenous people. On June 11, 2008 , four months after the Australian government , Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the individual and cultural consequences of the school system.
Nevertheless, the dispute over the rights of the Indians continued. 1999 to 2001 there were riots in New Brunswick over the dispute over the question of whether the Mi'kmaq of the Burnt Church First Nation are allowed to catch lobsters out of season . This fishing question is extremely complex and has not yet been resolved. In November 2009, the accused Ahousaht , Ehattesaht First Nation , Mowachaht / Muchalaht , Hesquiaht and Tla-o-qui-aht on Vancouver Iceland for admission to commercial fishing ( Ahousaht Indian Band And Nation v. Canada Attorney General, 2009 BCSC 1494 ).
Just as fundamental was the question that was violently raised in 1995 in the so-called Gustafsen Lake Standoff in British Columbia. This was about land claims by the Shuswap on the lake in question not far from 100 Mile House . 400 police officers and five helicopters were involved in the month-long siege of the occupiers, and one person was killed. One of the occupiers, James Pitawanakwat, fled to the United States and was the first and only Indian to receive political asylum. In the judgment, Janice Stewart of the Oregon District Court accused the Canadian government of occupying land that was never ceded. That this question has by no means been resolved was most recently shown by the Caledonia land occupation in Ontario, which became known in February 2006 and still lasted at the beginning of 2008, or the Grassy Narrows blockade , which has existed since 2002 and is showing initial success.
Even today, living conditions are often precarious. In 2005, the Kashechewan First Nation's drinking water crisis reached national media attention when bacterial contamination was discovered in its water supply .
At the end of 2005 , for the first time since the constitutional talks in the 1980s , Prime Minister Paul Martin invited the representatives of the First Nations to a First Ministers conference. Shortly before his election as Prime Minister, Martin promised in the Kelowna Agreement to provide five billion dollars within the next five years to improve the living conditions of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit . The agreement was dropped by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, with only $ 150 million and $ 300 million in the 2006 and 2007 budgets, respectively.
On the other hand, the treaty negotiations between Canada and the provinces on the one hand and the First Nations on the other have made progress in some areas. In British Columbia, a six-stage contract process is followed that a few tribes have already completed. The treaties adopted by the Lheidli T'enneh in the Prince George region and the Tsawwassen in the Lower Mainland around Vancouver are only waiting to be ratified by parliament. Five of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribes have also come together to form the Maa-nulth First Nations , and in 2007 a large majority decided on a treaty.
The neighboring Ditidaht defend themselves against this , as do the Songhees and the Semiahmoo against the agreements of the Tsawwassen. Other tribes, such as the Kwakiutl or some Stó: lō tribes, have left the contract process again because the former see it as a breach of the contract with James Douglas , or others see it as a creeping expropriation. Although the tribal areas are to be enlarged considerably, their ownership is individualized. The poorer tribes run the risk of their traditional territory being sold piece by piece. Since David Vickers, Supreme Court Justice, to whom Xeni Gwet'in granted around half of their traditional territory of 4,000 km² in late 2007 in the Nemiah Valley west of Williams Lake , the entire negotiation process has probably come to an end. The Mi'kmaq on Newfoundland, however, found recognition in 2011, so that with the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation, the numerically largest tribe in Canada emerged.
Ultimately, the government never moved away from individualizing and assimilating the Indians. Therefore, while all crimes against the indigenous peoples have been recognized, the attempt to wipe out an entire culture has never been condemned. Parts of the Canadian population, on the other hand, seem to accept the indigenous people as part of their own complex culture; many believe that this is precisely what is special about Canadian culture.
Treaties and their consequences: the Cree in northern Québec (since 1975)
The Cree with their 135 tribes represent the largest group among the First Nations and comprise around 200,000 people. The gigantic Baie James hydropower project with reservoirs of over 15,000 km² saw the approximately 7,000 Cree and 4,500 Inuit who lived on the bay and in the North du Québec region as a threat to their hunting and trapping way of life in their approximately one Million km² area. A sensational process culminated in the 1975 agreement between the Baie James and North Quebec . In 1984 the Cree were formally discharged from the guardianship of the Indian Department and they have since owned all the rights of the Canadian administrative units .
In 1991, the Cree and Inuit signed a treaty that allowed Canada to use hydropower - in return for compensation payments and rights to self-government in part of the convention area. Within a core area (about 1.3% of the area, i.e. approx. 14,000 km²), the area of their nine settlements, the Cree received the sole right of use. In other areas they had exclusive hunting and fishing rights. But in around 85% of the treaty area they only have a few hunting privileges. There are also employment opportunities in administration and business, in health care, environmental protection and even operating the Air Creebec airline . The school system conveys the language and culture of the Cree.
With all the progress, however, there is a problem: The fragmentation and individualization is advancing, a new leadership layer has emerged that dominates the administration. In addition, there is less and less traditional hunting, while the young are neither represented in one nor in the other group. In addition, the Baie James hydropower project is being viewed more critically. The Grand Chief of the Crees of Quebec , Matthew Mukash, elected in 2005, calls for wind turbines to be promoted .
Trends
It is a multitude of factors that threaten the independence of Indian cultures. On the one hand, these are events that lie in the past, which have irrevocably changed their culture and have partially deprived it of the material and knowledge base. On the other hand, there is still the economically motivated transformation of their natural environment (above all the destruction of forests, but also the threat to fish stocks), on the other hand, poverty and at the same time the formation of new elites, and paradoxically related to both, the emigration of young people in particular and dependence of the remnants of state and industry.
Three significant changes in recent years are on the one hand the protection of considerable parts of the old tribal areas as provincial parks and national parks , but also under their own administration, as with the Cree. This creates an income opportunity for many reserve residents through self-administration and tourism that neither destroys resources to the extent that they have so far, nor keeps them dependent on state welfare. A second change concerns the near-breakthrough negotiations between various tribes and the Canadian government. In 2006 in British Columbia alone, 57 First Nations were in 47 different negotiations. These tribes represent two-thirds of the First Nations population in the province. These contracts will enlarge the tribal areas, but the previously unsalable land will be privatized. This would make it alienable for the first time, which in view of the poverty of numerous communities could amount to slow emaciation. This brings a third concept into play, which the Tla-o-qui-aht in particular have been promoting since 2005. Their concept aims at a meticulous reconstruction of traditional society with the help of all sources, and its restoration (see restoration of traditional society ). Nomadic groups, who received hardly any attention because they were not recognized as tribes, such as the Kitcisakik in Québec, have been persuaded to settle down in recent years, their children are educated far outside their territory.
In contrast, there are still the partly economic, partly humanitarian arguments for integrating the First Nations through the privatization of land ownership. On the one hand, the argument is based on a waste of resources and, on the other hand, the question of whether the subsidization of the mostly rural areas is not economically senseless, since the cities are the engines of the modern economy. Thirdly, any form of collective land ownership is rejected, with its comparison with the socialist systems, which is easy in North America.
The Indians represent a kind of intermediate position, who rise as individuals within the system, but do not forget their origins. The first Indian lieutenant governor of Canada, the Cree James Bartleman from Ontario (2002-2007), for example, turned his attention to the youth and collected over a million used books for the schools, promoted writing and reading skills and brought their problems more into the public consciousness.
The question of what the Indians living on the reservation will live on has led to controversy in the United States for decades between state institutions, economic interest groups and even between tribes. This is due to the fact that the Indians there have been allowed to gamble under favorable tax conditions since 1988 . The numerous casinos - in California alone, 60 of the 109 recognized tribes operate this mixture of entertainment, tourism and gambling - are now competing with one another. The situation in Canada is still different. Only a few tribes operate a casino, but in 2008 the smoking ban in Alberta, which came into force on January 1, 2008, was the first to fight, behind which very fundamental questions are hidden. Because the Cree reject this ban and withdraw to the legal position that their reserve is federal territory and is therefore not subject to provincial legislation. The River Cree Casino and Resort on Enoch Cree , located right next to the Edmonton shopping mall , has been the focus since early 2008. It didn't open until 2006 and is the first Alberta-operated casino, right in the vicinity of the province's first casino, which opened in 1980. Here, too, conflicts similar to those in the USA are foreseeable when operating permits are extended to other tribes.
The question of who is recognized as a status Indian is still decided by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development on the basis of Indian law. Since 2007, the Union of Ontario Indians , which represents 42 tribes, has been trying to enforce that the tribes determine who is an Indian as part of their self-determination. For this purpose, a separate citizenship law was developed. The Cree in northern Quebec, the Nisga'a Nation, the Tlicho First Nation in the Northwest Territories, and most groups in the Yukon Territory have evaded departmental oversight.
Since the population decline stopped in the course of the interwar period and child mortality on the reservations fell drastically in the 1960s, the number of Indians has increased significantly faster than that of the rest of the Canadian population. This means that aspects such as education and opportunities, but also participation within ethnic groups, are becoming increasingly important because the proportion of young people is now very high. However, the number of suicides - the Attawapiskat tribe in northern Ontario became known in particular in the media - prompted the federal government in 2016 to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ( Resolution 61/295 of September 13, 2007), which included With the exception of Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, all members had agreed to incorporate the constitution. Although the corresponding requirements were already recognized in 2010, they are now to become legally binding.
This also applies to the need for consultations in connection with the exploitation of raw materials. The high raw material prices from 2007 onwards already showed that the First Nations are in possession of enormous wealth. In connection with the increasing independence, this has the consequence that the foreign trade contacts are intensified. The northernmost tribes can be found in associations of the Arctic peoples. In November 2008, a delegation from several First Nations visited China to independently agree on cooperation. In June 2007, King Tuheitia Paki of the New Zealand Māori , more precisely the 127,000- strong Tainui tribal association, met a delegation from the Squamish and Nisga'a in Vancouver .
A major social problem of the First Nations is the disappearance of women and girls from their social environment without leaving any noteworthy traces. In 2016, the Justin Trudeau government took steps, for the first time through a federal government, to come to terms with past cases and learn lessons for the future, with the aim of minimizing the number of victims.
Research history
Peter Jones (1802-1856), a Methodist and maternal member of the Mississauga, also called Sacred Feathers , wrote a survey of the Ojibwa in the early 19th century ( History of the Ojebway Indians , published in 1861). Other laypeople, such as the Anglican Edward Francis Wilson (1844–1915) in Sault Ste. Marie and Charles M. Tate in British Columbia collected numerous ethnological observations, just as many missionaries, such as the Oblate Adrien-Gabriel Morice , published extensive works on languages. Outside Canada there was much greater interest than inside the country. Apart from the ethnologist from Toronto Daniel Wilson (1816-1892), most of them came from Europe. In contrast, the history of the indigenous peoples was in a deplorable state, as shown for example in the Chronicles of Canada, The Dawn Of Canadian History, A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada , published in 1915 .
Franz Boas and his students helped ethnological research, which in America is more oriented towards anthropology , to achieve a breakthrough. New Zealander Diamond Jenness dealt with Ojibwa and Carrier groups during the First World War . The French Marcel Giraud dealt extensively with the Métis. These fundamental works include those of Marius Barbessu from the Université Laval.
Alfred G. Bailey from New Brunswick can be regarded as the first ethnohistorian to evaluate the historical sources with the eye of an ethnologist. Another root of the history of the First Nations was military history , as it was written by FG Stanley on the Northwest Rebellion of the Métis, who en passant examined the influences of the Métis on the frontier society and from there on the general development of society. Apart from Robert Allen's His Majesty's Indian Allies , this branch has hardly been deepened, in contrast to the USA.
It was only with the strong growth in the size and role of Canadian universities in the 1960s that there were more research projects, especially in the field of archeology, such as by Bruce Trigger . Only now were the Indians no longer regarded as a “perishing race”, and the classificatory aspects no longer prevailed either. The first criticism of the destructive government policy was loud.
Cornelius Jaenen ( Friend and Foe , New France) and Robin Fisher ( Contact and Conflict , British Columbia until 1890) dealt with the question of cultural contacts, Daniel Francis and Toby Morantz (on the fur trade), Jennifer SH Brown ( Strangers in Blood , women im Fur trade) or Sylvia Van Kirk ( Many Tender Ties ) dealt with the fur trade, as did AJ Ray ( Indians in the Fur Trade ), who first focused on the Indians. In the 1980s there was an emphasis on the role of Indians and women in trade and missions, investigations into Indian politics and the reactions of those concerned (Gerald Friesen: A Narrow Vision on the Role of the Bureaucrat DC Scott). Also on Western Canada, Sarah Carter wrote about the failed agricultural policy ( Lost Harvests ) and Katherine Pettipas ( Severing the Ties that Bind ) about government attempts to stop the annual meetings of the Plains Indians. There were also studies on the suppression of the potlatch, such as those by Douglas Cole and Ira Chaikin ( An Iron Hand upon the People ) and on legal history.
In the 1990s, the first synopsis emerged, such as those by JR Miller ( Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens ) and Olive Dickason ( Canada's First Nations ). General stories of Canada no longer began with the so-called "Vikings" of around 1000, but with the first tangible settlement of the country. Archeology was thus of great importance, but linguistics and genetics also play a major role.
The struggle for political rights and the constitutional disputes that made Indian groups appear as political parties and lobbyists, however, led to historians being ousted from the public eye by legal scholars and political scientists. In addition, the indigenous groups demanded their perception and cooperation in historical projects, but above all that of their own image of history and their own forms of transmission, as well as their knowledge. The preoccupation with the oral tradition in the form of oral history further accommodated this development.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization brought out James Wright's standard archeological work ( A History of the Native People of Canada. Archaeological Survey of Canada ) in 1995. In 2003 Larry J. Zimmerman followed with American Indians: The First Nations: Native North American Life, Myth and Art , which sought to combine ethnological, historical and religious aspects more closely. The subject began to have a stronger effect on research. It was not until 1999 that an Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples was published by the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, founded in 1976.
The Internet now not only enables numerous First Nations to publish their own history (see list of Indian tribes recognized in Canada ), but also their own collections of sources, such as the First Nations Digital Document Source , which, however, primarily serves the question of land claims.
Museums, archives, libraries
- Hudson's Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg
- Bibliothèque et Archives Canada , especially the areas Patrimoine autochtone and Premières Nations (The heritage of the indigenous people - The First nations)
- British Columbia Archives in Victoria
- Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario
- Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau near Ottawa
- Glenbow Museum in Calgary
- McCord Museum in Montréal
- Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver
- Museum of Northern British Columbia (British Columbia)
- National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC
- Nicola Valley Museum and Archives in Merritt, British Columbia
- Northern Life Museum at Fort Smith (Northwest Territories)
- Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Musée Pointe-à-Callière in Pointe-à-Callière (Montreal)
- Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton
- Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria
- Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto
- Sainte-Marie-au-pays-des-Hurons near Midland (Ontario)
- Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC
- X̲á: ytem in Mission (British Columbia)
literature
- Timothy G. Baugh, Jonathon E. Ericson: Prehistoric Exchange Systems in North America , New York: Plenum Press 1994.
- John Borrows : Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law , University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2002.
- Robert Choquette : The Oblate Assault on Canada's Northwest , University of Ottawa Press, Ottawa 1995.
- Olive Patricia Dickason: Canada's First Nations: a History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times , Toronto: University of Oklahoma Press 1992.
- Olivia Patricia Dickason: A Concise History of Canada's First Nations , University of Oklahoma Press 1992, Oxford University Press, Toronto 2008. (4th edition), again Oxford University Press, 2010.
- Jo-Ann Episkenew: Beyond Catharsis. Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing In and Through Indigenous Literature (Eng .: Beyond the catharsis. Truth, reconciliation and healing in and through indigenous literature) , dissertation, Greifswald 2006.
- Wolfgang Lindig / Mark Münzel : The Indians, Volume 1: North America , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-04434-9 .
- David J. Meltzer : First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America , University of California Press 2009.
- James Rodger Miller: Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada , revised edition, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1991.
- Harald Moll: First Nations, First Voices. The legal status of indigenous peoples in Canada, taking into account the special circumstances in British Columbia. ( Publications of the Walther Schücking Institute for International Law at the University of Kiel ), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-428-11766-6 .
- Claudia Notzke: Aboriginal Peoples and Natural Resources in Canada , Captus Press, 1994, ISBN 1895712033 .
- Daniel N. Paul: First Nations History. We were not the Savages , 3rd ed., Fernwood, 2006, ISBN 978-1-55266-209-0 .
- William C. Sturtevant: Handbook of North American Indians , Smithsonian Institution (ed.), Probably 20 vols., Washington (DC) since 1978.
- Bruce Trigger : The Historians' Indian. Native Americans in Canadian Historical Writing from Charlevoix to the Present , in: Canadian Historical Review 67/3 (1986) 315-342.
- James Wright: A History of the Native People of Canada. Archaeological Survey of Canada. 3 vols., Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization 1995, 1999, ISBN 0-660-15951-1 , ISBN 0-660-15952-X , of vol. 3 is Part 1: Maritime Algonquian, St. Lawrence Iroquois, Ontario Iroquois , Glen Meyer / Western Basin, And Northern Algonquian Cultures, published in April 2004, ISBN 0-660-19175-X .
- Larry J. Zimmerman: American Indians: The First Nations: Native North American Life, Myth and Art. Duncan Baird Publishers, 2003, ISBN 1-904292-74-7 .
Web links
- JV Wright: A History of the Native People of Canada , website of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Canada
- Indigenous-French Relations , collections canada
- EA Allen: The Prehistoric World: or, Vanished Races , chap. 12: The Prehistoric Americans, National Institute of Technology Calicut website ( May 8, 2012 memento on the Internet Archive ), archive.org, May 8, 2012
- Vikings. The North Atlantic Saga - Smithsonian Institution's exhibiton the Vikings and their discovery
- Canada in the making: Aboriginals: Treaties and relations , part of Early Canadiana Online , a project of Canadian universities and other institutes (English)
- First Nation Profile from the Canadian Minister for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs
- A journey to a new land - educational website of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver
- Indian Claims Commission website
- Website of the American Indian Claims Commission Decisions
- Specific Claims - Justice at Last , Indian and Northern Affairs Canada
- Canadian Native Law Cases from the Native Law Center at the University of Saskatchewan for the period 1763-1978
- First Nations Digital Document Source
- Arndt Reuning: bones, genes, totem poles. Who Were the First Settlers in the New World? , Deutschlandfunk May 31, 2009
Remarks
- ↑ Andrew Kitchen, Michael M. Miyamoto, Connie J. Mulligan: A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas , in: Public Library of Science (PLoS), February 13, 2008, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone. 0001596 .
- ↑ Apparently he was proposed by Elder Sol Sanderson of the unrecognized Chakastapaysin First Nation in the early 1980s. See (PDF, 456 kB): ( Speech Sanderson, p. 78 ( Memento from April 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )).
- ↑ Less common is the term “First Peoples”, which was made famous by the First Peoples National Party of Canada (FPNP), which also includes the Métis and Inuit .
- ↑ On the one hand forts were understood to mean real fortresses, on the other hand mere trading posts that did not have any fortifications, sometimes they were mere huts. Therefore, trading post and fort are used synonymously here.
- ↑ Roger L. Nichols: Indians in the United States & Canada, A Comparative History , University of Nebraska Press 1998, ISBN 0-8032-8377-6 , has tried to pinpoint the differences, but comparative approaches to the topic are narrowly limited by the state of research . Christa Scholz pursued a closer question: Negotiating Claims: The Emergence of Indigenous Land Claim Negotiation Policies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States , New York 2006.
- ↑ These cultural misunderstandings are extremely complex, as shown in the negotiations between British Columbia and the First Nations there. Compare plus territory: a contradiction and a key to understanding .
- ↑ However, dogs were kept as wool suppliers, for example by the coastal Salish. Lastly: Barbara Huck, The hair of the dog: was it a sheep or a dog? in: The Beaver: Exploring Canada's History 2007. For the distribution of the American Indian Dogs see p. Areas where Pre-Columbian 'American Indian Dogs' were found .
- ↑ The Historical Atlas of Canada provides a map that shows the spatial focus of pre-European main food sources ( Native subsistence. Major food sources ).
- ↑ These include, for example, the winter counts of the Lakota , which recorded important events and were kept, continued and verbally commented on by specially ordered guard interpreters. See the Smithsonian Institution exhibition ( March 3, 2016 memento in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ This Garrick Mallery, Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes. First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-1880, United States Government Printing Office , Washington, 1881 (Project Gutenberg EBook).
- ↑ French fur traders spread tuberculosis as early as 1710, but it seldom broke out; however, the new infections were sufficient for the pathogens to survive. Only with the impoverishment policy at the end of the 19th century did a massive outbreak of tuberculosis occur ( fur traders brought tuberculosis to North America , in: Welt online, April 5, 2011.)
- ↑ See for example Lorena Sekwan Fontaine, Canadian Residential Schools: The Legacy of Cultural Harm, in: Indigenous Law Bulletin 2002 . The responsible ministry presents these processes in a fundamentally similar manner: Volume 1 - Looking Forward Looking Back, PART TWO False Assumptions and a Failed Relationship .
- ↑ How contradicting the development is, show some of the most recent events in British Columbia: First Nations. Land Rights and Environmentalism in British Columbia - Development .
- ↑ Morgan Baillargeon, curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization , has been leading a research project since 2005 on the question of the cultural identity of urban natives (aboriginals).
- ↑ Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples now adopted. In: humanrights.ch. Humanrights.ch association, October 1, 2007, accessed on July 29, 2019 .
- ^ Thomas G. Arnold: The Ice-Free Corridor. Biogeographical Highway or Environmental Cul-de-Sac? , Arch. Diss., Simon Fraser University 2006.
- ↑ See Mitochondrial Population Genomics Supports a Single Pre-Clovis Origin with a Coastal Route for the Peopling of the Americas , in: The American Journal of Human Genetics 82/3 (March 3, 2008) pp. 583-592.
- ↑ Renée Hetherington, Andrew J. Weaver, Álvaro Montenegro: Climate and the migration of early peoples into the Americas , Geological Society of America Special Papers 2007, pp. 113-132.
- ↑ Distinctive Paleo-Indian Migration Routes from Beringia Marked by Two Rare mtDNA Haplogroups , in: Current Biology 19 (January 13, 2009), 1–8, preprint ( Memento of August 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, 692 kB) .
- ↑ Bastien Llamas, Lars Fehren-Schmitz et al .: Ancient mitochondrial DNA provides high-resolution time scale of the peopling of the Americas , in: Science Advances Vol. 2, No. 4 (April 1, 2016), DOI: 10.1126 / sciadv.1501385 . See CL Scheib, Hongjie Li, Tariq Desai, Vivian Link, Christopher Kendall, Genevieve Dewar, Peter William Griffith, Alexander Mörseburg , John R. Johnson, Amiee Potter, Susan L. Kerr, Phillip Endicott, John Lindo, Marc Haber, Yali Xue, Chris Tyler-Smith, Manjinder S. Sandhu, Joseph G. Lorenz, Tori D. Randall, Zuzana Faltyskova, Luca Pagani, Petr Danecek, Tamsin C. O'Connell, Patricia Martz, Alan S. Boraas, Brian F. Byrd, Alan Leventhal, Rosemary Cambra, Ronald Williamson, Louis Lesage, Brian Holguin, Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, Johntommy Rosas, Mait Metspalu, Jay T. Stock, Andrea Manica, Aylwin Scally, Daniel Wegmann, Ripan S. Malhi, Toomas Kivisild : Ancient human parallel lineages within North America contributed to a coastal expansion , in: Science, June 1, 2018, 1024-1027.
- ↑ The possibly human-worked mammoth bones of Old Crow are controversial . See J. Cinq-Mars: On the significance of modified mammoth bones from eastern Beringia , in: The World of Elephants - International Congress, Rom 2001, pp. 424-428.
- ↑ This assumption is supported by findings in the Paisley Caves in Oregon, which go back more than 14,000 years.
- ↑ See article by Simon Fraser University , or the interview with Jon Driver.
- ^ Claude Chapdelaine: Présences autochtone de l'âge glaciaire à aujoud'hui. Des chasseurs de la fin de l'âge glaciaire dans la région du lac Mégantic: découverte des premières pointes à cannelure au Québec , in: Recherches amér Indiennes au Québec 30 (2004).
- ↑ Christopher Ellis: Understanding “Clovis” Fluted Point Variability in the Northeast: A Perspective from the Debert Site, Nova Scotia , in: Canadian Journal of Archeology / Journal Canadien d'Archéologie 28 (2004) 205-253. Organic finds have been dated to 10,600 ± 47 BP, Ellis assumes a first settlement from 10,900 BP (p. 208, 242 f.).
- ↑ See Timothy H. Heaton: On Your Knees Cave , 2002 ( Memento of June 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), archive.org, June 22, 2009.
- ↑ In the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Alaska, 46 so-called caribou fences , which were used for driven hunts, are listed as historical monuments (see Parks Canada, Vuntut National Park of Canada ( Memento of September 14, 2005 in the Internet Archive )).
- ↑ D. Bruce Dickson, The Atlas assessed: A review of recent anthropological approaches to prehistoric North American weaponry, in: Bulletin of the Texas Archaeological Society 56 (1985) 1-36.
- ↑ The oldest site is the L'Anse Amour Site on the east coast of Labrador (Province of Newfoundland and Labrador ), a grave from around 5500 BC. Chr.
- ↑ Older and controversial finds from the USA, such as the Kennewick man , do not yet affect the Canadian area.
- ↑ See Obsidan from Mount Edziza ( Memento October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), from the Royal British Columbia Museum . The oldest find among the Tlingit , which was built in 8300 BC at the latest, indicates extensive obisidian trade . Chr. Obsidian (see Forest Service returns ancient remains of Native American to Tlingit tribes in Alaska, in: The Seattle Times, October 20, 2007 ).
- ↑ John H. Blitz, Adoption of the Bow in Prehistoric North America, in: North American Archaeologist 9/2 (1988), pp. 123-145, assigns him to 3000 BC. In the arctic region, but only after the turning point in the south. Its distinguishing feature are smaller projectile tips.
- ↑ One of the oldest records of domesticated dogs in North America comes from the Illinois River Valley and is 8,500 years old. Even older, probably 10,000 years, is a find in the Danger Cave in Utah (Darcy F. Morey / Michael D. Wiant: Early Holocene Domestic Dog Burials From the North American Midwest , in: Current Anthropology 33/2 (April 1992) 224-229 and Robert Lee Hotz: Those New Tricks Came From Old Dogs , in: Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2002 ).
- ↑ Within this phase, also known as Period III, a distinction is made according to the corresponding sites: Oxbow (4000 to 3000 BC), McKean (3000 to 2000) and Pelican Lake (2000 to 1000 BC), the latter extending to extends about 500 AD.
- ↑ This early West Coast culture includes clearly different regional cultures. Around the Skeena River in the north, a distinction is made between Prince Rupert III / Haqwilget A , Gitaus VI and the Skeena Complex . On Haida Gwaii existed a culture. In the central north a distinction is made between Namu II and III , McNaughton I and the Cathedral phase , on the central south coast Bear Cove II and O'Conner II . On the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Nuu-chah-nulth- related early and middle Yuquot , and Shoemaker Bay I; on the Georgian Strait and on the lower Fraser the phases Maurer , St.Mungo and the early Locarno Beach phase , on the Gulf Islands the Mayne phase , and also here the early Locarno Beach phase ; finally at Fraser Canyon the Eayem and Early Baldwin phases .
- ^ Brian Lewis, Katzie heritage site being bulldozed for bridge. Only three per cent of artifacts have been recovered so far ( Memento from November 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), in: The Province, June 22, 2008.
- ↑ Toronto's Historical Plaques
- ↑ Thomas H. Richards, Michael K. Rousseau, Late prehistoric cultural horizons on the Canadian Plateau, Simon Fraser University, Department of Archeology 1987.
- ↑ On the importance of slavery on the North American Pacific coast between Alaska and the Columbia River cf. Leland Donald: Aboriginal slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
- ↑ This is what the Helluland Archeology Project deals with .
- ↑ The oldest tradition is Adam von Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum , Descriptio insularum Aquilonis . He already interprets Winland as wine country.
- ↑ For more details see u. a. Delores Bird Carpenter: Early Encounters - Native Americans and Europeans in New England , East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994.
- ↑ See: Basque Whaling in Red Bay, Labrador . One of the ships, the San Juan , sank in port in 1565.
- ↑ Chris R. Landon: American Indian Civilizations and the Social Sciences , 1993, p. 45.
- ↑ See (PDF, 80 kB): Serge Joyal, Le Canada à l'ère des Guerres de religions - Une page méconnue de L'Histoire de France - 2007 (PDF; 78 kB).
- ↑ The Historical Atlas of Canada, Native Population early 17th Century, provides an approximate idea of the population distribution in the east
- ↑ For those who want to take a closer look at details: Carte de l'Amérique du Nord .
- ↑ Jan Grabowski tries to find out what role retail trade played: Le petit commerce entre Amérindiens et Francais à Trois-Rivières, 1665–1667 , in: Recherches amér Indiennes au Québec 28 (1998)
- ^ W. Faden, A map of the Inhabited Part of Canada from the French Surveys; with the Frontiers of New York and New England, 1777.
- ↑ When decolonization took place in Canada or is still taking place is controversial. See Julia Emberley: Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal: Cultural Practices and Decolonization in Canada , University of Toronto Press 2007.
- ^ The Gutenberg project published the report of Alexander Morris, the Vice-Governor of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories: " The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories including the negotiations on which they were base, and other information relating " . William Clint: The Aborigines of Canada under the British Crown , 1878 summarized the basics of dealing with the "Aborigines of Canada" .
- ↑ Statutes of Great Britain (1930), 20–21, George V, chap. 26th
- ↑ "... the government will in time reach the end of its responsibility as the Indians progress into civilization and finally disappear as a separate and distinct people, not by race extinction but by gradual assimilation with their fellow citizens." (Quoted from Alison Kay Brown, Laura Lynn Peers with members of the Kainai Nation: Pictures bring us messages. Sinaakssiiksii aohtsimaahpihkookiyaawa. Photographs and Histories from the Kainai Nation , University of Toronto Press 2006, p. 19.)
- ↑ Library and Archives Canada has made the sources digitally accessible: Portrait of Lieutenant Frederick Ogilvie Loft, founder of the League of Indians of Canada approx. 1914–1918
- ^ Indian Defense League of America .
- ↑ Provincial associations were able to hold out. The Indian Association of Alberta was founded in 1939, the Union of Saskatchewan Indians in 1946, just like the Union of Ontario Indians , plus the Indian Association of Manitoba .
- ↑ The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development identified around 100 political organizations in July 2008: Search by Tribal Council ( Memento of November 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ The sun dance was known to the Cree as thirst dance, to the Saulteaux or Plains Ojibwa as rain and to the Blackfoot as a medical dance . The Dakota and the Nakota , Dene and Stoney knew him too.
- ^ According to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada .
- ↑ Here you can find the decision of the Supreme Court of January 31, 1973: Calder v. Attorney-General of BC .
- ^ For classification: Hamar Foster, Heather Raven and Jeremy Webber: Let Right Be Done. Aboriginal Title, the Calder Case, and the Future of Indigenous Rights , UBC Press 2007.
- ^ Ottawa to change discriminatory Indian Act rules, The Star, June 2, 2009 .
- ↑ United Nations adopts Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples ( Memento of November 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (www.un.org), archive.org, November 12, 2012
- ↑ Canada endorses indigenous rights declaration , CBC News, November 12, 2010 ( Memento of November 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), archive.org, November 17, 2010.
- ↑ “The government of Canada today formally expresses to all Aboriginal people in Canada our profound regret for past actions of the federal government which have contributed to these difficult pages in the history of our relationship together” (Government of Canada, quoted from Tanja Zinterer: Political change through political advice ?: The Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the independent commission "Immigration" in comparison , Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2004, p. 194.)
- ↑ The United Church of Canada did this first in 1986 , followed by the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1998 (the text can be found here ).
- ↑ After the end of his tenure, the bishop in San Rafael, California, apologized to the Miwoks (Beth Ashley, Retired bishop apologizes for mistreating the Miwoks, in: Marine Independent Journal of December 26, 2007, digital: Retired bishop apologizes for mistreating the Miwoks , marinij.com ( memento of February 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive )), archive.org, February 2, 2015.
- ↑ A video recording of the speech can be found here . The text is here .
- ↑ Ahousaht Indian Band And Nation v. Canada Attorney General, 2009 BCSC 1494 , Indigenous Peoples. Issues and Resources, November 13, 2009 .
- ↑ Poverty and underinvestment in education were the focus of the Aboriginal Day of Action on June 29, 2007, during which road and rail blockades in the greater Toronto-Montreal area attracted attention.
- ↑ See David Carrigg, Huge win for Interior natives. BC land-claims process 'dead,' says grand chief , in: The Province, November 22, 2007 ( Memento of December 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Significant for the discrepancy between the perception by institutions and that of Canadians is perhaps the development of the website Things Canadians Should Know About Canada ( Memento of February 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (What Canadians should know about Canada, archive.org, 21 February 2015). This page, set up by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Dominion Institute , initially contained 101 "things" that did not include the indigenous people. Only one vote brought them onto the list: Aboriginal Canadians Voted # 102 ( Memento from November 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), archive.org, November 10, 2011.
- ↑ Hugh Shewell: "Enough to keep them alive": Indian welfare in Canada, 1873-1965 , University of Toronto Press of 2004.
- ↑ An overview of the casinos in Canada can be found here: Canada Casinos on 500 Nations. First Nations Supersite .
- ↑ In California, the dispute led to a referendum that was concluded at the beginning of February 2008, in which the four operators of large casinos prevailed (see Michelle deArmond and Jim Miller, Voters approve Indian gambling expansion, in: The Press Enterprise Com, February 6, 2008 ).
- ↑ See Anishinabek begin developing own citizenship law , Nation Talk, June 28, 2007.
- ↑ See LEGISinfo, 1st session of the 39th Parliament, April 3, 2006 - September 14, 2007 ( Memento of December 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ).
- ^ Text of the resolution .
- ↑ Canada officially adopts UN declaration on rights of Indigenous Peoples , CBC / Radio-Canada News, May 10, 2016.
- ↑ China-Canada Aboriginal Business Opportunity 2008 Trade Mission November 2–14 2008, in: Nation Talk, November 14, 2008
- ^ Government of Canada. Canada-New Zealand Relations ( February 1, 2009 memento in the Internet Archive ), archive.org, February 1, 2009.
- ^ Jones, Peter , in: Dictionary of Canadian Biography online
- ^ According to Wilson, Edward Francis , in: Dictionary of Canadian Biography online especially The Ojebway language: a manual for missionaries and others employed among the Ojebway Indians , Toronto, [1874?] And Missionary work among the Ojebway Indians , London, 1886.
- ↑ This work is available online. It contains numerous stereotypes of 19th century historiography.
- ^ About him: Ronald Haycock: The Image of the Indian , Waterloo Lutheran University 1991, p. 19 f.
- ^ Sarah Carter: Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy , McGill-Queen's University Press 1991.
- ^ Katherine Pettipas: Severing the Ties that Bind: Government Repression of Indigenous Religious Ceremonies on the Prairies , Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press 1994.
- ^ Douglas Cole, Ira Chaikin: An Iron Hand upon the People: The Law Against the Potlatch on the Northwest Coast , Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre 1990.
- ↑ Sidney L. Harring: White Man's Law: Native People in nineteenth-century Canadian Jurisprudence , University of Toronto Press 1998.
- ↑ James Rodger Miller: Skyscrapers hide the heavens: a history of Indian-white relations in Canada , University of Toronto Press 2000, 1st edition 1989.
- ^ Paul Robert Magocsi (ed.): Encyclopedia of Canada's peoples , University of Toronto Press 1999.
- ^ Multicultural History Society of Ontario, home page
- ^ First Nations Digital Document Source ( Memento October 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), owned by the Claims Research Units, currently maintained by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs .
- ↑ With pictures. Bilingual, of your choice . Select the Premières Nations area on the left in the sitemap; in Art. then numerous other links to the stocks
