Indian Agent (Canada)
As Indian Agent (Indian Agent) of the Administration of was Indian Affairs responsible (Indian affairs), local representatives of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (now called), respectively. This department reports to the Ministry of the Interior. Indian agents existed in Canada from 1876 to 1969.
The Indians in Canada are increasingly referred to as First Nations , the Indian agent as the Government Agent .
The position was created by the Indian Act of 1876, known as the Indian Act . During the phase of successive gold discoveries ( Fraser Canyon Gold Rush , Cariboo Gold Rush , etc.), the area of responsibility temporarily merged with that of the Gold Commissioner . In the 19th century in particular, this type of clustering of offices or merging of administrative, executive and explicitly economic responsibilities was widespread. Even Edgar Dewdney was not only Indian agent, but at the same time Vice-Governor of Saskatchewan , Manitoba and the Northwest Territories .
Dewdney began to divide up the huge areas of responsibility of the Indian agencies as early as 1883/84. In British Columbia alone, 15 Indian agencies were established. These were Babine, Bella Coola, the Cowichan Agency, Kamloops, Kootenay, Kwawkewlth, Lytton, Naas, New Westminster, Okanagan, the Queen Charlottes Agency, Stikine, Stuart Lake, West Coast and the Williams Lake Agency. Several of the around 200 tribes recognized by the federal government from within the province and to which reservations were entitled were summarized in each case.
The headquarters in Ottawa formed the top level in the hierarchy of the Indian Ministry. These included inspectors or superintendents who traveled to the individual agencies. The Indian agents represented the lowest level. During the Second World War there were about 114 agencies in the country, the Indian agents were selected through a patronage system. They were mostly selected on site or were recommended by other agencies. There was no job advertisement. This situation lasted until the early 1950s.
Most of the Indian agents stayed in office for a long time. Their main job was to report to Ottawa, to distribute government grants - most of them were of the opinion that the bare essentials were sufficient for life - they were to manage political and economic conditions and otherwise enforce the Indian Act . They were also asked whether they considered it necessary to send a doctor, but this failed in many cases because of the costs, which the intendants estimated as too high.
In the first decades after 1867, the founding year of Canada, attempts were made to put pressure on Indians by denying them food rations if they moved away from or on the reservation without permission. The aim was to enforce sedentariness, whereby the buffalo hunters among the prairie tribes, whose prey had been exterminated, were particularly often exposed to this means. This could lead to conflicts with the missionaries if, for example, a couple was forced to separate because they came from two different villages. Edgar Dewdney refused to give the rations requested by the wafers , even under the circumstances.
The Indian agents were responsible for issuing permits that allowed leaving the reservations. They were also expected to take the children to residential schools , boarding-style schools where Indians were to be turned into Canadians. The Indian agents met with correspondingly fierce resistance.
The qualification profile was extremely simple. Local knowledge and the ability to cope with internal administrative processes were sufficient, practical skills such as road or bridge construction were welcomed. Knowledge of the Indian languages was not required.
Occasionally, Catholic Indians demanded an Indian agent of the same denomination, which could lead to conflicts in the regions that were heavily dominated by Protestants.
literature
- Emily Arrowsmith: Fair enough? How Notions of Race, Gender, and Soldiers 'rights affected Dependents' Allowance Policies towards Canadian Aboriginal Families During World War II , Thesis, Ottawa 2006.
- Lawrence Barron: The Indian Pass System in the Canadian West, 1882-1935. In: Prairie Forum 13, 1988, ISSN 0317-6282 , pp. 25-42.
- Robin Brownlie: Man on the Spot. John Daly, Indian Agent in Parry Sound, 1922-1939. In: Journal of the Canadian Historical Association. NS. 5, 1994, ISSN 0847-4478 , pp. 63-86.
- Noel Dyck: What is the Indian "problem". Tutelage and Resistance in Canadian Indian Administration , Memorial University of Newfoundland - Institute of Social and Economic Research, St. John's 1991, ISBN 0-919666-72-8 ( Social and economic studies 46).
- Victor Satzewich: Indian Agents and the "Indian Problem" in Canada in 1946. Reconsidering the Theory of Coercive Tutelage , In: Canadian Journal of Native Studies 17.2, 1997, ISSN 0715-3244 , pp. 227-257.
- Victor Satzewich: Where's the Beef? Cattle Killing, Rations Policy and First Nations “Criminality” in Southern Alberta, 1892–1895 , In: Journal of Historical Sociology. 9, 1996, ISSN 0952-1909 , pp. 188-212.
- Victor Satzewich, Linda Mahood: Indian Agents and the Residential School System in Western Canada, 1946-1970 , In: Historical Studies in Education. 7, 1995, ISSN 0843-5057 , pp. 41-65.