Francis Pegahmagabow came home from the Western Front in 1919 as one of the most decorated Indigenous soldiers in Canadian military history. Back at Wasauksing (Parry Island), he found that his medals did not change his legal status: as a "status Indian" under the Indian Act living on his reserve, he could not vote (First World War veterans on reserves gained the federal vote only in 1924), his community's decisions could be overruled by an Indian agent, and the government could take children from their families for school. He went on to serve as chief and to speak out for his people's rights. His life captures the central contradiction of this period: First Nations, Métis and Inuit people contributed to Canada in war and peace, while government policies aimed to control them and erase their cultures.
Military service
- More than 4,000 First Nations men volunteered for overseas service, a remarkable number given their legal status; Métis, Inuit and non-status volunteers were not counted separately, so the true total was higher.
- Reasons varied: honouring alliances and treaty relationships with the Crown, warrior traditions, a sense of adventure, a wage, and hope that service would win respect and rights.
- Notable soldiers include Francis Pegahmagabow (Anishinaabe sniper, Military Medal and two bars), Métis sniper Henry Norwest (Military Medal and bar, killed in August 1918), Onondaga runner Tom Longboat (a dispatch runner in France), and Inuk sniper John Shiwak of Labrador, who served with the Newfoundland Regiment and was killed in 1917.
- Some communities, such as Six Nations of the Grand River, debated whether they should fight as allies rather than as subjects; others gave men, money and farm produce.
- When conscription came, many First Nations argued that treaty promises exempted them. On January 17, 1918, an order-in-council exempted status Indians from combat service.
Coming home was hard. Indigenous veterans often had to go through the Indian agent to apply for benefits, and many received less help than other veterans. Under the Soldier Settlement program, about 85,000 acres of reserve land in Western Canada were acquired, often under pressure, for settlement by non-Indigenous veterans, while Indigenous veterans who wanted farms faced extra barriers. In 1918, as part of a wartime drive for more food production, the government had also changed the Indian Act to let officials lease uncultivated reserve land to outsiders for farming or grazing without the band's consent.
Residential schools and the Indian Act
The residential school system, funded by the federal government and run by churches, aimed to separate children from their families, languages and cultures and to assimilate them. In 1920, under Duncan Campbell Scott, the deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs, the Indian Act was amended to make schooling compulsory for First Nations children aged 7 to 15, at day, boarding or residential schools; parents who refused could be fined or jailed, and truant officers and police could take children. Testifying to a parliamentary committee in 1920, Scott said the goal was "to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic". Children in the schools faced overcrowding, poor food, diseases such as tuberculosis, punishment for speaking their languages, and in many cases physical and sexual abuse. Many died.
| Policy | Year | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Compulsory schooling | 1920 | Removed families' ability to keep children home from day, boarding or residential schools |
| Compulsory enfranchisement | 1920 (repealed 1922; a version returned in 1933) | Let officials strip a person of Indian status without consent, ending their membership and treaty rights |
| Pass system (Prairies) | From 1885, enforced into the 1920s and beyond | Agents required First Nations people to get a written pass to leave the reserve, although no law authorized it |
| Ceremony bans | From 1885, extended later | The potlatch was banned from 1885, and later amendments targeted other ceremonies such as the Sun Dance. After a potlatch at Village Island, British Columbia, in December 1921, 45 people were charged, 20 were jailed and masks and regalia were seized for museums |
| Ban on funding land claims | 1927 | Made it illegal to raise money or hire lawyers to pursue land claims without government permission, until 1951 |
Organizing and resisting
Frederick Ogilvie Loft (Onondeyoh), a Mohawk of Six Nations of the Grand River who had served overseas as a lieutenant, founded the League of Indians of Canada, the first national Indigenous political organization. Its first congress met at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1919. The League called for control over reserve lands and resources, better education without forced removal, and an end to the government's interference in band affairs, and it tried to unite nations across the country. Scott's department treated Loft as a radical, monitored his meetings, discouraged communities from contacting him and tried to strip him of his status by enfranchising him. The League faded in the East but continued on the Prairies and inspired later organizations.
- Deskaheh (Levi General), a Cayuga hereditary chief of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy at Six Nations, travelled to Geneva in 1923 to ask the League of Nations to recognize the Confederacy's sovereignty. The League refused to hear the case, and on October 7, 1924, the RCMP removed the hereditary council at Six Nations and imposed an elected council under the Indian Act.
- In British Columbia, the Allied Tribes of British Columbia pressed land claims for nations that had never signed treaties. A parliamentary committee rejected their claims in 1927, and the same year Parliament banned raising money for land claims.
- Treaties: Treaty 11 (1921) was negotiated in the Mackenzie Valley after oil was found at Norman Wells; Dene leaders understood it as a peace and friendship agreement, not a surrender of land. The Williams Treaties (1923) in south-central Ontario took land from seven Chippewa and Mississauga First Nations and were later interpreted as ending their harvesting rights; a 2018 settlement recognized those rights and included apologies from Canada and Ontario.
Métis and Inuit
Many Prairie Métis lived in poverty as "road allowance people" on narrow strips of unused public land, without a land base or federal recognition; organized political action in Alberta grew in the late 1920s and early 1930s (see the next unit). In the North, Inuit life changed quickly. The collapse of commercial whaling had removed a source of trade goods, but in the 1920s high prices for white fox fur drew trading posts, including new Hudson's Bay Company posts, across the Arctic, and Inuit families increasingly trapped for trade. The RCMP opened Arctic posts in the 1920s, partly to assert Canadian sovereignty, bringing Canadian law to communities that had governed themselves.