Indian Act: Permit to control a culture

The system was meant to protect Natives from being cheated, but it quickly changed into a way to ensure aboriginals didn't compete

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When George Munroe came back from the war in 1944, he had shrapnel in his back and a chip on his shoulder.

Having fought overseas for freedom and democracy, he found it grossly unfair that in his own country he couldn't buy a drink, vote in a federal election or sell goods without a permit - all because he was Native.

Often he'd go to sell a steer or a load of grain and be denied a permit by an Indian agent or farm instructor. And that was after travelling for several days with a team of horses from the John Smith reserve to Duck Lake, Sask.

"They were trying to boss us around just like kids," recalls Munroe, 78.

"I used to argue with them. I used to tell them, 'I fought for this country. I don't want to be handled like a kid'."

The permit system is still in the Indian act, though it hasn't been enforced since the mid-1960s. It's just one painful episode in Canada's paternalistic treatment of Natives.

With the stroke of a pen, the Indian Act, passed in 1869 and amended several times later, crushed Native systems of government that had worked well for Munroe's ancestors-even though their inherent right to govern themselves was not surrendered in treaties.

The goal, say critics, was to control Natives politically and alter them culturally, to turn them into what has been called "brown whitemen".

But it was a policy that failed. Despite the banning of Native ceremonies and dances and the use of their own languages in schools, Native people still found ways to maintain their identity.

"They resisted, evaded and defined efforts to control their decision-making, limit their traditional rights and deprive them of their children," says Jim Miller, a University of Saskatchewan historian.

But economically, they've never recovered from federal policies that stunted their agricultural efforts and stifled attempts at commerce.

"The Indian At never let them have control over their own economic lives,"says Miller.

The permit system for selling goods is one example.

Permits were supposedly brought in to protect Natives from being cheated by unscrupulous whites. But the goal quickly changed to ensuring Natives weren't a threat to white businesses, says Jack Fund, a former Indian Affairs superintendent of schools.

"Towards the end it was a power thing," said Funk, co-editor of a 1991 book of Native stories published by the Saskatoon District Tribal Council.

Permits "took away the pride, the initiative of many Indian people and made them into beggars," he said. "It was this system which was to follow."

Even in the 1960s, a wealthy Native farmer in the Battleford area had to get a permit to sell his 200 head of cattle, Funk said.

Stan Cut Hand, a Saskatoon teacher and retired Anglican priest, remembers going with his father to ask for a permit to sell hay so they could buy food. At first the farm instructor refused, but he finally relented.

"He was a little buy with a big stick and he knew how to use it," Cut Hand recalls.

The system meant Native people seldom handle cash. if they sold a cow or some wood, they'd get a credit for the sale on Indian Affairs' ledgers. Then when they needed groceries, the farm instructor would debit the person's account.

Natives had to have permission even to slaughter a cow. One chief who killed a cow to feed hungry band members was removed from office for doing so without permission.

One of the blackest marks on federal Native policy is the "pass law," which was unique to Western Canada. A Native had to have a permit signed by the Indian agent to leave the reserve.

The ass law wasn't a law at all, but a departmental policy to prevent Natives form joining the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. It soon became a way of preventing Natives from organizing to fight for treaty rights, discouraging parents from visiting residential schools and stopping Natives for attending ceremonies and dances on distant reserves.

Though the RCMP were reluctant to do so, they were under orders to make arrests s if the pass system was law. It was enforced through an Indian Act amendment giving the Indian agent the power of justice of the peace to enforce Criminal Code provisions for vagrancy and loitering.

Some agents threatened to withhold food rations or withdraw privileges. But after awhile most Native people simply ignored the pass system and many Indian agents only made a pretense of enforcing it.

Laurie Barton, a Native studies professor at the University of Saskatchewan, says

a south African delegation came to study the reserves in 1902 but it would be an exaggeration to conclude Canada's pass system was the model for South Africa's.

"The tyranny only implied by the pass system here was in fact implemented in law there," he said.

By the mid0-1930s, the pass system had all but died out, though some passes were still being used in the early '40s.

In the 1930s, Native activist John Tootoosis travelled from reserve to reserve without a pass to tell his people about their treaty rights. However, in 1937, a federal agent reported to his superiors that Tootoosis had been "absent from his reserve since December without permission," according to Geoffrey York's 1990 book The Dispossessed.

Even as late as 1956, the director of Saskatoon's Western Development Museum wrote to Indian Affairs officials seeking written permission for Chief Harry Little Crow to leave the reserve for five days to attend a Zion-Era celebration.

For decades, many Natives were kept in the dark about what the Indian Act actually said. York notes that in 1935, when Tootoosis asked for a dozen copies, he was given only two and was told it was "not considered necessary to make a wide distribution of the Act."

A 1927 amendment to the Act made it illegal for Indians to raise money to finance political organizations or to pursue legal claims against the government.

These basic political rights weren't restored until 1951. And it wasn't until 1960 that Natives were allowed to vote in the federal elections.

In 1927, the Sun Dane was outlawed, as was any kind of participation in public festivals or performances in costume, such as powwows.

These were legalized in 1951 because the government "figured these customs had been destroyed and weren't a threat to Indian acceptance of dominant Protestant work ethnic values,"says Saskatoon law Professor Norman Zlotkin.

The 1952 revisions to the Indian Act also gave provincial governments the power to legislate the sale of liquor to Natives.

All these interferences with Native life have left scars.

"If you run somebody's life in all respects, it can't have anything but a negative impact for generations to come," says Don Zurich, former director of the Native Law Centre in Saskatoon.

Even today, the Indian Affairs minister and the bureaucracy still have control over Natives' lives.

For instance, the minister still has the power to withhold approval of any decision made by a band council.

Since the title to reserve property is vested in the Crown, Native bands can't use their lands as security against loans.

And a band's decision to give a land holding certificate to a member who wants to farm on the reserve is still subject to ministerial approval.

"Overall, the colonial model is still in place," said Zlotkin.