The Canadian Government's Strategies for Solving the Indian Problem

Duncan Campbell Scott: Solving the Indian Problem
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The Canadian Government’s Strategies for Solving the Indian Problem
The Indian problem refers to the challenges conflicts that arose between European settlers and indigenous communities in North America. The Aborigines, also known as the First Nation, resisted the taking away of their lands by the settlers, and this was seen as a serious long term challenge that will hinder the creation of cohesive Canadian society comprising of foreign settlers and the native people. The proposed solution of these problems, pioneered by Duncan Campbell Scott, head of Indian Affairs in Canada from 1913-32, aimed at absorbing the indigenous people into the mainstream Canadian society as a way of diffusing these conflicts. These solutions included assimilation of the natives into the European culture, education for Aborigine children, and legislative abolishment of native Aborigine practices.
Assimilation
Assimilation was seen as a way of not just making the native people a part of the mainstream Canadian society, and in doing so stop them from seeing European settlers as the outsiders who had forcibly taken their lands, but also as a way of making the aborigines discard their “savage” ways and accept civility. Scott argued that assimilation was necessary for making the Natives turn toward “Civilization and ensuring that they did not revert to their “savage” and “pagan” ways” (qtd in Wiseman, 1996, p. 122). The native people’s culture was regarded as savage because it was antagonistic to the interests of the European settlers. For instance, as long as they lived subsistence lives and loved their nomadic life, they were a threat to the industrialization interests of the settlers who wanted to profitably exploit the natives’ vast virgin lands. In this way, the Indians were an obstacle to “the spread of “civilization” – that is to say, the spread of European, and later Canadian, economic, social, and political interests” (Spear, 2010). At the same time, their culture was considered uncivilized because they were unwelcome to foreigners. The attempt to assimilate the natives into the cultures of the settlers, therefore, was viewed as a potential way of making the native man see himself as part of the mainstream society and hopefully, forget his antagonism toward the settlers. The assimilation policy was also guided by the assumption that the native Indians will see assimilation as a ticket for the improvement of their condition, and accordingly, welcome and embrace it. Duncan Scott echoed these sentiments and assumptions when he states that “The happiest future for the Indian race is absorption into the general population, and this is the object and policy of our government” (Titley, 2011, p. 34). Assimilation, it was reasoned, would solve the Indian problem by making the natives “dissolve” into the larger Canadian society and cease to exists as a separate entity that was antagonistic to the whites. Scott envisioned this reality when he stated that “the government will in time reach the end of its responsibility as the Indian progress into civilization and finally disappear as a separate and disctinct people, not by race extinction but by gradual assimilation with their fellow citizens” (Wiseman, 1996, p. 120). As it is evident from this stamen, the idea that the Indian problem can be solved my making them and the whites one and the same people was the driving force behind the assimilation policy.
The Canadian government pursued the assimilation of the native Indians by discouraging the use of their own language, religion, and culture. Under the assumption that the natives Indians’ language, culture and religion was backward, it was believed that by stripping them of their cultural and religious beliefs it would be possible to transform and make them to be like Europeans. If this goals was to be achieved, whereby the native Indian adopted the mindset of the Europeans, it could help in diffusing the Indian’s enmity toward European settlers, which in turn will help in creating a harmonious, cohesive, and united Canadian society.
It should be noted, however, that part of the objective of the assimilation policy was to improve the social and economic conditions of the Indians. This measure was seen necessary in making the Indians fit within the political, social and economic body of the Canadian society. Scott asserts this motive in stating that his department’s aim was to focus on assimilating the Indian into the mainstream Canadian society “until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department” (Wiseman, 1996, p. 127). At the same time, though, the assimilation of the indigenous people by way of improving their economic and social conditions was a strategy for assuaging the grievances of the Indians who felt that their lands had been stolen from them. Thus, the assimilation was also a political tool for justifying European se...