Chapter 8 Review Questions

There are three groups of Indigenous Peoples, according to the Canadian Constitution: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. The Indian Act applies only to status First Nations Peoples.

The Medicine Wheel is a holistic method of addressing individual, family, and community healing, positive change, and social justice. According to the teachings of the Cree Nation, the Medicine Wheel also promotes balance and harmony within people and communities. It offers a guide to understanding problems and finding solutions that considers multiple aspects of a person, including one’s emotional, cognitive, social, and physical functioning, in a spiritual context.

The Urban Indigenous Action Plan identified the following challenges specifically facing Indigenous Peoples who live in urban settings: experiences of racism in service delivery; homelessness and lack of affordable housing; inadequate public transportation; lack of education, training, and employment opportunities; limited supports for youth; poor access to health, including mental health, services; violence against Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and trans people; food insecurity; and involvement in the criminal justice system.

The Act took away status from Indigenous women who married non-Indigenous or non-status Indigenous men and did not allow them to pass it on to their children. It banned them from political leadership and made them the property of men. Some people regained their status through changes to the Indian Act in Bill C-31 in 1985 and Bill C-3 in 2011.

The Indian Act was used to assign Indigenous Peoples to categories of status or non-status. Those who were simply not present when government officials showed up to count heads in the late 19th century were not recognized as “Indians.” This meant that they were not registered as “Indians,” which in turn prevented their entitlement to certain rights and benefits. The act also contained a section referred to as enfranchisement, a process whereby “Indians” could become Canadian citizens and have the right to vote only by relinquishing their ties to their communities, which included any rights to land. The act eliminated the status of Indigenous women who married non-Indigenous or non-status Indigenous men and did not allow them to pass it on to their children. Throughout colonial history, policies also removed status for veterans, people who attained a university degree, and those who were employed off of their reserve.

Although reserves were created for status “Indians,” they did not own this land; it belonged to the British Crown. Thus, to this day, without ownership of land, Indigenous Peoples in First Nations communities are severely limited in land development. They are unable, for example, to obtain bank loans as they have no collateral.

Residential school survivors may have turned the oppression they experienced in the schools inward, believing the negative stories that the oppressors created about them. Thus, when many residential school survivors had children, they experienced a great deal of difficulty parenting them. Some treated their children how they had been treated, with harsh discipline, coldness, and even abuse. Others were emotionally unavailable to their children, afraid to touch them, express love, or teach them through appropriate discipline. These were the forms of parenting that they inherited from their developmental years in the schools. As a result, their children may pass on their experiences with their parents to their own children, continuing the trauma.

An ally can be anyone who recognizes the harm caused by colonization and seeks to work with Indigenous Peoples to bring to light stories of oppression, both past and present. An ally is someone who is comfortable being an outsider when working with Indigenous communities and with confronting uncomfortable truths about his or her own privilege and how these privileges may have occurred at the expense of Indigenous Peoples.

The Sixties Scoop refers to the large-scale adoption and fostering of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children into non-Indigenous homes in Canada, the United States, and around the world between the early 1950s and the late 1980s. The Sixties Scoop has evolved into the “Foster Care Scoop” since Indigenous children are still being removed from families and placed into permanent care via the foster care system.