The Ministry of Immigration and Colonization

Telling a truth of how Canada 'settled the west'

I am someone who is passionate about educating people about Canada’s colonial history, and gently sharing (not to induce guilt or shame) with Canadians about how this country ‘reaps what it sows’ when it comes to its relationship with Indigenous peoples. Centuries of laws and policies of genocide, forced relocations, displacement, assimilation, racism and discrimination lead to the current situations we face today, borne out by statistics that indicate poorer health outcomes, lower life expectancy, and social issues.

What is alarming to me is the erasure of truth in history happening before our eyes in the United States. A recent Washington Post headline said, “Trump says he’s erasing ‘shame’: critics say he’s hiding historic truths.” I am grateful that Canada has not embraced this willful blindness (though there are worrying signs of residential school denialism and Trump-style racism). George Santayana (ironically a Spanish-American philosopher) is credited with the oft-cited quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

So, since I still have the freedom to share Canada’s historic truths, I’ll take the opportunity to write about a sliver of time, and outline the reverberations we still feel today because of what happened during that sliver of time, so that we are not condemned to repeat it.

I called this post ‘The Ministry of Immigration and Colonization” because this is the actual name of a former Federal Government department in Canada. I’ll show you the evolution of Canada’s attitude towards Indigenous peoples through the various Ministries responsible.

In 1876, Canada amalgamated all previous laws (since Canada became a Dominion in 1867) into a piece of legislation called the Indian Act, which was to regulate “Indians and Land reserved for Indians.” BTW, this is why, in Canada, we call them reserves, whereas in the U.S., they call them reservations. Canada created the federal Department of Indian Affairs to oversee the implementation of the Indian Act.

Between 1870 and 1921, through a disingenuous process (a post for another day), Canada and First Nations signed 11 treaties across a vast swath of land formerly known as Rupert’s Land and the Northwestern Territories. It covered what is now Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

In 1917, a new federal department was created. It was called the Department of Immigration and Colonization. It was clear from the beginning that the government wanted people to immigrate to Canada and be part of the ‘glorious’ colonization project of the British empire and its burgeoning Dominion; preference of course for British immigrants first, then others from the British Isles, the United States, then elsewhere in western Europe and then eastern Europe (essentially, as long as they were ‘white.’) And how would they entice people to come to this unknown place? Through propaganda of course. Here’s an example.

Copyright Library and Archives Canada

And right there, in capital letters ‘Minister of Immigration and Colonization.’ It wasn’t a bad word back then. Look at this poster. What images does it evoke? What is the message of the poster? Look at the ‘angel’ opening the curtain of wheat onto a pastoral image of rural prosperity. Notice that it depicts fully functioning farms with animals and barns and houses. Not the reality of back-breaking labour to clear the ground, bring in and raise the animals, and harvest crops, never mind enduring the shock of long, cold, dark winters when no farming would take place. The subliminal message that ‘the land’ is all about ‘cultivated land’. The not so subliminal message of ‘terra nullius’, meaning ‘empty land’ or ‘land occupied by no one’ in Latin. By ‘no one’, I mean First Nations. Where are the Indigenous people in this photo? They did not fit the myth; they had to be erased for the colonization project to succeed. They had been tidily coerced, or tricked into, or reluctantly agreed to congregate on small parcels of land called Indian reserves. Of course, once people realized Canada’s duplicity in relegating them to often poor plots of land, often smaller than promised, to be essentially displaced and confined to their reserves, they protested and demanded redress. Canada couldn’t have that, so Canada amended the Indian Act in 1927 to make it illegal for Indians on reserve to hire lawyers or seek legal counsel to advance land claims against the government. Convenient.

So, back to the posters. Who wouldn’t want to come here if this was the enticement? Perhaps your ancestors came to Canada after seeing a poster like that.

Or, perhaps it was a poster like this:

Copyright Library and Archives Canada

Doesn’t it look enticing? The neat rows and plots, the big houses, the wheatfields that go on as far as the eye can see, and 160 acres! This elevated the stereotype of rugged individualists, ‘pulling themselves up by the bootstraps’, arriving with nothing but the clothes on their back and a dollar in their pocket.

As I said earlier, my goal when teaching and presenting is not to induce guilt or shame. How would anyone know that underneath the excitement of ‘free farms’, was a very real cost, not so much for Canada, but for First Nations. How did this land become available to give away to immigrants? Why would you even think to ask? These farms were on the recently acquired, ahem, expropriated, land that First Nations ‘ceded and surrendered’ during the numbered treaty processes. Really? There is no word in any Indigenous language that can be translated as ‘cede and surrender’. No concept of land as something to be bought and sold. No understanding of land as deeds, or fences, or private property.

So, unsuspecting immigrants pour across the prairies, grateful to this ‘new country’ and the opportunity to make a living, build a life, generate wealth and enjoy prosperity and freedom. Their settlement was only made possible because of the displacement of Indigenous peoples. This is an uncomfortable truth.

Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta grew rapidly, bolstered by burgeoning agriculture, mining and oil industries. First Nations, through the treaties were supposed to share in the benefits and the prosperity and the wealth generated from the resources and access to the land, that was also being shared. This has not happened (yes, more recently, we see First Nations across the Prairies demand ‘a seat at the table’ and ownership stake in resource companies, but that doesn’t erase over a hundred years of colonization efforts).

The provision of free land for immigrants allowed families to build what is called generational wealth, something that was denied to the First Nations, and why we still see such a huge gap between standards of living between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples today.

In 1929, the Minister of Immigration and Colonization took on a new title, or rather added a title: Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs. So, colonization and assimilation and discrimination and immigration were intricately linked. But that was for only one year. Later in 1930, the Minister of Immigration and Colonization was designated Minister of Mines. In 1935, it became Minister of Immigration and Colonization and Minister of the Interior. A year later, all four offices were abolished, and replaced with the office of Minister of Mines and Resources, fully erasing the term ‘colonization’. Is this because the efforts were so successful? Had there been enough ‘colonization’ that the ministry was no longer required?

The Ministry of Immigration and Colonization was, from Canada’s perspective, a success in building this country. From the perspective of the First Nations communities, families and individuals who were not part of the equation, not so much.

And the ‘Indians’, well, they weren’t immigrants, they weren’t colonists, and they weren’t considered Canadians (unless you gave up your Indian Status and were ‘enfranchised’—I’ll have to write another post just on that!). And so, the erasure of First Nations from the minds and realities of those who settled the west, was nearly complete. We could be relegated to reserves (sometimes far from emerging settlements, towns and cities) or romanticized and historized as the vanishing race, no longer able to “get with the times” and fit into a modern world.

Yet the land remembers. Our ancestors who forged alliances, took care of the land, fought, suffered, loved and died on land that they believed had been given to them by the Creator, was still there, is still here.

What is also still here is the racism, the discrimination faced by Indigenous peoples. Without an understanding of history, I’ve heard Canadians grumble about ‘our tax dollars paying for these Indians’, and ‘why don’t they just get off welfare and get a job’ and ‘why is Canada paying exhorbitant amounts of money to these people for something that happened 100 years ago’ What isn’t said, but what is often implied is, ‘we conquered you, so get over it.’ No one conquered Indigenous peoples in what is now Canada. There were no ‘Indian wars’ like in the United States. Ours was a kinder, gentler genocide, the kind that tried to legislate people out of existence, take their land, renege on treaties, and, if they couldn’t assimilate them, then ignore them, oppress them and hope they go away. Yes, I realize this sounds harsh, but I go back to the Santayana quote, and why I’m passionate about history—Canadians have not been given the whole story, and certainly not a fair story of what happened here, and the consequences.

In 2018, a farmer in Saskatchewan named Gerald Stanley was acquited of all charges in the death of a young man named Colton Boushie, who was shot by Stanley on Stanley’s property. Throughout the trial and afterwards, outrage and racism were on full display, but without a full understanding of history (or even a cursory view like I’ve provided here), it was easy to miss the deep and tragic irony of it. Stanley (and other farmers) vehemently spoke about their ‘rights’ to ‘protect their private property’ from ‘intruders’. Stanley’s farm is in Treaty 6 territory; ancestral land of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation, where Colton Boushie was from. How did Gerald Stanley’s ancestors acquire the land that he so vehemently ‘protected’? Perhaps they saw a poster like the ones I’ve included in this post? How did the original people of the land become ‘intruders’? How much does Gerald Stanley, and any farmer across the prairies, understand about the signing of the treaty that encompasses their land? That the treaty is a binding, enduring agreement that Canada disregarded, to make free land available to immigrants?

So, while there is no longer a Ministry of Immigration and Colonization in Canada, we are still living with the impacts of the attitudes that created it.

If you’ve read to this point, thank you for your willingness to understand a piece of Canada’s colonial history, perhaps change your perspective, and be part of a growing contingent of Canadians who want to know better and be better. Pl;ease subscribe, restack and share!

Let me know if your organization wants to learn more. Through my company, NVision Insight Group, we offer courses and presentations on topics like this.