Let the Non-Indigenous Canadian Among You Who Is Without Sin Be the First to Cast a Stone at Sir John A.

Sir John A. Macdonald has been subjected to harsh criticism for his relationship with the Indigenous peoples of the Plains, and while a lot of it is warranted, it is difficult for us to cast the first stone at him for his sins since he has been dead for well over a century and our governments, which we elect, continue to pursue policies almost identical to his today.  Macdonald was convinced that Indigenous Canadians of the Plains would be better off if they abandoned their nomadic ways, became literate, adapted to the capitalist system, and followed Canadian law.  Does Justin Trudeau believe anything different?  Macdonald did not expect Indigenous peoples to forget their identity any more than Scottish Canadians would, but he was proud of Canada and assumed that it had the best culture in the world, a culture that everyone should emulate.  More racially tolerant than most Canadians of the time, he formed warm friendships with several Indigenous Canadians, and his legislation in 1885 granting the vote to all Indigenous Canadians in the country--even the ones who had not even heard of Canada--was quite generous, especially because in the West at the time Indigenous voters outnumbered European Canadian settlers by a considerable margin and theoretically could have sent quite a few members of Parliament to the House of Commons.  Unfortunately, after a few particularly hated settlers were killed by angry young Crees during the the North-West Resistance later that year, Macdonald had to repeal the Indigenous franchise in the West, and in the 1890s Sir Wilfrid Laurier disenfranchised the Indigenous people of Eastern Canada as well.  Macdonald was a humane man and did not want war with First Nations people or the Metis, only assembling troops against the Metis when he felt that he had no political alternative.  He sent my cousin Charles-Rene-Leonidas d'Irumberry de Salaberry and others to negotiate with Louis Riel in 1869, and only after Riel executed Thomas Scott did he feel compelled by public opinion to take more drastic measures.  Macdonald was obsessed with getting his railway to the Pacific and keeping the Americans from claiming the Canadian Prairies, and when Indigenous nations requested treaties with the Crown he had these negotiated and signed in good faith, agreeing to their demands to provide food, medicine, small annual cash grants, education, and agricultural tools and livestock to assist their transition to a new way of life.  Indigenous people could plainly see from what had happened south of the border that military resistance was futile and that with the swift disappearance of the bison herds and the arrival of settlers that they would have to prepare their children for a different type of world.  However, neither side was able to anticipate how fast the bison population would crash to virtual extinction and how dependent the Indigenous people would be on government rations.  Macdonald ended up spending a large proportion of Canada's national budget--probably a larger proportion than the budget of Indigenous and Northern Affairs today, although I have not examined the numbers--on feeding the nations of the Plains.  These expenditures were constantly attacked by the Liberal opposition as an insanely extravagant waste of taxpayer dollars, while newspapers reported that Indigenous people were still starving to death in many places and that the government agents and contractors responsible for distributing supplies were often corrupt and providing inadequate quantities of substandard food.  Agents who doled out food in miniscule quantities were rewarded by their superiors and more generous ones fired; even worse, some tyrannical agents withheld rations from families until teenage daughters were handed over as sexual partners.  Macdonald walked a political tightrope--he did not want Indigneous people to starve, which would be scandalous and immoral, and at the same time he wanted to avoid outraging taxpayers who might vote Liberal and turn him out of office.  The unhappy result was that Indigenous people suffered from chronic malnutrition and desperately bad living conditions that in combination made them vulnerable to tuberculosis (a disease native to the Americas) and introduced diseases such as smallpox.  The government took over the Hudson Bay Company's smallpox vaccination program and provided free vaccinations to as many Indigenous people it could.  However, so many malnourished Indigenous men, women, and children died from disease that the medical establishment and public believed that Indigenous people were doomed to near extinction.  But if the government had been intent on genocide, it would not have fed and vaccinated Indigenous people, nor would it have bothered to provide schools for their children.  These day schools and residential schools paid for by the government were designed to provide elementary education to Indigenous children equivalent to the standard provided for by day schools and residential schools attended by non-Indigenous children.  Boys would be trained to be farmers and girls to be housewives, just like the vast majority of European Canadians, who rarely stayed in school past Grade 8.  Experts did advise that boys and girls would make the transition to "civilized" life faster if they lived separately from their parents, but at the time most Indigenous children attended day schools and lived at home.  While Macdonald did set up most of this educational system (some schools had been founded well before Confederation), he could not have anticipated the abuses that would occur at the hands of the teachers.  Corporal punishment was being phased out in Canadian schools, and the torture and extreme mental and sexual abuse that Indigenous children were subjected to during the following century would have horrified Macdonald.  Nevertheless, he could be blamed for the penny-pinching budgets provided for the schools, since the students were quartered in overcrowded classrooms and dormitories and were furnished with completely inadequate nutrition, ideal conditions for the proliferation of diseases that killed so many innocent children.  Religious groups were given the task of running these establishments because nuns, monks, priests, and ministers were willing to work for free or close to it and were thought to be people of exemplary virtue and kindness.  It is important to point out that Indigenous schools across Canada are still grossly underfunded by the federal government compared to their provincial counterparts and are often in poor repair with scarce school supplies.  Since the government will not spend the money to build a high school on every reserve, young teens in their formative years are still being sent to high schools in other communities often hundreds of kilometres away, boarding in homes with strangers and in school residences.  But do not call these "residential schools" because, of course, those are all officially closed.  Due to continuing poverty and despair, and associated problems, Indigenous people live, on average, a decade less than other Canadians.  If Macdonald and his contemporaries are to be accused of callousness and genocide, so can Justin Trudeau and the Canadian public today.  At the time people complained that the Indigenous people would not work and were content to live forever off the money provided by the long-suffering Canadian taxpayer.  Does this sound familiar? There is plenty of evidence that Indigenous people at the time were willing to do any work they could get to keep their families alive, but institutional barriers barred them from competing with non-Indigenous settlers on an equal basis.  Some, in contravention of treaties, were even banned from fishing in their own lakes and rivers because this might endanger the livelihood of newly-arrived European-Canadian fishermen.  Sir John A. Macdonald can be criticized for putting politics ahead of Indigenous people's interests, but it is hard for any non-Indigenous Canadian alive today to cast the first stone at him because we are equally guilty of always considering our own self-interest first.  If we take down Macdonald's statues, we will have to take a wrecking ball to the statue of every prime minister on Parliament Hill.  To go further, we should go around our homes and take down photos of ourselves, our family members, and friends because we all deserve to be dishonoured.  Our ancestors set up the system and we are still running it--and badly.  Modern Indigenous Canadians could start by attacking Macdonald, but would be exhausted to the point of collapse if they had to follow this up with shaming every non-Indigenous person they meet.  Macdonald had his faults, such as his keen desire to be  reelected and his unquestioning confidence that European-Canadian culture was the best in the world, but he really was trying to help Indigenous people with food, vaccinations, education, and job training.  We have our faults too, but we also have, on the whole, good intentions.  Let us act on them.

Dr. Martin Nicolai, Aurora High School; formerly adjunct assistant professor of history, Queen's University