The Indian Act and the Gender Dynamics

(Unedited first draft)

The European Settlers in Canada not only appropriated the indigenous land, they even tried to break the Indigenous social structure.  Indian Act of 1876 institutionalized the European Settlers’ attempt to destroy the social and cultural fabric through different policies one of which was Indian Residential School (IRS). While most indigenous people suffered due to the Indian Act and the IRS, Indigenous women were the worst victims. By imposing the European male-centric social structure by formalizing the male-female inequalities into law, and by ‘producing’ a generation of indigenous people ‘trained’ in the Indian Residential Schools, the Indian Act completely altered the gender dynamics of the Indigenous community. Though racial, economic and other forms of discrimination were also institutionalized through the Indian Act, gender issue will be the focus of this paper.  

Gender balanced social structure was one of the hallmarks of the First Nations. They believed the eagle flies with a female wing and a male wing, showing the importance of balance between the feminine and masculine in the human condition (Valaskakis et.al, 17). Through the Indian Act of 1876 white settlers destroyed this gender equilibrium. The indigenous communities, most if not all, were matriarchal or semi-matriarchal (and even matrilocal) with matrilineage where children inherited the clan of their mother (Blair, 2) and where women had the decisive roles in the family as well as the community. For instance, in the Mohawk tribe, children inherited the clan of their mother, not their father.  This was totally in contrast to the European cultural ideal of patrilineage. Similarly, the role of indigenous women in the society was in contrast the settler’s ideals of women as the part of domesticity, not the exterior socio-political world. Through the Indian Act, they introduced the chief and council system which removed the indigenous women from the socio-political role (Cindy, 3). Indigenous women’s authority, agency and the role within their society and traditional government were completely undermined in the post 1870s days. The gender parity, one of the unique Indigenous social traits, thus got replaced with gender disparity.  

Gender roles were redefined after the promulgation of the Indian Act. The colonizers forcefully replaced the power structure of the native communities which was horizontal by the vertical one compelling indigenous women to hold the lowest rank in the political and economic strata. For instance, write Valaskakis et al., European fur traders refused to deal with First Nations women, and that the women’s husband, father, or brother would make the sale or exchange of the fur, and therefore, would receive the proceeds (26). It shows how women were sidelined from the decisive roles. After the promulgation of the Indian Act, indigenous women experienced denigration of their gender roles and subjectivities.  The worst of all, Section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act made the Indigenous women’s status entirely dependent on their husband: “a woman who married a person who is not an Indian…[is] not entitled to be registered [as Indians]”.        Indigenous men were exempted from this provision. Marrying other than an Indian girl would not affect his Indian identity. This provision clearly placed men in the higher pedestal than their female counterparts.

The Indian Residential School system was one of the colonization programmes that not only undermined the gender-balanced social structure of the indigenous people, it endorsed and perpetuated the European patriarchal values as well. The school inculcated the European values in the Indigenous children as de Leeuw observes, “with curricula that espoused the colonial vision of civilizing Indigenous women by enforcing upon them the concept of submissiveness and servitude towards both colonial class and Aboriginal men” (1, qtd in Gender, Justice and Residential School). It is important to note that Residential schools were backed by both the white State and the religious institution, the church. While European political system, which was brought to Canada by the settlers, itself was patriarchal in nature, the churches also endorsed and disseminated the patriarchal values. So, residential schools were used indoctrinate the Aboriginal children with those values. The female students were taught to be subservient and submissive to the male authority, both indigenous as well as white. Thus, female students who came out of those residential schools became dependent on men and their voices got silenced. Those women lost the agency and voice.

However, this does not mean that indigenous men did not have to suffer. Irrespective of their gender, children were forcefully taken to the residential schools. They were traumatized, beaten and browbeaten in those schools. However, the loss they experienced was not as profound as of their female counterparts. The aboriginal men assimilated the colonizer’s patriarchal ideals that they had learned in the residential school, especially the exercise of power through control, violence and intimidation, a lack of respect for equality between men and women, and abandonment of family and responsibility (Anderson). They, thus, accepted and internalized the division of gender role with women confined to the domestic world taking care of family and doing household chores and men living an active and domineering role.

The Indian Act, thus, left women vulnerable to gender discrimination and denigration. The colonial administration became successful in dismantling the Indigenous familial and social structure with men and women having equitable gender roles. Questions arise: did indigenous women easily accept their newly assigned gender roles? Are the modern-day Indigenous communities still following the gender roles defined by the Indian Act or have they revived their gender roles of the past? Attempts to find answers to these questions will lead to a new socio-cultural study of Indigenous communities of Canada.

Works Cited

Anderson, K.  Life stages and Native women: Memory, teachings, and story medicine. Winnipeg:

University of Manitoba Press. 2011

Blair, Dr. Peggy J. “Rights of Aboriginal Women On- And Off -Reserve”. The Scow Institute. 2005

Borrows, John J and Leonard I. Rotman. Aboriginal Legal Issues: Cases, Material and Commentary.

            Toronto & Vancouver. Butterworths. 1998.

Valaskakis, Madaleine Dion Stout et al.  Restoring the Balance, First Nations Women, Community,

and Culture. Univerity of Manitoba Press, Manitoba, Canada. 2009

Hanson, Cindy. “Gender, Justice, and the Indian Residential School Claims Process”. The International Indigenous Policy Journal. Volume 3. 2016. Retrieved from: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/iipj/vol7/iss1/3

 “The Indian Act”. Indigenous Foundation.arts.ubc.ca. 2009. 03 08 2018.