ABSTRACT

First Nations 1 people in Canada have endured horrific amounts of loss and grief throughout time since the first explorer arrived on their lands. This loss and grief is in some ways indescribable, as the hurt goes so deeply into the fabric of who First Nations are both as peoples, and as individuals. Every possible method has and is being used by the colonizer 2 to deprive First Nations of their lands, resources, culture, language, way of life and governments. The government’s main purpose was to assimilate First Nations 3 to solve the “Indian problem” and take the “Indian out of the child” (Leslie, 1978). The most referred to quote on government policy is as follows:

I want to get rid of the Indian problem . . . Our objective is to continue 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, that is the whole object of this Bill.

(Scott 4 1920, in Leslie, 1978, p. 114)