Missing the “roar”

Aboriginals in the 1920s

•Contribution to war had not helped aboriginals at home

•Aboriginals not classified as person’s under the law

•Couldn’t vote in BC until 1949• in Federal elections aboriginals were the

last people to get the vote in 1960

Aboriginals in the 1920s

•Social and economic conditions in reserves were poor

•Aboriginals who sought jobs in the city were discriminated against

Residential Schools•Residential schools tried to “assimilate”

aboriginals to Canadian culture•Many students were traumatized by

separation from families•Students were stripped of the cultural

identities•Many students were physically,

emotionally, and/or sexually abused in the residential schools

Aboriginal Challenges:

•Early in the 1920s Aboriginals in BC challenged the provincial and federal gov’t on 3 issues:

▫Potlatch ceremony▫Cut-off lands▫Aboriginal title

•Potlatches were important cultural celebrations for Northwest Coast Natives.

Potlatch

•Potlatch banned in 1884 but not really enforced until after WWI

•Potlatch was a ceremony that showed Aboriginal wealth and status.

•Often put on for a whole village by a chief for births, deaths, and marriages

•Many chiefs were arrested and sentenced to jail terms

Aboriginal Title and Cut off Lands

•Aboriginal Land Claims had not been settled in BC like they had been in the Prairies

•They were set aside plots of reserve lands but parts of these kept being taken away by the government. These were called cut-off lands.

•As a result the reserves continued to get smaller and smaller

•Most of BC has no treaties

Aboriginal Challenges

•The Allied Tribes of BC kept fighting for aboriginal rights to no avail

•The government changed the Indian Act to allow the gov’t to acquire reserve lands and to not allow aboriginals to raise money for Land Claims rights

Other groups that missed the roar

African Canadians•Nova Scotia: Education Act of 1918

provided separate schools.•Superior Court of Quebec ruled in favour

of racially segregated seating in Montreal theatres.

•1929- black delegation to a World Baptist Convention denied hotel rooms in Toronto