“21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act” by Bob Joseph

This book is very similar to Indigenous Writes by Chelsea Vowel, which makes sense — it covers much of the same ground.

Because I read Indigenous Writes fairly recently, I can’t say I learned much new here. Still, it was a good reiteration of the main points: just how deliberately the Indian Act was designed to control Indigenous people, suppress their cultures, break apart communities, and force assimilation.

It’s also a much shorter and more straightforward book, so if you want a quick overview of the Indian Act and some of the things it has done over the years, this is probably an easier place to start.

Anyway, here are the 21 things in short:

1. Indigenous women could lose their status.
2. Residential schools were established.
3. Reserves were created and controlled by the government.
4. Indigenous people were given European names.
5. People could be prevented from leaving reserves without permission.
6. Becoming educated or otherwise “assimilating” could mean losing Indian status.
7. Reserve land could be taken for roads, railways, and other public works.
8. Reserve land could be leased to settlers without meaningful Indigenous control.
9. Indigenous political organizations were banned.
10. Raising money to fight land claims in court was prohibited without government permission.
11. The sale of alcohol to Indigenous people was prohibited.
12. The sale of ammunition to Indigenous people was prohibited.
13. Indigenous people could be banned from pool halls.
14. The government imposed the band council system over traditional forms of governance.
15. Indigenous languages were suppressed.
16. Traditional religions and spiritual practices were suppressed.
17. Indigenous people could be prohibited from appearing publicly in traditional clothing and regalia.
18. Ceremonies such as the potlatch were made illegal.
19. First Nations people were denied the federal vote without giving up status until 1960.
20. A permit system controlled whether First Nations farmers could sell what they produced.
21. And, really, the thing connecting all of the above: the Act was explicitly built as a system for controlling and assimilating an entire people.

Nothing here was particularly new to me after the other books I’ve read on the subject, but putting all of it into one short list is still pretty striking. It is difficult to look at these policies together and pretend they were just a collection of unfortunate mistakes.