History of Indian and White Relations 101 - Part III

A couple of weeks ago I posted a rant about the content of a link from Saskboy's blog, which he had swallowed as gospel truth, lock, stock and barrel. I published two parts, the first one here and the second one here. My issue with Saskboy can frequently be boiled down to his naivete. Poor Saskboy. Unbeknownst to him, he had hit upon a subject that I have devoted my entire life to - the study of the history of Indian and White relations in Canada. But God bless the young trooper - that didn't stop him from arguing with me and pretending to know more than he does.

I finished Part II with a short discussion about the taxation issue, in response to this passage from the website Saskboy links to:

"Another area of Treaty right is taxation. "Personal property on a reserve, including income, is not subject to taxation, either federal or provincial. This is an affirmation of oral promises made at the signing of the Treaties that the reserves shall be tax-free" (Brizinski, 1993: p. 188)."

First of all, since I have not read her book, and since the phrasing of the text on the website doesn't make it clear, I do not know if the passage quoted above is word for word from her book "Knots in a String: An Introduction to Native Studies in Canada", or if the creator of the website merely uses Brizinski as a source and attributes the idea expressed in the passage to her. Although, the use of quotation marks around the two sentences immediately prior to the citation data in brackets does suggest that those words are a direct quotation. If that is the case, then I also have an issue with Brizinski's knowledge of history. But that's typical of the academic wing of the Indian Industry. While the very essence of a historians' work, by definition, is the examination of original documents and an interpretation of them in the context of a thorough knowledge of the era under study. But this isn't considered necessary in the Indian Industry's world view. Oral history, several generations removed from the events in question are of equal or superior value in piecing together what really happened generations ago.

So what's wrong with the bolded part of the quote? To begin with, the passage attributed to Brizinski, viz - "This is an affirmation of oral promises made at the signing of the Treaties that the reserves shall be tax-free" - taken together with the whole tone and context of the language use on the website, implies that the tax exemption is a Treaty right applicable to all Treaties negotiated between various Indian groups and the Canadian government (or British Crown, if you're a purest) and that is unmitigated balderdash.

It is true that oral statements regarding taxation were made by the Canadian government's negotiator during the negotiation of Treaty 8 in what is now northern Alberta and parts of adjacent territories. It is also true that the statements were made in response to concerns raised by the Indians present at the negotiations. But that is the only Treaty from that era at which the subject of taxation was raised during negotiations, so why is the plural "Treaties" used in the Brizinski citation? This is typical of the Indian Industry - taking a tiny slice of historical fact about a very specific and unique event and extrapolating it across a broad swath of other events that happened both before and after in which the specific milieu did not exist.

But more to the point, why would the subject of taxation even be raised by Indians in northwestern regions of the then North West Territories, who lived on lands that were remote and, for the most part, heavily wooded and unsuited for settlement by agricultural enterprise or any other mode of permanent settlement?

One of the best explorations of this question is found in a paper by Wendy Aasen delivered at a conference commemorating the centennial of the signing of Treaty Eight. I have the proceedings of that conference. It was published in the premier issue of Lobstick: An Interdisciplinary Journal, which, much to my surprise, is also published on the net, so you can read it yourself. Although she deals with the exemption from military service, which was also an issue raised and a promise made during the negotiations, the answer she gives applies equally to the taxation issue. To put it simply, the Indians were well aware of what was happening in the world at the very end of the 19th century, as she states:

"The world at the turn of the century (which had experienced relative peace for approximately 40 years) was becoming increasingly unstable. This instability was accompanied by uprisings in the colonies and in rising tensions between world powers."

This included concerns in Canada's government about the possibility of an Anglo-American war and other problems that could play out right in their back yard. In essence, the Indians wanted no part in someone else's war, including paying for it.

With respect to the issue of taxation, from the Treaty Commissioners' report as quoted in Aasen:

"There was expressed at every point, the fear that the making of the treaty would be followed by the curtailment of hunting and fishing privileges and many were impressed with the notion that the treaty would lead to taxation and enforced military service...

We assured them that the treaty would not lead to any forced interference with their mode of life that it did not open the way to the imposition of any tax, and there was no fear of enforced military service."

Aasen also describes how and why Indian people living as far north as Lessor Slave Lake would have knowledge of world affairs and why it mattered to them. Their way of life, which was largely living off the land and trading (bartering) furs, rather than cash, could be disrupted. The Spanish American war had raised the value of furs to an all time high. At the end of the 19th century, in this corner of the world at least, trapping was good business.

But the answer to a companion question is also necessary. Why did the Canadian government promise not to tax or conscript them? What were their motives? The answer is quite simple and the number of journal articles and books devoted to this is by now legion. Since the 1840s Indian land was considered non-taxable because it was crown land (a throwback to the Royal Proclamation and to the Hudson's Bay Company Charter). It did not belong to Indians. The British North America Act, which created Canada in 1867 states that:

"No lands or property belonging to Canada or any province shall be liable to taxation."

Moreover, Indians themselves were considered wards of the state, hence, not liable for enforced military service, or, by extension, taxaton. The notion that the tax exempt status of Indians derived from a treaty negotiated in 1889 in which the Indians were recognized as sovereign peoples is - to put it bluntly - pure unadulterated nonsense.