by Karine Duhamel and Matthew McRae
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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In a 1919 essay entitled “The Canadian Indians and the Great World War”, Duncan Campbell Scott, Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, detailed how Indigenous people in Canada had participated favourably in the war effort. Indeed, as he pointed out, “From the very outset of the Great War the Indians throughout the Dominion displayed a keen interest in the progress of struggle and demonstrated their loyalty in the most convincing manner both by voluntary enlistment in the overseas forces, generous contributions to the patriotic and other war funds and energetic participation in war work of various kinds at home.”[1] A key agent in the colonization of Indigenous lands and lives, Duncan Campbell Scott sought to paint the contributions of Indigenous people in a way that would bolster and valorize the Department’s ultimate mission which was the total assimilation of Indigenous peoples. In his mind, Indigenous people were a hindrance to the progress of Canada—their participation, in relatively high proportion, indicated to Scott that the mission was working.
Lance-Corporal John Shiwak (Sikoak), a Labrador Inuit from Rigolet, served with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and was killed at Cambrai on 20 November 1917.
Source: Aboriginal People in the Canadian Military, Chapter 5, http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/pub/boo-bro/abo-aut/chapter-chapitre-05-eng.asp
Yet, his analysis was deeply flawed. It is clear, from the records of Indigenous people themselves as well as photos, letters, reports and artifacts, that Indigenous people had different motivations for their participation in the Great War: treaty commitments, the relationship with the Crown, as well as family obligations and socio-economic pressures all contributed to the invaluable contribution of Indigenous service-people from across Canada. They had not acquiesced to the project of colonization; for many, their service was in fact a re-assertion of the original relationship established with the Crown over the past three centuries.
Understanding the true nature and significance of Indigenous service in the First World War requires looking beyond numbers, statistics and official reports. Researchers interested in this period should note the more complex history provided by looking beyond the traditional archive to the stories of those individuals and communities involved, as provided by photos, first-hand accounts, petitions, newspapers, monuments and by the aftermath of the First World War in Indigenous communities.
By the Department’s own accounting, over 3,500 status Indians served in the Great War, amounting to no less than one-third of all status Indian males of military age at the time.
Lieutenant O. M. Martin, labeled “1” in this photo, was identified as ‘Mohawk.’
Source: Janice Summerby, Native Soldiers, Foreign Battlefields, Ottawa, 2005.
The official statistics, however, tell only part of the story. For instance, these figures do not account for non-status Indian people, Inuit and Metis who served, nor do they tally Newfoundland’s contribution to the war—then still a separate British Dominion—which included at least 15 people with some Inuit ancestry.
While there were no officially all-Aboriginal units, some units had a high proportion of Aboriginal members. These included the 107th Timberwolf Battalion. It was raised by Glenlyon Archibald Campbell who, in 1885, had served with Boulton’s Scouts in the Northwest Resistance. He began recruiting in November 1915, and within three months, had a battalion of 1000, about half of whom were Indigenous. Their roots varied, including members of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Cree, Ojibwa, Iroquois, Sioux, Delaware and Mi’kmaq people. Training was often conducted in Cree and Ojibwa at Camp Hughes, near Pilot Mound, Manitoba. Following training, the unit shipped overseas on 19 September 1916.
Residential schools contributed to recruitment in their own way, as cadet programs actively supported enlistment. Activities tended to focus on drill and routine with the intention of supplanting Indigenous traditions, such as the Sun Dance or other ceremonies, and administrators generally felt as though the Cadet Corp would promote the discipline and loyalty they argued was lacking. For boys who joined, the Cadet Corp could also offer opportunities to travel off the reserve and was frequently used as a means to reward students who were seen to be following the rules.
In 1914, Albert Mountain Horse, himself a product of the St. Paul’s Industrial School Cadet Corp, became one of the first Status Indian people to enlist. Samuel Middleton, the principal of the school at that time, was ostracized by the community for encouraging enlistment after Mountain Horse died in November 1915.
In many communities, the decision of whether or not to join the military could be divisive. While the federal government initially had no official policy on the recruitment of Indigenous people, the practice was to discourage them. Many who attempted to join early on were turned away. Yet by 1917, the high number of front-line casualties created a need, and Indian Agents began to hold recruiting events on reserves.
Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (no date).
Source: AEF, John Moses Collection. www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1414152378639/1414152548341
While status Indian women were not well represented during the First World War, at least one Indigenous woman served overseas in an American military hospital. Edith Anderson was born in 1890 on the Six Nations Grand River Reserve. Determined to become a nurse, she found few opportunities to train in Canada. She therefore studied at the New Rochelle School of Nursing in New York State and became a registered nurse in 1914.
In 1917, Anderson and 19 other nurses, 14 of whom were also Canadian, joined the US Medical Corps finding themselves in Vittel, France, at Buffalo Base Hospital 23.
Indigenous women were also involved on the home front. The Six Nations Women’s Patriotic League in Ontario made socks, quilts, and other items for the war effort. Food such as chocolate, fruitcake and Christmas puddings were also gathered by the League for soldiers serving overseas. The women did face discrimination, as when a ban was placed on their socks in 1915 for fear they could transmit smallpox to soldiers.
In addition to direct service and booster organizations, status Indian people were strongly encouraged to donate money to the war effort. Advertisements such as the one depicted on page 44, which appeared in a period broadside between 1914 and 1918 on behalf of the Canadian Patriotic Fund, encouraged donations—and assimilation—by using a caricatured Status Indian contributing to the cause. The Canadian Patriotic Fund was a private fundraising organization originally established to offer aid and financial assistance to soldiers’ families.
Cadet Corps of the St. Paul’s Indian Industrial School near Winnipeg, circa 1900
Source: United Church of Canada Archives Digital Collections, http://uccdigitalcollections.ca/items/show/1422?tags=Residential%20Schools
The line “my skin is dark but my heart is white” suggests that darker skin implies less virtuous characteristics and expounds the principle of ‘whiteness’ being a virtue.
Ironically, many Indigenous veterans were denied benefits under the Canadian Patriotic Fund after the war based on the insistence by the fund that the Department of Indian Affairs be responsible for Aboriginal soldier re-settlement.
Recruits from File Hills, Saskatchewan, October 1915. Left to right: David Bird, Joe McKay, Leonard McKay, Leonard Creely, Jack Walker, ---?, and Harry Stonefield.
Source: Glenbow Archives, NA-3454-41.
In 1917, the large number of front-line casualties prompted a new Military Service Act which instituted conscription for all British subjects of age. Many First Nations objected to conscription on the grounds of their special relationship with the Queen, promises made during treaty negotiations, and the fact that as First Nations, they did not enjoy the same rights as other Canadians.
Public perception of Status Indians serving in the Great War was a testament to the prevailing attitudes about race and Indigenous people at the time. In many newspaper articles, authors pointed out the great sacrifice that Indigenous people were making for the Canadian or British cause, as if to highlight the success of the Department of Indian Affairs’ mandate in assimilating entire communities. As this particular article states, “... but there is one race of people of whom little has been told who are fighting with their heart and soul to bring an ultimate victory to Britain’s arms. He is the Canadian Indian.” Enlisted soldiers are described as “silent, taciturn men” and men for whom “ways of the white man were strange to many of them.”
At the same time, the article also lauds the way in which more traditional skills provide an advantage: “No better men could be found for the Inland Water transport, for they are experts with an axe and with a boat, and in the forestry department they were indispensable. For scouting purposes there were none better, with eyes like an eagle and ears like a fox, they were the ideal men for this purpose.” The author reifies racial stereotypes while supporting the idea that these skills can be useful in the projects of non-Indigenous Canada. The author argues that service in the war is an opportunity for Indigenous people to experience a new level of civilization and that they have laid aside the old ways to come serve.
In reality, and although many Indigenous people served with great distinction, they did not necessarily trade in their traditional Indigenous ways for a new life. For Indigenous people, military service was complementary, not in opposition to, their identity as Indigenous men and women.
At war’s end, and even though status Indians were officially eligible for programs such as the Soldier Settlement Act of 1919, which was designed to help veterans transition into an agricultural lifestyle, the Act designated the Department of Indian Affairs as the administrator of all benefits, allowances and pensions for status Indian people. The measure’s stated intention was to avoid the confusion of joint administration, but the result was that less than 1 in 10 Aboriginal applicants received land or loans on reserve. When it did endorse grants on the reserve, there was no guarantee that the land grant would be respected, as by the Department’s own policy on Indigenous land-holding, reserve land could not be privately owned.
“My skin is dark but my heart is white.” A poster soliciting donations to the Canadian Patriotic Fund during the First World War.
Source: www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?
The Soldier Settlement Act was also used by the federal government to justify the appropriation of reserve land for non-Aboriginal veterans. In 1919, Order in Council PC 929 granted the Department of Indians Affairs the authority to expropriate reserve land “not under cultivation or otherwise properly used” without the consent of the band. Through this Act, the Soldier Settlement Board acquired over 85,000 acres of reserve land in Western Canada for non-Aboriginal soldier settlement in the years immediately following the First World War.
Other injustices came later. By the late 1920s, for instance, Aboriginal veterans were denied access to the Last Post Fund, a program meant to ensure that all veterans received a proper burial. In 1932 and with the onset of the Depression, status Indian veterans were also ineligible for the Veteran’s Relief Allowance. Although these decisions were reversed in 1936, their impact was significant.
Two-Row and Covenant Chain wampum belts. This document was produced by a group of women from the Six Nations of the Grand River who, in 1917, petitioned King George V, citing the wampum belts as records of their agreement with the Crown that they would never again be compelled to fight in foreign wars. The agreements highlighted the concept of sovereignty association between the Crown and the Six Nations Confederacy. Objections such as these all contributed to the 1918 passing of Order-in-Council 111, which officially exempted status Indians from combat duties, although they could still be conscripted for non-combat roles.
Source: Library and Archives Canada, RG 10 Indian Affairs, Volume 6767, File 452-15, Part 1.
Metis men had also enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and had taken part in battles at the First Ypres (April 1915), the Somme (August 1916), Vimy Ridge (April 1917), Passchendaele (October-November 1917, and the famed “One Hundred Days” (August–November 1918). Many served with great distinction, including Henry Norwest (c1880s–1918). Henry was the best sniper in the Canadian Expeditionary Force with 115 confirmed kills and succumbed to sniper fire at the Battle of Amiens.
For the Metis, demobilization presented its own challenges. When veterans returned, they often found themselves shuffled between federal and provincial governments in efforts to access veterans’ services.
In his 1919 essay, Duncan Campbell Scott argued that the close of the Great War would hasten great change. As he argued,
The return of the Indian soldiers from the front will doubtless bring about great changes on the reserves. These men who have been broadened by contact with the outside world and its affairs, who have witnessed the many wonders and advantages of civilization, will not be content to return to their old Indian mode of life. ...Thus the war will have hastened that day ... when all the quaint old customs, the weird and picturesque ceremonies, the sun dance and the potlatch and even the musical and poetic native languages shall be as obsolete as the buffalo and the tomahawk, and the last tepee of the Northern wilds give place to a model farmhouse.
Yet this was not to happen. Indeed, those who had served returned from the front with a new awareness and an energy for change and transformation. They had identified as members of the Canadian military, and had been recognized as such. The demobilization, which highlighted starkly for many the lack of rights for Indigenous people in Canada, would be the genesis of a number of organizations that, through the work of veterans and others, would continue to fight for recognition.
The League of Indians, founded by veteran Fred Ogilvie Loft in 1919, was one such group. Its statement of principles contained passages condemning the mistreatment of veterans, denouncing the residential school system and protesting against the lack of Indigenous political representation within the federal system. Indian Affairs responded by attacking the League, going as far as threatening to involuntarily enfranchise its leader, Fred Loft, in an attempt to discredit him as a genuine representative of Aboriginal interests.
League of Indians founder Fred Loft at the former Ohsweken Orange Lodge at the Six Nations Fair grounds.
Source: Six Nations Public Library Digital Collection, http://vitacollections.ca/sixnationsarchive
The National Aboriginal War Veterans monument was unveiled in 2001. Located in Confederation Park across from the Lord Elgin Hotel between Laurier Avenue West and Slater Street in Ottawa, the monument stands as an important correction to our history. Its text, which singles out the important contributions of Indigenous men and women, reads “We who would follow in their path are humbled by the magnitude of their sacrifice and inspired by the depths of their resolve. We owe them a debt of gratitude we cannot soon hope to repay.” Indeed.
Veterans unveil monument. Left to right: Arnold Sinclair, Drank Orvis, Randi Gage, Thomas Whitburn, and Gerald Bennett in Riverton, Manitoba at the unveiling of the new memorial stone, 14 May 2016.
Source: Randi Gage
As Elder Randi Gage, founding vice-president of the National Aboriginal Veterans Association, maintains, Indigenous veterans and particularly those who served in the First World War, gave up a great deal to serve, including, for many, treaty rights. In short, Indigenous people did not have to serve; they chose to. This choice commands our ongoing respect, admiration—and action. This 8 November, on National Aboriginal Veterans Day, remember their sacrifice.
Books and Articles
Fred Gaffen, Forgotten Soldiers. Pendicton, BC: Theytus Books Ltd., 1985.
Kellen Kurchinski, Steve Marti et al., eds. The Great War: From Memory to History. Ottawa: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014.
P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Craig Leslie Mantle, eds. Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian Military: Historical Perspectives. Winnipeg: Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2007.
P. Whitney Lackenbauer, R. Scott Sheffield and Craig Leslie Mantle, eds. Aboriginal Peoples and Military Participation: Canadian and International Perspectives. Winnipeg: Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2007.
Shane Warren Porter, “St. Paul’s Boarding School: The Early Decades of Anglican Missionary Schooling on the Blood Reserve,” MEd Dissertation, University of Lethbridge, 1993.
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Vol. 1, Looking Forward, Looking Back. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1996.
Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. “The Aboriginal Soldier After the Wars–Ninth Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples.” 1st Session, 25th Parliament, 1994.
Janice Summerby, Native Soldiers, Foreign Battlefields. Ottawa: Veterans Affairs Canada, 2005.
Timothy Winegard, For King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First World War. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2012.
Other Sources
Oral History with Randi Gage, co-founder, National Aboriginal Veterans Association (NAVA), 29 July 2016.
1. For complete essay, see http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/confederation/DCScott/address_essays_reviews/vol1/cdn_indians_great_war.html (accessed 31 August 2016).
We thank Clara Bachmann for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
We thank S. Goldsborough for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
Page revised: 9 November 2020
