The idea that Canada has been somehow more civilized in its treatment of " it's " indigenous peoples has been something that Canadians have enjoyed telling themselves for a very long time. The reality is that by and large it is just that, something that Canadians like to tell themselves. Probably the main reason we have gotten away with telling ourselves this for so long is the absence of " Indian wars" of the type that the United States had against the comanches, the sioux, or the apaches. Because of the absence of these types of large-scale wars, massacres, or the deliberate extermination of the Buffalo, Canadians think that they have had a different policy in the past, but this really is not the case.

The reality is that Canada simply has been more effective, or better organized, in its treatment of indigenous peoples, and also did it slightly later, when Canadian officials could simply point South of the border and say "you don't want that do you?"

To retell the entire history of Canada and pre-canadian colonies and their relationship with various first Nations is beyond the scope of any single comment, but I think I can highlight enough of the relevant information for you to get a clear picture.

First, there might be a little bit of Truth to this story if you go back a long ways. It is true that the French did have more amicable relations with the first Nations that they were allied with then the americans. This does not mean that the French did not treat their enemies any better. One of the intolerable Acts that led to the American Revolution was the fact that the crown refused to allow settlement of Ohio, or the Ohio territory, as it had promised that it would not encroach further on these lands. Because of this, there were a number of indigenous groups that fought on the side of England during the American revolution, and after the defeat many of them moved to Canada and formed part of the core of the new province of upper canada, which later became ontario. Looking at the various groups that fled the United states, you find hutterites, mennonites, Irish and Scottish catholics, blacks, and first nations. These formed the majority of the people who fled, and many of them were fairly concerned that Live and Let Live continue to be a principle of their new location, as the United States had not been all that friendly to religious minorities if you weren't the right religious minorities, or minorities in general.

When upper and lower Canada along with the maritime provinces eventually decided to Confederate to stand against the growing power of the United States after the Fenian raids, they too suddenly had a problem with the idea of not encroaching on indigenous land. The same Royal proclamation of the mid 18th century that had bothered the American colonists now bothered the Canadian political elite, when after purchasing Rupert's Land from the Hudson Bay company they were told that they did not simply own it, but still must make treaties with everybody who lived there prior to establishing it as a part of canada.

By this time there were American traders, whiskey traders, settlers, coming into the prairies, and their behavior was obvious. The Canadian government decided to send in the Royal Canadian mounted police to solidify their claim to the territory, and preemptively establish the rule of law. It didn't hurt that most of the people that the new RCMP we're enforcing laws against were americans, and as a result early on the RCMP was able to establish something of a contrastive identity, i e we aren't american. This really is the period of Miss making, the moment that all Canadians have chosen to remember ever since. But this is also when things get bad for first nations, as shortly after the treaties were signed, then applied with force largely through the power of the mounties, and interpreted in ways that benefited the government and from the perspective of first Nations very much went against the spirit of any of the treaties. For the next number of years deliberate policies were pursued regarding malnutrition, the promotion of disease, the deliberate fracturing of communities, and all of this resulted in depopulation. You can read the primary work on this period, it's called "clearing the plains". The result is that in the very period that many Canadians like to think of as their moment when they acted nicely, the government of Canada along with its official Representatives were deliberately depopulating the prairies of First Nations people. This coincided with the ramping up of assimilation policies, such as residential schools, and forcing people into Western economic structure. People often talk about this as a sad chapter in Canada's history, but Canada is only 150 years old, while assimilation is policies and residential school are well over a hundred and twenty years in operation. As some of my friends say, that's not a chapter that's the whole damn book.

In British Columbia in the story is actually a little bit worse. BC never signed any treaties with first nations, and to this day has attempted to pretend it never needed to. Recent supreme Court decisions have established that it does, and as a result the ownership of Crown Land is legally very shaky. In large portions of British Columbia land that is actually habitable is only a small percentage of the actual land. Much of the land is mountain top, or glacier, and so when settlers came in they discovered that almost all of the Prime land was being used by first nations. Almost every single town in British Columbia has been built on the site of a first Nations community, usually one that had to be relocated or assimilated in order for that to happen. Most of this was done at a time when British Columbia had laws on the books that made this illegal, but the letter of the law has rarely matched practice. British Columbia also had documented deliberate spreading of smallpox to many communities, with a mortality rate of well over 90%. A lot of the evidence for this has been documented the work of Tom swanky.

This dislocation and relocation was followed by the destruction of natural resources. In the prairies Canada never had to hunt the Buffalo to extinction, as the Buffalo traveled across the border and was already being destroyed south of it. They did however replace the natural landscape with farming. In British Columbia a century of deforestation has destroyed in 100 years what took a thousand years to grow, and a fishing industry that has taken double to triple historic levels of fishing even at the highest estimates of previous population, has reduced every fishery to well below historic levels. Often laws were deliberately drafted to limit indigenous participation in these industries. Indigenous methods of fishing for example were made illegal, and licenses to fish, when that became the established practice, we're managed by canneries.

The end result has been a population that if anything is just as traumatized as the American Indian population, and and also a population that has, by and large, far less of a land base then American communities. Native American reservations are far larger on average than Canadian ones. Poverty, diabetes, poor health resulting from a lack of cultural continuity, all of the various impacts associated with colonialism are just as present in Canada as they are in the United states. The main difference is in canada, first Nations makeup roughly 4% of the population, far more in many regions, and while in the US discussion of civil rights and racism is largely situated around the experiences of black americans, in Canada the same questions are often focused on Canada's treatment of first nations.

To give an example, during the civil Rights movement in the states, upon hearing that Dr Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated, a teacher of one of my friends commented that "isn't it horrible how the Americans treat their blacks, I mean it isn't like theyre Indians." This level of blindness to what is in many cases an equivalent situation goes hand in hand with the myth that Canada has been better to its people. Native people form as high a percentage of incarcerated population in Canada as do black people in the United States. Practices like moonlight tours, where RCMP would dump intoxicated people outside of towns in the middle of winter where some died, are not uncommon. Violence against indigenous people, especially women, has resulted in a large number of unsolved murders, and a national outcry.

At least I can say that in Canada first Nations are real people in the public consciousness, whereas in the United States native Americans are often relegated to history. How else can I explain the former presidents repeated use of the term Pocahontas to refer to indigenous women if it were not the case that most Americans don't recognize indigenous people as still existing. In both countries though, these questions remain present. These questions are still questions that have to be answered.