ARCHIVED - Aboriginal Documentary Heritage

Aboriginal Soldiers in the First World War

By James Dempsey

Essay

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Notes

1. Author's Note: The use of the term "Indian" (as opposed to First Nations) in this essay reflects the current official and legal practice of the Government of Canada, as outlined in the Constitution and in the Indian Act.

The term "Aboriginal" refers to Indians, Métis and Inuits, whose experiences and legal issues are not and have not been the same. Only Indians lived on reserves; Métis and Inuit did not. Métis veterans did not have to go through the same hoops that Indians did when it came to the Soldier Settlement Act because legally the Métis were Canadian citizens, while Indians were not. As this essay deals primarily with Indian veterans, the term "Aboriginal" would be inappropriate. Where examples include Métis veterans, they are referred to specifically as Métis.

2. Alexander Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Including the Negotiations on Which They Were Based, and Other Info Thereto, Toronto: Willing and Williamson, 1880, p. 225.

3. Ibid., p. 50, 69.

4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31, 1918, Ottawa: King's Printer, 1919, p. 15.

5. Canada, Parliament, House of Commons, Official Report of the Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada. May 4, 1916, Ottawa: King's Printer, 1916, p. 3407.

6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31, 1915, Ottawa: King's Printer, 1916, p. 17.

7. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31, 1916, Ottawa: King's Printer, 1917, p. 14.

8. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31, 1915, Ottawa: King's Printer, 1916, p. 17.

9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31, 1918, Ottawa: King's Printer, 1919, p. 13.

10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended March 31, 1915, Ottawa: King's Printer, 1916, p. 17.

11. Edward Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973, p. 122.

12. Letter from Mark Steinhauer to D.C. Scott, August 7, 1916, Library and Archives Canada (LAC). RG 10, vol. 6767, file 452-124-1A.

13. Duncan Campbell Scott, "The Canadian Indians and the Great World War," Canada in the Great War: Vol. III, Guarding the Channel Ports, Toronto: United Publishing of Canada, 1919, p. 327-328.

14. Letter from J.D. McLean to Thomas Deasy, September 8, 1922. LAC. RG 10, vol. 3181, file 452-15, part 1.

15. Letter from Philip Morris, Assistant Secretary, Canadian Patriotic Fund, to D.C. Scott, March 1917. LAC. RG 10, Vol. 6762, file 452-2-2. Letter from W.J. Dilworth to J.D. McLean, February 10, 1917. Blood Agency Papers, Glenbow Archives, M1788, box 16, file 122.

16. Letter from D.C. Scott to W.J. Dilworth, April 18, 1917, Blood Agency Papers, Glenbow Archives, M1788, box 16, file 122.

17. Consolidated Statutes of Canada, 1916, Clause 81, Sec. 164.

18. Letter from J.D. McLean to James McDonald, March 28, 1919, Department of Indian Affairs form letter to agents, May 6, 1919. LAC. RG 10, vol. 7524, file 25-102-1.

19. Letter from D.C. Scott to Arthur Meighen, October 15, 1918. LAC. RG 10, vol. 7484, file 25001, part 1.

20. Letter from W.S. Woods to A.F. MacKenzie, February 1932. LAC. RG 10, vol. 6762, file 452-1-5.

21. W. Everard Edmonds, "Canada's Red Army," Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art and Literature, Vol. 54, no. 5 (1921), p. 341-342.

22. Duncan Campbell Scott, "The Canadian Indians and the Great World War," p. 327.

23. Ibid., p. 327-328.

24. The Albertan, Calgary, June 26, 1922.

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