Missing The Roar?

Natives and Chinese in 1920s Canada

Please write down these questions, as we will use them to study the next slide…

• Who is speaking?

• What do they intend to do?

• How are they or could they do this?

• What does it say about attitudes of the time?

I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone …

Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.

• - Duncan Campell Scott (1920) Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs

Our aim is to make them [male residential school students] good Christian men, men of action, men of thought; we try to teach them habits of self-dependence, not to be always waiting to be told what to do, but to think for themselves, and we attempt to show them the beauty of a good life, well and usefully lived.

(Signed)

G.H. Hogbin – Calgary Industrial School 1910.

Residential schools• First nations children from 6 years old• Some boarding, more day—130 by 1931• Assimilate Natives into Canadian Society• Forcibly taken from parents—est. 150,000• No language, culture, celebrations• Forced to dress and behave in the right way• Some physical, mental, sexual abuse• Not welcome in wider society – no rights as citizens. Lost

Generation thesis.• Last one closed 1986• PM Harper apology in 2008; compensation package ($) put in

place in 2007; chance to apply ended 9/2012

• What do you think of the idea of residential schools and the attempt to educate Native peoples in the right way to live?

• How do you think non-Natives felt about residential schools at the time?

The Head Tax

• 1881 – 1885 – 17,000 immigrants from China to build CPR

• 1885 – new Head Tax just before CPR finished• Only applied to Immigrants from China• $50 to enter• Increased steadily• 1903 - $500 – ave. house price/2 years salary• Note irony of July 1st date in 1923

Chinese Immigration Act (1923)

26. Whenever any officer has reason to believe that any person of Chinese origin or descent has entered or remains in Canada contrary to [against] the provisions of … the Chinese Immigration Act ... he may, without a warrant apprehend [arrest] such person, and if such person is unable to prove to ... the officer that he has been properly admitted [allowed] into and is legally entitled [allowed] to remain in Canada, the officer may detain [hold] such person in custody and bring him before the nearest controller for examination, and if the controller finds that he has entered or remains in Canada contrary to [against] the provisions of this Act ... such person may be deported to the country of his birth or citizenship …. Where any person is examined [looked at] under this section [part of the act] the burden of proof of such person’s right to be or remain in Canada shall rest upon him [the person who has been arrested must prove they are allowed to remain in Canada].

The Chinese Exclusion Act

• Passed in 1923• Head Tax not effective in stopping immigration• Led to almost complete stop on immigration• Split up families and generations• Stopped in May 1947• Response to protests after Chinese Canadians

fought and died in WW2

I was born and raised in Canada, and was fortunate to know as a child my Goong-Goong, my grandfather Yeung Sing Yew, who paid $500 (over one year’s salary at the time) in Head Tax as a 13-year old migrant … months before Canada passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which forbade any further Chinese immigration …. My grandfather lived almost his entire life in Canada, only returning to China to marry, and was forced to leave his pregnant wife behind in China because of Canadian exclusion laws. These generations of split families were the direct legacy of Canadian legal racism. His own father had left him and his brothers in China as children because he could not afford to bring them over until they were old enough to work and help pay off their own Head Tax payments. When my grandmother and mother were finally able to join my grandfather in Canada, just before I was born, it was an emotional reunion. My mother had never known a father growing up, and he had been deprived of knowing his own child—she was 27 years old the first time she met her father in 1965.

• Note different experiences of white women compared to Natives and Chinese in Canada. What would the 1920s represent in the historical memories of each group?

• How is Canada different today than it was before? Why do you think these changes occur?