First Nations in Canada
First Nations is a term used to identify Indigenous peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. Traditionally, First Nations in Canada were peoples who lived south of the tree line, and mainly south of the Arctic Circle. There are 634 recognized First Nations governments or bands across Canada. Roughly half are located in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.
Under federal employment equity law, First Nations are a "designated group", along with women, visible minorities, and people with physical or mental disabilities. First Nations are not included in the Statistics Canada visible minority category, as there is a separate category for First Nations, Metis and Inuit.
North American indigenous peoples have cultures spanning thousands of years. Many of their oral traditions accurately describe historical events, such as the Cascadia earthquake of 1700 and the 18th-century Tseax Cone eruption. Written records began with the arrival of European explorers and colonists during the Age of Discovery in the late 15th century. European accounts by trappers, traders, explorers, and missionaries give important evidence of early contact culture. In addition, archeological and anthropological research, as well as linguistics, have helped scholars piece together an understanding of ancient cultures and historic peoples.
Terminology
Collectively, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples constitute Indigenous peoples in Canada, Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or "first peoples". First Nation as a term became officially used by the government beginning in 1980s to replace the term Indian band in referring to groups of Indians with common government and language. The First Nations people had begun to identify by this term during 1970s activism, in order to avoid using the word Indian, which some considered offensive. No legal definition of the term exists.Some Indigenous peoples in Canada have also adopted the term First Nation to replace the word band in the formal name of their community. A band is a "body of Indians for whose use and benefit in common lands... have been set apart, ... moneys are held... or declared... to be a band for the purposes of", according to the Indian Act by the Canadian Crown.
The term Indian is a misnomer, given to Indigenous peoples of North America by European explorers who erroneously thought they had landed in the East Indies. The use of term like Native Americans or American Indians, which the government and others have adopted in the United States, is not common in Canada. It refers more specifically to the Indigenous peoples residing within the boundaries of the US. The parallel term Native Canadian is not commonly used, but Native and Autochtone are. Under the Royal Proclamation of 1763, also known as the "Indian Magna Carta," the Crown referred to Indigenous peoples in British territory as tribes or nations. The term First Nations is capitalized. Bands and nations may have slightly different meanings.
Within Canada, the term First Nations has come into general use for Indigenous peoples other than Inuit and Métis. Outside Canada, the term can refer to Indigenous Australians, U.S. tribes within the Pacific Northwest, as well as supporters of the Cascadian independence movement. The singular, commonly used on culturally politicized reserves, is the term First Nations person . Since the late 20th century, members of various nations more frequently identify by their tribal or national identity only, e.g., "I'm Haida", or "We're Kwantlens", in recognition of the distinct First Nations.
History
Nationhood
First Nations peoples had settled and established trade routes across what is now Canada by 500 BCE – 1,000 CE. Communities developed, each with its own culture, customs, and character. In the northwest were the Athapaskan-speaking peoples, Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ, Tutchone-speaking peoples, and Tlingit. Along the Pacific coast were the Haida, Tsimshian, Salish, Kwakwakaʼwakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nisga'a and Gitxsan. In the plains were the Blackfoot, Kainai, Tsuutʼina and Piikani. In the northern woodlands were the Cree and Chipewyan. Around the Great Lakes were the Anishinaabe, Algonquin, Iroquois and Wyandot. Along the Atlantic coast were the Beothuk, Wolastoqiyik, Innu, Abenaki and Mi'kmaq.The Blackfoot Confederacy resides in the Great Plains of Montana and Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. The name Blackfoot came from the dye or paint on the bottoms of their leather moccasins. One account claimed that the Blackfoot Confederacies walked through the ashes of prairie fires, which in turn blackened the bottoms of their moccasins. They had migrated onto the Great Plains from the area of now eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Historically, they allowed only legitimate traders into their territory, making treaties only when the bison herds were exterminated in the 1870s.
Pre-contact Squamish history is passed on through oral tradition of the Squamish indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Prior to colonization and the introduction of writing had only oral tradition as a way to transmit stories, law, and knowledge across generations. The writing system established in the 1970s uses the Latin alphabet as a base. Knowledgeable elders have the responsibility to pass historical knowledge to the next generation. People lived and prospered for thousands of years until the Great Flood. In another story, after the Flood, they repopulated from the villages of Schenks and Chekwelp, located at Gibsons. When the water lines receded, the first Squamish came to be. The first man, named Tseḵánchten, built his longhouse in the village, and later on another man named Xelálten, appeared on his longhouse roof and sent by the Creator, or in the Squamish language keke7nex siyam. He called this man his brother. It was from these two men that the population began to rise and the Squamish spread back through their territory.
The Iroquois influence extended from northern New York into what are now southern Ontario and the Montreal area of modern Quebec. The Iroquois Confederacy is, from oral tradition, formed circa 1142. Adept at cultivating the Three Sisters, the Iroquois became powerful because of their confederacy. Gradually the Algonquians adopted agricultural practises enabling larger populations to be sustained.
The Assiniboine were close allies and trading partners of the Cree, engaging in wars against the Gros Ventres alongside them, and later fighting the Blackfoot. A Plains people, they went no further north than the North Saskatchewan River and purchased a great deal of European trade goods through Cree middlemen from the Hudson's Bay Company. The lifestyle of this group was semi-nomadic, and they followed the herds of bison during the warmer months. They traded with European traders, and worked with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes.
In the earliest oral history, the Algonquins were from the Atlantic coast. Together with other Anicinàpek, they arrived at the "First Stopping Place" near Montreal. While the other Anicinàpe peoples continued their journey up the St. Lawrence River, the Algonquins settled along the Ottawa River, an important highway for commerce, cultural exchange, and transportation. A distinct Algonquin identity, though, was not realized until after the dividing of the Anicinàpek at the "Third Stopping Place", estimated at 2,000 years ago near present-day Detroit.
According to their tradition, and from recordings in birch bark scrolls, Ojibwe came from the eastern areas of North America, or Turtle Island, and from along the east coast. They traded widely across the continent for thousands of years and knew of the canoe routes west and a land route to the west coast. According to the oral history, seven great miigis beings appeared to the peoples in the Waabanakiing to teach the peoples of the cat=no way of life. One of the seven great miigis beings was too spiritually powerful and killed the peoples in the Waabanakiing when the people were in its presence. The six great miigis beings remained to teach while the one returned into the ocean. The six great miigis beings then established cat=no for the peoples in the east. Of these doodem, the five original Anishinaabe doodem were the Wawaazisii, Baswenaazhi, Aan'aawenh, Nooke and Moozoonsii, then these six miigis beings returned into the ocean as well. If the seventh miigis being stayed, it would have established the Thunderbird doodem.
The Nuu-chah-nulth are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. The term Nuu-chah-nulth is used to describe fifteen separate but related First Nations, such as the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations, Ehattesaht First Nation and Hesquiaht First Nation whose traditional home is on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In pre-contact and early post-contact times, the number of nations was much greater, but smallpox and other consequences of contact resulted in the disappearance of groups, and the absorption of others into neighbouring groups. The Nuu-chah-nulth are relations of the Kwakwaka'wakw, the Haisla, and the Ditidaht. The Nuu-chah-nulth language is part of the Wakashan language group.
In 1999 the discovery of the body of Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchi provided archaeologists with significant information on indigenous tribal life prior to extensive European contact. Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchi, or "Canadian Ice Man", is a naturally mummified body that a group of hunters found in Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park in British Columbia. Radiocarbon dating of artifacts found with the body placed the age of the find between 1450 AD and 1700 AD. Genetic testing showed that he was a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations.
European contact
Aboriginal people in Canada interacted with Europeans as far back as 1000 AD, but prolonged contact came only after Europeans established permanent settlements in the 17th and 18th centuries. European written accounts noted friendliness on the part of the First Nations, who profited in trade with Europeans. Such trade strengthened the more organized political entities such as the Iroquois Confederation. The Aboriginal population is estimated to have been between 200,000 and two million in the late 15th century. The effect of European colonization was a 40 to 80 percent Aboriginal population decrease post-contact. This is attributed to various factors, including repeated outbreaks of European infectious diseases such as influenza, measles and smallpox, inter-nation conflicts over the fur trade, conflicts with colonial authorities and settlers and loss of land and a subsequent loss of nation self-suffiency. For example, during the late 1630s, smallpox killed more than half of the Huron, who controlled most of the early fur trade in what became Canada. Reduced to fewer than 10,000 people, the Huron Wendat were attacked by the Iroquois, their traditional enemies. In the Maritimes, the Beothuk disappeared entirely.There are reports of contact made before Christopher Columbus between the first peoples and those from other continents.
Even in Columbus' time there was much speculation that other Europeans had made the trip in ancient or contemporary times; Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés records accounts of these in his General y natural historia de las Indias of 1526, which includes biographical information on Columbus. Aboriginal first contact period is not well defined. The earliest accounts of contact occurred in the late 10th century, between the Beothuk and Norsemen. According to the Sagas of Icelanders, the first European to see what is now Canada was Bjarni Herjólfsson, who was blown off course en route from Iceland to Greenland in the summer of 985 or 986 CE. The first European explorers and settlers of what is now Canada relied on the First Nations peoples, for resources and trade to sustain a living. The first written accounts of interaction show a predominantly Old world bias, labelling the indigenous peoples as "savages", although the indigenous peoples were organized and self-sufficient. In the early days of contact, the First Nations and Inuit populations welcomed the Europeans, assisting them in living off the land and joining forces with the French and British in their various battles. It was not until the colonial and imperial forces of Britain and France established dominant settlements and, no longer needing the help of the First Nations people, began to break treaties and force them off the land that the antagonism between the two groups grew.