Lesson Six: Imposing Liberalism

2. Lesson 4.6.1 The Aboriginal Experience with Liberalism

The Aboriginal Experience with Liberalism

Differences in ideological perspectives of the Aboriginal people and the Europeans led to conflict, misunderstandings, mistreatment, and abuses. The superiority that Europeans felt toward the Aboriginal peoples led them to attempt to assimilate the Aboriginals to the European perspective.

"The great aim of our civilization has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitants of the Dominion [of Canada] as speedily as they are fit for the change."

-Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, 1887

The assimilation of Aboriginal peoples in Canada was the reason for the imposition of liberal ideology. The Aboriginal people of Canada have had liberal values imposed upon them by assimilation since their first contact with European settlers.

"With the coming of the Europeans, our experience as a people changed. We experienced relationships in which we were made to feel inferior. We were treated as incompetent to make decisions for ourselves. Europeans would treat us in such a way as to make us feel that they knew, better than we ourselves, what was good for us."

-Georges Erasmus, a First Nations leader, 1977.
from Erasmus, Georges. "We the Dene." in Mel Watkins. Dene Nation, The Colony Within. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.

Today, Aboriginal groups, along with the Canadian government, have been working toward resolving the issues created by assimilation.

In 2008, the Canadian government apologized formally for residential schools. The imposition of residential schools was an assimilation policy that forced 150 000 First Nations children into residential boarding schools that were far from their homes and in which the First Nations languages and cultural traditions were banned. Many survivors of the residential systems have said also that they were abused sexually and physically. The Roman Catholic Church operated about 75 per cent of the residential schools from the 1870s to the 1970s.

Visit the CBC Digital Archives to understand more about

A Lost Heritage: Canada's Residential Schools

In April 2009, Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, with a delegation of other Aboriginal peoples from Canada, attended Pope Benedict's weekly general audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican City in Rome, Italy. Fontaine and the delegation later met the Pope to discuss abuses inflicted on Aboriginal children at residential schools in Canada operated by the Roman Catholic Church.

History has shown Canadians that the imposition of liberal ideology on Aboriginal peoples has affected the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit in many ways. As settlers came to Canada, greater efforts were made by government to impose liberal ideology on Aboriginal peoples. Differences in beliefs and values led to conflicts over land ownership. Government attempts at assimilating Aboriginal peoples into the mainstream were abusive and destructive, and assimilation limited Aboriginal peoples' freedom and control over their own lives. Trudeau's White Paper of 1969 continued the efforts to absorb Aboriginal peoples into the mainstream culture by trying to create a "just society" and to disregard treaty agreements and Aboriginal land claims.