The History of Racism in Canada. The First Nations lost their land and rights to Europeans over the last few hundred years.

The History of Racism in Canada

The First Nations lost their land and rights to Europeans over the last few hundred years.

• Slavery was legal and common practice in Canada until the British Empire banned it in 1834.

British North America Act (1867)

• The British North America Act recognized certain rights for religious groups and for linguistic groups, but nothing for equality of gender, race or colour.

The Indian Act (1876)

"A person means an individual other than an

Indian."

Section 12 of the Indian Act (1880).

• The Indian Act - was a series of racist social control laws enacted by the Federal government of Canada to place Aboriginal Peoples of Canada in the position of a colonized people.

• Assimilation – the process through which a person or group of a

minority culture is absorbed into the majority culture, losing the distinct features of the minority people.

– Examples: The Canadian government assimilated First Nations people

by putting them on reservations, which were often too small for traditional hunting. The government also put the kids into residential schools.

• The Indian Act regulated and controlled virtually every aspect of Aboriginal people’s life, including Sundance and Potlatch gatherings, which were the major social, economic and political institutions of the First Nations tribes.

• It wasn’t until 1951 that Parliament repealed the laws prohibiting potlatch.

Chinese Head Tax

• 17,000 Chinese workers came to Canada to build the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rockies to the Pacific ocean, 1,500 of which died in the process.

• Chinese who wanted to immigrate to Canada were forced to pay a head tax of $50 in 1885 after the completion of the CPR. From 1886 to 1894, 12,197 Chinese people immigrated to Canada and paid the tax.

• In 1901, responding to public pressure about a continuing influx of Chinese, Ottawa doubled the head tax to $100.

• The head tax was then increased to $500 in 1903, which was approximately the same as two years wages.

• From 1886 to 1923, the Canadian government collected more than $22 million in head tax payments.

• Ethnocentric: a belief that one’s own race or culture is superior to others.

Anti-Asian Riot in Vancouver (1907)

• September 8th, 1907 – The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council formed the Asiatic Exclusion League, which organized a giant anti-immigration rally at city hall to protest against giving jobs to Asian immigrants.

• After anti-Asian speeches about the "yellow peril," a riot took place where a mob of 7,000 people marched through the streets of downtown Vancouver, smashing windows and destroying signs on Oriental businesses.

• In Chinatown, they looted and burned thousands of dollars worth of Chinese property.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1923)

• The Canadian Federal government replaced the Chinese head tax with Chinese Immigration Act or Canadian Chinese Exclusion Act, which had the effect of barring Chinese immigrants from the country altogether.

• The Chinese Immigration Act wasn’t repealed until 1947, and it wasn't until 1967 that the final elements of the Canadian Chinese Exclusion Act were completely eliminated.

> July 1, 1923, is known as "humiliation day" in the Chinese Canadian community.

Komagata Maru (1914)

• In 1908, the Canadian government imposed a "continuous passage rule" which forbid immigrants from making a direct journey to Canada. This measure was directly aimed at India immigrants, since there was no direct voyage from India at that time.

• In 1914, a group of 376 Sikh’s from India challenged this restriction, arriving in Vancouver on board the Komagatu Maru. After two months in the harbour and an unsuccessful court challenge, they were forced to return to India.

• The boat sailed back to Calcutta where it was met by police, and 20 people were killed as they disembarked while others were jailed.

Canada’s response to the Holocaust

• Canada’s record for accepting Jews fleeing the Holocaust was among the worst in the Western world.

• Canadian policy towards Jewish refugees was summed up in the words of one official: "None is too many."

• As Nazi-inspired hatred spread through Europe, many Jews tried to head to safety in North America. However, Prime Minister MacKenzie King and Immigration Director F.C. Blair kept the number of Jewish refugees small.

> Between the years 1933 and 1945, less than 5,000 Jews were

accepted into Canada.

S.S. St. Louis (1939)• In May 1939, 907 German Jews left Hamburg aboard the SS St.

Louis with visas allowing them to enter Cuba. But when they arrived in Havana harbour, Cuba denied the refugees entrance. The St. Louis was then turned away from Panama, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Paraguay.

• Canada was the last hope for the refugees aboard that ship, but the Canadian government refused them entry. The St. Louis sailed back to Europe. Very few of the refugees survived the Holocaust.

The Japanese Canadian Internment (1942)

• During the Second World War, 22,000 Japanese Canadians were expelled from within a hundred miles of the Pacific.

• Thousands were detained, and at the end of the war, "repatriation" to Japan was encouraged.

• 4,000 people left, two thirds of them Canadian citizens.

Japanese internment camp in British Columbia during WWII

Who is Rosa Parks?

On December 1st, 1955, an African-American woman named Rosa Parks refused to obey an Alabama bus drivers order to move to the back of the bus to make room for a white passenger.

Her courage helped spark the American civil rights movement.

But who is Viola Desmond?

Viola Desmond(The Canadian Rosa Parks)

• On November 8th,1946, successful African-Canadian businesswoman Viola Desmond refused to sit in the balcony reserved for blacks at a theater in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

• She was forcefully removed from the theatre, arrested, and thrown in jail overnight.

• She was then tried without counsel for attempting to defraud the Federal Government as she hadn't paid a 1-cent tax to sit downstairs, despite her offer to pay the difference. The theater owner would not sell it to her because she was black.

• She was convicted and fined $20 and ordered to spend 30 days in jail.

• She took her case to the Supreme Court of Canada, but lost.

First Nations right to vote

• It wasn’t until 1960 that First Nations people got the right to vote in Canadian federal elections.

• This was the first time that the government acknowledged citizenship for Aboriginal Peoples without the condition of the assimilation into the Canadian white society.

Immigration to Canada

• Canada adopted a “merit system” in 1967 and removed all references to race and ethnicity, which had limited admission of people from Asian, African and Caribbean countries.

Residential Schools

• Attendance at residential schools was made mandatory by the government in 1920 for Native Canadian children between the ages of 7 and 16.

• The "aggressive assimilation" program was dedicated to eradicating the languages, traditions and cultural practices of native Canadians.

• Children were forced to leave their parents and were harshly punished for speaking their own languages or practicing their religions.

• The Canadian government forced about 150,000 First Nations children into government-financed residential schools where many suffered physical and sexual abuse.

• The residential schools have been linked to the widespread incidence of alcoholism, suicide and family violence in many First Nations communities.

A time of healing…

Constitution Act (1982)

• The Constitution Act of 1982 included the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guaranteed fundamental freedoms of conscience, thought, speech and peaceful assembly, official language rights and equality rights without discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnic origins, religion, sex, age or disability and official language rights.

• On September 22nd, 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney made a speech in the House of Commons to acknowledge the past injustices suffered by Canadians of Japanese ancestry.

• A $21,000 per person settlement was reached with the National Association of Japanese Canadians for the internments and abuses of World War Two.

• Prime Minister Harper made a full apology to the Chinese-Canadian community in 2006 for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants who came to Canada between 1885 and 1923.

• In June 2008, Prime Minister Harper made an official apology at the House of Commons for the governments treatment of children in Indian residential schools, stating "Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm and has no place in our country."

• The federal government agreed to pay $1.86 billion to surviving residential students, and to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to document the experiences of children who attended the schools.

• Prime Minister Harper apologized in September 2008 for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident while speaking to a crowd of about 8,000 people in Surrey, B.C.

• But members of Sikh community and an organization of the descendants of victims of the 1914 tragedy rejected the apology, demanding that the Prime Minister do the same in the House of Commons.