“Apartheid in a parka”? Roots and longevity of the Canada–South Africa comparison

Abstract

Comparisons between Aboriginal policy in Canada and apartheid in South Africa appear frequently in public discourse, often with claims of actual links between the two systems. This paper interrogates these supposed links, using an analysis of land policy and the pass system in each country to demonstrate the improbability of the claims of direct influences. The paper then goes on to analyze the intellectual history of these comparisons, asking why they have been, and continue to be, made by many different actors in the face of a lack of historical evidence. The paper argues that the claims have served the needs of many different groups in different ways and thus maintained a hold despite their lack of historical foundation. However, good policy must be founded on clear analysis of history, and this paper argues that it is important to de-link South Africa and Canada, and understand oppression in each context on its own terms.

Keywords:

• Canada
• South Africa
• Indian Policy
• apartheid

Acknowledgments

Thank you to those who commented on drafts of this paper and presentations of this material; Valerie Korinek, Dwight Newman, William Beinart, Jim Handy, Jim Miller, John Thompson and the anonymous reviews for all their suggestions and insight. Also thank you to Martin Lanthier of Libraries and Archives Canada (LAC) for assistance in obtaining some archival materials. Finally, to CISA and WISER at the University of the Witwatersrand for hosting me in South Africa.

Notes

¹ Dr. J., “Mandela and Anti-Colonial Struggles,” http://yourheartsontheleft.blogspot.co.za/2016/01/mandela-and-anticolonial-struggles.html.

² Hall, “Canada’s Bitter Legacy of Injustice,” A8.

³ DuCharme, “The Segregation of Native People in,” 3–4.

⁴ “Saskatoon Group Compares Indian Act to Apartheid Policy,” 3.

⁵ Stoler and Cooper, “Between Metropole,” 11, 28.

⁶ Cf. Laidlaw, Colonial Connections; Lester, Imperial Networks; Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race.

⁷ Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, 1–13.

⁸ Laidlaw and Lester, Indigenous Communities, 12.

⁹ Cairns, Citizens Plus.

¹⁰ What follows in this section is a brief overview of the history and legal dimensions which can be found in more detail in Horwitz and Newman, A Legal-Historical Consideration.

¹¹ Indian Act 1876 (Canada), SC 1876, c 18. For a helpful legislative history of the Indian Act, see Bartlett, The Indian Act of Canada. For a detailed account of policies and purposes of the Act over time, see McHugh, Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law, 183–85, 245–50, 255–64, 388–91.

¹² Canada, House of Commons Debates, (30 March 1876), 933, 3 Sess., 3 Parl. Indian Laws and McHugh, Aboriginal Societies, 182–3.

¹³ An Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in This Province, and to Amend the Laws Respecting Indians, S.C. 1857, c. 26. See also Leslie and Maguire, The Historical Development of the Indian, 6; and Tobias, “Protection, Civilization Assimilation,” 6.

¹⁴ Public Archives of Canada, RG10, Vol. 6810, file 470-2-3, Vol. 7: Evidence of D.C. Scott to the Special Committee of the House of Commons Examining the Indian Act Amendments of 1920, pp. 55(L-3) and 63(N-3).

¹⁵ Ross, Status and Respectability, 4.

¹⁶ Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa, 83; Dubow, “Holding a Just Balance,” 217.

¹⁷ See generally Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant.

¹⁸ See also Ray, I Have Lived Here which traces the economic history of Canada’s Aboriginal communities over the longue durée, thereby extending his earlier analyses focused on the fur trade. In British Columbia, the shift to a fishery-cannery economy was the significant development as opposed to agricultural settlement as in Ontario and on the Prairies.

¹⁹ Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa, 9–15 and 21–7.

²⁰ Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, 111.

²¹ The ten Bantustans or homelands were ethnically based: Transkei and Ciskei became Xhosa homelands; Bophuthatswana the Tswana homeland; Venda was for TshiVenda speakers; Gazanlulu was the Tsonga/Shangaan homeland; Swazis were to live in KaNgwane; Ndebele speakers were confined to KwaNdebele. Lebowa was the Northern Sotho/Pedi homeland; South Sotho speakers were to live in QwaQwa; and Zulus in KwaZulu.

²² Adams, “The Metis,” 70.

²³ For an older but still valuable discussion on this point see, Walshe, The Rise of African Nationalism; and Harris, “Imagery, Symbolism and Tradition,” 105–25.

²⁴ See for example, Pettipas, Severing the Ties that Bind.

²⁵ Carter, Lost Harvests, 149–56.

²⁶ Ibid., 131–2.

²⁷ Ibid., 281 n.15.

²⁸ Ibid., Our Land, 130–131 n53.

²⁹ Bourgeault, “Canada Indians,” 21.

³⁰ Fairweather, A Common Hunger, 297. I have searched for evidence of the alleged visit in both Libraries and Archives Canada and the South African National Archives in Pretoria and not found any. I have thus far been unable to access certain public archival files at Libraries and Archives Canada from the latter parts of this time period that are currently considered “lost”; my access to information request to pursue these files did not yield any success. Although there are barriers to a definitive search, any such visit, seems highly unlikely.

³¹ Miller, Painting the Map Red.

³² Carter, Lost Harvests, 8–9; Miller, “Owen Glendower,” 386, 39–91; Purich, Our Land, 132.

³³ Worden, The Making, 67.

³⁴ Ibid., 79.

³⁵ Ibid., 82.

³⁶ Leighton, “A Victorian Civil Servant.”

³⁷ Middleton, Sir Fredrick Dobson, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/middleton_frederick_dobson_12E.html (accessed July 27, 2016).

³⁸ See for example Fredrickson, White Supremacy; Andrews, “Perspectives on Brown,” 1155; Stack, “Higginbotham Speech,” 5.

³⁹ Horwitz and Newman, A Legal-Historical Consideration.

⁴⁰ Bartlett, “Parallels in Aboriginal Land Policy,” 1–35.

⁴¹ Cambre, “Terminologies of Control,” 19–34.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Platiel, “Reserves Poor Model for Native Self-Rule,” A8.

⁴⁴ Day, “Non-Reserve Natives get Raw Deal,” B9.

⁴⁵ Beinart, Twentieth Century, 249–50.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 259.

⁴⁷ Freeman, The Ambiguous Champion.

⁴⁸ DuCharme, The Segregation of Native People in Canada, 3–4.

⁴⁹ Naumetz, “PM Rejects Comparison,” A1.

⁵⁰ Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Apartheid.

⁵¹ Ibid., ii.

⁵² Sawridge Band v. Canada, [1995] 4, C.N.L.R., 121.

⁵³ Sawridge Band v. Canada, [1997] 3 F.C. 580 at para. 19.

⁵⁴ McInnes, “Nisga’s Deal is Apartheid,” A6.

⁵⁵ Ibid., A1.

⁵⁶ Erasmus, Address for the launch of the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996 http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ap/pubs/spch/spch-eng.asp (accessed July 20, 2016).

⁵⁷ The story was then picked up in Canada and quoted in Goodspeed, “Envoy’s Trip to Indian Reserve,” A3.

⁵⁸ Goodspeed, “Envoy’s Trip to Indian Reserve,” A3.

⁵⁹ CBC, “Apartheid in Canada? Babb to Visit Peguis Indian Reserve,” Interview by Valerie Pringle with Yusuf Saloojee and Louis Stevenson, http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-71-703-4143/conflict_war/apartheid/ (accessed July 20, 2016).

⁶⁰ Goodspeed, “Envoy’s Trip to Indian Reserve,” A3.

⁶¹ Freeman, The Ambiguous Champion, 117.

⁶² Ibid., 118.

⁶³ Freeman, The Ambiguous Champion, 216–19.

⁶⁴ Bourgeault, “Canada Indians,” 6; Greenshields, “Canada Should Clean up Own Act,” A7; “Only 1 Indian Goes to S. Africa,” A1.

⁶⁵ What is interesting to note here is that at precisely this time Sebogodi’s village had become a hotspot of struggle for control between the homeland of Bophuthatswana and the ANC. Braklaagte had been incorporated into Bophuthatswana in 1988, against the will of many of the citizens who wanted to maintain their South African citizenship. The fight between the ANC, who claimed to be working on behalf of the citizens, and the government in Bophuthatswana who wanted to keep the area as part of their territory, was violent and bloody. The conflict lasted through the transition period from apartheid to democracy, from 1990 to 1994. What link, if any, there was between these events and the visit to Canada I have been unable to ascertain.

⁶⁶ Staples, “Apartheid Born in Canada,” B7.

⁶⁷ Ibid.

⁶⁸ Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture, 144.

⁶⁹ Barsh and Henderson, The Road, 246.

⁷⁰ Asch, Home and Native Land, 74–6.

⁷¹ Ibid., 75.

⁷² Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). 1997. Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Vol. 5: Renewal: A Twenty-Year Commitment. http://www.uni.ca/library/rcap_year.html (accessed July 20, 2016).

⁷³ Erasmus, Launch of the Report.

⁷⁴ Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture, 45–52.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 246–7.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 250.

⁷⁷ Edmonton Journal, A10.