“The Awakening Has Come”: Canadian First Nations in the Great War Era, 1914-1932 (2015)

In the Great War era from 1914 to 1932, the historical literature has cast First Nations peoples as actors without agency, reacting primarily to government policy. This article will demonstrate that government policy had less of an impact on First Nations peoples than scholars have led readers to believe. At the outbreak of war in 1914, First Nations communities’ responses to the prospect of enlistment were varied. For those who did enlist, many were attempting to reconnect with the spirit of their ancestors. Once overseas, Indigenous soldiers found themselves in overwhelmingly anglicised environments. Despite these assimilative conditions, they practiced and sustained cultural and martial Indigenous tradition. When they returned home, First Nations veterans breathed new life into Indigenous political organisation. They created the League of Indians of Canada at the end of 1918, agitating for the well-being of First Nations peoples across the country. This article will argue that First Nations individuals and communities utilised the event of the Great War to further both personal and communal interests in a time of great uncertainty and assimilation. In a 1919 publication, Duncan Campbell Scott, the Canadian deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, said, “ [T]he end of the [First World W]ar should mark the beginning of a new era for [First Nations] wherein they shall play an increasingly honourable and useful part in the history of a country that was once the free and © Canadian Military History 24, no. 2 (Summer/Autumn 2015): 11-35 1 : Canadian First Nations in the Great War Era, 1914-1932 Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015 1 2 : C a n a d ia n F i r s t N a t io n s in th e G r e a t W ar E r a open hunting ground of their forefathers.”1 To Scott, First Nations peoples had proven themselves during the Great War from 1914 to 1918.2 Over 4,000 of 35,000 Canadian First Nations eligible for military service served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (ce f). In other words, at least 35 percent of the First Nations populationroughly equal to the percentage of Euro-Canadian war participantsserved during the Great War.3 Following the war, despite the new respect Scott claimed First Nations peoples deserved, government assimilatory policies continued.4 Even then, First Nations were able to form one of the first pan-Canadian Indigenous political organisations in the country’s history during the interwar period.5 Ontario veteran F.O. Loft (Mohawk) established the League of Indians of Canada at Sault Ste. Marie in September 1919, in order to give voice to First Nations peoples.6 Following the initiative of the league, provincial First Nations organisations began to form in the early 1930s.7 The historiography of Canadian First Nations soldiers and veterans in the Great War era is one that requires significant expansion. Beginning in 1985, scholars began to write about the “forgotten warriors” of the Great War and also drew attention, for the first 1 Duncan Campbell Scott, “Canadian Indians and the Great World War,” in Canada and the Great World War, vol. 3, Guarding the Channel Ports (Toronto: United Publishers of Canada, 1919), 328. 2 Legally “Indians” are considered one of three Aboriginal groups within Canada (the others being the Inuit and Metis). Although this paper focuses on the experiences of soldiers who were defined as “Indians” either by themselves or the Canadian government, it employs the term “First Nation” as a more widely accepted and culturally respectful label. 3 Timothy C. Winegard, For King and Kanata: Canadian Indians and the First World War (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2012), 6. 4 See Lisa Salem-Wiseman, “ ‘Verily, the white man’s ways were the best’: Duncan Campbell Scott, Native Culture, and Assimilation,” Studies in Canadian Literature 21, no. 2 (1996), 120-142; Winegard, For King and Kanata, 28, 41-42 for assimilation policies. 5 Although the league is the first pan-Canadian organisation, the first inter­ provincial Indigenous political organisation was the General Council of Ontario and Quebec Indians. It was formed in 1870. 6 J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relation in Canada, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 318-319. 7 The one exception would be the Allied Tribes of British Columbia, whom formed in 19 15 . 2 Canadian Military History, Vol. 24 [2015], Iss. 2, Art. 2 http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol24/iss2/2