2. Women's Perspectives - Christian Aboriginal Infrastructure ...

20 An Act providing for the organisation of the Department of the Secretary of State of
Canada, and for the management of Indian and Ordinance Lands, S.C. 1868, c. 42, s.15.
The definition was virtually identical to that in the 1850 Lower Canada legislation (see
note 15).
21 An Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians, the better management of Indian
affairs, and to extend the provisions of the Act 31st Victoria, Chapter 42, S.C. 1869, c. 6.
22 Some of these measures were as follows: instituting a system of individual property
holding on reserves; permitting the imposition of the three-year elective system for chiefs
and councillors on chosen bands; limiting the powers of elected councils to a list of
relatively minor matters, all subject to official confirmation; providing that an
enfranchised Indian man could draw up a will regarding his land in favour of his children,
but not his wife, in accordance with provincial law. Originally designed for the more
"advanced' Indians of Ontario and Quebec, this legislation was later extended to
Manitoba and British Columbia and eventually to all of Canada.
23 Letter from Hector Langevin to Sawatis Anionkiu Peter Karencho and other Iroquois
Indians, Caughnawaga, Quebec (20 August 1869), National Archives of Canada [NAC],
Record Group [RG] 10, Vol. 528. See also D.E. Sanders, "The Bill of Rights and Indian
Status" (1972) 7 U.B.C. L. Rev. 81 at 98.
24 In the modern version of the Indian Act, location tickets have been replaced by
certificates of possession and occupation. The concept in the modern act is similar to that
in the 1869 legislation, however.
25 Objections were raised early on by Aboriginal groups. In 1872, the Grand Council of
Ontario and Quebec Indians (founded in 1870) sent the minister in Ottawa a strong letter
that contained the following passage:
They [the members of the Grand Council] also desire amendments to Sec. 6 of the Act of
[18]69 so that Indian women may have the privilege of marrying when and whom they
please, without subjecting themselves to exclusion or expulsion from their tribes and the
consequent loss of property and rights they may have by virtue of their being members of
any particular tribe. (NAC RG10, Red Series, Vol. 1934, file 3541)
These requests, of course, went unheeded. See also John Leslie and Ron Maguire, eds.,
The Historical Development of the Indian Act (Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and
Northern Development, Treaties and Historical Research Centre, 1978), p. 55.
26 J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in
Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), pp. 194-195.
27 An Act to further amend "The Indian Act, 1880", S.C. 1884, c. 27, s. 5.
28 An Act to amend the Indian Act, S.C. 1920, c. 50, s. 2.
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