WAKAW — Each gathering of the Prairie Rivers Reconciliation Circle includes an educational session to continue the path of learning for the members, empowering them to be allies with Indigenous peoples in reconciliation. For reconciliation to happen, there must be awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm inflicted, atonement for the causesand action to change behaviour.
April’s educational session was led by Cliff Joanis, Advisory NCO – “F” Division Indigenous Policing Services. The session included Indigenous history, treaties, the Indian Act, residential schools and reconciliation, with a focus on the RCMP context in Saskatchewan. RCMP recruits come from all over Canada, and it is important that all recruits know the history, so they can better understand all the people they will be called to interact with. His presentation is not an attempt to lay blame or “bash” non-Indigenous people, but merely to give the history Indigenous peoples lived.
Cliff was raised in Saskatoon as an adoptee through the Sixties Scoop. His biological mother was at the residential school in Prince Albert first and was then transferred with several other girls (in the middle of the night) to a residential school at Lethbridge, Alta.
His career has been spent working in Saskatchewan Indigenous communities. Since 1997, he has worked in Montreal Lake, Onion Lake, Big River, Île-à-la-Crosse, Ahtahkakoop and Mistawasis. He is a proud member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. His great-grandfather was the first RCMP officer posted in Northern Saskatchewan, and he is very proud to carry on the family policing tradition.
Part of the RCMP’s mandate is to educate its members on issues in First Nations communities and the history of the relations and interactions between the RCMP and Indigenous peoples. In the past, the RCMP Training Depot hosted a 4-day Aboriginal Perceptions Training in Regina, which was underutilized. Now, in partnership with the OTC, it has been compressed from 4 days into 2.
The term Indian still appears in legal and historical contexts even though the term is not used anymore. The term Indigenous is an umbrella which includes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples equally as distinct groups.
Historically, the Royal Charter of King George III made the Hudson Bay Company an internationally recognized government. The charter prohibited settlers and religious missions from occupying the chartered lands and recognized the sovereignty of hundreds of Indigenous communities. Parliament tried several times to overturn the Charter and open the territory to settlers without success. The border between the United States and the HBC territory was referred to as the Medicine Line because Indigenous people saw it as a line that ‘repelled’ the United States Army and settlers.
Colonial Secretary Granville opposed British military intervention in Canada, as the Canadian government faced resistance in its attempts to take control from the Hudson’s Bay Company. The 1763 Royal Proclamation established a framework for fostering a positive relationship between settlers and First Nations people. The 1867 British North America Act, now known as the Constitution Act, undid that by granting the government the authority to create laws concerning ‘Indians.’ This shifted the approach to treating Indigenous peoples as wards of the Crown, with a focus on their assimilation into settler society.
The Indian Act was introduced to enable the government to exert control over Indigenous peoples, restrict their mobility, and ultimately aim to eliminate their identity as Indians. This policy, if effective, could relieve the Crown of its treaty obligations and allow it to claim sole possession of the land that is now Canada. Canada’s approach was characterized by a relentless pursuit of a so-called “permanent solution” to what they called the “Indian problem.” The objective was the extinguishment of Indigenous peoples, their rights and their land title.
Although not covered by the Indian Act, many Métis children were forced to attend residential schools. Additionally, the Inuit, who were also not included in the Indian Act, faced assimilation policies enforced by the government. The colonial ideals targeted all Indigenous peoples.
Initially welcomed by the Indigenous people living in the then-called North West Territories, through the Indian Act, the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) were tasked with enforcing measures taken by the government, including forcibly returning First Nations individuals found outside their Reserves without a pass. The Pass System, implemented by Indian Agents to regulate the movements of First Nations people, was initially enforced by the NWMP. However, in 1893, the NWMP protested the Pass System, and the NWMP Commissioner instructed officers to stop returning Indigenous individuals to their Reservations as he deemed it illegal.
RCMP reconciliation efforts include increasing Indigenous recruitment and representation, strengthening internal training and cultural understanding and providing culturally responsive policing services.
