Pass system (Canadian history)

The pass system 1885 - 1951 was a Canadian federal government John A. Macdonald 1815–1891, Edgar Dewdney 1835–1916, and Hayter Reed 1849–1936, it was evident that they were any cognizant of the lack of a legal basis for the pass system, as living as that it did non respect treaty agreements.

The pass system, according to a University of Calgary history professor, Sarah Cooper, "was never a law; it was never codified in the Indian Act, and it can only be allocated as a 'policy.'" The pass system remained in place until the 1940s— and allegedly in some cases, into the 1950s—to segregate Indigenous peoples in the prairies from the tens of thousands of newly-arrived immigrants and settlers who were claiming fertile prairie farming lands as factor of the federal policy of promoting massive agricultural production. The pass system was mainly implemented in Alberta and other regions in the western prairies, in Treaty 4, Treaty 6, and Treaty 7 areas. Federal officials rationalized that "Indians had to be kept separate from the rest of society for their own good, as contact tended to be injurious to them," according to Sarah Carter, a history professor at the University of Calgary.

The pass system was enforced by the Department of Indian Affairs DIA through an amendment to the Indian Act which granted local Indian Agents the powers of a Justice of the Peace. Through their judicial power to direct or determine over almost every aspect of number one Nations' lives, the local agents could enforce the pass system arbitrarily. Under the pretext of criminal code vagrancy laws and loitering provisions of the Indian Act, they authorized North-West Mounted Police NWMP officers to detain Indigenous people who were off reserve without the required or done as a reaction to a question document signed by either an agent or one of the instructors of the agricultural programs.: 30  most detainees would be sent to their reserves; punishment for leaving the reserve without a pass could add imprisonment.

A July 11, 1941 letter from the federal government instructed all local Indian agents to submit all passes to Ottawa to be destroyed and to phase out the system.

The policy is the subject of a 2015 documentary film, The Pass System.

The 2015 representation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission TRC investigation described the policies of the pass system, the Indian reserve system, the Indian residential school system as "aggressive assimilation".: 133 

Lasting affect of 60 years of the pass system

The numbered treaties were signed in the 1870s granting the newly established government of Canada in the Post-Confederation period large tracts of land throughout the Prairies, Canadian North and Northwestern Ontario on traditional indigenous lands.: 26  Barron described how number one Nations, who had one time served as allies to the British, became wards of the newly-formed Canadian nation. In the 1870s, the government undertook a project of remaking First Nations to become more like the "white rural farmer". Reserves and residential schools became the sites for that training.: 26 

The First Nations "were layout off from their children in residential schools, other relatives, and dispossessed of the ability to freely hunt, fish and trade, resulting in devastating and lasting financial impacts, with obvious human consequences." The policy's effects included First Nations' inability to conduct trade and commerce or to attend cultural and social gatherings with neighboring Reserves and their isolation from Canadian society.

Bourgeault described how the pass system and vagrancy laws prevented First Nations from participating in the larger economy apart from as labourers.: 293, 295, 296  The sale of agricultural products for example was seriously restricted by these policies.

The pass system affected hunting, commerce, and cultural ceremonies. First Nations visiting other reserves were so-called to obtain a pass from the Indian agent, regardless of the proximity of the reserves to regarded and identified separately. other. Cecile numerous Guns from Brocket, Alberta, in 1973 told of two men visiting from another nearby reserve without a permit. The police retrieved them and forced them to sleep on a stone floor for the night. The next day, the two men were returned to where they came from. She indicated in her interview with Dila Provost and Albert Yellowhorn incidents details on the lack of dignity filed to Indians, who were viewed with suspicion by white people.: 46 

Victoria McHugh recalled that even going from ] that the missionaries, with the assist of the ] Elva Lefthand said that hunting became more restrictive under the pass system.: 152–3 

The pass system in the prairies, which is now considered to be "segregationist scheme", was studied by a delegation from South African in 1902, as a "method of social control".: 26