Introduction

Many Western settler states are undertaking processes to improve Indigenous-settler relations after centuries of colonization. The primary focus of this Element is Canada, with some discussion of other CANZUS countries, namely: Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ), and the United States of America (USA). The term “reconciliation” has been widely used in Canada and Australia. It is optimistically interpreted by some as an opportunity to ensure that Indigenous lands are returned, and that political support and funding are available to promote the revitalization of Indigenous languages, cultures, spirituality, and self-determination. It can also be a time to heal and to make amends for negative legacies of the past, and to change settler colonial structures that demonstrably discriminate against Indigenous Peoples.Footnote ¹ Others have a more critical view, seeing reconciliation as mainly performative, a chance for settler governments to rebrand themselves as inclusive and progressive, to make settler colonialism appear more palatable to everyone.Footnote ² Still others deny there is any need for changes to the status quo. Indeed, offence is taken when it is suggested that the country is anything other than a model of equal opportunity, liberal democracy, and prosperity.Footnote ³

Consonant with debates on reconciliationFootnote ⁴ (a focus of my previous work, although not a major topic of this study) are ongoing “history wars” about the nature of Indigenous-settler history and ongoing relations within and between communities.Footnote ⁵ This analysis foregrounds the conflicts between settler-based, often celebratory national narratives (which often accompany negative myths against Indigenous Peoples) and Indigenous Peoples and their supporters, who are more focused on challenging these narratives in the quest for historical accuracy and the realization of Indigenous rights. In a Canadian context, dominant historical accounts have at least one social purpose, primarily: to promote belonging for settlers of European origin. They cement close ties to the British and French mother countries of many settlers and demarcate the cultural boundaries into which (often racialized) newcomers are expected to integrate. Such narratives marginalize Indigenous Peoples so that national history is not based on any violent “original sin,” but rather is a record of peaceful, consensual settlement. We see similar discussions in the US, Australia, and ANZ.

An underlying argument here is that European explorers, travellers, and settlers initiated the first “history wars” through the promotion of negative myths about Indigenous Peoples, as an accompaniment to settler colonialism. These “foundational history wars” are understood here as the nineteenth century denial and denigration of Indigenous oral histories, laws, and practices of self-determination. The first iterations of such “wars” were very one-sided, marked by assertions of European and Christian superiority and benevolence. As Gina Starblanket (Cree/Saulteaux, Star Blanket Cree Nation) describes, the settler state has long advanced a dominant narrative that “colonial settlement was negotiated and governed legally and fairly,” using non-violent means designed to “respect and cultivate ideals of human freedom and equality.” However, such “Imperial approaches,” Starblanket recalls, “have always been contested by Indigenous people, who have long pointed to more expansive understandings of the relationships we entered with the Crown and have undertaken sustained critique of violations of this relationship.”Footnote ⁶

Positive myths of settlement were often accompanied by the silencing of Indigenous voices. Silencing includes what Māori educator Liana MacDonald describes as “a racial discourse aligned with state ideologies … that supports ignorance and denial of the structuring force of colonisation.”Footnote ⁷ This process has also been called “colonial unknowing,” an “aggressively made and reproduced” mode of disavowing the settler colonial past and its implications in the present.Footnote ⁸

A series of contemporary or “modern history wars” took place predominantly from the 1960s. Indigenous perspectives have been more critical of mainstream histories than dominant settler accounts, in that they highlight centuries of land dispossession, the use of famine to force Indigenous Peoples onto reserves, the prohibition of languages, spiritual practices, and cultures, the suppression of traditional forms of diplomacy and trade, and the attempted destruction of Indigenous leadership and government.Footnote ⁹ However, these accounts often do not focus on victimization, but rather on the continued vibrancy and agency of Indigenous Peoples as political actors within, outside, and beside the settler state, with millennia of history in the exercise of self-determining rights and practices.Footnote ¹⁰ The emphasis has been on what the late Moana Jackson (Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Porou) called an “ethic of restoration,” on regaining the relationships and balance that have been threatened by ongoing processes of colonization. Crucial to restoring balance is the prioritization of Indigenous stories, rituals, practices, which also implies correcting the misleading stories Europeans have told for many centuries, stories integral to the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples.Footnote ¹¹

This Element identifies and de-normalizes mythistorically grounded racist beliefs, promoted by explorers, settlers, and the state about Indigenous Peoples and history. It attempts to correct a selection of the misperceptions that have developed over the centuries since the exploration, colonization, and settlement of the CANZUS states. The goal is to provide a fuller history that privileges Indigenous perspectives and offers a robust and informed critique of dominant historical narratives.

In many settler states including Canada, myths of peaceful settlement and consensual state formation have been challenged, as Indigenous Peoples gain prominence in national life, and articulate the case for self-determination, the return of lands, and control over their own affairs. These processes, ongoing for decades, are now resulting in tangible changes to national narratives, including recognition of settler state genocide against Indigenous Peoples (Canada, and the US state of California), and federal government support (albeit primarily rhetorical) for Indigenous self-determination. While Canada figures as the primary case study, this analysis also briefly discusses foundational myths in the other CANZUS countries: Australia, ANZ, and USA.

Methodologically, this study draws from documents primarily about Canada, distilled from primary sources written from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present, with some secondary sources as well. The author has identified recurring stereotypes, claims, and partial truths mixed with much misleading information, which together form a series of myths. These are then critically analyzed and refuted, using a combination of historical and contemporary accounts. Identifying and refuting settler myths is a process consistent with the work of contemporary Indigenous academics and community leaders. For example, Bob Joseph (Gwawa’enuxw) recently identified and refuted nine myths about Indigenous Peoples in CanadaFootnote ¹² while Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker do the same for 21 myths about Native Americans in the United States. The myths they identify feed into what they call a “master narrative” about American history and its foundation, justifying systemic racism and ongoing colonization and structural violence against Indigenous Peoples.Footnote ¹³

These myths are foundational, creating interlocking narratives that validate Western settlement at the expense of Indigenous Peoples. This Element proceeds with the following sections. First, it engages with “history wars” over the benign/malign foundations of the country, currently being undertaken in Canada and other western settler states, before turning to a discussion of how we can best understand the context of myths and racism directed against Indigenous Peoples.

The first set of myths described and refuted are attempts to demonstrate that Indigenous Peoples did not and do not possess legitimate claims to the lands and waters on which their ancestors have lived since time immemorial. First, there is the myth that the landmass of Canada is a relatively empty, beckoning land, with a small population. Second, since the ways in which lands were used by Indigenous Peoples did not conform to European forms of land ownership, there is therefore no legitimate Indigenous claim to territory. Similar myths were to be found in Australia, ANZ, and the US. Other cognate myths include the recent origins of Indigenous Peoples from Asia, alongside the peaceful and legitimate nature of European settlement and colonization. Treaties are presented as land surrender documents, as legal transactions where Indigenous leaders consented to the spread of settler government and the relinquishment of their lands and waters in return for a limited range of benefits from the crown.

A second set of myths (sometimes called old-fashioned prejudice) was specifically designed to denigrate Indigenous Peoples. The myth of the doomed race is one example, myths of Indigenous conflict, violence, and lack of civilization, another; both can also be found in other settler states. Equally widespread were myths about the mistreatment of Indigenous women by Indigenous men, amid a general denigration of traditional gender relations. These were often accompanied by myths of Indigenous alcoholism and the need for colonization and missionary conversion to protect Indigenous Peoples from their own excesses, as well as from the “bad” white men, who were contrasted to a range of “good” missionaries, police, and government officials.

A third set of myths relies on more modern forms of prejudice, often epitomized by claims that Indigenous Peoples demand more than their individual fair share of resources and recognition from the country. These myths stem from the claim that Canada is a successful liberal democratic society, a well-functioning meritocracy where everyone can theoretically attain positions of comfort and influence through hard work. The history and legacies of conquest, invasion, and genocide are suppressed in favour of myths of peaceful and collaborative settlement. Settler states can promote narratives of being democratic, tolerant, open, affluent, and multicultural, while at the same time maintaining systems which actively and paternalistically suppress Indigenous Peoples. This section concludes by unpacking myths of meritocracy within a supposedly multicultural state, where difference is to be tolerated within a European settler framework.

The final section analyses a series of myths related to the province of Québec and their distinctive construction of a linguistic, cultural, and lineage-based nation. This nationalism excludes Indigenous Peoples and denies settler identity and responsibility for colonization. Many in Québec reason that they as French Canadians share similar experiences with Indigenous Peoples of being oppressed. This final section of myths includes compact theory, Québec as a French nation, Québec as the victim of English Canada, the myth of a kind Québec towards Indigenous Peoples, and finally, that genetically, French Canadians constitute a Métis nation.

Foundational and Modern History Wars: Conflict over Memory and Representation

This section highlights what can conventionally be seen as the “history wars,” which developed during the 1980s and 90s. These can be termed “modern history wars,” whereas earlier “foundational history wars” took place as the country was being created and settled.

As conventionally understood, for at least four decades, CANZUS states have been the locus of competing narratives over whether the creation of their state was a benign, universally beneficial undertaking, or an inherently negative and genocidal exercise at the expense of Indigenous Peoples, and their traditional relations with lands, waters, and animals.Footnote ²² History wars can be defined as debates over collective memory within a national territory, between those separated by generational, ethnic, ideological or other divisions deemed to be of fundamental importance to members of the groups involved. “Modern history wars” are often prompted by catalytic events. They can develop when Indigenous Peoples, marginalized communities, and revisionist historians and activists seek to counter hegemonic approaches. Exposing the state’s strategic forgetting of history is another crucial element.Footnote ²³

The term “history war” was coined in 1994, when the Smithsonian Institution planned to host an exhibition featuring a moral discussion about whether the US Air Force was justified in the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945. This inaugurated a rhetorical conflict, pitting so-called liberals against conservatives over whether political correctness had become too pervasive in American culture.Footnote ²⁴ Modern history wars became more intense during historical flashpoints – especially commemorations of key signposts in settler history. These include: the 500^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyages in 1992, the Australian bicentennial commemoration of Captain Arthur Phillip’s first fleet in 1988, the 150^th anniversary of Canadian confederation in 2017, and the 250^th anniversary of James Cook’s landing in Aotearoa New Zealand. These celebratory narratives were challenged by Indigenous Peoples with their own memories of these events and their genocidal legacies.Footnote ²⁵

In Australia, the genesis of modern history wars can be traced to bicentennial commemorations, for which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander protesters proposed “a year of mourning.”Footnote ²⁶ These took an important role in public consciousness from 1996 when Prime Minister John Howard condemned the use of “black armband history” to make the balance sheet of Australian history appear overwhelmingly negative when in his perspective the reverse was true.Footnote ²⁷ Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and activists called out the Howard government for donning a “white blindfold” in its understanding of history.Footnote ²⁸ A key focus of discussion was whether genocide was committed in the colonization of Australia, and indeed whether the entire history of the country was marked by continual but different and interlinked forms of genocidal violence. This included eighteenth and nineteenth century massacres and other colonial tactics, as well as the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their parents and communities in the twentieth century.Footnote ²⁹

In Canada, history wars developed in the 1980s and 1990s, largely as a debate between settler scholars about how to approach settler history. Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein emerged as key figures in the debate between “inclusivists” and “nationalists” over the most desirable direction for Canadian history.Footnote ³⁰ Of interest to this study was the later debate about the legacies of colonization in general and the Indian Residential Schools (IRS) in particular during the early 1990s and after. The IRS system was established in the mid-1880s, designed to assimilate Indigenous Peoples into a settler-dominated colonial society. The federal government worked closely with mainline Canadian churches, who were together responsible for running most schools until the 1950s. From 1920 until the 1950s, schooling for First Nations children aged five to sixteen was compulsory and the government saw to it that there were few if any day schools available near First Nations reserves. Children were forcibly removed from their families and communities, and efforts were made to destroy Indigenous languages, cultures, and identities.Footnote ³¹

In 1990, prominent Anishinaabe leader Phil Fontaine (later National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations) openly declared how he was physically and sexually abused and encouraged others to come forward. Eventually, in 1991, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was created to uncover and document the various harms committed against Indigenous Peoples. The Commission’s Report in 1996 highlighted four main types, the first of which concerned widespread abuse in Residential Schools (as well as their goals of assimilation and cultural destruction).Footnote ³²

In 2009, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada began investigations into the full extent of abuses in the IRS system. In 2015 they concluded that cultural genocide was committed, and outlined 94 recommendations to bring about fundamental change to the settler status quo. Other federal government-funded initiatives followed, making important inroads into highlighting the structural racism of the state and its violent and sometimes lethal consequences. These initiatives include the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2016–2019), and the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools (2022–2024).Footnote ³³ Following a visit by the late Catholic Pope Francis in 2022, when the Pope acknowledged that genocide was committed in the IRS system, the Canadian House of Commons in October 2022 unanimously passed a non-binding motion recognizing the crimes of the IRS system as genocide. This admission is rare amongst settler states, and the only other CANZUS government to recognize genocide has been the US state of California, when in 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom used the term in his official apology to Indigenous Peoples. In neither case have governments initiated any new policies to reflect these admission of responsibility.

In understanding any conflict over memory and representation, it is crucial to ask who has the legitimacy to speak for the past. Daniel Woolf highlights how conflict can develop when the past is seen as the “property” of some but not others, and when there are underlying assumptions that some people have the moral or ethical right to “own” the past and interpret it as they think fit, advancing their own view as the only authentic voice.Footnote ³⁴ Settler state myths have been dominant for at least a century and a half, if not longer, and European settlers have not been accustomed to having their understandings of history challenged by Indigenous Peoples or others, although within settler societies there are often vibrant (if circumscribed) debates.

Challenging settler myths may serve as a useful corrective, reducing settler dominance over how knowledge is created and spread. Lisa Monchalin (Algonquin, Métis, Huron) describes how: “General Canadian history has typically minimized or rationalized the realities of colonization,” and when settlers learn about some elements of colonization, there is a tendency for them to distance themselves from the wrongs of the past.Footnote ³⁵ Settlers promoting a conservative view of the nation and its founding may denounce purportedly new narratives as disloyal and distorted portrayals of the past. Often there is a sense that personal and collective identities are threatened when national narratives seem to be under sustained critique for being partial, misleading, or false.Footnote ³⁶

While the majority of Canadians: Indigenous, settler, and arrivant (descendants of Black and other people brought to the Americas against their will),Footnote ³⁷ appear to support some progressive change, there is also backlash. In 2018, the Canadian polling firm Angus Reid charted a division over Indigenous issues between, with those very much against any distinct rights for Indigenous Peoples at 21 percent (the “Hardliners”) with the “Wary” and “Sympathetic” comprising exactly 50 percent of the population, followed by “Advocates” at 29 percent.Footnote ³⁸ While there may be little modus vivendi between Advocates and Hardliners, it is instructive that half of Canadians fall in the middle. History wars involve persuasion – presenting the past and present in such a way that readers, listeners, participants, can be encouraged to take a position and mobilize politically, either to bring change or reinforce the status quo.

Those denying negative aspects of Canadian history may express nostalgia for a European past, through the belief that accounts from previous centuries (written before “wokeism” and political correctness “tainted” freedom of speech) are a more authentic depiction of Indigenous Peoples and Europeans.Footnote ³⁹ The general argument advanced in this study is that Canada was constructed by earlier more hardline versions of today’s Hardliners who engaged in foundational history wars to promote the merits of European colonization and settlement. Negative myths built the country as it is currently constituted. In modified form, the same political parties and institutions have run the country over the past century, and Canadian institutions have not changed in any fundamental way, despite much hopeful rhetoric about overcoming the past and forging new and better relationships.Footnote ⁴⁰ Unfortunately, our country was built on foundations of the denial of Indigenous humanity and civilization, and contemporary denialism continues a long tradition. This is also true in other CANZUS states.Footnote ⁴¹

Myths Against Indigenous Peoples

This Element advances that anti-Indigenous myths provided a permission structure for European settlers to move into someone else’s traditional territories and feel secure and justified in doing so. Myths, as Henry Tudor recalled some time ago, can serve social functions, “either to advocate a certain course of action or to justify acceptance of an existing state of affairs.”Footnote ⁴² Myths are bound up with practical arguments, such as supporting “the claim of a certain group to hegemony, sovereign independence or an extension of territory.”Footnote ⁴³

For Alex Zakaras in his study of foundational myths, clear contrasts are made between the positive characteristics of the group (its virtues, idealized attributes, and values) and “others” who are seen to be threatening, antagonistic, or potentially: a “source of pollution or decay against which struggle was and is necessary.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Zakaras traces settler state consolidation to the development of coherent national myths, able to bind settlers together, “creating new forms of collective identity, of fusing often diverse and far-flung groups with competing cultural, ethnic, and religious attachments into a cohesive national people.”Footnote ⁴⁵ People thus become invested in their myths because these assume fundamental significance to the nation during periods of uncertainty. Chiara Bottici adds that a political myth doesn’t just reproduce what is understood about a given group: “it can also be the means for the construction of an identity yet to come.”Footnote ⁴⁶

Myths helped create order, routine, and some level of predictability and understanding of the human condition. Most myths contain elements of truth, as Joseph notes, but due to the fact that they are often developed for one group and against another, they are also misleading, and can “paint a distorted picture that does not represent reality.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Jackson too notes the central role of myths in colonization, “stories that range from pseudo-scientific and legal rationalisations to blatantly racist presumptions.”Footnote ⁴⁸ In many respects, myths have played a useful psychological role for settlers, streamlining decision-making for those in the dominant group. Less thought is required, and context can pragmatically be ignored. Indeed, one can employ myths to reassure oneself that what on the surface seems extremely unequal and intolerant treatment is in fact normal, unremarkable, and the natural order of things, what Mark Rifkin has identified as “settler common sense.”Footnote ⁴⁹

Eviatar Zerubavel notes the prevalence of denial in most societies, stemming from the individual’s “need to avoid pain,” especially so when “something particularly distressful threatens our psychological well-being.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Indeed, people may engage in “a conspiracy of silence,” where they choose to outwardly ignore a reality known to them all, but which is never discussed in public.Footnote ⁵¹ This can lead to what Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) terms a process of “reification,” in which “a colonising nation or people will tend not to interpret or characterise its political system as one of domination.” Indeed, he observes: “The descendants of those who managed to impose their political system forcibly on nations and peoples now termed ‘Indigenous’ … undoubtedly prefer to frame that system in terms of ‘democracy’ and ‘civilisation’.”Footnote ⁵² These processes enable the flourishing of positive narratives of the state, like Paulette Regan’s critical dissection of Canada as a “nation of peacemakers,” which supports a “myth of innocence” over how and why an Indigenous presence has until recently, been virtually erased from mainstream history and society.Footnote ⁵³

Promoting positive narratives of the settler state, deploying negative myths against those who would undermine it, while simultaneously supressing difficult knowledge, are all part of the how settler states have operated against the sovereignty and wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Goenpul Quandamooka) has described the “great deal of work [necessary] to maintain Canada, the United States, Hawai’i, New Zealand, and Australia as white possessions.” Indeed, she identifies conflicts for spatial recognition taking place in every urban landscape of the settler state where “signs of white possession are embedded everywhere.” By contrast, she reminds us that “Indigenous sovereignties exist here too,” even if settler states try to obscure this evidence.Footnote ⁵⁴

Those supporting mainstream foundational myths may not have malign intentions, and historically, settlers have found it difficult to gain the information and perspective necessary to critically engage with the status quo myths they are being fed. A goal of identifying and refuting anti-Indigenous myths is thus to better educate the settler public, to inform and persuade, so that no one can continue to plausibly deny the negative aspects of colonization and their continued legacies. Joseph puts it that sharing “knowledge and information” has mutual benefit, and “can make the world a better place for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.”Footnote ⁵⁵ A change in mentality can have obvious benefits for Indigenous Peoples. Allan and Smylie note the pervasive nature of racism in government policy documents, educational systems, and through media stories, “contributing to and reinforcing a naturalized kind of racism that permeates Canadian society.” Negative views in turn, “all serve to justify acts of belittlement, exclusion, maltreatment or violence at the interpersonal, societal and systemic levels.”Footnote ⁵⁶

Myth of an Empty Beckoning Land

A key myth of North America during the nineteenth century was the demographic emptiness of the continent. Much of this study’s research focus is on the Plains, what would become the Prairie Provinces (formerly Rupert’s Land at the time of the formation of Canada in 1867). Such myths were used to justify the expansion of settler control over Indigenous territories, while Indigenous land holdings were reduced to a small fraction of their former size. The myth of a numerically small number of Indigenous Peoples helped justify state expansion, given that European migration numbers were large: 1.14 people million migrated to Canada from 1987 to 1914.Footnote ⁷⁷ Reducing the numerical size and territorial reach of Indigenous Peoples were important considerations in justifying this rapid transfer of Europeans to Canada. Equally important was the view that Europeans could claim the right of discovery as the first civilized Christian peoples to explore and inhabit the landmass which would later be called Canada, through what is often called the doctrine of discovery.Footnote ⁷⁸

A key myth held that the future Prairie provinces were sparsely populated by peoples with no governance capability and little understanding of civilization. This section presents these writings in loose chronological order, from the early to mid-twentieth century. British-born writer and historian Emily Weaver’s A Canadian History for Boys and Girls (Reference Weaver1919) promoted myths of a “black-haired, copper-coloured people … thinly scattered all over America.” Weaver’s history recounts Indigenous Peoples as backward, using “clumsy stone hatchets and shell knives,” to engage in “picture-writing – that is, they made rough sketches instead of writing words.”Footnote ⁷⁹ While Indigenous Peoples were an interesting historical curiosity, Weaver assured her young readers that they were “few in number, and, in Canada, are found chiefly on lands set apart for them by the government and in the unsettled regions of the north and west.”Footnote ⁸⁰

Further to this was the claim that Indigenous Peoples had no concept of politically bounded territory, and certainly no institutions of statehood in a European Westphalian sense that could compete with the sovereignty claims of the British. H.G. Mellick, Superintendent of Baptist Missions (Reference Mellick1909) penned this description: “The [Indigenous] race was like sailors who were shipwrecked and drifted in many directions.”Footnote ⁸¹ Percy Evans in his 1914 history of the Prairie Provinces noted the “scattered and migratory tribes of Indians who were allied in loose confederacies,” claiming “The boundaries of their hunting grounds were thus constantly changing.” They were, he avers, “confined to no precise territory.” Settlers could therefore feel no compunction in taking over these lands for farming, since it was unlikely they “were ever very numerous,” and at any rate lived “a purely nomadic existence.”Footnote ⁸²

Humourist and political scientist Stephen Leacock’s later views epitomized a sense of Canada as an empty land, reflecting his blend of conservatism and imperialism. In his 1941 book, he observed that North America “remained, as it had been for uncounted centuries, empty.” While conceding that “prehistoric North America [w]as inhabited by the Indians,” he was quick to note that “Indians were too few to count,” and their “use of the resources of the continent was scarcely more than that by crows and wolves, their development of it nothing.”Footnote ⁸³ The overarching description of Indigenous Peoples as nomadic reduced the impact of their territorial or sovereignty claims. Equally, in his 1943 historical account of the Prairies, Joseph Scott noted: “of course the boundaries of the land claimed by the tribes were not like the boundaries of countries, for the Indians had to move from place to place hunting the animals which supplied them with food.”Footnote ⁸⁴

A primary focus of these myths was to deny sovereignty to Indigenous Peoples. The belief that Indigenous Peoples did not own land nor exercise political functions and create institutions in ways analogous to their European counterparts was proof that they had no government, and therefore no right to exercise self-determination.

The Myth of Recent Asian Origins

From the nineteenth century and into the present, a prominent myth about Indigenous Peoples was their recent Asian origin, journeying to what became Canada through no particular intention, and with no plans to establish permanent foundations of settlement or governance. These claims came at a time when Chinese and Japanese immigration was severely restricted. Journalist and historian Howard Kennedy (Reference Kennedy1925) painted the “Indian” as “a wanderer,” slowly moving from Asia, fishing and hunting with no plans to settle. Rather, they “don’t know where they are going, and don’t much care. They are not looking for a place to settle down in, land of their own to farm, to build a house on.” Thus, they had no ambitions akin to European settlers and were never to be considered competition for the abundant resources available to the growing country. Kennedy recalled: “These first comers have ‘discovered America,’ without knowing it. They have no idea that they are the first to set foot in a ‘new world.’ … They just go on living as they have been used to living.”Footnote ⁸⁵

Newer but nevertheless cognate perceptions of Indigenous Peoples have been promoted in current the Canadian citizenship guide, Discover Canada, crucial reading for all those writing the citizenship exam. First published under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in 2012, it has remained substantially unchanged in its 2021 incarnation (the most recent edition). Rather than engage with settler colonialism, prospective citizens are told that Indigenous Peoples are the first immigrants, given that their ancestors “are believed to have migrated from Asia many thousands of years ago.” Discussion of Indigenous governments and territorial claims are reduced to their being “well established here long before explorers from Europe first came to North America.”Footnote ⁸⁶

In terms of Indigenous history, no sense of territorial ownership, attachment, or government is recognized. Rather: “When Europeans explored Canada they found all regions occupied by native peoples they called Indians.” Their ownership of distinct territories was not discussed. Instead, they are described as “liv[ing] off the land, some by hunting and gathering, others by raising crops.” Discussions of colonial violence are set aside for a vague description of the commonplace nature of warfare amongst “Aboriginal groups as they competed for land, resources and prestige.” Europeans brought change which on balance turned out well, stresses the guide. On the negative side “Large numbers of Aboriginals died of European diseases to which they lacked immunity.” No other causes of death are mentioned, and the story ends happily, as “Aboriginals and Europeans formed strong economic, religious and military bonds in the first 200 years of coexistence which laid the foundations of Canada.”Footnote ⁸⁷

Whether readers encounter older myths or their more contemporary manifestations, both make the case for settler ownership and sovereignty over lands on which Indigenous Peoples had lived for millennia. The focus here was what became known as the “doctrine of a legal vacuum.” Brian Slattery critiques what he terms the myth of Indigenous “wanderers” who “possess[ed] neither sovereignty nor permanent rights of any sort to the territories they occupied.” Indigenous Peoples would present a practical obstacle to colonization, but in legal terms, posed no more of a challenge than “the wild animals of the forests and plains.”Footnote ⁸⁸

Myths of a European Right of Discovery

Selected European myths from the fifteenth century onwards promoted European Catholic forms of control at the expense of Indigenous ownership of their own territories in the so-called “New World.” The original Catholic “doctrine of discovery” harkens back to the fifteenth century, designed to legitimate a global Papal jurisdiction, and any actions necessary to increase Papal influence, including the Crusades and the invasion and conquest of non-Christian lands.Footnote ⁸⁹ A series of Papal “Bulls” (declarations) such as the Inter Caetera (1493) legitimated the conquest of territory and its control by a Catholic monarch, if local populations were “infidels” and “barbarian nations” who had yet to be converted. The Treaty of Torsedillas (1494) territorially divided the “New World” between Spain and Portugal under the guise of converting Indigenous populations. Conversion also became a legitimating factor for the French and the English as they expanded into what later became North America. In 1541, the French king’s commission to explorer Jean de la Rocque included spreading the “Holy Catholic Faith and Catholic Doctrine” as part of the colonizing process. By 1578, English letters patent to explorer Humphrey Gilbert provided authority for him to “discover … such remote, barbarous, and heathen lands, countries, and territories not possessed by any Christian prince or people nor inhabited by Christian people and the same to have, holde, occupy and enjoy.”Footnote ⁹⁰

The English (and later British) would distinguish their forms of conquest as superior, by claiming to deplore the violence of the Spanish and Portuguese. Overt religious motives would be sidelined in favour of arguments stressing European style land occupation and cultivation as the deciding factor in whether Indigenous Peoples owned their own land and possessed sovereignty. Paul DePasquale traces English justifications for colonization to Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), wherein the author outlined how lands could be taken “[w]hen any people holdeth a piece of ground void and vacant to no good or profitable use.”Footnote ⁹¹

As Barbara Arneil has explained, this theoretical proposition would be enhanced by John Locke, in his particular view of colonization in Two Treatises of Government (circa 1689). He rejected Spanish forms of violent territorial conquest and offered instead a series of tests based on rationality and how peoples lived on and related to land. Locke would successfully advocate for a “superior” English Protestant style of proprietorship based on agriculture, industrialization, and trade. Arneil traces a crucial change in the seventeenth century, when the focus of English colonialism shifted from colonial resource exploitation and trade to English settlement and occupation of Indigenous territory in the Americas. The perception of Indigenous Peoples thus changed from being indispensable trading partners to constituting impediments to colonial development.Footnote ⁹²

Reflecting this new attitude to colonization, Locke sought to create a new definition of property. Rights by virtue of occupation were now to be superseded by proof of ownership through particular types of labour: “[T]hose who tilled, enclosed, and cultivated the soul would be its owners.”Footnote ⁹³ By contrast, “natural” or “savage” people did not have any rights to property, and in Locke’s conceptualization, Indigenous Peoples were both “superstitious” and “idle.”Footnote ⁹⁴ His myths were self-serving, and Locke had conflicts of interest, as he profited from the expansion of English agriculture, and the trade in enslaved Africans.Footnote ⁹⁵ In order to operationalize the theory, Locke ignored much in his representation of Indigenous Peoples. Examples of their sophisticated settlements, successful cultivation and farming practices, as well as their entirely reasoned rejection of private property in favour of communal ownership were all suppressed in favour of a mythology that Indigenous Peoples were “nomadic but social, who lacked industry and reason, but had potential for both and knew little about cultivating the land or governing [themselves].”Footnote ⁹⁶

Tied to a Lockean sense of property was the right of discovery. A “settlement thesis” was established, through which British colonizers presented Indigenous nations as being uncivilized and therefore not worthy of consideration as sovereign entities. The concept of Terra Nullius held that there was a jurisdictional vacuum that could be filled by the Crown when they “discovered” and then occupied Indigenous lands. This has been dubbed the discovery paradigm, through which Indigenous rights including “Aboriginal title” flow only from Crown law, and thus are seen to be legally inferior to the sovereign powers of the Crown.Footnote ⁹⁷

A typical example of this thinking can be found in George Bryce’s Reference Bryce1887 Short History of the Canadian People. Bryce was a Presbyterian minister, president of the Royal Society of Canada, and founder of Manitoba College.Footnote ⁹⁸ Europeans claimed Canada by right of discovery, he noted, starting with “a Frenchman of Brittany,” then “English adventurers on Hudson Bay,” followed by the “restless Scottish pioneers,” and “American loyalists.” The story of Canada, which largely excluded Indigenous Peoples was of a “gathering of the races” from several European countries, and their consolidation into one people, operating “under the shelter of Britain,” to eventually assume control of “well-nigh half of North America.”Footnote ⁹⁹

Similarly, Mercer and Robertson’s Public School History of England and Canada (Reference Mercer and Robertson1886) avoided Indigenous Peoples almost entirely, and their section on the “discovery” of America focused on Columbus, while paying homage to the “hardy Norsemen,” and later to Jacques Cartier.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Similarly, in The Imperial Heritage (1898), Ernest Williams stated that Canada “is ours by right of discovery,” largely through the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot, which were commissioned by the English King Henry VII.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The argument here central to this myth was the lack of European-style private land ownership, which denied Indigenous Peoples recognition of their control of lands and waters, as well as their governing capacity.

Throughout the history of English and British settlement in what is now Canada, the doctrines of discovery and Terra Nullius proved central to legitimating the theft of Indigenous lands and the eventual creation of the settler state.Footnote ¹⁰² Despite numerous court decisions challenging these doctrines, they continue to underwrite crown assumptions of state sovereignty and denial of underlying Aboriginal title. As John Borrows (Chippawas of the Nawash) has noted: “It requires a discriminatory denigration of Indigenous peoples’ laws and ways of life to hold that Indigenous title and governance is subject to non-Indigenous paramount interests as a by-product of European sovereign assertions.” In the end, we are left with an unresolved legal problem: “Crown power can be directly traced to discriminatory assumptions rooted in European sovereign assertions when the Crown ‘discovered’ Canada.”Footnote ¹⁰³

In 2023, Pope Francis repudiated the doctrine of discovery, although he did not rescind the Papal bulls on which it was based, nor did he assume Vatican responsibility for their outcomes. Indeed, he claimed that the doctrine was not “part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,” and was “manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Soon after, the Canadian government released a statement noting how the doctrine constituted “a failure of the Catholic Church to uphold the inherent human rights of Indigenous Peoples,” while affirming that the federal government “accepts that ancient doctrines such as this have no place in Canadian law and do not define our ongoing relationships with Indigenous Peoples.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Despite these admissions, however, little has changed in terms of the unbalanced power dynamic between the Canadian settler state which continues to assert crown title, and Indigenous Peoples who have considerably less control over their traditional territories.

Myth of Indigenous Peoples as Doomed Races

The myth that Indigenous Peoples were doomed to disappear was common in the nineteenth century and lent to settler colonialism a sense of historical inevitability. In North America, historians noted the frequent use of “vanishing” as a trope. The romantic ideal of “melting away” suggested that the “disappearance” of Indigenous Peoples, while unfortunate, was really no one’s fault. One might abstractly blame historical inevitability and a Darwinian belief in evolution and “progress.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Late nineteenth-century settler anthropologists drew clear distinctions between what they saw as “primitive” versus “modern” societies. Indigenous Peoples were presented as resistant to change and consigned to antiquity, with anthropologists seeking to document their traditional beliefs and practices, within a context of inevitable decline and disappearance. By contrast, European political and cultural evolution and ascendency would be documented from an entirely different perspective. As Bain Attwood and Fiona Magowan have recounted: “In this grand narrative of progress, ‘primitive,’ oral societies such as Aboriginal ones tended to be precluded since it was held that they were neither capable of change nor compatible with modernity and therefore irrelevant to a study that traced the past becoming the present.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷

That Indigenous Peoples supposedly lived poorly and would inevitably die out was taken for granted by some early (and extremely racist) commentators. Hugh Gray’s Letters from Canada (Reference Gray1809), for example, described Indigenous Peoples as “half naked, wholly covered with dirt, and oily paints, and swarming with vermin; diminutive, and weakly in their persons and appearance.” Grey took their passing for granted: “their numbers decrease every year, if they were wholly extinct, I do not think that human nature would be a great sufferer by it.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸

In Canada, a low tolerance for Western disease and “virgin soil epidemics” was used to excuse the very high death rates of Indigenous Peoples on reserves and in Indian hospitals and residential schools. Sherene Razack observes that as settler colonization proceeded, Indigenous Peoples were marked “materially and symbolically,” as bodies who were “not up to the challenge of modern life,” reinforcing settler claim’s to be the “legitimate heir to the land.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The subtext here was that Indigenous Peoples were part of a pre-colonial past, a pre-civilized environment, and thus did not belong in modern settler colonial society.

Julian Ralph, in a Reference Ralph1892 collection of historical sketches, lamented the passing of Indigenous Peoples as regrettable but inevitable. His book began with a type of false praise for the supposedly carefree Indian, which he contrasted to the European. Civilization, he remarked, brought with it “many rules and responsibilities and so much hard work.” This he contrasted to the life of the “wild Indian,” who possessed “the greatest amount of pleasure and the least share of the care that men can hope for.” Western civilization doomed Indigenous Peoples, and while sad, was not really anyone’s fault. Ralph reminisced: “They lived in their war-paint and by the chase. Now they are caged. They live unnaturally and die as unnaturally, precisely like other wild animals shut up in our parks.”Footnote ¹¹⁰

Methodist missionary John Maclean (Reference Maclean1896) provided a more global historiographical appraisal of “doomed” Indigenous races. In his comparative history, there was “a tendency to extinction among all savage nations, and notably amongst the American tribes who are the heirs of a deteriorating civilization.”Footnote ¹¹¹ This was not unique however, given “evidences of decay” “amongst the tribes on every island and continent,” including Indigenous Tasmanians, Australians, Hawaiians, Māori, and Fijians.Footnote ¹¹² Much of this appraisal, as Ralph later revealed, was an argument for missionary conversion as well as Indigenous assimilation into farming and industrial life throughout the British Empire.

Similar mythology could be found elsewhere. In Australia, overtly racist views held that Aborigines were fated to disappear due to their putative inferiority, according to eighteenth century accounts, as “one degree above brute creation,” “the lowest race in the scale of humanity,” “the connecting link between man and monkey tribe,” and “a species of … tail-less monkeys.”Footnote ¹¹³ In ANZ, Māori were often cast as a model or superior Indigenous People. For novelist Anthony Trollope, they were “the most civilised” of all “savages,” and in racial hierarchies, Māori were usually placed just under Europeans, above Aborigines and southern Africans. Imagery of Māori as “selected stock” who had braved long voyages to reach New Zealand prompted such epithets as “Vikings of the Sunrise” and “Aryan Māori.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ This however did not prevent some European theorists concluding that Māori too were destined to disappear, and belief of the inevitable “passing of the Māori” was exemplified through missionary John Wohlers’ 1881 prophesy that “As a race they had outlived their time.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ Belief in Māori disappearance could be found at least as far back as 1835, when the “British Resident,” James Busby noted that Māori themselves felt their demise was inevitable:  “[T]hey conclude that the God of the English is removing the aboriginal inhabitants to make room for them.”Footnote ¹¹⁶

Given myths about the decline of Indigenous Peoples, then, it was important for settlers to model gratitude and paternalistic kindness because they would inevitably inherit and control whatever good things Indigenous Peoples had discovered or invented. This performance of gratitude signalled the passing of ownership from the original inhabitants to the new and more worthy inheritors of the land. Kidd outlined in Canadians of Long Ago that while their “old life is now almost gone,” it is crucial that settlers remember the “gifts which the Indians have given us.” This included showing trails and canoe routes, providing food and shelter, and pemmican, all of which “helped greatly to make exploration easier.”Footnote ¹¹⁷

Within the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs, the myth of doomed Indigenous Peoples remained salient for some time, although by the of the nineteenth century, it was a theme waning in importance. Superintendent General Clifford Sifton wrote in his 1904 Annual Report: “It seems difficult in some quarters to get rid of the idea, at one time doubtless quite justified, that the Indian is a dying race, doomed to extinction before the advance of civilization, but facts and statistics fail to support this view of the situation.” He nevertheless noted that despite advances and his own optimism, “In so far as some few tribes are concerned it would appear as if there were something endemic in their constitution … which suggests their ultimate disappearance, unless it can be discovered and remedied.”Footnote ¹¹⁸

The tone of this myth was somewhat regretful, but also optimistic in terms of the prospects for European newcomers. Indigenous Peoples were fated to disappear, and therefore, there was no need for settlers to plan long-term institutions that could incorporate them as equals. Nor would it be necessary to create syncretic institutions to somehow combine Indigenous and European elements that could bridge different governance and legal traditions. Instead, the myth implied European cultural and (often assumed) racial superiority. As such, while one might personally lament the situation, little could be done to go against the inevitable forward march of history.

Myth of Treaties as Surrender Documents

Tied to myths of a sparsely populated continent, was the myth that the treaties eventually signed in some parts of Canada between some Indigenous nations and the crown constituted land and sovereignty surrender documents. The predominant myth promoted by the federal government has been of treaties as, one-time transactional rather than ongoing relational agreements.Footnote ¹²⁷ Implicit too was the assumption that there were no valid treaties between Indigenous nations (from a Western perspective) before these land surrender agreements were initiated.

A 1967 publication by the Indian Affairs clearly articulated the surrender myth. The treaty-making process was contextualized as a response to Indigenous unease “at the influx of settlers,” the reduction of the bison (buffalo) and general concerns for the future. Treaties from 1870 are undertaken with benevolence on the part of the crown, to provide security for Indigenous Peoples through “the extinction of Indian title.” From this period onwards, First Nations leaders supposedly gave up land and sovereignty. Treaty 1 (August 1871) was described as a surrender document for a large tract of land in southern Manitoba. Treaty 2 was described as a “surrender from the Chippewa Indians” of several tracts of land. Treaty 3 was also described as the ceding of land; Treaty 4 was the “surrender of a tract of land.” Later treaties used similar language, with the government generally outlining the terms of the treaties to include “the relinquishment of the Indian right and title” to specific lands. As a result: “The Indians had permission to hunt in the ceded territory and a fish in the waters thereof, as long as it remained the property of the Crown. … ”Footnote ¹²⁸

The treaties, according to this myth, involved the surrender of land and sovereignty to the British (later the Canadian) crown, in return for various benefits from the state, including permission to hunt on the ceded territories, to fish, gain some annuities, and live on some lands aside for reserves and farms. Other benefits included agricultural implements, farm animals, sometimes healthcare, and provision for the establishment of schools on reserve.Footnote ¹²⁹ By 2023, the federal government continued the same argument, seeing the 11 numbered treaties as “land surrenders on a huge scale,” bringing Indigenous Peoples in the view of the government “under the jurisdiction of the Dominion of Canada and its laws.” While noting that some Indigenous leaders were unhappy with the arrangements, there is certainly no attempt to refute the land surrender claims.Footnote ¹³⁰

The focus here was legitimating European forms of governance. The myth of surrender assumed that Indigenous Peoples recognized that they would inevitably disappear, and that their lifestyles and traditions were civilizationally inferior. The myth assumes that Indigenous leaders sought to sign treaty in order to guarantee the survival of their people within a European institutional structure. We know from Indigenous oral histories and the work of Indigenous treaty scholars that the myth is untrue. Treaties were to form the basis for ongoing and enduring relationships between treaty partners. They offered the potential for treaty federalism that could bring together Indigenous and settler orders as distinct governments but in ways that were mutually beneficial.Footnote ¹³¹

That Indigenous nations were self-determining political actors was affirmed by the British Crown through the 1764 Treaty of Niagara, signed with numerous Indigenous nations. The Treaty recognized Indigenous ownership of the land and premised further British settlement on Indigenous consent. It established clear lines of authority, and it gave the British Crown responsibility for keeping local colonial administrations in line so they would not bother Indigenous Peoples in the practice of their governments and in their use of their resources and lands. At Niagara, Two Row Wampum belts were exchanged, conveying for Indigenous Peoples an “understanding of a mutual relationship of peace and non-interference in each other’s way of life,” as John Borrows described it. The treaty’s oral implications recognized Indigenous self-government and sovereignty.Footnote ¹³² The Covenant Chain belt, also part of the treaty process, depicted two individuals holding hands, representing distinct peoples who were also interdependent.

These periods of treaty-making coincided with the relative strength of Indigenous Peoples. Early agreements dealt with peace, friendship, and trade, and they were often conducted on terms of equality, carefully observing Indigenous diplomatic protocols, such as smoking a calumet, exchanging gifts, intermarrying to promote kinship relations, and other means. Later periods of treaty-making from the late eighteenth century were marked by a decline in Indigenous power and land holdings, and a commensurate increase in the relative power and size of European populations.Footnote ¹³³

From Canada’s first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald onwards, settler governments engaged in patterns of obfuscation, and employed translators who equivocated the surrender clauses of treaties when negotiating terms with Indigenous leaders.Footnote ¹³⁴ Contra the myth outlined in the previous section, Indigenous leaders never agreed to an absolute surrender of territory, which was neither part of the vocabulary nor the conceptual worldviews of Plains peoples.Footnote ¹³⁵ For example, the Cree word for sale is “Atawagiwa,” which is never used for land, while terms for land transfer are “eskonigan (to share) or kitieynamatin (to yield for use).”Footnote ¹³⁶ This conforms loosely to the European legal concept of usufruct, whereby someone may enjoy the use and benefit of a property even if it is owned by someone else. Sharon Venne (Notokwew Muskwa Manitokan) clarifies that male Indigenous leaders who took treaty had neither the power nor the mandate to surrender territory. Leaders represented and followed the directions of their community, and did not have the legitimacy to sign away “the land, water, trees, mountains, resources above and below the ground, animals, birds, fish and all other living things.”Footnote ¹³⁷

Gordon Christie (Inupiat/Inuvialuit) notes a fundamental contradiction between Indigenous views of sovereignty and that of the Crown. He writes: “Indigenous communities and nations continue to assert independent legal and political authority over their lands, waters, and peoples, while we see presumptions in Canadian law and policy that indigenous legal and political authority either no longer exists, or that to the extent it does there’s no longer independent, that it is “merged” into crown sovereignty.”Footnote ¹³⁸ This was Crown mythology, and no such legal surrender of territory by Indigenous nations took place. Sheldon Krasowski’s detailed analysis of the first seven numbered treaties on the Canadian Prairies demonstrates that the oral agreements and the notes of the negotiations are very clear. Chiefs on behalf of their people agreed to land sharing relationships in return for treaty benefits from the crown: “including annuity payments, reserved lands, education, and assistance with the transition to agriculture.” However: “they certainly did not surrender the land. It was to remain Indigenous.”Footnote ¹³⁹

In Canada, the desire of Indigenous First Nations, individually and through collective bodies, to have the Crown honour its treaty commitments has continued. A good example is the 1978 “Position Paper” by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians (which represents Indigenous nations in this province):

By 2010, the (slightly renamed) Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations again articulated this perspective: “Indians retained the right to govern themselves. The Treaty process did not diminish Indian Government but rather confirmed its existence. When the Government negotiated with the Chiefs and signed the Treaty documents they were recognized as legitimate leaders of legitimate bodies.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ The Assembly of First Nations (the national lobbying organization for Canadian First Nations) has maintained the same view, while engaging in what might be described as creating their own myths about Europeans. Their Constitutional Report (1992) described First Nations as “The founding people, because their ancestors were living here on turtle island, with their own laws and institutions, before the Celts swarmed over Britain and the Gauls invaded what is now France.”Footnote ¹⁴²

Indigenous Peoples had millennia long-histories of making treaties before the Europeans arrived. They developed complex and sophisticated cultures and systems of governance, law, and defence, as well as trade networks and military alliances. They maintained diplomatic protocols that involved the exchange of gifts, ceremonies such as pipe smoking, the negotiation of treaties, and they kept records of these diplomatic activities in a wide range of forms.Footnote ¹⁴³ Of the early treaties, the Indigenous-led Yellowhead Institute notes that they “reflected a world where diverse communities should share a geography if they collectively worked towards co-managing the contents of the bowl or dish, “as long as the grass grows” or “the world stands.”Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Many examples exist. Venne cites the pre-colonial Cree-Dene Treaty which demarcated specific territories for each nation on either side of the Peace River and continues to be honoured.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Aimée Craft (Anishinaabe-Métis) carefully outlines the historic alliance system between three Anishinaabe nations (The Council of Three Fires) as an example of an enduring treaty relationship. This Council in turn maintained long-term alliances with others nations like the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) and the Sioux (Dakota).Footnote ¹⁴⁶

Further to these forms of human diplomacy, Indigenous Peoples also have a long history of treaty-making with non-human living beings. Human-to-human treaties were but one iteration of a long-term complex process involving mutual relationship-building founded on principles of enduring respect and reciprocity. For Yellowhead, relationships with animals were central to the survival and identity of the nation:

Treaties with Europeans can through this optic be understood as bringing newcomers into a web of long-term treaty relationships. Canada’s assumption of responsibility for interpreting treaty, has resulted, Gina Starblanket observes, in “incoherent,” and “misinhabited” interpretations. These fail to recognize Indigenous understandings of treaty as “frameworks for relating,” representing “diplomatic processes for negotiating relations of non- violent and generative co-existence between living beings in shared geographies.”Footnote ¹⁴⁸ These points articulate that the final goal of treaty-making was not European-Indigenous relationships but sense of balance and reciprocity between all inhabitants of a particular territory. This view can provide a deeper historical context for understanding the significance of treaty in many Indigenous nations.

Old-Fashioned Myths: Conflict, Cruelty, and Superstition

This section of the Element may be triggering for readers, because it outlines racist views, designed to strike a combination of fear, revulsion, and pity in settler readers.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Such myths presented Indigenous Peoples as irrational, cruel, and childlike. The upshot was that they could not govern themselves and thus needed Europeans to intervene with Western order and government. These myths stressed the desirability and necessity of European government and law, and suggested that Indigenous Peoples did not have the capacity to govern themselves in ways which were peaceable, predictable, and civilized. The focus therefore was creating a system based solely on European conceptions of good governance.

The myth of the warlike and cruel Indian was commonly found in European traveller accounts and school textbooks. British major George Warburton (Reference Warburton1857) outlined: “The rudest form of human society known in the old world, was far advanced beyond that of the mysterious children of the West, in arts, knowledge, and government.”Footnote ¹⁵⁰ John Bourinot’s Canada (1897) featured a section on Indigenous Peoples, who were derided for their “savage nature,” animated by “animal passion” and lacking in “the purity of love.” He wrote: “Prisoners were treated with great ferocity, but the Iroquois exceeded all nations in the ingenuity of torture. Stoicism and endurance, even heroic, were characteristics of Indians generally … ”Footnote ¹⁵¹

William Clement’s History of the Dominion of Canada (Reference Clement1897) described Indigenous men as being “of unclean habits and without morals,” noting: “Upon the war-path he was cruel, tomahawking, scalping and torturing with fiendish ingenuity. A stoic fortitude when himself tortured was about his only heroic quality.”Footnote ¹⁵² Historian George Wrong’s work (Reference Wrong1935) continued a similar theme: “[S]ome tribes practised revolting cruelties and it was true of most Indians that they were lazy, dirty, vain and arrogant.”Footnote ¹⁵³ Indigenous Peoples, he argued, had no regard for British conventions of war. Indeed, in their warfare, “primitive conditions” created a code which “justified anything in order to kill the enemy … They tortured to death and even ate prisoners.” As such, he appeared to find little problem with the fact that “[a]ll this caused in the British officers the angry conviction that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴

These views were also prevalent in Canadian government publications. For example, Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Frank Oliver, in his Annual Report for 1910, described an Indigenous “indifference to human life and suffering,” which “still to no small extent pervades the Indian population.” His hope was that “dissemination of Christianity and expansion of the some-what curtailed limits of their knowledge and interests may gradually work a change in this regard.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵

It is worthwhile considering the eminent positions of many of these commentators, who represented part of the intellectual elite of the settler state at that time. Bourinot served as chief clerk of the Canadian House of Commons, and helped found the Royal Society of Canada (the preeminent organization of academics), of which he was later its president. Clement was a retired judge based in British Columbia, while Wrong was an ordained Anglican minister, a fellow of the Royal Society and head of the Department of History at the University of Toronto. These men were some of the architects of Canadian academic life and contributed to the cultural foundations for how the country was imagined and settlement justified.

Myths Against Indigenous Women as a Justification for Colonization

Throughout North America’s long history of colonization, gender myths have been used against Indigenous Peoples, with Indigenous women as particular targets of violence.Footnote ¹⁶³ Traditional Indigenous matrilineal societies were especially targeted by patriarchal colonizing government officials and missionaries. In Canada, the Indian Act legally alienated many Indigenous women from their communities, while creating and implementing an elected band council system dominated by men. The National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019) engaged in a detailed study of gender myths, to document why Indigenous women and girls were targeted with violence and death at a rate almost six times higher than their white counterparts. The Inquiry noted the evolution of three historically predominant myths which are still influential today. The “Queen” image depicted an older woman, “militant and mothering,” a strong matriarchal figure. Second was the “Indian Princess,” a more sexual, girlish, female figure, more easily subject to assimilation and cooption. Indigenous women came to symbolize “virgin land that was open for consumption to settlers.”Footnote ¹⁶⁴

With the occupation and takeover of Indigenous lands, together with Indigenous resistance, the third image of the “squaw” was used to justify territorial colonization, through the belief that Indigenous Peoples were uncivilized. As the Inquiry notes: “The term “squaw” literally means dirty, immoral, and unworthy; it is the antithesis to the traditional Victorian woman.” It was used to justify mistreatment and violence against Indigenous women, who were stereotyped as unfit mothers who could not care for their children. As well, the image of “easy squaws” helped promote unchecked violence, permitting “Indigenous women to be blamed for the sexual deviance of white settler men.”Footnote ¹⁶⁵ The National Inquiry documented the long history of hyper-sexualization of Indigenous women, especially the false belief that they were promiscuous. This served the interests of settler men who could feel justified in demonstrating racism, while also sexually assaulting them.Footnote ¹⁶⁶

At times, Indigenous women were seen as a hindrance to Indigenous men when the state sought to civilize or “advance” them. For example, a 1909 House of Commons Sessional Paper would target Indigenous women: “No sooner do the men earn some money than the women want to go and visit their relations on some other reserve, or else give a feast or dance to their friends … . The majority of (the women) are discontented, dirty, lazy and slovenly.”Footnote ¹⁶⁷ The perpetuation of negative myths about Indigenous women helped justify their mistreatment, and as the Inquiry notes, “relieved officials, police, and non-Indigenous settlers of all blame – or at least of any crime.”Footnote ¹⁶⁸

At other times, Indigenous men were the focus of attack, with women portrayed as hard-working but long-suffering victims. Warburton’s Reference Warburton1857 account is an early example of this racist genre. Indigenous men were accused of “loiter[ing] away their time in thoughtless indolence,” refusing to do “the necessary industries” of life to the extent that “the greater part of the labor is performed by women, and men will only stoop to those portions of the work which he considers less ignominious.”Footnote ¹⁶⁹

Bryce, in his Short History similarly identified amongst Indigenous Peoples “a strong sentiment as to the inferiority of woman,” who functioned as “the slave of the family.” He continued: “Woman must strike the tent and erect it, must do the great share of the burden-bearing on the march, must paddle the canoe on the voyage and portage the cargo about the rapids – she, in short, but attends the footsteps of her stalwart lord, like the spaniel, to fetch and carry.”Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Maclean’s account (Reference John1892) was little different: “Amongst the Blackfeet, marriage is simply a bargain between the suitor and the young woman’s father, for a certain number of horses.” And: “When the husband became angry with his wife, he beat her with impunity; when he wished her no longer, he sold her, and when she was found guilty of adultery, her nose was cut off.”Footnote ¹⁷¹

In his 1901 Story of the Dominion John Hopkins claimed that Indigenous man, “treated his women as do all savage peoples, and considered himself far superior to the necessities of labour or servitude.”Footnote ¹⁷² The myths, needless to say, where not rooted in fact. As David Smits noted many decades ago, such gendered misperceptions were often a form of European self-denial and a projection of their own sexism, with Indigenous Peoples as a “negative reference groups representing exact counter-images of Euroamericans’ ideal sexual statuses and roles.”Footnote ¹⁷³ Smits put it down to a mixture of envy and resent, used to obscure the reality that settler women were not well treated and had fewer rights in their society than did Indigenous women in theirs.Footnote ¹⁷⁴

The National Inquiry highlighted serious problems of gender violence in Canada, including within Indigenous communities. Some Indigenous commentators make the argument that this must be first understood as the ongoing and intergenerational product of colonization. In a recent intervention, Mi’kmaq social worker Cyndy Baskin refutes the myth that there is some characterological defect that manifests itself in violence towards women. Rather, she traces an “ethic of domination” as the primary causal factor, attributing intimate violence to colonialism, assimilation, and cultural genocide.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ Engaging with the histories and legacies of colonization helps put this violence into context: “economic and social deprivation, substance misuse, multigenerational and collective trauma, the breakdown of healthy family life, and the theft of traditional values.”Footnote ¹⁷⁶ Her understanding of traditional views holds that “family violence rarely existed prior to the breakdown of traditional societies caused by colonization.” Women and men were seen as equal, albeit with different roles and responsibilities. Women were sacred because of their ability to give life, and the role of women as first teachers was in no way inferior to the role of men who were tasked with providing for and protecting the people.Footnote ¹⁷⁷

Intergenerational violence due to internalized patriarchal colonial norms and patterns means that solutions to violence against women may need to involve changes within Indigenous communities as they prepare for self-determination. Rauna Kuokkanen (Sami) articulates the case for ending colonization and patriarchy simultaneously, as both “relations of domination” are “nested,” founded on “violence, unequal social and material relations, and deeply held, sometimes unconscious beliefs.” Otherwise, expressions of Indigenous self-determination could perpetuate settler colonialism, even within Indigenous-led institutions.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ Kuokkanen’s focus is on stopping both forms of violence together, as solving one without addressing the other will be counterproductive. This is not to romanticize or essentialize Indigenous societies as entirely free of gender inequality, as some were more matriarchal and egalitarian than others. However, there is overwhelming evidence that most Indigenous societies had much stronger matriarchal traditions than anything Europe had to offer at that time.Footnote ¹⁷⁹

Myths of Indigenous Alcoholism

Like the previous characterological attacks, myths of an Indigenous predisposition for alcohol were instrumental in disparaging their rationality and responsibility, reducing their agency, in favour of arguments for settler state control of Indigenous bodies and communities. The idea that they were temperamentally unfit to govern was key, and these myths were also used to justify removing children from their families and communities. The myth held that Indigenous Peoples had a low tolerance for alcohol, coupled with an almost insatiable desire to consume it. These myths were widespread throughout the former British Empire and helped promote the merits of colonization.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ In a Canadian context, myths of alcoholism were commonly promoted by white travellers, missionaries, and other commentators. Such views were widely found in school textbooks, government documents, and in the media. These were examples of sedimented prejudices which made the case for more settler colonialism, more surveillance and policing. Saving Indians from themselves became a strong justification for the expansion of missionary activity, the spread of state control, the reduction in lands for Indigenous Peoples and the denigration of their laws, governance, and spiritual practices.

These myths exaggerated the numbers of people susceptible to alcohol abuse, and conspicuously ignored environmental factors (loss of lands, community, employment, and freedom) that created the conditions for alcoholism to spread. Further, such ingrained views were never based on any comparative assessment of settler drinking habits. Alcohol consumption was weaponised against Indigenous Peoples by the state, through the passage of the 1857 Gradual Civilization Act and the later Gradual Enfranchisement Act. Claims of alcohol abuse could be used by the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs to strip someone of the very basic benefits accruing to them by virtue of being Indigenous. Métis journalist Chelsea Vowel identifies a three-stage process: alcohol was intentionally introduced by white traders and settlers. It was then banned due to claims that Indigenous Peoples were genetically prone to alcoholism. Any alcohol consumption was classified by the state as “abuse,” even if considerably less was consumed than in settler homes. Severe penalties were allocated against Indigenous Peoples, which included the removal of children, denial of rations, and sometimes imprisonment.Footnote ¹⁸¹

Claims of Indigenous alcoholism were widespread in official government documents, especially in annual reports by Indian Affairs; this theme remained consistent over time. In 1880, Superintendent General Edgar Dewdney observed: “The effect upon Indians generally of the immoderate use of ardent spirits is to render them frenzied – they completely lose their self-control.” Spirits, he argued, “arouse in him his savage nature afresh, and to lead him to the commission of the most fiendish crimes.”Footnote ¹⁸² By 1898, James Smart, Deputy Superintendent General, noted a decline in what he called “the drinking class,” with the rise of temperance on reserves. However, there were still dangers, and “liquor, if indulged in at all, provoke[s] a far stronger craving in an Indian than in an ordinary white man,” and will “render him reckless as to the cost at which he gratifies the passion when excited.”Footnote ¹⁸³

In 1907, Frank Pedley, Deputy Superintendent General, echoed similar views, noting: “there is no one vice so dangerous to Indians as that of indulgence in strong drink, for not only are they peculiarly predisposed by temperament to such indulgence, but they lack the stamina of constitution which enables white men longer to resist its deleterious action, and when under its immediate influence they more completely lose control of themselves in all directions.” The myth of alcoholism was often coupled with the belief in redemption through Christianity and missionary activity. For Pedley, conditions had improved, largely due to the work of Indian agents, supported by “the sympathy of the great majority of the Indians, who themselves recognize the danger to their race.” However, he primarily applauded “the missionaries of the gospel who labour among them [and] deserve much of the credit.”Footnote ¹⁸⁴

As with government publications, school textbooks and general histories echoed the same mythology, including a stock morality play that pitted Indigenous Peoples as victims against selfish traders (the bad white men) versus the good white men from the government and the missions. For many settlers, conversion was one of the best antidotes to the problems supposedly plaguing Indigenous communities. Christianity and European civilization were presented as more egalitarian and democratic than traditional Indigenous societies, and more suited to cope with the rapidly changing world. David Duncan’s Reference Duncan1908 history of the Prairie provinces extolled the “Jesuit missionaries,” who risked “their lives and endured great hardships in order to bring the Christian religion to the Indians and train them in habits that would make them more happy and more healthy.” He compared these to the fur traders who, by contrast, sought wealth at the expense of the “ignorant Indians” by encouraging “fire-water.”Footnote ¹⁸⁵ Percy Evans (Reference Evans and Brown1914) credited the missionaries and their “noble work” in “dealing with these degenerate descendants of a once mighty and noble race.”Footnote ¹⁸⁶ He echoed Duncan’s praise of the labours of Jesuit missionaries, for being “one of the noblest annals in the history of the world,” braving “untold dangers and miseries” to spread the gospel.Footnote ¹⁸⁷

Others, however, noted that Christians should do more, lamenting how many Christian settlers were too passive in the face of the whiskey trade. Mellick for example (Reference Mellick1909) articulated: “The bad white man gives him the black drink, and the Christian white man stands by and sees the helpless Indian debased and robbed of all that is left to him worth possessing and does little to protect or help him.” It was therefore the role of the “good” white man to intervene.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ Mellick regretted the lost opportunity to use goodness to promote full assimilation. Had Indians been “treated in a truly Christian manner and had a Christian example being set before them, they would be ‘White Indians’ today, or at least measure well up to the standard of good Christian citizens.”Footnote ¹⁸⁹

Thompson Ferrier, Methodist minister and former Principal of the Brandon Indian Residential School in the province of Manitoba, conveyed a similar theme in his Reference Ferrier1912 book, noting how “the white man’s vices have taken a deeper root than his virtues. His fire-water and the diseases he has introduced have demoralized whole tribes.”Footnote ¹⁹⁰ Weaver’s Reference Weaver1919 school textbook echoed a similar theme of an Indigenous problem with “fire-water”: “When once the passion for drink seized them they would part with all they had to obtain it. Some even sold their children for the sake of getting ‘French milk’ as they called it.”Footnote ¹⁹¹

Louis Norman Tucker’s Reference Tucker1914 appeal to “protect the native races” included gratitude to the Indians for allowing settlers to “inherit … this magnificent Dominion.” What follows is a typical mea culpa: “We have destroyed their hunting-grounds and taken their livelihood from them. We have decimated them with our diseases and our fire water, and degraded them with our vices.” The solution however lay in more and better British civilization, not less, to encourage quicker adaption to settler ways. Citizenship was one obvious solution, and Tucker also cited approvingly the “splendid instruments” possessed by the state, including the Reserves, and “the complete system of Boarding, Residential and Industrial Schools.”Footnote ¹⁹²

Weaving patriotism into this too, Canada was presented as the positive Indigenous-friendly nation protecting them from the evils of the American whiskey trade. In overtly racist language, Evans blamed illicit American traders for “rapidly reducing the Redskins into a liquor sodden race of degenerates, quarrelsome, dangerous, and useless.” He concluded: “Apparently the whiskey bottle was fast becoming the God of the Indian, and the ‘blessings’ of civilization were being poured down his throat instead of being instilled into his brain.” Evans’ goal, it seems, was to justify the expansion of European settlement, especially the permanent presence of the Northwest Mounted Police, to, as he puts it “supervise the Indian tribes and to stamp out the nefarious practice of supplying the Redskins with strong drink.”Footnote ¹⁹³

By 1961 the tone of commentary around claims of Indigenous alcoholism had changed, but the underlying assumptions behind the myth remained. A reference paper from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration noted of Indigenous Peoples: “Liquor has presented a special problem.” As such, the government: “thought necessary to control the liquor traffic with Indians,” through special legislation prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol “except for medicinal purposes.”Footnote ¹⁹⁴

Myths of Meritocracy and the Liberal Democratic (Racial) State

A number of modern prejudices are based on denigrating Indigenous Peoples for their seeming inability to assimilate into the settler state, which is presented as a neutral container with universally beneficial properties. In his discussions of settler colonialism throughout the CANZUS states, Robert Nichols has developed the term “Settler Contract” to describe “the strategic use of the fiction of a society as the product of a ‘contract’ between its founding members when it is employed in these historical moments to displace the question of that society’s actual formation in acts of conquest, genocide and land appropriation.”Footnote ²⁰⁴ This is true of all settler states, including Australia, ANZ, and the USA.

Bain Attwood notes the widespread acceptance of simplistic myths that legitimate the nation and largely ignore the violence on which it was founded. These “provid[e] a simple charter for the nation’s present and future rather than seeking to understand the past in all its messiness.”Footnote ²⁰⁵ Absent such acknowledgment, it becomes easier to spread the myth that the settler state is a land of equal opportunity, with everyone having the same life chances, irrespective of Indigeneity, race, gender, or sexuality.

Historical narratives promote the fairness and equality of the Canadian system, which universally rewards personal merits such as hard work, talent, and ingenuity. The established order, despite its inequalities and hierarchies, is legitimate because settlers have earned what they have. Sheelah Mclean (a settler teacher and one of the founders of the Indigenous-led activist movement Idle No More) paraphrases her family’s thinking: they gained “social and political status in society through intelligence and hard work alone.” There is much obfuscation and denial, however, as racially dominant groups have far more access to resources, opportunities, and power, which have been deliberately denied to Indigenous Peoples and racialized groups. As she explains: “The myth of meritocracy reinforces liberal individualism, providing the public with racist explanations for the vast inequalities that exists between Indigenous people and white settler society.”Footnote ²⁰⁶

As Vowel notes however, Canada has never had a level playing field, and historical injustice is not over – there has not been a “magical moment” where “contemporary fairness” has replaced centuries of injustice.Footnote ²⁰⁷ A staple of settler colonial theory is that the structures established by the state are fundamentally unequal towards Indigenous Peoples. Whether consciously or not, as per Lorenzo Veracini, settlers have “inherited structures of domination that are inherently unjust.” This renders settlers complicit in maintaining the structures of settler colonialism. Rather than the system running along parallel lines with forms of Indigenous governance, or excluding them, it was designed to replace them: “Canada as a settler colonial polity was not made without Indigenous peoples, it was made against them.”Footnote ²⁰⁸ The belief in a Canadian meritocracy remains crucial to this country’s appeal; most settlers (even the newest ones) are emotionally invested in this idea. This social contract is simple to grasp: if newcomers work hard, follow the laws and rules, they will reap rewards for themselves, and what they gain can become private property, guaranteed by the state, and then passed along to their descendants in perpetuity.

Myths of Meritocracy and Multiculturalism: The Colour-Blind Society

As Canada changes demographically, and more racialized newcomers immigrate, multiculturalism and tolerance for diversity allows the country to be more welcoming. However, multiculturalism can also dilute Indigenous rights, to promote soft cultural rights at the expense of implementing hard rights. Multicultural models can purportedly accommodate Indigenous Peoples, promoting a social and economic contract whereby anyone who is willing to contribute to Canadian society can belong. This view is not new. Paul Chartrand has noted a “strong public perception that views Aboriginal peoples as historically disadvantaged racial minorities rather than distinct societies of an inherently political nature, societies which are relevant political communities entitled to participate in crafting a legitimate political order.”Footnote ²³³

The history and ongoing practices of settler colonialism are largely erased from view. Again, Discover Canada offers a contemporary interpretation, proudly claiming that the country is a “land of immigrants” since, over the past two centuries, “millions of newcomers have helped to build and defend our way of life. Many ethnic and religious groups live and work in peace as proud Canadians.”Footnote ²³⁴ Canada is seen as a society not based on dominant races, cultures, or languages, but potentially open to embracing all peoples. The structural elements of the state, especially its institutions, are not recognized as being settler colonial, British and French, but rather as having universal merit.Footnote ²³⁵ A 2019 Environics survey indicated that a large proportion of respondents felt that Indigenous rights were not distinctive and that an equality paradigm should inform government decision-making: “48 percent see Indigenous Peoples as being just like other cultural or ethnic groups in Canada’s multicultural society, while 42 percent see them as having unique rights as the first inhabitants of the continent.”Footnote ²³⁶

Early myths of meritocracy conveniently elided the strongly racially biased decisions about who could enter Canada and who was denied. Restrictive “White Canada” immigration policies targeted Asians and South Asians in particular, and immigration policies were designed to encourage more white Europeans to become settlers. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King famously sought to exclude Asian immigrants on the premise that they would “change the fundamental composition of the Canadian population.” Later decision-makers would couch the policies in terms of attracting “immigrants from countries with political and social institutions similar to our own” to quote Jack Pickersgill, MacKenzie King’s Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.Footnote ²³⁷

In 1947, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Louis St Laurent created the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (merging the Nationalities Branch and Indian Affairs), with the goal, as St Laurent put it, of making “Canadian citizens of those who come here as immigrants and to make Canadian citizens of as many as possible of the descendants of the original inhabitants of this country.” In both cases, the new Department focused on assimilating non-Europeans. To this end they created a targeted publication for Indigenous Peoples (Indian News) promoting individual achievement and assimilation as the path to success.Footnote ²³⁸

During the 1960s, widespread demographic changes presaged demands for a broader less rigidly British-centred national identity. In 1969, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism recommended the integration rather than the assimilation of non-British ethnic groups.Footnote ²³⁹ Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, in his White Paper laid out a vision where Indigenous Peoples would be “made” the same as every other Canadian. Trudeau, with then Indian Affairs Minister (later Prime Minister) Jean Chretien, sought to end the existence of Indigenous Peoples as a “race apart.” Trudeau suggested that reserves were akin to “ghettoes,” and cast doubt on the legitimacy of Indigenous “ancestral rights” in a modern Western country. Treaties were presented as antiquated, and Trudeau declared his desire that Indigenous Peoples “should become Canadians as all other Canadians.”Footnote ²⁴⁰

The White Paper would have brought unilateral abrogation of the treaties, and thus provoked strong reactions within Indigenous communities, who rose up and derailed the initiative. As Dale Turner (Temagami First Nation) has articulated, “White Paper liberalism” was consistent with Western European political ideals, which privileged the individual as the central unit of a political system, while seeking primarily to balance both the freedom and equality of individuals operating in the society.Footnote ²⁴¹ For many Indigenous Peoples, the Multiculturalism Act in 1971 was closely tied to the same vision represented by the White Paper. Both represented a desire to assimilate non-Europeans into settler society. When introducing both multiculturalism and bilingualism to the House of Commons in 1971, Trudeau articulated that while Canada had two official languages, there was no dominant culture or ethnicity or as it put it, “No citizen or group of citizens is other than Canadian, and all should be treated fairly.”Footnote ²⁴² This effectively elided the dominant British and French nature of Canadian culture, language, laws, and institutions.

Some contemporary multiculturalism theorists have also promoted the immigrant identity of Canada, while tacitly recognizing but also downplaying the importance of Indigenous Peoples. As the seminal multicultural theorist Will Kymlicka has stated: “Canada has largely been built by settlers and immigrants who have left the constraints of the old world behind, to start a new life in a new land.” While he inserts a caveat that “Canada was not a terra nullius,” he is nevertheless content to advance a view of Canada as “a young, modern society, free from the old hierarchies, cultural prejudices and embedded traditions of the Old World. It is, Canadians like to think, a classless, meritocratic and democratic society, open to newcomers and to new ideas.”Footnote ²⁴³

Such views are problematic for Indigenous rights. Vowel describes multiculturalism as creating the conditions whereby Indigenous Peoples “exist as Canadians and celebrate surface culture (food/music/clothing) without existing as a separate legal category. Indigenous peoples would need to stop advancing their claims to Indigenous rights, and exist within a framework of Canadian rights.” However: “Giving that up to become Canadian and to be folded into a Western liberal-rights framework is the definition of assimilation.”Footnote ²⁴⁴ Rachel George, a Nuučaańuł political scientist, notes how narratives of multicultural tolerance can “divest Indigeneity from Indigenous communities, consuming it as Canada’s multicultural identity, and effectively extinguishing Indigenous nationhood’. In other words, “Inclusion is just the Canadian word for assimilation.”Footnote ²⁴⁵

Some immigrants may relate to Indigenous Peoples as fellow victims of a colonial system, for example, the Japanese internments and Chinese head taxes were highly discriminatory. While this shared marginalization may build bridges of empathy, it does not imply equality or sameness. Indeed, racialized peoples have sometimes become part of the problem. In a seminal article, Bonita Lawrence and Ena Dua highlighted the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples and perspectives within antiracism movements. After all: “Histories of the settlement of people of color have been framed by racist exclusion and fail to account for the ways in which their settlement has taken place on Indigenous land.”Footnote ²⁴⁶ Sunera Thobani has highlighted similar dynamics, describing: “The more immigrants have sought their own inclusion and access to citizenship, the more invested they have become, with very few exceptions, in supporting the nation’s erasure of its originary violence and its fantasies of progress and prosperity.”Footnote ²⁴⁷

This does not preclude mutual understanding and alliance building, and Indigenous and Black scholars have drawn parallels as well as distinctions between their communities, when faced with five centuries of colonization and alienation from ancestral lands and cultures.Footnote ²⁴⁸ A recent publication by Leanne Simpson and Robyn Maynard outlines the shared struggles and vibrancies of both peoples in resisting white domination, settler colonialism, and capitalism.Footnote ²⁴⁹ The focus is on bridge building against common challenges, although there is also recognition that Indigenous rights are different, based on distinct claims to territory and nationhood.Footnote ²⁵⁰ The argument here is that meritocracy along European settler lines creates a particular framework into which non-Europeans and Indigenous Peoples are expected to fit.

Québec and Indigenous Peoples: Distinctive Relations and Myths

This final section focuses on myths about Indigenous Peoples in the province of Québec. Québec has a distinct history from the rest of Canada, being comprised primarily of territory that was settled and later colonized by France, which did not sign treaties with Indigenous nations. Québec has maintained a civil (rather than common) law tradition, and is predominantly French-speaking. Québec promotes interculturalism rather than multiculturalism, which privileges integration into a French linguistic and cultural environment, which is deemed to be under threat in a predominantly Anglophone continent. Much of their mythology about Indigenous Peoples has its own particular characteristics. The distinctive nature of settler colonialism in Québec means that some studies of Indigenous-settler relations often draw distinctions between this province and the rest of Canada.Footnote ²⁵¹

The British colonial system may have precipitated some of the conflict between French settlers and Indigenous Peoples. For example, the 1763 Royal Proclamation and the Québec Act worked together to recognize and affirm some rights of autonomy and self-government for Indigenous Peoples, with some land rights. However, the Proclamation was primarily designed to spread British law and government, and reduce French influence, with the goal of submerging French speakers, as well as limiting Roman Catholicism. The British, as Eva Mackey explains, effectively “played different populations against each other in the interests of the British colonial project, paradoxically giving Native peoples land rights in order to control and assimilate members of another European culture.”Footnote ²⁵²

English-French biculturalism has been based on a compact theory of Canadian politics, as an official Québec government publication explains, a “compact between free and autonomous provinces … [not] a mere creation of the imperial [British] Parliament.”Footnote ²⁵³ This ideal is complicated by the prior existence of Indigenous nations, possessed of their own territories, governments, worldviews, and practices, who demonstrate the problematic nature of some French settler-Canadians seeking to embrace a form of ersatz indigeneity.

Québec has been the locus of its own “emancipatory nationalism,” due to a sense of French settler political and cultural alienation within the federal state. This was certainly true historically, although now, in the era of a Coalition Avenir Québec government, the sense of resentment and anger has dissipated somewhat.Footnote ²⁵⁴ The concept of Québec as a nation predates their military defeat at the hands of the British. Nationalism can be understood as a movement closely associated with historical writing and the rise of academic historiography during the global nineteenth century. The Parti Nationale was created by Honoré Mercier in 1885, and later, the Union Nationale was formed in 1935. The name of the provincial legislature would be changed to L’Assemblée nationale in 1968.Footnote ²⁵⁵ All of this differentiates Québec from any other Canadian province (despite weak analogues in Alberta’s periodic calls for independence) and changes the nature of Indigenous-settler relations to one of contesting historical, cultural, and territorial nationalisms.

In 1985, the Québec legislature recognized ten Indigenous nations (an eleventh would later follow). However, no specific rights were affirmed through this process. The Québec government’s position was that no written treaties were signed with Indigenous Peoples during French rule, and when New France was defeated, no Indigenous rights survived. This theory has animated Québec nationalism. While some Indigenous concerns are recognized as legitimate, any problems are seen to be fully resolvable by Québec through its own distinct political and legal institutions.Footnote ²⁵⁶ Not unlike the rest of Canada, successive provincial governments, as well as Québec society in general, have been loath to recognize Québecois as a settler nation that has been complicit in a long history of colonization and subjugation of Indigenous Peoples.Footnote ²⁵⁷

Early Québec historical accounts tended to focus on conflict between the French and Indigenous Peoples. Nineteenth century accounts were similar to those in English Canada – focused on Indigenous Peoples as “savages.” As Cecilia Morgan paraphrases in her historiographic analysis: Indigenous Peoples in these accounts were “noted for their warlike tendencies, treachery, cruelty, superstitious nature, and lack of social order and discipline.” Only the Hurons, allied to the French, were seen in a positive light. Historical accounts used Indigenous Peoples as a foil for French Canadian nationalism, from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.Footnote ²⁵⁸ Highly influential until the 1940s were the writings of Lionel Groulx, who promoted a conservative brand of Catholic, rural, French nationalism, strongly critical of immigration, industrialization, English Canada, and democracy. There was also an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in his work.Footnote ²⁵⁹

Québec myths share some commonalities with those in other provinces. Themes of Indigenous Peoples as superstitious, immoral, warlike, and treacherous were common in the standard textbook, Histoire du Canada, used in most of Québec’s high school history classes. Written by Paul-Emile Farley and Gustave Lamarche, this was reproduced in multiple editions from 1934 into the 1960s. Some textbooks erred in another way, simply erasing an Indigenous presence from the history of Québec. Morgan specifically cites the work of Jean Bruchési and Albert Tessier as typical examples in the 1940s and 1950s. Another theme developed in post-1945 history textbooks – that of Indigenous Peoples as helpful and obliging towards the French in guiding them through the territory, and helping them secure food supplies and local technology for their survival. However, this theme of Indigenous helpers did not extend towards recognizing their many thousands of years of history, nor their deep and abiding claims to ancestral territory.Footnote ²⁶⁰

Québec as a Victim Nation

Another influential myth in Québec concerns how relatively fair and just were early French settlers when compared to the English / British. Earlier conceptions of French colonial policy and their mission civilisatrice, designed to convert and assimilate Indigenous peoples, have been largely downplayed in favour of more positive narratives. This has much to do with the fact that French Canada was colonized by the British, while simultaneously colonizing Indigenous Peoples and lands.Footnote ²⁷⁰ This allows Québecois to claim a sort of moral capital, to be expended against Anglo-Canada but also deployed to delegitimate Indigenous nations within the territorial boundaries of Québec.

However, Québec is not a nation indigenous to North America, nor does it exist separate from its European past. Equally, it does not have a long history on the territory it claims, as do European nations like the Basques, Catalans, or Scottish, to whom they are often compared. In practice, Québec was both a French settler colony in its own right, and later a colonized subject population following their defeat by the British in 1759. Daniel Leroux traces three historical periods in what he terms the myth of “double-colonization.” The first is a French dominated settler colonial project, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, followed by subjection after 1763 and until Confederation, after which we see different conceptions of who is in control. A constant theme throughout is the existence of white supremacy, with French settlers moving up and down a racial hierarchy which includes periods of dominance, submergence, and dominance again.Footnote ²⁷¹

Leroux here raises a crucial point about settler identity and responsibility, noting that French descendants have been raised with a myth of being primarily victims of British colonization. The fact that their French ancestors occupied and colonized large proportions of Canada and the United States for a century and half is rarely discussed, nor is the enslavement of Indigenous Peoples and Africans during this time. The French colonies were connected through broader economic policies which benefited from the interlinked trade in enslaved Africans and sugar.Footnote ²⁷²

A certain aesthetic took root amongst the French Québecois intelligentsia in the 1960s, who wholeheartedly embraced the decolonial theories of Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Albert Memmi, and claimed to be part of a comparable liberation struggle. Julie Burelle highlights the French Québécois’ “often uncritical alignment with racialized and colonized Others and their careful forgetting of their ongoing role as settlers vis-à-vis Indigenous people.”Footnote ²⁷³ This is problematic precisely because, unlike Indigenous Peoples and Black people, French Canadians clearly benefited from whiteness, as a settler population, with ties to Europe, a dominant structural positioning, and the ability to establish colonizing institutions.Footnote ²⁷⁴

This myth of victimhood is easily operationalized, especially against racialized immigrants who are not Francophone, white, or Catholic. The denial of settler colonialism and racism in the case of Québec is troubling, and nationalists frequently deploy immigrants and racialized peoples as “foils for Québec sovereignty or threats to the survival of the French identity.”Footnote ²⁷⁵ Leila Benhadjoudja discusses the situation as a battle between “two white supremacies,” with immigrants “invited to submit to one of the two supremacies, either through the politics of multiculturalism in Canada or through a francophone national identity in Québec.”Footnote ²⁷⁶

Myth of an Indigenous “Métis” Nation

Tied to this range of myths is a less popular but nevertheless influential belief that most French Canadians have some Indigenous ancestry, and therefore can claim to be Indigenous if they choose. This myth legitimates the Québec demand for the preservation of French culture and tradition, and its obligations on newcomers to assimilate into its dominant culture and society. It can and has also been used to delegitimate self-determining rights of Indigenous Peoples within the territory of Québec.

Former Québec Minister of Cultural Affairs Denis Vaugeois invoked the concept of a “nation métissé” or a mixed nation, in part to refute and dilute specific First Nations’ rights to land and autonomy, based on the argument that all French Canadians could claim Indigenous heritage and thus Indigenous rights. Similarly, legal studies academic Sébastien Malette has sought to merge Québecois and Métis identities as the same, with both “bath[ed] in a historically mixed society and carr[ying] a distinct culture from this fact.”Footnote ²⁷⁷ Yet, as Leroux notes, claims to Indigenous ancestry rest on weak foundations, where one Indigenous ancestor is claimed from about 300 – 375 years ago, one of a potential 2,000 ancestors through 12 generations.Footnote ²⁷⁸ Buttressing Leroux, a 2023 scientific study employed a detailed methodology to evaluate “the degree of the identity-by-descent between Québec individuals and Native American populations.” The authors draw the conclusion that “the Québec population is not different from other New World populations of European descent in being enriched in alleles of Native American origin, although the extent of admixture is much lower than in Central and South American populations.”Footnote ²⁷⁹

It is instructive that the number of intermarriages, contrary to these myths, were relatively small. Few Indigenous women married French settlers; indeed before 1670 only 12 marriages to Indigenous women are recorded, amongst a population of about 3,700 settlers (primarily men). Leroux demonstrates how false claims of Indigeneity are “used politically to oppose actual, living Indigenous peoples.” Rather than reflecting on Indigenous ancestry, and returning lands and promoting Indigenous rights to self-determination, the reverse has often been true, and claims of lineal descent are used to counter Indigenous land claims.Footnote ²⁸⁰

French colonial views of Indigenous Peoples in the early seventeenth century, as Leroux discusses, were distinctly racist. Attempts at intermarriage were derived primarily from the desire to Frenchify Indigenous Peoples, and to increase the aggregate French population. The overall goal was to eventually assimilate and eliminate Indigenous Peoples as separate nations and populations.Footnote ²⁸¹ Leroux outlines many of the perils and violence involved in this grand narrative of “friendly cohabitation and mutual respect.” What largely disappears from view is the strongly patriarchal nature of French colonization, which sought to subjugate Indigenous women to European norms. In these early myths, French men are seen to be virile and Indigenous women as promiscuous.Footnote ²⁸² In the later period after about 1663, intermarriage was frowned on, as French women were brought to the colonies. As Leroux notes, while sexual unions did take place periodically, the mixed-race products of these unions were generally excluded and stigmatized by French colonists and were thus most often raised within Indigenous communities.Footnote ²⁸³

These myths in Québec underwrite each other, suggesting a distinctive identity, defined through descent, language, culture, and other attributes, coupled with strong myths of historic victimization and current vulnerability as a cultural and linguistic minority. Indigenous Peoples integrate poorly into the self-conceptions of Québecois and often become subject to discrimination and marginalization, their inherent right to self-determination submerged when the Québecois nation is privileged.

Conclusions: The Lengthy History of History Wars

Theoretically, this Element contextualizes modern history wars within a much longer timeframe, stretching back centuries to early accounts by European explorers and settlers. Rather than locating the inception of these debates to the mid to late twentieth century, I argue instead that the first salvos (such as they were) were fired by European explorers and settlers. Before colonization, Indigenous knowledge systems, governance structures, laws, diplomacy, and trading practices, were flourishing and dominant on the North American continent. The spread of settler colonialism brought with it the development of a wide range of negative myths about Indigenous Peoples and the legitimacy of these traditional Indigenous systems were denied. It is thus disingenuous to see the more recent narratives of Indigenous Peoples and their supporters as primarily reactive and radical, seeking to upend a comfortable and mutually beneficial status quo. Rather, these interventions should better be seen as restorative, designed to correct past misperceptions and untruths. Implicit here is a critique of dominant meritocratic principles.

This study has sought to provide a critical analysis of selected myths directed against Indigenous Peoples, which, following the author’s argument, have been foundational to the Canadian state, and which have clear echoes in other CANZUS states. Some myths are less salient now than they were when first enunciated in the early or mid-nineteenth century, but all serve political functions, that is: to denigrate the capacity of Indigenous Peoples to exercise their rights to self-determination on their own lands. Through careful analysis, this study has attempted to refute these myths, in the belief that this is a necessary precondition for truth-telling, given their corrosive impact on Indigenous Peoples, and their languages, laws, cultures, governance traditions, and spiritual practices.

It is tempting to focus on bridging gaps, and to use models such as the American Civil rights movement, or multiculturalism, to conceptualize what positive changes for Indigenous Peoples could look like in CANZUS states. However, while these may be well-meaning lenses, they are incomplete, given that Indigenous rights exist in a different category from redress for disadvantaged minority groups. Indigenous rights are guaranteed through treaty and have been fully affirmed through Canada’s incorporation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into federal law. The current modern iteration of the history wars can best be seen as a challenge and corrective to dominant settler narratives, Hopefully, this Element can be a contribution to truth-telling, that is: the unpacking and critique of foundational myths to be found not only in Canada, but also in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States.