Was The Indian Act A Form Of Assimilation Or Subjugation?

Was The Indian Act a form of Assimilation or Subjugation?

The Indian Act is best defined as an act of assimilation on the indigenous people. At the time of implementation, the two main parties involved with the Indian Act were the Canadian government and the Indigenous people. Assimilation is the act of absorbing information, experiences, and ideas. In a society, assimilation is the process where individuals or groups of differing ethnicities are to be changed and absorbed into the dominant culture. In contrast, subjugation is the process of being in control or dominant of a subject or group. In a society, subjugation refers to a governing body being in control of a population. The Indian Act is assimilation rather than subjugation because the Canadian government implemented rules to

This was ultimately done to seamlessly absorb the indigenous people into the colonist population. Major aspects of the Indian Act include residential schools, enfranchising, and cultural bans. Residential schools were mandatory for indigenous children to attend. At residential schools, children were forcibly taught the culture of the settlers and were punished if they showed any connection to their native culture. Enfranchising forced high work status and settler-married indigenous people to change their name to be like a colonist. Cultural bans illegalized important indigenous traditions such as the potlatch, further suppressing indigenous culture. The Indian Act wasn’t focused on becoming dominative over the indigenous population, rather, it was created to convert indigenous people into settlers to strengthen the colonist population. The Indian Act is an assimilative legislation because its goal was to absorb the indigenous community into the colonist community by suppressing indigenous