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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| R. Scott Sheffield, The Red Man's on the Warpath: The Image of the "Indian" and the Second World War (Vancouver: UBC Press 2004)
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| THIS SUBTLE, interesting book by R. Scott Sheffield examines the image of the "Indian" as it was understood in the minds of English Canadians during the period from the 1930s Depression through to the end of World War II. The subject is emphatically the "imagined" Indian, not his flesh-and-blood counterpart. Throughout the text the author refers to the former as the "Indian" (in quotation marks), thereby continually calling the reader's attention to the distinction that lies at the heart of the book. This expository strategy largely succeeds. It fails only when Sheffield forgets himself and begins to make comments about the alleged disparities between real and imagined Indians. How can this be done, the reader wonders, when the author has limited his expertise to one of the paired terms? |
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The book differentiates between the "Administrative Indian," that is the "Indian" as perceived by the staff and officials of the Indian Affairs Branch [hereafter IAB], and the "Public Indian," meaning the "Indian" as viewed by the general public. Sheffield discovers the "Administrative Indian" in the correspondence files of the IAB, particularly those relating to schooling, enlistment and compulsory military service, Indian policy reform, and the postwar review of the Indian Act. The "Public Indian" is revealed through an exhaustive survey of the print media in English Canada, including daily and weekly newspapers, academic quarterlies, and such popular periodicals as Saturday Night. The author pays no attention to film and literature sources, which, he says, "reflected a relatively small intellectual elite and have already been the subject of scholarly attention." (12) The phrase,"reflected a relatively small intellectual elite," points to a weakness in the methodology, namely a tendency to emphasize the production, rather than the consumption, of cultural material. Regardless of how small a number of people made films and newsreels, the key issue is the extent of their distribution and the meanings audiences attached to them. Sheffield states that newspapers "were not simply sources of opinions. They were also reflections of the cultural values and norms of the society in which they operated; they not only shaped and reinforced opinion, but also drew from an existing cultural toolbox, employing language and imagery that their readership would recognize." (13) This is true, but it does not go far enough. Sheffield seems to assume that the readers of newspaper stories interpret them more or less similarly and that their "common-sense" interpretation coincides with his own. Both are dubious propositions. Readers bring to texts their own viewpoints and cultural predispositions. They habitually recast information so that it conforms to preconceived opinions. This is especially true of texts that involve stories and symbols, as do many of the excerpts Sheffield cites. Such stories and symbols inherently carry multiple meanings; they always mean more than they say. |
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Ignoring or disregarding this methodological complication, Sheffield forges ahead with a clear, vigorous argument. He asserts that in the 1930s, the "Public Indian" was a contradictory amalgam of the "noble savage," an heroic remnant tragically doomed to extinction, and the "drunken criminal," the contemporary "Indian" laden with numerous character flaws. (The "drunken criminal" language is distasteful, but Sheffield believes that it accurately reflects the views of the time.) The "Administrative Indian" conformed to the latter stereotype because, as Sheffield explains, IAB personnel, immersed in the here-and-now of daily duties, were disinclined to brood over a romanticized past. Further, they formed a negative opinion of Indians, when the latter resisted the government's assimilation policies. Those outside the IAB, many of whom never saw an Indian and had no occasion to visit a reserve, freely indulged their speculations. |
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With the coming of the war, the dichotomy between the "positive-historical and negative-contemporary" (70) versions of the "Indian" broke down. In its place emerged an image that was both positive and contemporary, the "Indian-at-war." Canadians took comfort from the fact that during the bleak early years of the conflict, with France defeated and the United States and the Soviet Union still not combatants, First Nations people rallied to the cause. By 1943, as prospects for Allied victory brightened, the prominence of the "Indian-at-war" faded, although it did not disappear altogether. When Canadians turned to reconstruction and, in the parlance of the day, "winning the peace," yet another image, that of the "Indian victim," came to the fore. A country fighting to rid the world of a racist, oppressive regime could hardly countenance racism and oppression in its own backyard. Articles began to appear dwelling on the squalor of reserve life and the paternalistic, overbearing system of Indian administration. Editorials declared the irony of First Nations soldiers fighting for a country that denied them full citizenship rights, including the right to vote. A massive wave of sympathy, arising from a collective sense of guilt, overwhelmed the public and forced the Canadian government to re-examine its policies. |
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In January 1946 the minister responsible for the IAB announced that his department would no longer actively oppose the formation of Native political organizations. The following May the government created a special joint committee of the Senate and House of Commons [hereafter SJC] to collect evidence and consider revisions to the Indian Act. Out of the committee hearings, which lasted two years and generated extensive press coverage, there emerged the Indian as "potential citizen," a construct that captured both the optimism of the era and the durable belief in assimilation as the best solution to the "Indian problem." Sheffield deftly sorts out the multiple meanings of "assimilation," a term that referred variously to the social, economic, and cultural convergence of First Nations with the rest of society; the removal of legal and constitutional differences between status Indians and other Canadians; and the absorption through intermarriage of the "Indian" race into the larger population. The diverse interpretations mingled confusingly in public discourse, merging vaguely with the newly popular jargon of "integration." |
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More than 150 submissions to the SJC came from Indian bands, tribal councils, chiefs, and Native-rights organizations, all of which received a boost from war conditions and the post-war revival of interest in Indian administration and legislation. Although the First Nations briefs differed on specific items, such as liquor rights and denominational schooling, they were united in opposing the policy of assimilation. The SJC seemed deaf to their message; the texts of the briefs meant one thing to the authors and quite another to the readers. As Sheffield observes, "terms like democracy, freedom, progress, citizenship, and equality were broad enough to accommodate a multiplicity of meanings, and indigenous leaders and spokespersons used such language almost as liberally as their Canadian counterparts." (141) The SJC could not reconcile special rights with equality of citizenship; First Nations representatives, by contrast, based their claim for distinct national treatment on the treaties, which they regarded as the bedrock of their relationship with the rest of Canada. The final report did nothing to resolve the uncertainty. The Committee firmly endorsed the strategy of assimilation in keeping with the image of the Indian as "potential citizen." To this end, it recommended increased powers of self-government for band councils as a means of fostering responsible citizenship. First Nations took the recommendation as an acknowledgement of their separate cultural identity and distinct status. |
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Sheffield, at the end of his study, discerns an underlying continuity in English Canada's construction of the imagined "Indian." He argues that from the 1930s to the postwar period the essential nature of the relationship between Canadians and the First Nations remained the same. It was based on "the deeply rooted assumption that English Canada's race, society, and way of life were superior to those of the 'Indian'.... Assimilation, although still founded on a conviction of racial superiority, was legitimized and renewed through liberal-democratic principles and confidence in the promise of scientific social engineering by an interventionist government." (178) The ambiguity of this passage centres on the problematic conjunction of racial superiority with liberal-democratic principles. Did the Canadian government misapply principles that are essentially valid, or are the principles themselves flawed by the erroneous presumption of universality? It is a mark of the quality of this book that it stimulates such broad questions, while satisfying our curiosity about a particular phase of Canadian history. |
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James M. Pitsula
University of Regina |
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