‘We never went anywhere. We stayed on the reserve’
In 1885, a temporary law barred Prairie aboriginals from leaving their communities without permission. Revoked after 60 years, the effects linger
OTTAWA— Charles Sawphawpahkayo wanted to get married.
To do that, the man from a reserve near Duck Lake, Sask., now known as Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation, would need to travel to the bigger town of Battleford, about 140 kilometres away as the crow flies.
Before he could leave, however, Sawphawpahkayo, presumably an adult, would need the written authorization of the local Indian agent, who signed the required permission slip — issued by the Department of Indian Affairs — on June 3, 1897.
The agent granted him 10 days away from the reserve.
The yellowed document is one of many featured in a new documentary film called The Pass System, for which director Alex Williams spent five years piecing together a dark and little-known chapter of Canadian history that had the federal government, fully aware it was acting without any legal authority, forbid First Nations in the Prairies from leaving their reserves.
“Canadians largely talk about settlement and pioneers and use benign and heroic language to describe what happened here and what actually happened is quite brutal,” Williams said.
“And if they were to have experienced what First Nations experienced, they might have a different opinion about Canadian history,” added Williams, who grew up in Saskatoon.
The film, narrated by actress Tantoo Cardinal, shows how the system, first approved by Sir John A. Macdonald during his second term as prime minister, lasted nearly 60 years without ever going through Parliament.
The Toronto premiere of the film will be at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Feb. 19, with another showing and talkback panel on Feb. 21.
The pass system was first implemented as an emergency measure, designed to be temporary, in response to the North-West Rebellion led by Louis Riel, as the Canadian government was concerned resistance could grow out of control if indigenous people began leaving their reserves to join in.
The idea went all the way up the chain to Macdonald, who approved it even for “loyal” bands, although he acknowledged they were on shaky ground in that requiring passes would violate treaty rights:
“. . . should resistance be offered on the ground of Treaty rights the obtaining of a pass should not be insisted upon as regards loyal Indians,” Macdonald wrote in a letter to Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney on Oct. 28, 1885.
Even the North-West Mounted Police, the precursor to the RCMP, protested the system in 1893, with Commissioner Lawrence William Herchmer ordering members of the force to stop returning people without passes to the reserves. “You know something is wrong when the cops say don’t do it,” Williams said in an interview. Hayter Reed, who was then in charge of the Indian Affairs Department, overruled the Mounties but acknowledged in a letter that the pass system was not grounded in law.
“I beg to inform you that there has never been any legal authority for compelling Indians who leave their Reserves to return to them, but it has always been felt that it would be a great mistake in this matter to stand too strictly on the letter of the law,” Reed wrote June 15, 1893.
The system remained in effect, as evidenced by the passes shown in the film, but also by stories told by First Nations people who either experienced the pass system themselves — or the parallel permit system that controlled how people living on reserves could sell their agricultural products — or remember relatives talking about it.
One powerful testimony comes from elder Therese Seesequasis, of Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation, who recalls spending 10 months of the year away from her family at residential school.
“We sure spent some lonely, lonely days . . . Our parents didn’t even come for Christmas,” she said.
The film notes the pass system helped support the residential school system as well, as Indian agents would often refuse to sign passes if they suspected they would be used to visit children there.
Winona Wheeler, a historian and professor of indigenous studies at the University of Saskatchewan who appears in the film, said in an interview that oral history is crucial to understanding what happened.
“I think without hearing those stories, a lot of stuff has been glossed over or hidden or has not surfaced in the public realm, because documents go missing or documents have not been made accessible in the archives,” says Wheeler, who drew a parallel to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission having to fight the government for access to ar- chives on residential schools.
Williams said only two actual passes exist at Library and Archives Canada and he suspects many were deliberately destroyed by a government who knew that what it was doing was illegal.
There is support for that assertion in a letter dated July 11, 1941, by Harold McGill, who was director of the Indian Affairs branch at the Department of Mines and Resources.
The letter circulated to Indian agents put an official end to the pass system, saying there was no law compelling First Nations people to stay on their reserves and that they were “free to come and go” like everyone else. McGill mentions government lawyers having come to that conclusion in 1900 — a statement for which Williams could find no documenta- tion — and also makes a request: “If you have any such forms in your possession kindly return them to the Department where they will be destroyed.”
Williams believes that, like the tragic and ongoing legacy of residential schools, Canada needs to come to grips with this part of our history, which most people would more comfortably assume was something that happened during South African apartheid.
“They have been fed a version of events that is, to put it politely, drastically incomplete of what was done in their name to secure the land for settlement,” said Williams, who argues the effects of these policies can still be seen today in the inequities between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians.