How Did Native Americans Affect The Assimilation Of Indigenous People

Before the European settlers inhabited what is now Canada, the Aboriginal population flourished. The Indigenous community lived in harmony among the rest of the living plants and animals on Mother Earth. The reason why animals are seen as Elder brothers and sisters in Indigenous culture is because, as Gehl references Basil Johnston, animals have a unique skill called pre-knowledge that humans do not have so “humans must learn from, and cannot live without, animal beings” (Gehl, 2017, p. 93). However, the influx of European settlers affected the harmony between human and animals. The Europeans brought discrimination and racialization toward Aboriginal peoples by taking away basic rights, enforcing laws that affected their livelihood, and by the assimilation of Indigenous children.
Another form of discrimination that was placed upon the Aboriginal population was the assimilation families and children faced through the integration of residential schools. The idea behind residential schools was to try and “civilize” the Aboriginal nation. Children were taken from their families and were forced into forgetting their language, traditions, hunting and gathering skills, until they were entirely “European”. The discrimination faced by the Aboriginal nation still to this day is well beyond horrific. In her article “The Queen and I: discrimination against women in the Indian Act continues” Lynn Gehl states that “the goal of the Indian Act was one of assimilation and the arduous task of civilizing the savages--a national agenda” (Gehl, 2000). Residential schools, paternity laws, denied access to Indian status and criminalization of Indigenous culture imposed from the government are all examples of how the Aboriginal population has been racialized and discriminated from European settlers and the country of