John A. Macdonald Was No Friend to Indigenous Peoples

In 1887, Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald wrote that he “was not prepared” to decide upon “a claim preferred by the Six Nations Indians to certain lands on the banks of the Grand River.” Instead, he cautioned: “It is extremely inexpedient to deal with the Indian bands in the Dominion…as being in any way separate nations.”

The “certain lands” Macdonald was referring to are the six miles of land on each side of the Grand River promised to the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in 1784 under the Haldimand Treaty — a vow made in recognition of the loss of territory sustained as a result of allying with the British Crown during the American War of Independence. As a result of Macdonald’s refusal to recognize the claim, the lands of the “Haldimand Tract” in southern Ontario remain stolen to this day.

Macdonald’s disdain in this case, though, is curious. Of all Indigenous nations, he actually favoured the Six Nations of the Grand River for various reasons – aside from their past loyalty – including their agricultural and educational developments (widely considered a success story and held up as a “model” by the Department of Indian Affairs). He also formed political relationships with a number of elite Six Nations leaders, who anointed him an honorary chief in 1886, and he claimed several prominent community members as friends such as physician Oronhyatekha and surveyor Thomas Green.

But the historical record is clear: Macdonald may have had Indigenous friends, but he was no friend to Indigenous peoples.

One constant in Macdonald’s career is that he thought “Indians” — indeed all Indigenous peoples so long as they insisted on their sovereignty and nationhood — were a problem, a hindrance to Canada’s expansion. In stark contrast to Macdonald’s strenuous efforts to accommodate competing claims of English and French nationhood in the new Dominion of Canada, he deliberately disavowed Indigenous nationhood and constructed it as a barrier to Canada’s continued development as a settler capitalist society. Canada’s success depended on the containment and control — and ideally the erasure and eventual elimination — of autonomous Indigenous nations. “The great aim of our legislation,” Macdonald explained, “has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change.”

This position marked a departure from earlier “Indian policy” in British North America, which, while still colonial and paternalistic, recognized Indigenous nationhood and strategically sought to strengthen nation-to-nation relations through diplomacy, alliance and treaty. Macdonald played a pivotal role in this shift, and it had disastrous consequences for Indigenous peoples. After being elected prime minister for a second time, he chose to serve as the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs (1878–87, and briefly in 1888) so that he could personally oversee Canada’s expansion through colonization and the management of Indigenous peoples. During his tenure, the subordination of Indigenous peoples as wards of the Canadian state — along with the coerced seizure and settlement of their lands for the purposes of resource extraction — became the stated goal of Indian policy as a way of facilitating Canada’s socio-economic development.

Macdonald’s commitment to enacting and supporting genocidal polices was consistent during his career. The list is long: legalizing the administrative control of Indians under the British North America Act, starving resistant First Nations on the Prairies into political submission, and banning Indigenous cultures and ceremonies like the Potlatch and Sundance in 1884. Macdonald also ordered Canadian militia, of which his own son (Hugh Macdonald) served as a lieutenant, to attack Métis, Assiniboine and Cree communities when they asserted their rights to land. Despite facing political pressure to grant amnesty or commutation, he approved the execution of Métis leader Louis Riel for high treason and hanged eight First Nations leaders, as a signal to Indigenous nations about the futility of resisting Canadian expansion. As he explained in 1885, “The executions…ought to convince the Red Man that the White Man governs.”

And while Macdonald was not prime minister during the passing of the 1876 Indian Act, he was one of the main architects of the 1857 Gradual Civilization Act, which formed the basis for some of the worst parts of the Indian Act such as the enfranchisement clauses, the denial of sovereignty and the forced assimilation of Indigenous governments, and the legislative conversion of First Nations women and children into becoming basically the property of First Nations men. Macdonald, supported by other politicians and a bourgeoning civil service, built the foundation for over a century of draconian governmental control of First Nations lives, the ostracization of Red River Métis, and rampant poverty, addiction and conflict in Indigenous communities — not to mention the suffering and death of countless lives.

Macdonald was also a key architect of the Indian Residential School system. In the late 1870s, Macdonald wanted to create a national network of government-funded and church-run boarding schools for Indigenous children that could be used to disrupt Indigenous lifeways and facilitate successful settler colonialism. As such, he appointed a friend, Nicholas Flood Davin, to investigate the boarding schools for Indigenous peoples in the United States and determine how a similar system could be established in Canada. Impressed by American policies of “aggressive assimilation” through manual labour schools, Davin published his report in 1879. Macdonald subsequently adopted Davin’s recommendation to create residential schools as one plank of a broader suite of policies aimed at eradicating Canada’s so-called Indian problem. Justifying the new system in the House of Commons, Macdonald argued:

When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write … [T]he Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.

Despite all of the evidence presented above now being more widely known, there are still some who insist on mythologizing Macdonald by emphasizing his role as a nation builder while omitting or downplaying his genocidal policies targeting Indigenous peoples. Defenders of Macdonald, many of them non-experts, deploy a range of rhetorical tactics, such as “whataboutism” and “cherry-picking,” to suggest that, for Indigenous peoples, Macdonald was a friend and not a foe. Out of context, they insist, for example, that he enfranchised certain Indians without loss of status or contend that without him there may not have been a treaty process on the Prairies at all or that he displayed more tolerance than some of his contemporaries, especially in the United States. These half-truths are meant to distract from the historical consensus on Macdonald’s controversial legacy. Furthermore, it prevents us from understanding this important reality: that selectively remembering Macdonald and unapologetically celebrating colonial mythology as a form of protecting a narrow sense of nationalist pride is counterproductive to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and thus jeopardises the future of a stronger and more just Canada.

In taking into consideration Macdonald’s full legacy, then, we must grapple with the fact that Canada’s first prime minister was both an important nation builder as well as a nation destroyer. When both of these aspects are acknowledged, it becomes clear that he should be remembered but not uncritically celebrated. Indeed, his refusal to work meaningfully with Indigenous peoples on a nation-to-nation basis and his commitment to use the power of the state to interfere, undermine and attack Indigenous lifeways should serve as a lesson to be avoided, not exalted nor emulated.

In today’s era of truth and reconciliation, Canadians have an important opportunity. Embracing the complex truth about Canada’s colonial past — and learning from it rather than always trying to defend and justify it — can pave the way to strengthening relations with Indigenous peoples and creating a more honourable future.