Indigenous Business IOP #3 PDF

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Summary

This is taken from weeks 1-3 with prof petit on pharmacy business from the course ADM please do not copy as these notes are original please and thank you. Hope this helps, happy reading :)...

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Introduction: The League of Indians of Canada In 1919, the League of Indians of Canada was formed by Frederick Ogilvie Loft, a Mohawk man from the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve near Brantford, Ontario. Loft was a veteran of the First World War who had served in France. The League of Indians of Canada was the first national Aboriginal political organization in Canada. Its main goals were to protect the rights and to improve the living conditions of First Nations people in Canada.

Aboriginal Peoples' Contributions to the First World War In order to understand why the League of Indians of Canada was important, it is necessary to consider why and how it started. Aboriginal peoples have a long tradition of military service in Canada. When the First World War began in 1914, they were considered wards of the state. This meant that federal government officials considered Aboriginal people to be incapable of taking care of themselves. Therefore, they were placed under the "care" and "protection" of the government, which acted as their guardian. As wards of the state, Aboriginal people were not required to enlist in the war. Even though they were not expected to participate, many Aboriginal men and women enlisted voluntarily. About 4,000 Aboriginal people enlisted -- in other words, one in three individuals -- and served with the Canadian Corps in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF).1 On many reserves almost all of the young men enlisted for service. For example, approximately half of the eligible Mi'kmaq and Maliseet men from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia volunteered for overseas duty. In other provinces, the number was even higher -- in the small community of File Hills, Saskatchewan, almost all of the eligible men signed up to fight.

Why Enlist When They Did Not Have To? When the First World War broke out in August 1914, the majority of Aboriginal people in Canada were living in extreme poverty. Many decided to enlist as a way to find work and to escape the boredom of living on reserves. Others volunteered in the hope that their participation in the war would help Aboriginal people gain legal equality with the rest of Canadians when the war was over.

Aboriginal Participation in the War Many Aboriginal individuals who served in the CEF became snipers or scouts. A major reason was that they were skilled hunters, and this required stealth and the ability to shoot well. The role of snipers was to keep the enemy "on edge" by shooting their rifles at targets from concealed positions called "nests." Scouts had the dangerous job of creeping behind the front lines before a battle in order to gather information about the enemy. Private Henry Norwest, a Métis man from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, was one of the most famous snipers. Another excellent sniper was Corporal Francis Pegahmagabow, an Ojibway man from Parry Island Band, near Parry Sound, Ontario. Lieutenant Cameron D. Brant, from the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, enlisted only three days after the Germans declared war on August 4, 1914. He died from poisonous gas during the Second Battle of Ypres, France, in April 1915. Other Aboriginal men who served in the war were Olympic runner Tom Longboat, from the Six Nations reserve, and Patrick Riel, grandson of the famous Métis leader Louis Riel....