Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Indigenous Peoples and Unions in Canada

Last year, Canada celebrated its 150th birthday. The notion that Canada did not exist prior to 1867 was greeted by many Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) as insulting – to say the least. More than 600 First Nations – speaking 50 different languages – have lived in this land since thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. The Inuit reside in Canada’s extreme north. The Métis are of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry and have been a crucial part of the Canadian story from well before confederation. Certainly the fur trade, Canada’s primary nation-building enterprise, would not have succeeded without the participation of Indigenous peoples. The country’s name derives from the Iroquoian word ‘kanata’, meaning settlement or community1. Canadian intellectual John Ralston Saul is convinced that Indigenous cultures are deeply entrenched throughout our society, distinguishing us from Europeans and Americans2. Any consideration of Indigenous peoples, wage labour and trade unions has to take place in the context of the historical experience of colonialism and its attendant racism. Colonialism involved the dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ land and resources, the erosion of their economic and political systems, constant attacks against their cultural and spiritual practices, and the incarceration of tens of thousands of Indigenous children in residential schools – where thousands were abused and died, and where they were taught that Indigenous cultures and languages were inferior to those of Europeans3. Residential schools left an intergenerational legacy of poverty, unemployment, addiction and broken lives, which still afflicts many Indigenous communities. This history is marked by the injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples; so too is the history of their participation in the labour market. Yesterday Indigenous peoples were especially active as wage-workers in British Columbia in the late nineteenth century. They worked in canneries and sawmills, in mining and agriculture, on the docks and sealing boats and as domestic servants and cooks in urban centres. For a part of that period they comprised the majority of wage workers in the province4, and have been described as ‘essential to the capitalist development of British Columbia’5. John Lutz reports that ‘from 1853 through to the 1880s, two thousand to four thousand Aboriginal People canoed up to eight hundred miles to spend part of the year in Victoria’, where they comprised a significant part of the paid labour force. Entire villages would sometimes be virtually deserted in the late nineteenth century as Indigenous men, women, and even children migrated to work for wages6. Indigenous peoples throughout the country worked for wages on a seasonal basis, while maintaining their involvement in traditional landbased economies, but they were pushed out of the paid labour force when non-Indigenous workers arrived. There is a long history of union efforts to exclude Indigenous workers from employment in order to preserve jobs for non-Indigenous workers7. Indigenous peoples were however often active in unions and in strike action. There are reports of Indigenous fishermen supporting strikes on the Fraser River in 1893, and addressing rallies ‘in support of the striking fishermen’. Indigenous longshoremen played a key role in 1906 in the formation of a local of the Industrial Workers of the World8. Indigenous women participated when they travelled hundreds of miles to pick hops around Puget Sound. Although not represented by a union, these workers ‘were known to strike for wages’9. There are also examples of unions extending solidarity to Indigenous workers and demanding justice on their behalf. In 1962, 80 Indigenous workers from Norway House and Split Lake picketed the Inco mine in Thompson, Manitoba, demanding the chance to work for wages. Inco resisted, but the union, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, supported the Indigenous picketers who were demanding the right to work. In a telegram to the Winnipeg Free Press the union wrote: ‘Indians [sic] all the way from Nelson House are parading at the International Nickel Company’s gates demanding their right to work. Many of these people were the first here, clearing the land where the company now stands. Now that the dirty work is finished they feel they have been cast aside. They want the same rights and privileges as their white brothers’10...

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