Remembering the Civil Service: Work and Life Stories of Indigenous Labourers in the Canadian Federal Civil Service

This thesis examines the memories and experiences of six Indigenous civil servants who worked in the Canadian federal public service from the late 1960s until today.Special attention has been paid to the role of identity; these women and men mediated their cultural identities as Indigenous peoples with their economic identities as federal civil servants.To contextualize these lived experiences, this thesis also explores the development of a culture of merit, representation, and employment equity within the federal civil service in the mid to late twentieth century.As an oral history study, this thesis takes on a very personal note because each research partner narrates their stories of work within the frame of an entire life lived.This has allowed for an understanding of not only the perceptions of each narrator regarding the civil service as a place of employment, but also the role and meaning of this work within each individual life as a whole.As a result, this thesis argues that the complexity of individual experiences, identity formation, and memory makes it difficult to generalize about "the Indigenous civil servant" in any meaningful way.Relatedly, this thesis also emphasizes both the enriching possibilities and the unique challenges of conducting life story oral interviews and "sharing authority" in collaborative research projects.3 More information about this topic can be learned through the following texts: Karyn Pugliese, "So, where are you from?Glimpsing the History of Ottawa-Gatineau's Urban Indian Communities," Master's Thesis, Carleton University, 2005; Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Indigenous Women, Work, and History 1940-1980 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2013); Heather Howard-Bobiwash, "Women's Class Strategies as Activism in Native Community Building in Toronto, 1950-1975,"The American Indian Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 3-4 (Summer/Fall 2003): 566-582; Nancy Janovicek, "Assisting Our Own: Urban Migration, Self-Governance, and Native Women's 1 This thesis focuses on the work experiences and life stories of Indigenous civil servants in post-Second World War Ottawa.By 1986, there were 965 Indigenous workers in the federal public service.4 My ultimate research goal has been to conduct oral interviews documenting the work experiences of Aboriginal public servants who worked in Ottawa since the late 1960s.Through this research I have provided an avenue for several Indigenous civil servants to voice their experiences and identities within the historical record. 5 My interviewees represent an interesting mosaic of identities, which reveals the variety of Indigenous peoples from across the country that came to work in the civil service.Interviewees have self-identified as members of many communities.An anonymous Odawa interviewee, who I henceforth refer to as John, has worked primarily for the Treasury Board Secretariat.6 Eric McGregor of Kitigan Zibi, has been a long time employee of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.Ronda Evans, from the North Temiskaming First Nation, worked as the former coordinator of Health Canada's Aboriginal Head Start program.Jaime Koebel, a former Educator of the National Gallery of Canada, has identified as a Métis woman with roots in the Albertan Kikino and Beaver Lake Métis communities.Lastly, Dave Monture, CQ, and Russ Organizing in Thunder Bay, Ontario, 1972-1979," The American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3-4 (2003): 548-565; Robin Jarvis Brownlie, "'Living the Same as the White People': Mohawk and Anishinabe Women's Labour in Southern Ontario, 1920-1940," Labour/ Le Travail Vol.61 (Spring 2008) : 41-68; Julie Guard, "Authenticity on the Line: Women Workers, Native 'Scabs,' and the Multi-Ethnic Politics of Identity in a Left-led Strike in Cold War Canada," Journal of Women's History, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Winter 2004): 117-140; Joan Sangster, Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).well as more traditional archival research in government departmental records and a secondary source literature review, I expect this study to contribute to the historiography of an understudied class of postwar urban Indigenous workers in Canadian history.7 In pursuing this research topic and in working collaboratively with my interviewees, I also intend this thesis to reflect the sensibilities and practices of intellectuals such as Steven High, Joan Sangster, Julie Cruikshank, and Craig Heron.8 In the chapters that follow, I explain the scholarly context of this thesis in more detail.Much of this introductory chapter sketches the context within which Indigenous workers were enmeshed as they entered federal civil service employment in the mid to late twentieth century.This will be accomplished through the examination of two key themes: firstly, I will identify how Indigenous public servants were part of a much larger movement of urban 7 I have chiefly been influenced by, among others, Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1991); Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1990; Steven High, "Native Wage Labour and Independent Production during the 'Era of Irrelevance.'"Labour/ Le Travail Vol.

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