BEST LEFT AS INDIANS: THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
AND THE INDIANS OF THE YUKON, 1894- 1950
KEN COATES,
Department of History,
Brandon University,
Brandon, Manitoba,
Canada, R7A 6A9.
ABSTRACT/RESUME
Studies of Indian policy in Canada and the Urn.ted States typically focus on the
legislative evolution of federal programmes for native peoples, often ignoring
the regional application of those policies. An examination of the development
of Indian policy in the Yukon Territory illustrates the need to balance the
national perspective with a regional view. Territorial realities interferred with the
application of federal initiatives. To compensate for local social and economic
conditions, government agents were required to develop policies and pro-
grammes more closely attuned to the regional setting.
L'étude de la politique Indienne au Canada et ause Ebats-Unis se concentre
typiquement sur l'évolution legislative des programmes federal pour les per-
sonnes natives, souvent ignorant l'application regional de ces politiques, et
l'examination du developpement de la politique Indienne dans le Territoire clu
Yukon illustre le besoin de balancer la perspective national avec la vue regional.
Les realites territoriales interfere avec l'application d'initiatives Federal. Pour
compenser pour les conditions sociales et économiques locale, les agents
gouvernementause devaient developper des programmes et des politiques plus
en accord avec l'etablissement régional.
THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF NATIVE STUDIES IV, 2(1984): 179-204
180
KEN COATES
In his assessment of the current state of historical research on government-
Indian relations in the United States of America, Francis Paul Prucha recently
argued that too much attention has been paid to the origins of federal pro-
gramming and too little to the implementation of policy. Studies of Jacksonian
Indian strategies, of the General Allottment (or Dawes) Act of 1887, and of
John Collier's Indian "New Deal" prepared in the 1930's have discussed, often
with great success, the impact of prevailing public attitudes on government
programming. 2 Unfortunately, most stop short of tracing national policy
changes to the level of implementation. As a consequence, historians still know
very little about the regional application of federal Indian policy.3 As Prucha
has pointed out (1981)
Historical research in the administration of public policy entails
two elements. There is first the formulation and determination
of the policy, the definite course or method of action which
guides and determines present and future decisions. Then there is
the adminstrative evolution of the policy. Neither of these can be
studied effectively without the other, for a policy can be fully
understood only by watching it unfold in practice.
Prucha's critique for the United States applies with even greater validity to
Canada. Commentators on the administration of Indian policy in Canada (and
there have been distressingly few) typically have sketched the broad contours of
federal legislation relating to Indians. 4 The consistently superficial analysis
employed in these studies, often laced with critical assessments of the paternal-
ism and colonialism inherent in the Indian Act, has resulted in a general
characterization of national Indian policy as unwavering, highly centralized and
goal-oriented. 5 Indian agents charged with the administration of the programmes
are described by implication as adhering without question to Ottawa policies.
The cause of this widespread acceptance of federal policy may lie in the
apparent simplicity and rigidity of federal programming. Surveying contempor-
ary Indian affairs, Ponting and Gibbins characterize the central historical tenets
of federal policy over the last century as the promotion of native self-
sufficiency, protecting the Indians from the evils of white society, encouraging
conversion to Christianity, and assimilating the natives (1980:3-30). While some
of these goals remained intact into the 1970's, national directives did not neces-
sarily translate into local initiatives. In southern Canada, it is true, reservations,
agricultural training programs, and church-administered boarding schools figured
prominently in native-government relations and seemed to conform to the
assimilationist program entrenched in the Indian Act. 6 In the north, however,
dispersed settlement and nomadic patterns made administration difficult, and
interfered with the uniform application of national policy. 7 Government actions
(and in this sense I refer to the larger bureaucracy and not just to the Depart-
ment of Indian Affairs) on Indian matters in the Yukon Territory between
1894 and 1950 illustrate the erratic implementation of national policy and in
particular the limited application of assimilationist goals. Equally, there is a
tendency to limit consideration of federal actions to the central concerns of the