GO rD hIll 500 Years of Indigenous resistanceof Canada. The rebellion was directed against the annexation of the
territory over the Metis—who numbered some 10,000 in the region. A
force of 400 armed Metis seized a small garrison and demanded dem-
ocratic rights for the Metis in the Confederation. The following year
the Manitoba Act made the territory a province. However, fifteen years
later in 1885 the Metis along with hundreds of Cree warriors under the
chiefs Big Bear and Opetecahanawaywin (Poundmaker) were again en-
gaged in widespread armed resistance against colonization. For almost
four months the resistance continued against thousands of government
troops which, unlike in 1870, were now transported quickly and en
masse on the new Canadian Pacific railway. After several clashes the
Metis and Cree warriors were eventually defeated; the Cree and Me-
tis guerrillas imprisoned, killed in battles or executed. Another Metis
leader, Gabriel Dumont, escaped to the U.S.
The Metis and Cree resistance of 1885 was the final chapter of armed
resistance in the 19th century. However, the use of military force in con-
trolling Native peoples was already being bypassed by the Indian Act of
1876, itself a reaffirmation and expansion on previous legislation con-
cerning Native peoples. This Act, with subsequent additions and changes,
remains the basis of Native legislation in Canada today.
Under the Indian Act, the federal government through its Depart-
ment of Indian Affairs is given complete control over the economic, so-
cial, and political affairs of Native communities. More than just a legisla-
tive instrument to administer “Indian affairs”, the Indian Act was and is
an attack on the very foundations of the First Nations as nations. Besides
restricting hunting and fishing, criminalizing independent economic
livelihood (i.e. in 1881 the Act made it illegal for Natives to “sell, barter or
traffic fish”), the Act also declared who was and who was not an Indian, it
removed “Indian status” from Native women who married non-Natives,
and criminalized vital aspects of Native organization and culture such as
the potlatch, the sun-dance, and pow-wow. Everything that formed the
political, social, and economic bases of Native societies was restricted;
the culture was attacked because it stood as the final barrier of resistance
to European colonization. In the area of political organization,
The Indian Act (of 1880) created a new branch of the civil service
that was to be called the Department of Indian Affairs. It once
again empowered the superintendent general to impose the elec-
tive system of band government... In addition, this new legisla-