Canada and the Second World War: Essays in Honour of Terry Copp

4. Fighting a White Man’s War?: First Nations Participation in the Canadian War Effort, 1939–1945

67 4 Fighting aWhite Man’sWar? First Nations Participation in the CanadianWar Effort, 1939–1945 Scott Sheffield Canada’s First Nations added their weight to the national war effort against the Axis powers in a remarkable range of ways.1 On the homefront, they lent their vocal support, time, labour, and limited financial resources; at the same time, young Native men and women volunteered in the thousands for service with the armed forces. Many others found themselves conscripted, called to report for medical exams and compulsory training under the National Resources Mobilization Act of 1940.2 Canadians were surprised and pleased by First Nations’ sacrifices and contributions, which gained significant media attention.3 The dominant society interpreted Indian actions as admirable patriotism and loyalty and as an attempt to prove themselves capable and worthy of inclusion in the mainstream of national life. Canadians viewed this as achievable solely via assimilation. Postwar efforts to reform Canadian Indian policy reflected these concerns and aspirations and succeeded in recasting Indian assimilation in liberal democratic garb. But this white man’s war was not the one that First Nations people were fighting.4 The subject of indigenous contributions to Canada’s wars of the twentieth century has emerged from obscurity to a relative degree of prominence over the past thirty years. Beginning in the 1970s, First Nations and Metis veterans’ groups drove the burgeoning awareness of the issues, concerned that their service had been forgotten and angered at their unequal access to 68 Fighting aWhite Man’sWar? veterans’ benefits after the Second World War and Korea. A growing number of scholars and graduate students began resurrecting First Nations’ wartime experiences with the goal of achieving the recognition and remembrance that indigenous veterans deserved. Fred Gaffen’s Forgotten Soldiers, published in 1985, became a catalyst for a number of master’s theses in 1988, 1992, and 1995 that were shaped and inspired by similar themes of historical resurrection and commemoration.5 Veterans Affairs Canada published another laudatory example of this genre in 1993.6 Importantly, veterans’ political efforts began to bear fruit in the 1990s when the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples produced a report on Aboriginal veterans in 1994–95.7 This was soon followed by extensive attention given to indigenous veterans’ experiences in the mammoth first volume of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP).8 These studies formed an evolving orthodoxy that had conjured enough attention by the late 1990s that a National Round Table on First Nations Veterans’ Issues was established to examine the historical experience of Status Indian veterans.9 The final report from that process concluded that First Nations veterans had been systemically disadvantaged. Based on these findings, the government made an offer of compensation in 2003. Such developments reflected the predominance of what some have called the ‘forgotten warrior’ interpretation of the Indians’ Second World War experience.10 This approach emphasized the injustice of conscripting Status Indians, as well as the disadvantages faced by First Nations veterans after the war, juxtaposed with claims of phenomenally high enlistment rates and of heartfelt and unrequited loyalty to treaties and the Crown. The impression created conveyed a tragic irony of Status Indians fighting bravely and ably in Europe for rights they were denied at home. The weight of such claims was politically potent, even if not always grounded in sufficient evidence. However, political exigencies of the 1980s and 1990s sometimes inhibited other lines of scholarly inquiry. It was difficult to question claims that Status Indian enlistment rates were higher than for any other segment of Canadian society, or to imply that not all indigenous recruits were uniformly courageous and natural soldiers, or to suggest that not all First Nations veterans were welcomed home as heroes.11 While such questions were legitimate, they at times seemed to threaten political agendas and to impugn the memory and sacrifice of those soldiers. Thankfully, the trend has begun to change in the 69 Scott Sheffield past decade, during which scholars have moved in new directions unfettered by the ‘forgotten warrior.’12 This chapter assesses the broad national patterns of First Nations’ responses to the Second World War, building on both the actions and the words of Status Indian people during the war. It will look at the broad spectrum of ways in which First Nations communities and individuals contributed to the war effort, as well as at those occasions when they resisted...