The Conversation (Canada) Canada
RCMP files join centuries of records on Indigenous people, scholar argues
Knowledge recapCleared for publication
Daniel Sims, of the University of Northern British Columbia, starts from a CBC report that the RCMP's security service infiltrated and watched Indigenous rights organisations in the 1970s. He argues this was not new. For centuries, missionaries, fur traders, the Indian Department, treaty pay lists, Indian status registration, residential schools and hospitals created detailed records about Indigenous people. Archives such as the Hudson's Bay Company Archives and Library and Archives Canada still hold them. Sims says the useful question is how accurate the records are, not whether they exist. He notes that people use them today, for genealogy and when applying for status. "To be Indigenous in Canada has often meant living under continuous observation." — Daniel Sims, Associate Professor of First Nations Studies, University of Northern British Columbia
Why it matters
Sims argues that writing these archives off as too colonial to use overlooks how Indigenous people rely on them, and that the RCMP files are one more layer in a long record of being watched.
Read the original at The Conversation (Canada)
Origins, evidence and credits
Original headline: The RCMP's surveillance of Indigenous groups exposes a centuries-long pattern in Canada
- Origins and holders
- The article says missionaries, fur-trade companies, churches and government departments made the records, and names as holders the Hudson's Bay Company Archives (Winnipeg), the Oblate records at Archives Deschâtelets (Richelieu, Québec), the Provincial Archives of Alberta (Edmonton) and Library and Archives Canada, with Métis citizenship records kept by Métis governments and organisations.
- What was checked
- The source does not describe independent checking; it is an analysis piece that draws on archival holdings and on CBC's reporting (it notes only that officials once checked church enrolment reports for inflated numbers).
- Limits reported
- Sims notes that the missionary and fur-trade records were made for self-interested reasons and that, as with any dataset, their accuracy has to be assessed.
People and institutions credited
Daniel Sims (Associate Professor of First Nations Studies; Adjunct Professor of Education, University of Northern British Columbia; author); CBC (the report on 1970s RCMP surveillance the article responds to).