With Good Intention: Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada

J.R. (Jim) Miller is Canada Research Chair of History at the University
of Saskatchewan and the author of Reflections on Native-Newcomer
Relations: Selected Essays and Lethal Legacy: Current Native
Controversies in Canada.

The story of Native–newcomer relations in 19th- and 20th-century
Canada is usually framed as a narrative of oppression. Within this
tradition authors focus on the negative policies and actions of
non-Natives, and in the better accounts also on Aboriginal peoples’
reactions to mistreatment. The problem with this approach is that
non-Natives almost always are depicted as totally malevolent—as
oppressors, exploiters, and people lacking in sympathy for the
disadvantaged.

Education specialist Celia Haig-Brown and sociologist David Nock have
deliberately recast the narrative of this book by focusing not on policy
or colonizing actions, but on the non-Natives who worked to mitigate,
resist, or overthrow regimes of oppression. The volume’s essays study
non-Natives who acted with good intentions, such as politician Simon J.
Dawson in a chapter by Janet E. Chute and Alan Knight, and female
missionary Emma Crosby in another by Jan Hare and Jean Barman.

Reframing the story provides the reader with a history that is richer
and more nuanced than the traditional account of unrelieved oppression.
While the contributors’ approach does not alter the historical reality
of mistreatment and dispossession, it does serve to remind students of
Canadian history that the Native–newcomer relationship was not just a
history of vicious actions by villainous individuals. In pointing out
the exceptions and the contradictions in the story of negative policies,
the contributors collectively deepen our knowledge and understanding of
the history of that problematic relationship.

While specialists in the field might wonder whether the contributors
acknowledge sufficiently the influence of Christian humanitarianism in
the story this volume reinterprets, they will agree that With Good
Intentions is a welcome addition to the literature on the history of
Native–newcomer relations in Canada.