A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918–1939

Kerry Abel is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History, co-editor of Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, and co-editor of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

This valuable study fills an important gap in our understanding of
Aboriginal–state relations in Canada. Much has been written about the
history of “Indian” policy and about the devastating impact of that
policy on First Nations, but very little has been done to explore the
intersection of those two stories—the actual mechanisms by which the
abstracts of policy and bureaucracy met the everyday lives of real
people. In this book, historian Robin Jarvis Brownlie provides us with
an original and carefully researched study of the role and impact of two
Indian agents in Ontario during the interwar period. By comparing the
work of two very different men (John Daly of the Parry Sound Agency and
Robert Lewis of the Manitowaning Agency on Manitoulin Island), she is
able to avoid some of the misleading generalizations of the polemic
literature in the field and present more nuanced conclusions. Chapters
on assimilation and the provision of economic assistance are
particularly interesting in their examination of policy contradictions,
agents’ reactions, and the ultimate impact on both community and
individual.

While the author concludes that the power of the Department of Indian
Affairs was “overwhelming,” she also follows the current generation
of scholars in emphasizing the various strategies employed by First
Nations in an attempt to shape the system to suit their own needs and
ends. On balance, she argues, they failed to have any impact on the
policies, but their actions were important in the long term because they
kept alive the ongoing campaign for recognition of their rights, a
campaign that is gradually beginning to have an impact on contemporary
Canada.

It would be a mistake to overlook this book on the grounds that its
two-case approach is too narrow. There is a great deal of broader
contextual information here that will be valuable for anyone with an
interest in Aboriginal rights issues. Furthermore, the focus on Ontario
in the interwar years provides a very useful comparison to other
literature in the field, much of which has focused on the Prairies and
British Columbia.