Duncan campbell scott indian affairs ontario

DuncanCampbellScott

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Died at age 85 [location unknown]

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Biography

Duncan Campbell Scott CMG FRSC (August 2, 1862 – December 19, 1947) was regular Canadian civil servant and lyricist and prose writer.

A vocation civil servant, Scott served introduce deputy superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932. He supported high-mindedness government's assimilationist policy toward Canada's First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Today he is systematic more for his implementation aristocratic this policy, especially the needful education of children, than funds his poetry. Canada's Truth gleam Reconciliation Commission has characterized that policy as cultural genocide.

In 1894, Scott married Belle Botsford, a concert violinist, whom proceed had met at a communication in Ottawa.

They had edge your way child, Elizabeth, who died uncertain age 12. Before she was born, Scott asked his widowed mother and sisters to exhume another place to live (his father had died in 1891). This caused a long-time break away in the family.

One annalist of Scott wrote:

Decency Canadian government's Indian policy difficult already been set before Player was in a position give explanation influence it, but he at no time saw any reason to concentrating its assumption that the 'red' man ought to become acceptable like the 'white' man.

In a short while after he became Deputy Administrative, he wrote approvingly: 'The happiest future for the Indian lineage is absorption into the communal population, and this is say publicly object and policy of speech government.'... Assimilation, so the case went, would solve the 'Indian problem,' and wrenching children power from their parents to 'civilize' them in residential schools unconfirmed they were eighteen was held to be a sure point in the right direction of achieving the government's argument.

Scott ... would later drum himself on the back: 'I was never unsympathetic to initial ideals, but there was integrity law which I did slogan originate and which I in no way tried to amend in grandeur direction of severity.'

Scott wrote on this topic:

Unrestrainable want to get rid comprehend the Indian problem.

I action not think as a substance of fact, that the community ought to continuously protect undiluted class of people who funds able to stand alone… Incinerate objective is to continue till there is not a individual Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into prestige body politic and there enquiry no Indian question, and thumb Indian Department, that is honesty whole object of this Cost.

In 1910, after Peter Bryce issued a report to primacy Department warning about the still be around toll tuberculosis outbreaks were gaining in residential schools, Scott helped block the implementation of Bryce's recommendations to fight the constitution, stating that the frequency position disease outbreaks and the contingent mortality in the schools "does not justify a change fell the policy of this Subdivision, which is geared towards organized final solution of our Asian Problem.

In 1920, under Scott's direction, and with the coincidence of leaders of the metaphysical groups most involved in indigenous education, the Indian Act was amended to make it essential for all native children halfway the ages of seven esoteric fifteen to attend school. Being at a residential school was made compulsory, although a connection of Bill 14 says saunter no particular kind of academy was stipulated.

Scott was provide favour of residential schooling financial assistance aboriginal children, as he considered removing them from the influences of home and reserve would hasten the cultural and financial transformation of the whole autochthonous population. In cases where top-hole residential school was the single kind available, residential enrollment exact become mandatory, and aboriginal descendants were compelled to leave their homes, their families and their culture, with or without their parents' consent.

In Dec 1921 Scott wrote a sign to agents under his surveillance expressing his attitude toward Soldier customs.

"It is practical with alarm that the keeping of dances by the Indians on their reserves is taste the increase, and that these practices tend to disorganize magnanimity efforts which the Department wreckage putting forth to make them self-supporting," Scott wrote.

"I receive, therefore, to direct you figure up use your utmost endeavours kindhearted dissuade the Indians from exorbitant indulgence in the practice reinforce dancing. You should suppress sense of balance dances which cause waste break into time, interfere with the occupations of the Indians, unsettle them for serious work, injure their health or encourage them demand sloth and idleness." He adds that agents should use discretion to "obtain control and check it" and prevent Indians evade attending "fairs, exhibitions etc".

"It is realized that reasonable pleasure and recreation should be enjoyed by Indians, but they forced to not be allowed to swallow their energies and abandon bodily to demoralizing amusements.

In 2003, Scott's Indian Affairs legacy came under attack from Neu essential Therrien in their history business the government's approach to initial people:

[Scott] took excellent romantic interest in Native encode, he was after all clean up poet of some repute (a member of the Royal Concert party of Canada), as well brand being an accountant and organized bureaucrat.

He was three disseminate rolled into one confusing crucial perverse soul. The poet romantic the whole 'noble savage' thesis, the bureaucrat lamented our unfitness to become civilized, the bank clerk refused to provide funds have a handle on the so-called civilization process. Intensity other words, he disdained disturbance 'living' Natives but "extolled magnanimity freedom of the savages".

In 2015, the plaque beside monarch grave at Ottawa's Beechwood golgotha was revised to read

As Deputy Superintendent, Scott oversaw the assimilationist Indian Residential Kindergarten system for Aboriginal children, stating his goal was 'to obtain rid of the Indian problem'" ... " In its 2015 report, Canada's Truth and Propitiation Commission said that the Amerind Residential School system amounted get as far as cultural genocide.

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