There’s an area in Chase called the VLA Flats, an agriculturally fertile bit of land the federal government deemed to be “surplus” to the needs of the Indigenous people living on it. They were removed, so non-Indigenous veterans returning from the First World War could settle on and farm it.
“When status Indians returned they were not eligible for the Veteran’s Land Act or any of the educational benefits” that non-Indigenous veterans received, said Richard Vedan, elder scholar and associate professor emeritus at the University of B.C. school of social work.
“It was [declared] surplus because the population of my people in the area was diminished by the smallpox epidemic and then the flu epidemic, and the ones who were left were being sent to residential school,” he said.
This was at a time all the reserves in Canada comprised just 0.0037 per cent of Canada’s land mass south of the 60th parallel, Vedan said. “There wasn’t a whole lot of reserve land to begin with.”
In all, Ottawa took almost 350 square kilometres from reserves to give to non-Indigenous veterans.
On Monday, Vedan will commemorate Indigenous Veterans Day along with other veterans and dignitaries at the Victory Square cenotaph in downtown 91原创.
It’s a day to reflect and remember, he said, but he hopes it’s also a time to learn from the past.
Vedan served in the Armed Forces for 11 years.
His grandfather volunteered for the First World War, seeing action at Ypres and at Passchendaele, where almost 500,000 casualties were reported from the combined armies.
He had several aunts and uncles serve in the air force and army, and his dad, Hector, fought in the Second World War.
A residential school survivor, Hector had lost his Williams Lake construction job and the army offered steady pay.
“His boss said, ‘Hector, you’re my best worker, you show up on time and do a day’s work for a day’s pay, but I have to let you go,’ ” explaining that he’d received complaints from people who’d contracted his company, Vedan said. “They were asking, ‘Why is an Indian working when there are white men who need jobs?’ ”
Hector stayed in Europe after discharge, playing professional hockey, before returning to Canada with his English war bride and settling in southern Ontario.
He never talked about being Indigenous, and Vedan didn’t discover he was Indigenous until he was 28.
“Basically, he was pretending he wasn’t an Indian,” Vedan said. “He was filled with the shame and the anger, and it wasn’t [until] decades later he was able to talk about.”
Until people work through how Indigenous people have been treated — not in a way that makes people defensive but in a realistic way — progress will not be made, he said.
“Canada is a marvellous place to live. We have some history that needs to be dealt with and it’s a time for all 91原创s to come together and, as they do, to deal with that history, all people living in Canada.”
Many thousands of Inuit, First Nations and Métis men and women served in Canada’s army, navy and air force, going back to the Boer War in South Africa in 1899.
Exact numbers are hard to come by, but it’s estimated at least 12,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit people have served in the three large wars of the 20th century, with at least 500 losing their lives.
Some Indigenous soldiers were decorated, many are memorialized on plaques and monuments around the country, such as the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument in Ottawa and the National Métis Veterans’ Memorial Monument at Batoche, Sask.
But many, many more Indigenous veterans — no one knows how many — came home after serving Canada and their names were lost to time.
“As a single identifiable group, Indigenous volunteers had a higher proportion [of their populations serve] than any other identifiable group in Canada for the First World War, for the Second World War and for Korea,” Vedan said.
Though they fought shoulder-to-shoulder with 91原创 soldiers, most First Nations soldiers weren’t considered 91原创 citizens until after the Second World War, and Indigenous Peoples didn’t get full voting rights until 1960.
Métis soldiers were told they and their families would be looked after once their military service ended, but it didn’t happen.
“They came back from the Second World War, it was pretty much that if your skin colour was dark you were considered to be either a half-breed or First Nations, and you were told to go along your way, go back to your traplines or do whatever you want to do, there’s nothing here for you,” said Dave Armitt, veteran chair for the Métis Nation British Columbia.
Armitt served in the Armed Forces for 22 years. He grew up wanting to do two things: Jump out of airplanes and drive tanks. He joined the cadets early, then became a reservist, before becoming a full-time combat engineer in the former Airborne Regiment.
It took decades of lobbying but the federal government publicly apologized in 2001 and offered First Nations veterans compensation in 2003.
Métis veterans would have to wait 16 more years before they began being compensated.
When the federal government finally agreed to compensate Métis veterans, beginning two years ago with $20,000 payments to veterans, widows or in some cases surviving children, people such as Armitt had a hard time tracking them, since there’d been no option of identifying as Métis when they enlisted.
“Métis veterans from World War II didn’t get a fair shake like the non-Indigenous soldiers did,” Armitt said.
“For me, Indigenous Veterans Day is about paying respect to those who went before me and paid the ultimate sacrifice over in a foreign land, and those that came back and never got the supports they should have had upon return, and really to reconnect with my Métis roots.”
