Skip to content | Skip to institutional links

Common menu bar links

Institutional links

ARCHIVED - Framing Canada:
A Photographic Memory

Archived Content

This archived Web page remains online for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. This page will not be altered or updated. Web pages that are archived on the Internet are not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards. As per the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada, you can request alternate formats of this page on the Contact Us page.

Essays

Aboriginal Peoples

Gallery - Assimilation and Control of Home

The majority of these photographs were taken during a period when European racial ideology maintained that all humans could be ranked according to a natural evolutionary scale. Social Darwinists commonly believed that Aboriginal people were less developed than their White counterparts and therefore needed to be helped in order to become modern and self-sufficient members of the new societies in which they lived. However, "help" included policies of forced assimilation, the culturally devastating reserve system and constant pressures to conform to the codes of White society. Government agencies as well as individuals eagerly photographed all of these processes to monitor the progress of Aboriginal reform.

Previous | View Gallery List | Next

Photograph of an Aboriginal man standing in a graveyard, Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan, circa 1885

Graveyard at Fort Qu'Appelle
Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan, ca. 1885
Photographer: O.B. Buell
PA-118766
Source

Photograph of three Aboriginal chiefs and a White man posing for the photographer, Brantford, Ontario, 1886

Blackfoot and Blood chiefs, who did not participate in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, brought to Ontario by the federal government for the unveiling of the Brant Memorial
Brantford, Ontario, October 1886
Photographer: Park & Co.
C-003397
Source

Photograph of female and male Aboriginal students, nuns and two men outside an Indian residential school, circa 1890

Indian residential school students and nuns
Location unknown, ca. 1890
Photographer: H.J. Woodside
PA-123707
Source

Photograph of students at the Fort Simpson Indian Residential School standing in front of the wooden school, each holding up a paper letter spelling, together, the word GOODBYE, Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, circa 1922

Students at Fort Simpson Indian Residential School
Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, ca. 1922
Photographer: J.F. Moran
PA-102575
Source

Photograph showing an aerial view of the Split Lake reserve, Split Lake, Manitoba, circa 1925

Aerial view of Split Lake reserve
Split Lake, Manitoba, ca. 1925
Photographer: unknown
PA-041572
Source

Aerial photograph showing the Hudson's Bay Company residence, the Anglican church and the Department of the Interior station, Lake Harbour, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut), March 1931

Hudson's Bay Company residence (foreground) and the Anglican church,
with the Department of the Interior station beyond
Lake Harbour, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut), March 1931
Photographer: Joseph Dewey Soper
PA-101479
Source