The Indigenous Casualties of War: Disability, Death, and the Racialized Politics of Pensions, 1914–39

Abstract

The First World War inflicted suffering upon hundreds of thousands of Canadian families between 1914 and 1918. In response, the state modernized its pension system to partially alleviate the postwar suffering of these families, reflecting the changing role of government in the lives of Canadians. To receive a pension after the war, Canadian veterans and dependants had to prove their postwar suffering arose directly from the battlefield, yet not all who qualified were accorded the same treatment. Unlike their non-Indigenous counterparts, external administrators were appointed to oversee the expenditure of pensions given to Indigenous veterans and dependants to ensure they were spent responsibly. Disabled Indigenous veterans and dependants recognized this as a profoundly discriminatory system – reducing them to their “Indian” identity – and drew from the nineteenth-century language of imperial nationalism and patriotism to demand equitable compensation and treatment from the state. Understanding the experiences of death and disability as intimately as the racist discrimination they faced, they envisioned their place as equals within the larger community of Canadian war casualties even though settlers and the state refused to recognize them as such.