In the 1960s and 1970s, Canada faced a number of serious issues, both domestic and external. An underground separatist movement in Quebec, growing increasingly militant, threatened national security and the safety of government ministers and citizens alike. Opposition to the United States' involvement in Vietnam, compounded by friction between Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and President Nixon, strained foreign relations and called into question the possibility of free trade across the undefended border. Anti-Americanism and economic nationalism were both on the rise, souring the relationship between the two nations and leaving scars that are still visible today.
Action taken by the federal government on the Indian affairs front tends to be disregarded, mostly because it did not involve firebombs and kidnappings and violent protests nor did it inspire witty aperçus from Trudeau. 1969, however, saw a marked change in the way the "Indian question" was to be handled in Canada, with the release of the White Paper on Indian Affairs.
The hopeless idealism of the Canadian people in the 1960s was cause for the belief that society could and should address the problems created by social inequities, and take steps to rectify them. Coincidentally, this was also the time during which the plight of the First Nations people living in abject poverty on reserves came into the public eye -- statistics showed that the average income of an Aboriginal person was less than half of the national average, and the average life expectancy was considerably lower among Aboriginal populations than among other ethnic groups in Canada.
The "Indian question", as it came to be called, revolved around the problem of what a government was to do with a minority group who saw themselves (probably rightly, too) as oppressed and underprivileged as a result of exploitation, both past and current. The Numbered Treaties signed shortly after Confederation and the Indian Act that followed them had been effective thus far, in the sense that they had skirted the issue by hiding it in residential schools and on reserves.
By the late 1960s, though, avoidance wasn't good enough anymore. A federal election was called in 1968; Trudeau's campaign for the Liberal party hinged on the creation of a "just society". Popular, eloquent, and charismatic, in a nation swept by Trudeaumania, he won.
The campaign has been criticised as being vague, and it was. It certainly sounded impressive; but where might the First Nations people fit in a "just society"?
According to Trudeau, the answer lay in repealing the Indian Act entirely and incorporating the First Nations into mainstream society. Penned by then-Minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chrétien, the White Paper on Indian Affairs of 1969 would, by making treatment for all peoples regardless of descent fair and equitable, dispense with the constitutional and legislative basis for discrimination that existed in differing treatment for Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals. Trudeau's "just society" would apply equally to everyone.
The Paper would also get rid of the Department of Indian Affairs and the reserves, created by the Indian Act and the treaties. Responsibilities for Indian affairs would be given by the federal government to the provinces. People of First Nations descent would receive the same treatment and the same services from the government as anyone else.
Opposition to the White Paper amongst the First Nations communities was just about universal. Tired of having a government unsympathetic to the unique problems they faced, many Aboriginals became politicised, alleging that the White Paper was merely another mechanism to assimilate their culture and destroy their heritage.
A major area of contention was that the White Paper had been prepared secretly and launched without warning, with no input whatsoever from the people it would affect. By many this was seen as yet another example of Prime Minister Trudeau's undying arrogance, bordering on incompetence.
Oddly enough, the aims of the Indian Act were remarkably similar to those of the White Paper that proposed to repeal it. The Indian Act, through drawing boundaries and creating disparity where there wasn't any before, tried to define who was and was not an Indian; a Native woman who married a white man would lose her status and thus all the rights that came with the treaties. Her children in turn would also be "non-status Indians". In this way, after enough generations of intermarriage there wouldn't be any status Indians left, the assimilation process would be complete, and the "Indian question" would have gone away of its own accord.
The White Paper was considerably more direct in its approach: under it the terms created by the Indian Act would become moot as either a "status" and "non-status" Indian would be treated the same as a French-Canadian, an Anglophone Canadian, a Jamaican-Canadian, a Ukrainian-Canadian. The problem of extreme poverty among the First Nations peoples and on the reserves would evolve into a problem of poverty only; of course it wasn't racially based, because everyone was equal. Instead of slow assimilation, it would be almost instantaneous; rather than being hidden, the problem would be neatly packaged and then discarded altogether.
The opposition voiced by the First Nations showed a shift in their demographic: the Aboriginal population was becoming more educated and more political, many of them now living in cities instead of on reserves, and they were no longer content to let a government dictate policies that would affect their lives without having consulted them first.
The opposition was so vocal that plans for the White Paper were permanently shelved in 1971.
Sources:
Robson, Robert. The Indian Act. http://flash.lakeheadu.ca/~rrobson/indact/I_s4.htm. Lakehead University. 9 June 2004.
Chiefs reaffirm opposition to revival of 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy, July 20, 1995. http://www.afn.ca/resolutions/1995/aga/res12.htm. Assembly of First Nations. 9 June 2004.
Government Indian policy in Canada. http://collections.ic.gc.ca/Indian/a75our06.htm. SchoolNet Digital Collections. 9 June 2004.
The Just Society and Aboriginal Peoples. http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/history30/u5ct3.html. Saskatchewan Ministry of Learning. 9 June 2004. | 
