Harold Cardinal - Adult Upgrading - English 012 First Nations Focus Winter 2024

Harold Cardinal Biographical Information

Harold Cardican - Canadian Encyclopedia
Harold Cardinal, Cree chief, lawyer, author (born on 27 January 1945 in High Prairie, AB; died on 3 June 2005 in Edmonton, AB). An Indigenous rights activist, Cardinal was a leader in the movement against the 1969 White Paper, which sought to do away with Indian Status and treaty rights. Cardinal was actively involved in Indigenous politics for much of his life and is remembered as a strong and inspirational leader.
Harold Cardinal - UXL Biographies
Harold Cardinal, a charismatic Cree tribal leader and author, presided over the Indian Association of Alberta, Canada, as a young man in the 1970s. His 1969 book, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada's Indians, had a powerful effect on public opinion about the rights of indigenous people. As a politician and a writer, Cardinal has effectively fought against the Canadian government's attempts to take away the rights to land and self-government granted by treaty to Canada's First Nations.
Harold Cardinal - DISCovering Multicultural America
Harold Cardinal is a political leader and writer, active on the provincial and national level. He was born in High Prairie, Alberta, on January 27, 1945, and raised on the Sucker Creek Reserve in north-central Alberta. Cardinal attended residential school in Joussard, Alberta, and then high school in Edmonton, Alberta. Cardinal interrupted two years of university study at St. Patrick's College in Ottawa, Ontario, where he studied sociology, to work with the Canadian Union of Students, as associate secretary for Indian affairs in 1966-67. That same year, Cardinal was elected president of the Canadian Indian Youth Council.
Harold Cardinal - Research Starter
Harold Cardinal rose to prominence in 1969 after he wrote a powerful counterpoint to a proposed change in Canadian policy toward the country's native tribes that was instrumental in ending the policy. He continued to be a strong proponent of the rights of Canada's indigenous people throughout his lifetime.

Books written by Harold Cardinal

The Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal
Call Number: Vernon Circulating Collection E 92 .C3 1999
ISBN: 0295979097
Publication Date: 2000-05-01
Aboriginal people in Canada took hope with the election of Pierre Trudeau's Liberals in 1968. They were outraged when the White Paper introduced by Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Jean Chretien a year later amounted to an assimilation program: the repeal of the Indian Act, the transfer of Indian affairs to the provinces, and the elimination of separate legal status for Native people. The Unjust Society, Cree leader Harold Cardinal's stinging rebuttal, was an immediate best-seller, and it remains one of the most important books ever published in Canada. Possessed of a wicked gift for satire, Cardinal summed up the government's approach as "The only good Indian is a non-Indian". He coined the term "buckskin curtain" to describe the barriers that indifference, ignorance, and bigotry had placed in the way of his people. He insisted on his right to remain "a red tile in the Canadian mosaic". Above all, he called for radical changes in policy on aboriginal rights, education, social programs, and economic development. The Unjust Society heralded a profound change in the political landscape. Thirty years later, however, the buckskin curtain has still not disappeared. Canada's First Nations continue their fight for justice. And Harold Cardinal's vision is as compelling and powerful as ever.
The rebirth of Canada's Indians by Cardinal, Harold
Call Number: Kelowna Circulating Collection E 92 .C348 1977
ISBN: 9780888301253
Publication Date: 1977

The White Paper 1969 & the Red Paper 1970

A SURVEY OF THE CONTEMPORARY INDIANS OF CANADA Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policies (aka as the Hawthorn Report)
A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada: Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policies (2 vols, Ottawa 1966–7), edited by Harry B. Hawthorn, was undertaken following a 1964 request by the federal government to the University of British Columbia. The overall philosophy of the report was captured in the phrase ‘Citizens Plus’. Indians should be regarded as ‘charter members of the Canadian community’. Indian peoples, who had often been deprived of many of the benefits of standard citizenship, particularly welfare state benefits, should have a plus component added to their citizenship. The contents of ‘plus’, some of which were found in treaties, were to be worked out in future political processes. ‘Plus’ was justified, among other reasons, because Indians ‘once occupied and used a country to which others came to gain enormous wealth in which the Indians have shared little’.

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau rejected the report, especially its ‘plus’ component, and proposed a contrary policy in its 1969 White Paper. The Indian Association of Alberta led the successful counterattack against the White Paper with its own document, entitled Citizens Plus.
The White Paper 1969
In 1969, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chrétien, unveiled a policy paper that proposed ending the special legal relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state and dismantling the Indian Act. This white paper was met with forceful opposition from Aboriginal leaders across the country and sparked a new era of Indigenous political organizing in Canada.
Rejecting the White Paper
The article discusses how Indigenous leader Harold Cardinal presented the document entitled "Citizens Plus," prepared by the Indian Association of Alberta (IAA) in response to the proposed "Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy," to then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Citizens Plus (The Red Paper)
Citizens Plus, also known as the Red Paper, was a report presented to the federal government on 4 June 1970. It was prepared under the leadership of Harold Cardinal and the Indian Association of Alberta. It was a response to the 1969 White Paper. The authors believed the White Paper offered a dire view of the future for Indigenous peoples.
THE INDIAN ASSOCIATION OF ALBERTA’S 1970 RED PAPER PUBLISHED AS A RESPONSE TO THE CANADIAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSED 1969 WHITE PAPER ON INDIAN POLICY
LEON CRANE BEAR

A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Lethbridge in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Department of Native American Studies University of Lethbridge 2015