If anyone doesn’t believe that Canada would ever abuse the legal system to rip-off Onkwehonwe people and remove them from their land, this document should shut down that argument. As recorded in the Canadian Archives.
10: R.S. 1927, Chapter 98, s. 141:
Every person who, without the consent of the Superintendent General General expressed in writing, receives, obtains, solicits or requests from any Indian any payment of contribution or promised of any payment of contribution for the purpose of raising a fund or providing money for the prosecution of any claim which the tribe or band of Indians to which such Indian belongs., or of which he is a member, has or is represented to have for the recovery of any claim or money for the benefit of the said tribe or band, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction for each such offence to a penalty not exceeding two-hundred dollars and not less than fifty dollars or to imprisonment for any term not exceeding two months.
Any lawyer that would take an Indian case also risked being disbarred. .
Since the 1924 take-over of the traditional Six Nations government, there was a flood of court cases filed involving land claims pouring into Indian Affairs. In an attempt to thwart Six Nations and other Native Nations from accessing the system, Prime Minister Willam Lyon McKenzie King installed a legal roadblock between First Nations, and justice.
The Superintendent General now had control over hiring lawyers for the band and since most f these classes involved the government itself, very few lawyers were ever hired and those who were were puppets of the Crown.
This section also shows the government’s unrestrained attitude towards Indians. According to the definition concocted by the British Crown Indians in fact were not “people” according to the law. But, if there was an unintended result of the order, it was that since Indians were not “people” they were not subject to taxation. This law remained on the books until 1951-52 when it was quietly revoked. After being on the books for 24-years, this restriction became so commonplace that in effect, the former law was still discouraging Natives from seeking legal council until the late 1950s.
During that time, a Native’s hands were bound and his voice silenced in regards to many land frauds and thefts of Indian land.
