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Right now, Canada is experiencing another spasm of controversy over the legacy of its first prime minister, John A. Macdonald. Although he undoubtedly laid the foundations of modern Canada, he also personally set in motion all the most damaging elements of Canadian Indigenous policy.

Here, in brief, is an accounting of the toll that Macdonald had on Canada’s First Nations.

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“I have reason to believe that the agents as a whole … are doing all they can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation, to reduce the expense,” Macdonald told the House of Commons in 1882.

It’s one of the most damning quotations ever attributed to Macdonald. And yet, in the parliament record it’s immediately followed by an even more damning comment as the Liberal opposition benches accuse Macdonald of not starving Indians enough.

“No doubt the Indians will bear a great degree of starvation before they will work, and so long as they are certain the Government will come to their aid they will not do much for themselves,” said David Mills, who had served as minister of the interior under the Liberal government of Alexander Mackenzie.

This was clearly an Ottawa that had no time for the rights and culture of what they would have called “savage” nations. Even in that context, over his career Macdonald would pursue an Indigenous policy so draconian that even his contemporaries would come to accuse him of going beyond the pale.