In spite of the fact that the Oblates of Mary Immaculate administered both the university and a vast network of missions and residential schools, Indigenous peoples were by and large absent from the formal curriculum for the first several decades of the institution’s existence. Only in the mid-twentieth century would certain professors develop and in interest in researching and teaching Indigenous subjects.
Occasional guest speakers
Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century history of the University of Ottawa, the curriculum was aligned with conventional academic practices, which is to say that it focused on European, classical learning. As historian Robert Choquette explained, Oblate received little training in missionary theory and practice. It “was felt that little or no instruction was required for missionary work”, a rudimentary knowledge of Catholic doctrine being deemed sufficient in the face of peoples who were completely ignorant of Roman Catholicism. “Respect for other cultures”, he adds, was not included in the training of a nineteenth-century missionary.” (Oblate Assault on the Northwest, pp. 15-6).
From time to time, however, the students were exposed to Indigenous subjects when Oblate missionaries who happened to be guests of the university while passing through Ottawa offered special presentations. In May of 1888, for example, Bishop Isidore Clut, OMI, who had been ministering among the Dene was a guest at the university’s St. Patrick’s Day banquet “and favored the students with specimens of various Indian dialects, which proved very interesting to the students.” (The Owl 1, 5, May 1888). On April 23rd, 1901, Reverend Albert Naessens, OMI, a missionary in the Northwest Territories and himself a former student of the University of Ottawa, likewise gave students “a surprise […] impromptu lecture on missionary life among the Blackfeet Indians” during which he:
“told the students, in a very agreeable and interesting manner, how he established a school for Indian boys. He says those large, brawny sons of the Blackfeet must be appealed to first by displays on the part of the white man of physical strength; not in the sense of violence, indeed, but rather in clever feats of skill. Confidence in this once established unshaken, and obedience, interest and all the other essentials of discipline flow from it. He says those sons of the chase love music and athletics, and he graphically related how he had availed himself of their aptitudes in these directions to impart moral force to the Indian boys.
University of Ottawa Review, 3,8, April 1901, pp. 339-450.
Collections
Beginning in 1869, the University of Ottawa boasted a small museum of natural history for teaching purposes. Initially located in the main building on Wilbrod St., it was moved to the new Science Hall (today the Academic Hall occupied by the Theatre Department, at 133 Séraphin-Marion) when it opened in 1901. There it took up a large room that filled the entire second floor, describes as being “finished and furnished in an elaborate and tasteful style that makes it peerless among Canadian Museums”.
The bulk of the university museum’s collection consisted of animal and mineral specimens, but it also included archaeological and ethnographic “curiosities”. These included such objects as an Egyptian mummy and an Etruscan vase, as well as many medals and coins, but also Indigenous artefacts received from donors in the Ottawa area and from Oblates in the field. In 1878, for example, the museum received “several Esquimaux [sic: Inuit] curiosities” from Father Arnaud, as well as other “Indian curiosities” from Revered B. Casey, an Oblate priest who ministered at Wakefield and Reverend O. Charbonneau, of Angus, Quebec. Casey’s donation included “a large earthenware vase, found in a case near Onslow, PQ”, that was deemed “specially remarkable”, while Charbonneau’s consisted of a “Relic of a primitive copper implement found embedded in and overlaid with phosphate of lime, five feet below the surface, at Templeton, PQ”. The collection grew to include kayaks, perhaps as many as five of them, and a couple of birchbark canoes. In keeping with the times, it also included human remains.
“Then if one cares for ethnology he may examine different skulls and many odd articles that human beings once found useful or ornamental. Relics of the red man are most numerous. Amongst them are costumes made of caribou and walrus skins, a dog sled with sets of harness and whips, carvings, tools, weapons, pottery, baskets, calumets, in a word, specimens of most of the handiwork of our Aborigines.”
Catalogue of the Museum of the University of Ottawa (1909), pp. 5-6.
Not readily apparent to the onlooker, however, was the fact that a large number of the museum’s animal specimens were there because of Indigenous hunters who had furnished them to Oblate collectors in the field. In this indirect way, Indigenous peoples were contributing to the academic dissemination of knowledge, supplying the necessary props for the non-Indigenous students’ engagement with zoology.
The museum fell on hard times thereafter. While it was spared from the fire which destroyed the university’s main building in 1903, it was transformed following that event to serve as sleeping quarters while new dormitories were constructed. In 1911, the museum was reduced by half to make space for a study room; in 1923, its space was repurposed to serve as the university’s new theater, its display cases pushed against the walls. When the Academic Hall was renovated in 1940, the collections were redistributed across the university, most of them offered up for sale two years later for the sum of $1000. It remains unclear what became of the collection’s Indigenous content.
Perspectives from the student papers
Student newspapers serve as a good gauge of the place that Indigenous peoples occupied in the consciousness of the University of Ottawa’s students. Over the years, several such papers have covered in both English and French stories pertaining to the university and its activities, and featured some of the students’ literary output: The Owl (1888-1898), The Review (1898-1914), The Fulcrum (1942-2009), La Rotonde (1932-1968, 1971-2009), L’Atomique (1965). I.D. (1969), Le Défi (1984-1985), Focus (1989-1992), and Baobab (1986-1987, 1991-1992).
The students’ perspectives on Indigenous peoples aligned with those of their times. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the figure of the Indian was stereotyped: at times barbaric and at times romantic, but in either case doomed to vanish. One issue of the Review, for example, might feature a poem on the French colonial heroine Madeleine de Verchères who faced “a numerous onslaught of murderous Indians, in the romantic days of the Old Regime” (1,5, January 1899, p. 269), while another might include a short suspenseful story about an Indian breaking into a house, set back when “the vast continent was people by a race of dusky savages” (2,8, April 1900, p. 517).
Unsurprisingly, the student papers also glorified the work the Oblate missionaries, from time to time publishing reports of their “noble” and “saintly” deeds in the western missions, and making pleas for the financial support of the people of Eastern Canada. A letter from Reverend C. Cahill, OMI, reproduced from the Catholic Record with the Review‘s enthusiastic endorsement thus explained that in the Archdiocese of St. Boniface, which counted an Indigenous population of 15,000, “The majority of these Indians are still heathen, and their evangelization is all the more urgent, that a so-called “cloud of witnesses” are in the field, each claiming to have the truth to present the poor untutored and frequently bewildered Indian”. Indian missions and schools were argued to be the most effective means of “christianizing and civilizing the Indian tribes” (1,6, February 1899, p.351).
At the same time, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century student papers from time to time evidenced a recognition of the harm caused by colonialism:
“But it must not be forgotten that there is much in the Indian’s character to be admired as well as much to be condemned, and that, for many of the outrages and acts of unfaithfulness attributed to him, the injustice of his white oppressor is largely to blame […] The redman has gained little and lost much.”
The Owl, 8, 6, February 1895, p. 268.
An article entitled “The Passing of the Red-man”, published in the April 1902 issue of the University of Ottawa Review elaborates along the same lines, acknowledging the harm done by the colonizers. The central premise, however, remained the superiority of European civilization:
“Not many generations ago where now we dwell, surrounded by all the embellishments of civilized life, there lived a race of men whose only education consisted in a rude knowledge of nature […] The silence of the primeval wilds they loved”
“But two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams rose from every valley […] the drudging squaw labored on the plantations of maize and tobacco while the children strolled about gathering from bush and bough […] When the curling fumes of the calumet arose gracefully in the ruddy glow of the camp-fire, all gathered around the aged warrior who recounted the valorous deeds of the past or discoursed of his future meeting with the departed braves in the happy hunting grounds of the Manitou or Great Spirit, for though these poor children of nature knew not the God of Revelation, the God of the universe they acknowledged in all around.”
[…] “from across the mighty Atlantic, there came many a bark bringing with them the seeds of life and death; the former were sown for us, the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. At first the intruders occupied but a narrow strip along the sea coast from Newfoundland to Florida, but ere long French and English alike proceeded to gratify their desire for more territory by expansion toward the west.”
[…] “The Indian, in fact, is in the last stage of his existence. Having been successfully the host, enemy and subject of the white man, he is now become the white-man’s ward : to feed, clothe and civilize him is now preferred to fighting him. As the case lies, he will soon be civilized off the face of the earth”
[…] “Yes, the proud red-men will soon be gone, gone forever […] Soon they will live but in the word and song of their exterminators. But as we, a wasting pestilence to them, have been a cause of their doom, let us at least, as men, pay a lasting tribute to their memory. We came, we saw, and by our restless energy we conquered. As such we should rise equal to the responsibilities we have imposed upon ourselves. Let us, by the aid of our superior natural gifts, raise the remnant of these children of nature to a higher plane of living […] let us reflects that we are enjoying the outraged and stolen heritage of the once proud red-man”.
Review 4,8, April 1902, pp. 419-421.
In later decades, such references receded from the university’s student papers. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Indigenous peoples and issues were surprisingly absent from the pages of both the Fulcrum and La Rotonde, even as these papers show that the student body was increasingly diverse, welcoming a growing number of students from outside Canada, and increasingly receptive to cultural diversity. On the rare occasions when the “Indian” came up, it was as a blank stereotype. In 1971 when the president of the Student Federation’s weekly column was entitled “Le Mot du Chef” (The Chief’s Word) and illustrated with a tipi, or in 1980 when a cartoon Indian was used alongside a pirate, an astronaut and a Playboy bunny to get the idea across that the paper was looking to recruit a diverse staff. While such imagery was meant to be playful, it betrays the disconnect between the university students and Indigenous peoples.
Missiology and Anthropology
The study of Indigenous peoples was formalized for the first time at the University of Ottawa indirectly, with the establishment of a teaching and research chair in missiology, i.e. in mission work as a scientific pursuit, in 1931. This was the first of its kind in Canada.
The first chairholder was Father Albert Perbal, OMI. While Perbal’s own area of expertise was centered on African cultures, and while the chair’s scope was global, it necessarily addressed missionary work among the First Nations and Inuit. J.-M. Rodrigue Villeneuve, OMI, succeeded as chairholder, followed by Deschâtelets, OMI, and Joseph-Étienne Champagne, OMI. Among its activities it organized occasional weeklong conference on missionary theory and practice, the “Semaine d’études missionnaires du Canada”, the first of which was held in Ottawa in 1934 and the second in Quebec City in 1936.
In 1948, the missiology chair was transformed into an institute, at the initative of Father Champagne who thereby became its first director. The Institute’s activity centered on the teaching of classes, trained doctors of theology, held conferences (resurrecting the Semaines d’Études missionnaires in 1949), and oversaw publications.
In 1952, Father Champagne went on to established a complementary Canadian Research Center for Anthropology (Centre canadien de Recherches en Anthropologie). At this time, the University of Ottawa did not yet have department of anthropology. Champagne found collaborators at the National Museum of Canada (now the Canadian Museum of History). This center had a special focus on the Canadian Middle North and Arctic, particularly the Yukon Territory and Northern Ontario, because of the Oblates’ focused presence in these areas. But the center also contributed to fostering the discipline more broadly, its efforts including the launch of the scholarly journal Anthropologica in 1955.
After 1965, with the separation of the University of Ottawa and St. Paul University, both the Institute and the Canadian Research Center for Anthropology transfered their affiliation to the latter of the two universities, where they continued to function for several decades more. The Center developed by the late 1960s a northern research program financed largely by a grant from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The Institute was meanwhile renamed Institut des sciences missionnaires in 1969, at which time Jean Trudeau, OMI, succeed Champagne as director. In the early 2000s it was disbanded.
Academic Mainstreaming
Indigeous content entered the mainstream of teaching, albeit in a small way, during the 1950s-1970s. Classes in history had been offered since the late nineteenth century, including a “Modern History” class that used the European “Discovery of America” as its starting point, and another devoted to the “History of British North America and United States”. Indigenous peoples must have been mentioned at least in passing in such classes, as elements of the backdrop of French and British colonization and Canadian and American nation building.
From 1942 to 1949 (?), Marius Barbeau, curator at the National Museum, offered a series of yearlong courses at the university on the “Human Geography of North America”. Each was a series of twenty-five classes on Thursday evenings. While taught under the label of human geography, the subject at hand was Indigenous ethnology.
Specialized programs of study only developed during the second half of the twentieth century. The department of history was created only in 1957, and began offering its B.A. with history specialization in 1960. By the mid-1960s, Cornelius Jaenen was teaching Indigenous history. “History of Native Peoples in Canada from the Origins to the Present” (HIS2307) has been taught on a regular basis since 2005 if not earlier.
The teaching of anthropology beyond the Oblates’ missionary framework was formalised following the creation of the Faculty of Social, Economic, and Political science in 1955, and the creation of a department renamed Department of Sociology and Anthropology in 2006 and School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies in 2014. Indigenous people appear to have frequently featured as case studies in thematic classes. From at least 1977 if not earlier, a distinct class was devoted in both official languages to “Indians of America” or “Les indiens d’Amérique” (ANT 3126, ANT3526), renamed in recent years “Native Peoples of the Americas” and “Peuples autochtones des Amériques”.
Theses
The earliest thesis submitted at the University of Ottawa on an Indigenous topic was Stanley A. Puchniak’s “Riel’s Red River government: A legitimate government, 1869–1870” (1931). Next, John Douglas Leechman, a curator at the National Museum (now Canadian Museum of History), obtained advanced degrees from the institution, first submitting an M.A. thesis on “The Popular concept of the “Red Indian” as revealed in literature” (1940), then a doctoral dissertation on “The “Red Indian” of literature: A study in the perpetuation of error” (1941).
Indigenous Pasts uOttawa 