Indigenous Canadian Veterans

Indigenous Peoples in Canada have fought on the front line of every major battle Canada has been involved in, and have done so with valour and distinction. 

It is estimated that 7,000 First Nations People served in the First and Second World Wars, and the Korean War; an unknown number of Métis, Inuit and non-Status Indians also served. 

However, it was not until 1995, fifty years after the Second World War that Indigenous Peoples were allowed to lay Remembrance Day wreaths at the National War Memorial to remember and honour their dead comrades.

At the time of the First World War, First Nations ("status Indians") were exempt from conscription because they were not considered “citizens” of Canada and did not have the right to vote. 

To serve in the Canadian Air Force or Canadian Navy, you had to be “of pure European descent”; this restriction was rescinded in 1940 for the Air Force and in 1943 for the Navy.

Many Indigenous people had hoped their wartime service and sacrifice would increase their rights in Canadian society. But Canada did not treat them the same as other Veterans after they returned to civilian life. 

Canada expropriated hundreds of thousands of acres of reserve lands during this era. Some of their land was also taken and given to non-Indigenous people as part of a program that granted farmland to returning Veterans. The government typically denied this reestablishment program to Indigenous Veterans, and also treated them unfairly in other ways.

Many Second World War veterans, including Tommy George Prince, the most decorated Indigenous war veteran whose medals included the American Silver Star and six service medals, re-enlisted for the Korean War simply because they were unable to re-enter their previous lives. The lives of numerous Indigenous veterans ended in despair and poverty.