A new documentary looks at the dark legacy of the Canadian government’s “pass system.”
The pass system was a method used by local Indian agents for over six decades to restrict the movement of First Nations people on and off their home reserves.
The film is produced by documentary filmmaker Alex Williams and he says the Indian Act, pass and permit systems were all used by government officials as a means of oppressively controlling the lives of Indigenous people.
“They were controlling people in different ways and controlling travel in different ways,” he says. “So, again, if it quacks like a duck, basically, it’s still control.”
Retired RCMP officer Jacob Peete of the Little Pine First Nation is one of the people featured in the film.
He says he hopes the documentary draws attention to the non-Aboriginal public of this little known dark practice of the Canadian government.
“My grandfather had to live through this thing, my father lived through that thing, I lived through the permit system when I was a young man,” Peete says. “I always said those things are wrong, they can’t be right.”
Peete also says he is not surprised that records and documents of the pass system are hard to find.
Since the system was never passed into legislation and therefore effectively illegal, he says Indian agents were often told to destroy documentation when an office closed.
In 1941, then head of Indian Affairs Harold McGill sent a letter to Indian agents telling them to stop using the pass system but the practice carried on for a number of decades after that.
The pass system was first instituted in 1885 after the Riel Rebellion although it has been historically proven First Nations people played very little role in the uprising.
For more information on the documentary, and to find out about local screenings, check out the website here.