Labour, modernity and the Canadian state: A history of Aboriginal women and work in the mid-twentieth century

This thesis explores how labour, modernity and the state shaped the history of Aboriginal women in mid-twentieth century Canada. It does so through four case studies drawn from the 1940s to the 1970s. The first examines Native women and domestic service. The second case study analyzes the federal Indian Placement and Relocation Program and the experience of women in it, focusing on those trained as hairdressers. The third case study explores the gendered history of the early Community Health Representatives program. The final case study utilizes the history of the Registered Nurses of Canadian Indian Ancestry association as a window into the history of Aboriginal nurses in the twentieth century. This dissertation draws on a variety of archival sources including the federal records of the Department of Indian Affairs and National Health and Welfare, oral interviews, the records of Aboriginal organizations, print and other media. This study illustrates the critical investment the Canadian state had in regulating Aboriginal women's labour. By exploring the history of Aboriginal women and wage work in the twentieth century, this thesis resists common narratives of Aboriginal displacement and invisibility especially in the fields of Indian health, education and employment. It adds to a growing literature investigating Aboriginal people in the modern era and challenging narratives of Aboriginal absence, displacement and apparent insignificance, inauthenticy and loss which current narratives about Aboriginal modernity entail.