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When European colonizers arrived, North America held an estimated 5 million to 15 million Indigenous people.
By 1900, through warfare. introduction of disease, state-sponsored violence, assimilation policies, systematic destruction, forced displacement, massacres, and cultural erasure the Indigenous population fell to fewer than 300,000.
 Throughout the history of Canada, the Canadian government, its colonial predecessors, and European settlers perpetrated systematic violence against Indigenous peoples that has been described as genocide.
The genocide and crimes against humanity included instances of forced displacement, land dispossession, medical segregation, nutrition experiments, physical violence, and compulsory cultural assimilation programs.
The Indian Act of 1876 is a Canadian federal law that combined earlier colonial rules to manage Indian status, reserve lands, and First Nations governments. It gave the government total control over First Nations people with the goal of forcing them to give up their culture and join Euro-Canadian society.
Though amended many times—such as in 1951 and 1985 to remove some unfair rules—the core framework of the Indian Act remains in force today.
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Native American Genocide in Canada
Throughout the history of Canada, the Canadian government, its colonial predecessors, and European settlers perpetrated systematic violence against Indigenous peoples that in contemporary times, increasingly has been described as genocide, and cultural genocide.
The treatment has also been described as ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. These collective actions included instances of forced displacement, land dispossession, medical segregation, nutrition experiments, physical violence, and compulsory cultural assimilation programs.
Canada engaged in a wide range of genocides. The governments funded and encouraged military campaigns against Native tribes.
1862 Smallpox Epidemic
The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic started in Victoria on Vancouver Island and spread among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. $20,000 British Columbia Indigenous died.
While colonial authorities used quarantine, smallpox vaccine, and inoculation to keep the disease from spreading among colonists and settlers, it was largely allowed to spread among indigenous peoples.
Some historians have described it as a deliberate genocide because the Colony of Vancouver Island and the Colony of British Columbia could have prevented the epidemic but chose not to, and in some ways facilitated it.
The colonial response to the epidemic among First Nations was a long-sought opportunity to be rid of them and an opportunity to take over First Nation lands.
Massacres
Federal troops and migrating settlers repeatedly targeted non-combatants, including women and children, in events like the Bloody Falls Massacre on July 17, 1771, the Hanging of Tsilhqot'in Chiefs on October 26, 1864, and the Cypress Hills Massacre on June 1, 1873.
The Indian Residential School System
Beginning in 1874 and lasting until 1996, the Canadian government, in partnership with the dominant Christian Churches, ran 130 residential boarding schools across Canada.
While the schools provided some education, they were plagued by under-funding, disease, abuse, sexual abuse and death.
Displacement
The High Arctic relocation took place during the Cold War in the 1950s the federal government forcibly relocated 92 Inuit citizens to the High Arctic as human symbols of Canada's assertion of ownership of the region.
The Inuit were told that they would be returned home to Northern Quebec after two years if they wished, but this offer was later withdrawn as it would damage Canada's claims to the High Arctic. They were forced to stay.
 In 1993, after extensive hearings, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples issued The High Arctic Relocation - Report on the 1953–55 Relocation. An official government apology was given on August 18, 2010, to the relocated families for the inhumane treatment and suffering caused by the relocation.
"The Government of Canada deeply regrets the mistakes and broken promises of this dark chapter of our history and apologizes for the High Arctic relocation having taken place. We would like to pay tribute to the relocatees for their perseverance and courage. The relocation of Inuit families to the High Arctic is a tragic chapter in Canada's history that we should not forget, but that we must acknowledge, learn from and teach our children. Acknowledging our shared history allows us to move forward in partnership and in a spirit of reconciliation."
John Duncan
(Minister of Indian Affairs) The Nunavik Dog Slaughter
The Nunavik dog slaughter was a practice that occurred between the 1950s and late 1960s where Royal Canadian Mounted Police from Ontario and Quebec were given orders to slaughter sled dogs from Indigenous Nunavik communities.
Medical Segregation
Medical segregation of Indigenous peoples in Canada involved the operation of 33 federally funded, racially segregated "Indian hospitals" between 1936 and 1981.
The Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital, Saskatchewan, built in 1936, the 50-bed Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital sat across Echo Lake from Saskatchewan’s provincial sanatorium. It was the site of Dr. RG Ferguson’s experimental BCG vaccine trial on Indigenous infants in the 1930s and 1940s. The hospital closed in 2004.
Birth Alerts
Birth alerts, disproportionately used for Indigenous children, was a practice in Canada, in which a social or health care worker notifies the staff of a hospital if they have concerns for the safety of an expected child based on their parents' history. This can include past instances of poverty, domestic violence, drug usage, and history with child welfare.
A birth alert could also be issued if the mother had undergone frequent moves, or had been in the foster care system herself as a child. Birth alerts are typically issued without the parents' consent, and often result in apprehension and placement of the child into foster care after birth.
In June 2019 after a report determined that the practice of targeting and apprehending infants from Indigenous mothers was "racist and discriminatory" the practice of Birth Alerts was abolished. The last province to abolish this practice was Quebec in 2023.
The “Sixties Scoop”
Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, child welfare authorities systematically removed tens of thousands of Indigenous infants and children from their families and homes often without their parents’ or band’s consent.
 Most children were placed with non-Indigenous, white families, to sever their cultural ties.
The physical and emotional separation from their birth families continues to affect adult adoptees and Indigenous communities to this day. Sterilization
The practice of forcibly sterilizing individuals deemed mentally unfit or "socially inadequate" was widespread in the early to mid-20th century. The belief was that by preventing these individuals from reproducing, society would be protected from the perceived negative impact of their genes. This led to compulsory sterilization of thousands of people, many of whom were Indigenous women, individuals with disabilities, and those deemed to have "undesirable" traits.
The legal basis for compulsory sterilization in Canada can be traced back to the passage of the Sexual Sterilization Act in Alberta in 1928. This legislation allowed for the sterilization of individuals deemed mentally deficient or mentally ill without their consent.
These practices remained in place until the 1970s, when public opinion began to shift and the practice was eventually deemed unethical and inhumane.
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