Courting the First Nations Vote: Ontario’s Grand River Reserve and the Electoral Franchise Act of 1885

Abstract

This article begins with an examination of the controversy caused in 1885 by the Macdonald government’s expansion of the dominion franchise to First Nations reserves in eastern Canada, a controversy that revolved around the liberal tenet that the right to vote should be intrinsically linked to independent property ownership. It then discusses the role of the Grand River Six Nations and Mississaugas in the elections and by-elections that took place in the Ontario ridings of Brant South and Haldimand between 1886 and 1897, the year before the Laurier government abolished Macdonald’s Electoral Franchise Act, with the result that treaty status Indians would not regain the vote in national elections until 1960. The picture that emerges is of an Indigenous community torn between conflicting forces, with traditionalists opposing participation in Canada’s elections, reformers supporting the franchise as well as the Conservative Party, and a third group who argued that the Liberal Party was more sensitive than the Tories to First Nations demands for increased responsibility and autonomy.