I'm thinking of David Gamble, a veteran from around 1990 to 1996, who served as the grand chief of the Saskatchewan First Nations Veterans Association. He's the one I mentioned who talked about serving “under a flag that didn't always protect us”. Regarding the post-Second World War veterans charter, the legislation was not restricted to certain ethnicities or backgrounds in writing. In practice, though, when it came to access to land, grants and finances, indigenous people did not benefit to the same degree non-indigenous people did. Mr. Gamble's words were that they were given land that already belonged to them on the Beardy's reserve in northern Saskatchewan, for example. It wasn't an explicitly racist legislation, but in practicality and in terms of access and benefits, it was different.
I think there's a rather clear line between the veteranhood and the service of Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian veterans, who were explicitly campaigning for redress later on—that's in the case of Japanese Canadian veterans—but also just for political equity in the immediate postwar era. Again, that was proof of service.
Because a lot of indigenous veterans returned to reserves, you didn't have that same immediate impact. However, in terms of cultivating the leadership group, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, many of the postwar first nations political leaders were veterans, and we see that today.
I'm thinking of one veteran in particular who described how he grew up. He was a residential school survivor from northern Saskatchewan. For him, the experience of serving was, as he put it.... He was the only indigenous person in his unit, but he realized he was as good as anybody else and thrived in the military. That confidence carried through to his post-service civilian life. He was not necessarily politically involved, although he was a political leader, but it was in terms of business and educational success. His service was an inflection point, a transition that acted as a sort of boost.
Again, that's not unique to indigenous or Black veterans. So many Second World War veterans I talked to—I interviewed 40 of them—said, “Look, I had a grade four education and my life was going along this certain trajectory. As a result of the postwar veterans charter and the skills I learned in service, I acquired these skills and then my life went off in another way.” One veteran of the Second World War became a doctor. He practised into his nineties. That was a future that was not open to him until the Second World War—until the educational opportunities opened up as a result of that.
It is often an inflection point—this transition zone where one's life veers off in a way it might not have done or been heading in before. There are elements unique to Black and indigenous veterans, but that's also a common theme for all veterans we interviewed.