The Indian Act Offences — A Register
DRAFT — CULTURAL REVIEW PENDING. This entry stands at the encyclopedia's cultural-review gate: a publisher's draft of the Collection's research, published nowhere until cultural review and the owner's examination pass it. Readings carry the research labels unchanged: Documented · Debated / Claim.
The code, statute by statute, as the law-pipeline research files it (Law, Abuse, Addiction, Prison, §1). Each entry carries its repeal layer; a law is not understood until its repeal is read beside it.
| Year | The offence | Its repeal layer |
|---|---|---|
| 1876 | The consolidated Indian Act entrenches complete liquor prohibition for status Indians; legal drinking runs through enfranchisement, and enfranchisement requires sobriety — a closed loop (Campbell 2008) | Broken at Drybones 1969; layers closed 1971 and 1985 |
| 1884 | Purchase, consumption and entry to licensed premises made offences — one to six months' hard labour and/or $50–$300 | Race-specific provisions repealed 1985 |
| 1887 | Warrantless arrest of the intoxicated | With the liquor regime, to 1985 |
| c. 1885–86 | The pass system — leaving a reserve without an agent's written pass. Administrative policy, never enacted; carried at that level on this register's face | Decayed unevenly through the twentieth century; never repealed, because never enacted |
| By 1936 | Possession of liquor in an Indian's own home an offence | Repealed with the regime, 1985 |
| 1927 | Section 141 — raising funds or retaining counsel for a band's claim without the Superintendent General's written consent; documented prosecution, John Elliott (Cowichan), 1930 | Repealed 1951 |
| 1969–71 | R v. Drybones holds s. 94(b) inoperative as race discrimination; Parliament repeals s. 94 (1971) | — |
| 1985 | The remaining race-specific liquor offences repealed; replaced by the band by-law power (s. 85.1) | — |
The Ontario interdiction list (1930s–1990) stands beside this register at its own level: a provincial Liquor Board list applied mainly to white Canadians — its evidentiary weight is its remembered name, "the Indian list," and it is not an Indian Act provision. Record: LAW_ABUSE_ADDICTION_PRISON_2026-10-30.md §1.
Read beside: Framing and Findings · The Schools