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Dictionary definition: Canadian Indians
- Article from:
- A Dictionary of Contemporary World History
- Author:
Copyright© A Dictionary of Contemporary World History 2004, originally published by Oxford University Press 2004. (Hide copyright information)
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Canadian Indians
A term used to refer to the aboriginal people of Canada who are neither
Inuit
nor
Métis
, and encompassing a wide variety of distinct peoples. Linguistically, Canadian Indians can be broken up into ten language families, ranging from Algonquian (with over 115,000 speakers in 1986) to Haida and Kutenai (with 200 speakers each in 1986). Legally, Canadian Indians are said to be ‘status’ Indians or ‘nonstatus’ Indians. Nonstatus Indians are those who, especially by intermarriage, have lost the legal rights granted to status Indians by the federal government. In 1987 there were approximately 360,000 status Indians in Canada.
The twentieth century ...