In the early 1900s, Canada put out ads to attract white American farmers. Black Indigenous settlers came too

Black Life: Untold Stories reframes the rich and complex histories of Black people in Canada, dispelling commonly accepted myths and celebrating the contributions of both famous and lesser-known individuals. The eight-part series spans more than 400 years, with an eye toward contemporary issues, culture, politics, music, art and sports.

This article is by researcher Karina Vernon. She is featured in the eighth episode, "Claiming Space."

The Oklahoma migration that brought about 1,500 Black American farmers to the Canadian Prairies in the early 1900s originated in a mistake and was notable for its cruel irony.

After the first 10 Numbered Treaties were signed between 1871 and 1907, transferring massive tracts of land (in what is now Ontario, B.C., Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta) to the Crown, Indigenous people were displaced and had to move onto the reserves set aside for them as meagre compensation for their territory. 

The Canadian government sought a new population to transform the grasslands and woodlands in the new provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta into profitable land for cattle, dairy and mixed farming. 

Officials launched a campaign in American newspapers to entice farmers to take up 65-hectare homesteads for free (plus a $10 administration fee, which would be more than $260 today). 

But the government didn't account for two key things. First, it failed to appreciate that once out in the world, the ads would reach far beyond their intended audience. Second, it underestimated the talent of Black people — particularly the kind of Black people in turn-of-the-century Oklahoma — to cross borders that others saw as inviolable.

Ads intended for white farmers were accidentally published in a Black newspaper

The ads the Canadian government intended for white American farmers accidentally got published in a Black newspaper. 

In 1901, the Broad Axe, a Black newspaper in Saint Paul, Minn., published articles stressing the "healthful" climate of Western Canada, praising Americans as "vigorous, resourceful and law-abiding" and welcoming "all who would come." After that, there was no getting the genie back in the bottle. 

Ads circulated in other Black papers, including the Boley Progress, which served Black Indigenous pioneers in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The messages that ran in Black and multiracial communities in the area didn't mention any racial restrictions, so disenfranchised Oklahomans assembled.

The Oklahoma migration 

Accounts of this important wave of migration often leave out the distinct histories of the Oklahoma migrants and the irony of their arrival on the Canadian Prairies in the years after Treaty 10 was signed.

The Canadian government essentially replaced its own Indigenous population with another.

Oklahoma was (and remains) home to a significant Black Indigenous population. The fact that Indigenous tribes owned slaves of African descent is particularly tough to contemplate, especially given the solidarity movements of contemporary Black and Indigenous communities. 

The Five Civilized Tribes — Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek (now Muscogee) and Seminole — were slave-holding nations. When the Five Tribes were forcibly removed from their ancestral home in the American southeast in the 1830s and shuffled onto Indian Territory, they brought enslaved Black people with them. 

There was a significant degree of mixing, creating a population of mixed Afro-Indigenous people. Black and Black Indigenous people were emancipated under the treaties the Five Tribes signed with the United States in 1866 following the American Civil War. But many freedmen — as the formerly enslaved people and their descendants are called — were disenfranchised again by the federal Dawes Commission, which allotted land to individual tribe members. On its lists of tribe citizens, the commission counted Afro-Indigenous people in the separate category of freedmen, despite their having Indigenous kin and blood ancestry. In some cases, this meant freedmen did not have tribal citizenship; it also affected their land allotments. 

Oklahoma became a state in 1907. The first bill passed by the legislature segregated public transit. Then in 1910, it introduced a new "grandfather clause," effectively excluding freedmen from the vote: anyone whose ancestors had not been allowed to vote on or before Jan. 1, 1866 (which included former slaves and their descendants) had to pass a literacy test.

It is not surprising that these doubly disenfranchised Black Indigenous people were particularly receptive to the ads for free Canadian land. They were, racially at least, already borderless after all.

When they arrived on the Canadian Prairies along with Black folks from Kansas, Texas and Missouri, government agents thought of the Oklahomans as "Indians." Their oral histories attest to this. Gwendolyn Hooks grew up on a farm near Breton, Alta. Her mother had moved to Alberta from Kansas; her father had moved from Oklahoma to escape Jim Crow laws. In her memoir, she recalls that her community had in-between status:

Ours was a subsistence economy; therefore, the men and some of the women in the community hunted. After all, we lived in virgin wilderness and sometimes, when our larders were low, we hunted out of season. Indians could hunt out of season; and at least in the States, we were considered Indians and the Canadian government representatives themselves referred to us as Indian on occasions.

Soon, however, the community was prevented from asserting any hunting and fishing rights. They were regarded as distinct from Indigenous people, with different legal rights. The complexity of their history and racial identities was flattened out, and they were viewed, socially and legally, as Black.

The migrants went on to help found the largest Black and Black Indigenous communities west of Ontario at that time: Amber Valley, Breton, Campsie and Wildwood in Alberta, and Maidstone in Saskatchewan. They were tightly knit self-sufficient communities. They built their own churches and schools, and developed their own trade economies, song cultures and foodways. 

Their history is vitally important for it demands that we shift our understanding not only of Canada, but also of Blackness itself.

Learn more about the Oklahoma migration in "Claiming Space," the eighth episode of Black Life: Untold Stories, streaming now on CBC Gem.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from features on anti-Black racism to success stories from within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.