Creation of the Northwest Mounted Police National Historic Event
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The creation of the North-West Mounted Police was designated as a national historic event in 1972.
The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada reviewed this designation in 2024.
Reasons for designation
The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), modelled after British colonial police forces and with origins in British cavalry traditions, was established in 1873 by the government of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald as a paramilitary force of 300 mounted constables to police the North-West Territories. Upon arrival in the West in 1874, following an arduous 1300- kilometre trek from Dufferin, Manitoba, the force established posts throughout the region, without the consultation or permission of First Nations.
The NWMP were founded to assert Canadian control over the North-West Territories and prevent American encroachment on or annexation of the region. The government also hoped to use the force to establish relations with Indigenous Peoples, eliminate the American whiskey trade and settler violence that was damaging First Nations communities, and avoid the scale of warfare such as existed between the United States and American First Nations in the West. However, the laws the federal government created and NWMP enforced, as police officers, magistrates, and justices of the peace, did not take into consideration Indigenous laws, moral codes, culture, customs, ways of life, or pre-existing social, economic, and political structures.
The trust engendered between the NWMP and First Nations leaders such as Siksika (Blackfoot) chief Isapo-Muxica (Crowfoot) and Kainai chief Mékaisto (Red Crow) as the force suppressed the destructive whiskey trade in 1874- 1875 facilitated the negotiations of Treaty 6 (1876) and Treaty 7 (1877). The trust between the police and Indigenous Peoples eroded in subsequent years as the NWMP was expected to enforce federal policies that had long term and damaging consequences for Indigenous Peoples.
Review of designation
Reviews are undertaken on an ongoing basis to ensure that designations reflect current scholarship, shifts in historical understandings, and a range of voices, perspectives and experiences in Canadian society.
In 2024, this designation was reviewed due to colonial assumptions and an absence of a significant layer of history in the commemorative plaque text. The original text, approved in 1975, highlighted the goals of the North-West Mounted Police to assert Canadian sovereignty and enforce Canadian law in the North-West Territories and claimed that these goals were achieved within a decade. The original text did not reference that one of the goals of the NWMP was to establish relations with Indigenous Peoples, nor the NWMP’s role in enforcing federal policies that had long term consequences for Indigenous Peoples.
New reasons for designation were developed that elaborate on the goals of the NWMP and on their relations with Indigenous Peoples in the region.
Sources: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, June 2023; December 2023.
The National Program of Historical Commemoration relies on the participation of Canadians in the identification of places, events and persons of national historic significance. Any member of the public can nominate a topic for consideration by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
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