Borrowed Blueprints

Quiet Canines Podcast · Oct 26, 2026 · 3m

Did you know that apartheid South Africa borrowed Canada’s playbook?

Both countries had large indigenous populations before European colonizers arrived. Both wanted to separate the indigenous population from white settlers and prevent them from owning land or voting. South African officials visited Canada to study how Indigenous people were controlled and managed separately from white citizens.

South Africa took what it needed and applied it to its own segregation policies.

In Canada, the Indian Act pushed indigenous people onto reserves. The government owned the land and indigenous people…