Small Conversations for a Better World Podcast
Small Conversations for a Better World Podcast
Conversations About Decolonization, Episode 1 / Indigenous Worldview & The Fur Trade
We're diving into learning about Indigenous History and Culture in Canada with the Indigenous Canada course, developed by the University of Alberta, Faculty of Native Studies. This week we cover a summary of what we learned in Weeks 1 and 2 of the course. We gain a better understanding of Indigenous Worldview and the events of the Fur Trade. These episodes are full of dates, and names, and events - chock full of learning, that set the stage for all that follow. See the links below to find the course for more thorough learning on your own time.
Find the Indigenous Canada Course:
Indigenous Canada via Coursera.org
Indigenous Canada via the University of Alberta
Discover Small Conversations on Social Media
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
Find Susannah Steers at www.movingspirit.ca and on social media @themovingspirit.
Find Gillian McCormick at https://physiogillian.com/ and on social media @physiogillian.
00:00
Susannah
Hello everyone and welcome to the small conversations for a better world podcast I'm Susannah Steers welcome to season 5
00:50.84
Gillian
And I'm Gillian Mccormick.
00:57.87
Susannah
If you're a long time listener. Thanks for coming back to us. We're so happy you're here you will notice some changes to the format. We're asking you to participate with us on the podcast in a very different way this season. If you are new to our podcast. We have conversations about all aspects of health with fascinating people who know lots about important things that all relate back to health in some way. Our overarching question that we ask all guests to our show Is “what is health,” each and every guest has given us their own description and they're not all the same. Even though there are some similarities. It might seem simple at first but health is an always moving target that we think is worth a careful look. This season, there is one particular topic that we believe requires a much much deeper dive. Elements of this topic have shown up in previous episodes where we talked about health equity racism trauma policing and all kinds of other things. But what we're talking about this season for the whole season, is decolonization.
02:19.10
Gillian
Susannah and I are committed to learning about the true history of the indigenous peoples of Canada to better understand our roles in current indigenous relations. We're taking the free online course called Indigenous Canada available to everyone. Through the web site coursera.org. That's coursera, c o u r s e r a dot o r g. This course was developed by the University of Alberta, Faculty of Native Studies by historian scholars. It has been available for all to take since 2014 which was notably the year of the last Truth and Reconciliation Commission. in view of last summer's revelation of the graves of indigenous children on the grounds of Former residential schools, we knew that we needed to understand more. We've wanted to discuss indigenous health on the podcast from the outset. We had a few false starts. We explored new formats, pitched ideas to people and organizations that we thought might help us work through some of the big issues and we didn't get very far. In hindsight we had to...
03:31.19
Gillian
Acknowledge that there has been a lot of big stuff happening for indigenous folks in this country and we regrouped and we went back to a drawing board and we realized that it probably wasn't about who we asked but who we were as askers and perhaps how we were going about the ask. And since we actually didn't know what to change we felt that we needed to go deep and start from the beginning. When we all learn then we can all be better informed and can feel more comfortable to unpack this scary deep and disturbing topic. If you want to (hear a) deeper introduction into why we've decided to go down this path for Season 5 please check out the teaser episode that we released in November, 2021. Susannah, in the teaser, we both discussed our initial links to this topic and the experiences that brought us to the table.
04:26.48
Gillian
We had observations about events around us and we had feelings about our responses to those events can you tell us what you feel when you think about your indigenous adjacent experiences?
04:37.29
Susannah
You know I think that the biggest thing that I have to say is that that I feel ashamed that I didn't recognize or dig deeper into questions that I had sooner. Um, it didn't feel close to me. Ah, you know I went to summer camp that had all kinds of..., Was in in in Ontario in Algonquin territory and there were, you know, different cabins had different indigenous names and you know we met at the stockade and we had you know that kind of thing and Beyond learning about the stars and plants and things it was sort of a Disney experience in terms of any kind of real connection to to indigenous culture. Um, so it just felt very very far away from me and and so I'm ashamed that, That I didn't engage, I didn't look deeper. Um, if you know when I did look at those questions it felt bigger, I didn't really know what to do with it and it was surprisingly easy to look away and so I'm I'm kind of ashamed that I did. How about you?
05:51.61
Gillian
I think that that I was going to say I think that that shame aspect of of looking closer and looking deeper is a pretty common theme amongst non-indigenous settlers to this country right. And you know I think maybe also ah Anger or feelings of anger at maybe their anger at the you know the government or you know its forebears for the way this is all played out or they feel overwhelmed by, like..
06:14.22
Susannah
Yeah, yeah.
06:27.80
Gillian
You know it wasn't me that made those decisions, me personally that had such a negative impact on people. Um, and what I noticed is that these are all really big dark feelings and that as humans we we really like to push those big dark feelings away. So It's hard to have meaningful conversations when that's the feeling that comes up.
06:49.73
Susannah
And yet if we're truly to achieve a place where we can move forward as as settlers descendants of those who came to this country to settle the land and and indigenous peoples can coexist in a manner that that honors. uplifts, connects all parties we need to know and and really understand what has gone before. The truths of this relationship through history because you can't as it's. And express we can't have reconciliation without truth. We need to know what those stories are.
07:29.93
Gillian
So, dear listeners, Sue and I believe that our way forward as those without lived experience of being indigenous is to learn what we can and speak about what we learn. And we want to examine what we feel and we think as we move through the learnings. Even if they're uncomfortable. What we want to try to create is a safe space where non-indigenous people without lived experience can talk about the things that they learn about that indigenous experience in Canada. So that right there a safe space for non-indigenous people with no lived experience. So if this is not you, dear listener, then we actually don't think that this is the podcast for you right now. We wish you really well but maybe go check out our first four seasons and then come back for season 6! If you're still listening realize that Susannah and I are going to make mistakes. We're going to miss the point, we're gonna get caught in the rhetoric or the language or own biases. All the time. It's not going to be perfect. Frankly, we're we're a little bit terrified about the mistakes we're bound to make so publicly. It's going to happen it' go to be, we are all going to feel awkward, even you, listeners what we expect is to know more...
08:40.47
Susannah
Just a little bit.
08:57.29
Gillian
By the end of this and honestly we expect to be just a little bit better at talking about our indigenous people's history and where we fit within it by the end of this season so we hope that you have heard your own story. Maybe resonated here. And your own desire to know more so that we can all do better and we hope you'll join us in taking the course. As we said, we're going to record and release these episodes probably every 2 weeks where we will discuss our learnings of the past 2 weeks lesson plans. So today is weeks 1 and 2 and then we parse through our notes and our reflections on those notes and we realize that while this this is a crucial beginning and there's some concepts and some timelines we can't really leave behind and so anyway, just a heads up that this is a long episode.
And if you are taking the course you actually might wish to have your own course notes open alongside us and so here we go here. We go.
09:55.10
Susannah
Say you're ready. Okay, so week 1 is all about worldview and I just want to say as we get started today, my immediate realization as I started this course week 1 was how much of this stuff I have never heard before and you know I grew up with a bilingual English and French education I always had kind of a smug sense that somehow I had an advantage in learning about Canada's 2 solitudes the the Canadian French reality and the Canadian English reality and particularly a lot of my history had come from a Quebecoise perspective and I realized that those same historical events were seen from very different perspectives whether you were coming at it from a French or English perspective and I don't know why I didn't recognize that that was also true. Um for indigenous peoples and in the first week of this course I realized that there was really basic stuff that I'd never heard before. And I'd never considered that there was more to learn about indigenous perspectives and that hooked me in right off the bat.
11:10.38
Gillian
I really love this Susannna, your reference to these 2 solitudes. I actually I mean I I hadn't really heard anyone refer to our French and English this way but it completely resonates as truth.. Um, and then yes I believe it needs to be an overhaul. There are 3 solitudes. In Canada oh boy, perhaps our official languages need to be French, English and a multitude of indigenous dialects.
11:13:00
Susannah
Before we dive in we should probably acknowledge that the Indigenous Canada course covers only four of the many Indigenous Peoples in Canada those perspectives so when we're talking about indigenous people. It really doesn't, it's, it's not a monolith. It's not one thing. What we're talking about is this incredible diversity across the land which as we learned from the creation story is called turtle island and there are many different nations with different worldviews and different relationships with the land, different perspectives and different traditions. So, It's not one size fits all. Even though that's kind of what we've been led to believe or that's how it's come forward in our education and so as a brief super super brief overview. A lot of what we'll be talking about today are what was encompassed in the course.
Ah, the inuit. Who encompass a huge territory across the north which has a very harsh climate as you can imagine and they're very connected to that that climate and that place but even still, there's a wide diversity within innu peoples.
Susannah
There's also the Nehiyawak .
Who I guess we would often think of as Cree, which is the largest aboriginal population in Canada and who who who have lived in bc, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, in some parts of the U.S. And there's the Kanien:keha’ka and I'm probably saying that wrong, which is is sort of known as the Mohawk population. North to the St. Lawrence River, Southern Quebec and Eastern Ontario and and in parts of Quebec as well. I mean I'm sorry in terms of parts of the U.S. as well. And here on the west coast the Tlingit which is Northwest Coastal Nations which I was stunned to realize and talk about diversity in a relatively small area. There are 45 different languages and 21 geopolitical groups. So there's a lot of diversity to talk about. Ah although I guess really the things that bring everybody together are this sense of connection to the land, connection to each other, and shared responsibility for everyone.
Gillian
Okay, so first I didn't know that there were forty five different languages in 21 different geo political groups in the little tiny area that is represented by the the northwest coast nations. Is a lot of diversity and to think that again, they've only talked to us really in detail in the course about 4 different nations. Even within those nations there's diversity. There's more nations across across turtle island and always they were represented to us, within our, and I'm talking about social studies classes when I was a kid, as just this one homogeneous culture of indigenous people and it was just like mind blow right there. So some other useful definitions for us.
Gillian
.. are someone who is non-indigenous is also known as a settler and non-indigenous culture might be referred to as settler culture. if I think about my parents alone just that 1 step Back. My father was not born in this country. He was born in Ireland and was a settler to this country. My mother was not born in this country. She was a settler to this country from England, I think that makes me first generation Canadian which feels weird to say that. My grandfather's people were here for longer. But of course they're swedish so they're settlers too even if they've been here for a few generations, um so I'm a I'm a settler which is again not a term I would have necessarily applied to myself previously. But it is undeniable when you look at it like that.
Susannah
Absolutely.
Gillian
Lived experience, probably it seems obvious but lived experience is personal knowledge about the world gained through direct firsthand involvement in everyday events, rather than through representations that are constructed by other people. So obviously, as a non-indigenous person I have no lived experience of being indigenous and I think it's important that we all recognize that. Ourselves in relation to that experience as we have this conversation. So we are talking about the worldview and also part of that worldview of indigenous people is created through their their oral traditions. It means that each nation uses storytelling as a method of passing on their wisdom and their traditions and translating stories about what might have happened in actual history or what happened in their creation stories and their teaching stories. And there's more about this later but um, it's important to understand these things about these oral traditions.
Gillian
I will that's okay, speaker that what I want to say here. Um I want to say that. Ah, the we're gonna get to go over this in a lot more detail in week five that the things that are taught within a story. But what's important is that this is really different than white settler tradition. Um, we love to write everything down. We love to have libraries and you know written proclamations and things that we sign and and. You know, even maybe now it's moved on to like pop culture and video and photo that's still written as a record of what's happening. Um I definitely would not have routinely sat with my grandparents and listened to them relay stories that had been handed down to them from their grandparents.
15:50.00
Susannah
Yeah, you know I I was thinking about this in reference to my own life too in terms of oral traditions and and what comes down and for me and my experience with oral tradition is training in Dance dance is absolutely an oral tradition and it was passed down from and whether it's whether it's as an art form, whether it's it as a method of sort of cultural or spiritual expression or devotion. The movements have been passed down from one generation to the next in terms of my training through dance as an art form. It was passed on. There's a lineage if you if you studied ballet, You know, who did you study under, what was the method that you studied. If you studied modern dance what was the lineage of people that you worked with and and the way that you move the way that you learned the philosophy behind the movement. Those kinds of things were all passed down from generation to generation. Now it's changed. Ah, to some degree. Obviously there are some kinds of notation. There's leband notation and other things that that are used to record the movement I don't think that's universally used and and certainly in terms of western dance there are, I'm sure, other ways of notating and certainly Instagram and and videos and zoom certainly over the pandemic, have have really changed how people use that kind of recording um, but even still you know somebody at the National Ballet of Canada will be working with a coach who has danced a role before to give the nuances of, ah, of a hand motion or a particular way to move into different things and I just for me that was my experience with an oral tradition because it is definitely 1 thing handed down. You know the methods of doing it are handed down 1 generation to another.
Gillian
Ah.
Susannah
You're not learning how to dance by reading a book.
GIllian
Um, right right? There's an experiential piece.
Susannah
So yeah, there's absolutely an experiential piece and and and the piece of of it coming from the ones who've come before on some level on some level. Um.
Gillian
Um, right.
Susannah
So that that it was just when I was thinking about that whole whole piece of it. Um I Just that was the only way I could relate to it is is through my dance training in terms of a lived experience.
17:12
Gillian
So the storytelling was really important from what I understand to establish and maintain. Um the worldview of the indigenous people and we've already talked about how diverse indigenous people are how diverse their nations are so they all have their own storytelling traditions. And their own oral traditions and probably their own individual pieces of worldview but there were commonalities apparently and some of this I am directly taking from the course notes. So if you think it's really eloquent. Take the course, go there with me. So ommonalities; Storytelling was used to pass on the lessons, commonalities and interconnectedness between individuals, past and present, and between communities and families and belonging and between communities and the land. More on that in a second. There were governing principles of peace and harmony that were really valued and every person is expected to have accountability for their actions and their words. Caring about the well-being of others is integral to one's position in the community. You're. Your position in the community is integral to how you care for others. That's so fascinating to me. Um, there's unity through collaboration we got to got to all work together to get what we need. The environment plays a huge role in worldview. And there's a lot of things here to unpack. The idea that the land is a commodity to be exploited or owned is inconceivable by the indigenous people. Land is borrowed from future generations. So while the indigenous people use the land to do things like agriculture, forestry, hunting, fishing, gathering for many nations, there's a responsibility connected to it. This understanding of stewardship. It's based on the belief that land is the heart of creation. It's not just a supplier for resources for the current generation. But an environment to be looked after for the next generations not just the next one, like your kids but their kids and their kids and their kids and their kids and their kids.
19:35:00
Susannah
And the idea that the kinship ties that I'm understanding and learning about there's a term that they they say all my relations and you know when I heard it with my settlers' ears I Think of my you know my aunts and my uncles and my grandmother and my grandfather. But as I understand it from an indigenous perspective that includes not just your family and your people or even more than just your community. You're talking about the place you live the environment you live in the animals that live within it the water that runs through it the wind the soil. The. Everything and that those are your you are connected to those people and responsible for them and accountable to them and that is something from ah from my perspective that is ah ah that is New. And I Love it.
Gillian
It's It's a key understanding of the world. It really changes everything if that's where you place yourself and it reminds me of our um, our mantra, Susannah, that there are no silos.
Susannah
Ah, yes, connection is everything.
Gillian
Connection is everything and they have placed themselves within this that the in the environment within the system. Not not hierarchical within the system.
Susannah
And not manipulating it but respecting the ebbs and the flows and the the that every piece has its own rhythm that needs to be respected and supported in a way that, that I haven't, well, in a way that just isn't a part of settler culture at all at least as I understand it anyway.
Gillian
No, not at all. So that was worldview I mean there's a lot there a lot more there and if you want more go take the course, go take it.
Susannah
There was a sentence at the very end of that first week that popped up on the screen and again this is coming directly from the course and what I thought it really struck hard. It said all these worldviews were tested to the brink of annihilation, when newcomers arrived. That's a lot and let's just take that with us as we move into week 2 the fur trade.
21:21
Gillian
The Fur Trade. Okay I'm going to give a little I'm going to give a little background on on my emotion for a sec here and then we're gonna because part of this this again Sue and I are trying to do really publicly is is talk to you about the feelings that we have to unpack and our experiences with this information. And the whole time I'm reading the fur trade and I'm listening to the lectures, all I can think of is my grade 6 classroom. Pretty sure it was grade 6 in terms of being introduced to this part of History. They didn't Anyway. Ah within my grade 6 classroom. It was a um an Integrated classroom of non-indigenous and indigenous children and I'm one of those people that, I really can feel, I can feel what's in the room, I know if it's comfortable or not, I don't always know what to do with it. So.
I have that little sixth sense that's happening. We're sitting and we're learning about the fur trade and smallpox epidemics and hunting the beaver and the buffalo to the brink of extinctions and and yup, that was not an easy room to sit in. And the primary emotion that I remember in myself at that time was shame that my ancestors had perpetrated these events upon the ancestors of my classmates. There was literally nothing said in the room to address those kinds of feelings so they just left us 11 year olds to simmer in that kind of yucky place and then, also, you know what, because of the way that it's presented, these aren't referred to as colonizers. If you can remember they were referred to as explorers.
Susannah
The intrepid Voyageurs in their canoes across the country.
Gillian
Yes, so you also felt this weird confused pride that those were your forebearers and that must have been really hard and they were clearly very brave and they were successful in their you know journeys and this is what you were left with was this like milieu, this little sick soup in your belly about history. So some of this stuff you're going to hear is all going to feel a little bit familiar. Ah you know like the first year of of contact. Not even in Canada but the thing that keeps singing in my head is in 1492 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue. Columbus didn't come to Canada I'm not saying that. But that's all I could think about um actually we talk for a little bit in this module about um, precontact trade. Okay, there were if I have this right? and this is directly from the course.
23:50
Gillian
Around 2 and a half million indigenous in North america and in North america that doesn't include mexico and central america there were trade relationships already. Ah mostly the trade relationships were around luxury items. So obsidian, copper, shells, flints and, notably oolichan oil and this is important if you are pertinent to BC because of the Grease Trails that came from the coast where these Oolichan fish would be harvested and then they would somehow process the oil and then they would take it inland to trade with other indigenous populations for other things that they had but these were luxury items. Okay, and then there was contact in whatever year you think contact happened and after contact everything changed for the indigenous way of life and this. First time that for me colonization was defined which I appreciated but that wasn't a part of the teachings of my grade 6 classroom anyways.
24:50
Susannah
The actual first contact in Canada that we have evidence of is Norse settlers landing in L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. In the early thousands they spent a cold winter or 2 there fixing their sailing vessels and it clearly turned violent. And those norse folks were driven out and sent home. Ah, if it had ended there the world would be a vastly different place and we we know now it didn't end that way. So the indigenous were left alone until the early mid 14 hundreds and then there were more points of contact to come so before we jump in there. It's time for another definition. Colonization is a term that describes the ongoing process where one group of people, the Colonizers, takes control of another group of people, the colonized. And so the process of colonization involves one group of people going in and taking over the land and resources of another group often damaging or even destroying their way of life. The colonizers exploit the land's resources and often use the land for settlement. Europe for example, had many colonizer groups. And Europeans themselves have colonized groups from all over the world including Africa, Asia, Oceania and this is all taken directly from the course notes so that it just was really important for us to talk about. Real the real effect of colonization and how it's defined.
26:13
Gillian
So there's some colonizers whose names we're gonna recognize, First was John Cabot or Cabot, however you like to say that came over claimed the land for King Henry but never got off his boat and no trade occurred. Interesting right? Next this guy was a piece of work. His name was Jacques Cartier in 1534 he traveled as far as the gulf of St Lawrence among large communities of the indigenous people and he was completely unbelievable. He got to the site of Quebec City now. He put up a huge cross and then he lied to the chief about why it was there and what it was for. He, on another occasion, kidnapped the Chief's sons as guides and went exploring inland though he'd been told not to go inland. And he took the kid the the sons for goodness sakes but he he also didn't seek to understand that, apparently, if he had traded two of his own men for the sons then it would have been acceptable to take them but he just took them and he didn't figure out the customs before he did and then the Topper is that on a completely separate trip he actually kidnapped Donnaconnna, the chief and took him back to Europe and Donnaconnna eventually died there. Cartier did set up a French colony in Canada and it ended in 1543 so a really short trial but then in 1603 Samuel Champlain arrives and following indigenous customs he actually built alliances with local indigenous communities. So, he was successful in staying and then a few years later he created Quebec in New France and this is when the trading begins. So listen, you may not listeners all be Canadians so I'm going to point out to you that our national animal is the beaver. The mighty Beaver is I believe ubiquitous with Canada because this poor animal was almost hunted to extinction to provide Europeans with felt hats. The indigenous did benefit because they received metal objects in trade like pots and knives and axes and needles and ice chisels and hatchets and other things they of course also traded for guns and bullets fishing nets mirrors you name it? um. But keep in mind that the indigenous worldview at this time they were not focused on material goods in their cultures previous to this. They were nomadic hunter gatherers. They did not stay in one place and it made no sense to accumulate things and they also cared very much about the individuals in a community over the goods.
Nobody went hungry. Nobody didn't have shelter so they didn't need to accumulate value to then trade for food or shelter in their culture. So in the action of making furs important and these goods important to them. The colonizers changed indigenous economy forever and by that they changed the indigenous Forever So truly, really, Sue the biggest thing I came to while I studied this model is about the deeper meaning of the fur trade related to Colonization. And I didn't really understand prior to this in quite so stark a way that it is economics that drive this massive cultural change right? if you picture a trade negotiation at its barest interpretation It's an exchange of items of value and I think. In Settler culture. We're really familiar with that. I buy something that's a trade negotiation but layered into all these exchanges are social and cultural exchanges of knowledge, technology, skills, values and when you open trade you open up to a whole new set of relationships and power dynamics.
30:00
Susannah
Um, and you know what this is where you know we're doing this entire season about decolonization. So as we think about these relationships and the processes of these relationships and the power dynamics inside them. We need to understand that and the the course points this out. So I'm going to bring up some some more things that are coming directly from the course. that colonization is a process so there are many different aspects. And not all of the colonizing elements actually happen at the same time or in the same order but the process nonetheless includes, one, a serious modification of indigenous ways of life including political economics social and spiritual systems. I mean we can think about that pretty directly in how the Canadian experience has unrolled. Setting up external political control. Forcing indigenous populations to become economically dependent on the colonizer and, providing abysmally poor quality social services such as education and health care for indigenous peoples and that's coming from Frieder's 2012.
The accumulated effect creates social divisions and the power dynamics that you were just talking about between the colonizer and the colonizes that is determined by race, thereby promoting institutional racism. So I mean when when I heard this and I went through this section this description of colonization hit me in a way that I really didn't expect. The idea of forcing a population that was already independent, thriving in their own way, like, you know, they had their own trade. All of the things that they were doing, happily doing it their way and we forced them to become financially dependent on the colonizer. And then failing and continuing to fail, to provide adequate resources to support that population. I mean it's absolutely disgusting and there's a part of me, this little hopeful, Oh god, please let me think it wasn't this bad part of me, wants to think that it was not intentional. But somehow it just sort of slid into being over time. But when we look at the history of colonization globally whether it's in India, in the Indian Ocean, in Southeast Asia, whether it's in the South America. Wherever it's happening. It's happening. Globally, we have to acknowledge that this has been and on some level, continues to be, a deliberate act and in my mind, that puts the responsibility for deconstructing this atrocious system directly on our settler feet. And part of that means examining our own worldview and our own place in it. Um, we seem to have this sense of entitlement above all, above everybody else. Above the people around us, above the animals. The humans, the environment. Um I think that we need to really look at that.
Gillian
Yeah, 100 percent super powerful. Not um, not really I feel like not deniable like it's not deniable. It's a right there over and over and over again.
33:00
Gillian
There's so much more and we're gonna talk about a few more things. There's more specifics you need to go and learn about. But there's a chilling concept about colonization and that think of those, those four things Susanna just talked about and then they also identified that there are 3 or maybe four or more different phases of the fur trade that have been identified by various historians. So in terms of the relationship between the indigenous and the European participants and how it changed. So the first phase was marked by the Indigenous peoples having a great deal of agency. They're going to hear a little bit more about this in a little while they knew the land. They knew the customs they knew where the hunting happened they were really great hunters. They had a lot of agency. Then the Second phase is marked by increasing indigenous dependency on those European items that they had traded for those metal things. I think were awfully handy for them. We could also talk about the introduction of horses. Um, how that distinctly changed the way that the indigenous hunted. Um, the third phase is when the Europeans gain control of the trade and then the negative impacts begin to overtake any benefits in the relationship for indigenous peoples.
34:25
Gillian
Susanna, Do you know what else was born out of the fur trade? The Hudson's Bay company. So for those who are not Canadian the HBC, the Hudson's Bay Company is still around although it is a shell of its former immensity.
Gillian
Um, we would make the note that wikipedia still describes it as the oldest incorporated joint stock merchandising company in the English speaking world. Um, what we've learned through Indigenous Canada is that this company was created by a small group of merchants in Europe in the 16 Seventy s ish and the crown gave them a huge tract of land in North America and they call it Rupert's Land. the British crown. Yes, they said that they could get their goods from there and they could trade within those lands and that they could provide the trade to the Hudson's Bay company only back to back to Europe. So it was from the get go a Monopoly. And it survived as such for a very very long time. So that those were the British Hudson's Bay company, the British. Then there were some French traders that were already here. They too were settlers of course but they tried to undermine this monopoly. And they became organized as the northwest company in 1779 so remember I said 1670. For like 100 years it was just HBC, fur trade and then there's these French people 1779. Okay. That northwest company became a major economic force of its own in direct opposition to the Royal charter that created the HBC in the first place. There are 2 things I wanted to highlight about this particular competitive market that was created at that time for the next hundred years. There was all of this trading of furs. And all of those traders heading into indigenous canada to get the furs and to do the trading and they develop relationships with the indigenous population. Quite often a European man and an Indigenous bride. And those relationships created a new kind of mixed race people. The Metis. The British called them halfbreeds and the northwest company called them. Oh I'm going to mess this up, bois-brulee or Metis. Something to do with the blood mix split and then point number 2 and this is way more involved so you got to stay with me. The Metis become a super strong economic force in cahoots with the Northwest Company for a while and then suddenly in 1811 the HBC sells a huge amount of land to 1 major shareholder, Thomas Douglas or in other words, Lord Selkirk and this was in the site of an already established area around the Red River Valley. And it had a huge this Metis population with this thriving economy but Lord Selkirk designated this land for dispossessed immigrant Scottish Highlanders to begin new lives in subsistence based farming. So here's what I want you to stop. You've got a picture a little backroom in I'm thinking England, right?
Susannah
Yeah, yeah, backroom deal.
Gillian
This was a backroom deal made by European wealthy merchants who had maybe never even been to North America but the Scottish you know? Um, what do I call him, emissary the one that had to deal with Scottish relations was like talking about this problem he was having with the Scottish Highlanders. And they said why don't you send them to North America because they considered it their land to sell. I'm not wrong! Didn't the English want the Scottish Highlanders to just go away. Okay, so they sent them to North America they gave them land that wasn't theirs to give.
Susannah
This is how they did it.
Gillian
Scottish are are I mean, I know they are hardy people but these they'd never seen a winter like they were going to have in this territory. They were basically helpless. They didn't have their farms established yet. They needed some help and the Metis gave it to them. One of the things they provided them for sure was pemmican which is made from buffalo fat and berries. It's like an energy ball. The first of its kind and that keeps these settlers alive but there's a lot of tension between these colonizers that don't recognize Metis claims to land. And Metis that don't love these settlers coming in onto their land and all these issues and rules and proclamations. So there's a Scottish lord in that area that then wants to control all this tension and he issues something that's called the pemmican proclamation stating that pemmican could no longer be exported out of the area. But this directly hurts the Metis population. They're trading this and they can't export it anymore and then six months later that same Scottish lord banned the use of horses in hunting buffalo. So then the Metis unites amongst themselves. Against both the HBC and the Northwest Company and all of the fighting becomes really costly to both the HBE and the Northwest Company and they amalgamated into one and Bam we have yet again another monopoly.
34:35
Gillian
Okay, so this time is looked at as a relatively stable economic time but it doesn't sit well with me because we're increasingly aware of how this is so often true that the the state of economic stability comes at the cost of so much. Like the Beaver. And the buffalo populations. Eventually the buffalo populations collapsed in the mid eighteen hundreds, hunted to near extinction for the HBC and Honey, You can still amble on down to HBC and pick up a pot or some shoes or some clothes. This is our heritage. Okay, so this European and Indigenous relationship drove this industry, that due to overharvesting completely ran everything aground in about the late 18 hundreds which of course puts the indigenous in a really desperate situation because now they depend upon the trade but there's less lands to make their lives upon that aren't now inhabited by European settlers.
Gillian
All of the things we haven't even covered or talked about but like smallpox came and decimated populations including 20000 people upon our west coast over here. Things were rife for change and they were a really great setup for the treaties which comes next.
Susannah
It's it's been a dense conversation. There are things that we need to know and that we continue to learn we would like to encourage you to take the Indigenous Canada course with us. There are so many things that I personally didn't get that have made given me a different understanding of where we are today. And I'm still learning I you know I feel like I'm I'm at the the baby pool here. But the course is giving me more than I ever imagined. So I really. Both Gillian and I, we encourage you to to take this course. We're going to put the link to the Indigenous Canada Course in the show notes. It's we're taking it through coursera.org and we'll put all the notes in there. Um. And the the links to the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta as well. So you can learn more about that with where it's all coming from and guess what it's never too late to start right? We all have to learn, now jump in and if you have questions or comments or anything please send us an email at info@smallconversationspodcast.ca. We promise we're going to review your questions and wherever possible we'll discuss them and try to find an expert who can help us frame the question. Um, inside the conversation. There is just so much to learn and I know I'm excited about it I'm I'm I'm excited, I'm thrilled, I'm terrified, I'm disgusted, I'm I'm all kinds of things. Ah, um, and I really want to encourage everybody to join us because this is what we're going to be working with over the next few ah few months and I think we'll have some really cool people to talk to as well to help us frame a lot of this. So thanks for listening in. We're thrilled you're on this learning path with us next time we'll explore weeks 3 and four of the Indigenous Canada course covering Treaties and Indigenous Legal Traditions. There are some surprises in there too so join us. We'll be here next time.
Gillian
And we'll have the coffee on.