I Have Lived Here Since the World Began
An Illustrated History of Canada's Native People
Ray, Arthur J. Publisher: Key Porter, Toronto, Canada
Year Published: 1996
Pages: 398pp Price: $45 ISBN: 1-895555-949
Library of Congress Number: E78.C2R38 1996 Dewey: 971'.00497
Resource Type: Book
Ray shows that Native culture played an important -- and largely unrecognized -- part in Canada's economic development. Rather than being "civilized" by European explorers, the indigenous people were already accomplished traders, artisans, farmers and hunters.
Abstract: Ray argues that Native culture played an important -- and largely unrecognized -- part in Canada's economic development. Rather than being "civilized" by European explorers, the indigenous people were already accomplished traders, artisans, farmers and hunters. Native culture began as the domain of anthropology and "salvage ethnologists," but it has gradually been included in Canadian history. However, modern histories of Native people are centred on ideological, religious, social and political aspects, leaving their economic history largely untold. It is this theme that Ray takes as his focus -- how Native people "took advantage of new economic developments or resisted those that offered them no benefit or degree of control."
Split into 20 chapters, the book is a chronological survey that begins just before first contact with European explorers and ends at the present day (1996). It begins with an account of indigenous people pre-contact, including rituals and spirituality, how identity was related to ancestral homelands and the influence of kinship on trading. Native legends of first contact suggest the need to reconsider European accounts of this experience. Native people took an active role in these encounters, and the trading networks they had established were subsequently taken over by Europeans. The growth of the fur trade saw a new kind of economic interaction between Europeans and Natives. The influx of European goods changed Native lifestyles, too. Multi-cultural societies sprang up around the new trading posts, most of which were owned by the Hudson's Bay Company.
But many conflicts developed because of trade and land. Natives tried, and often failed, to preserve their homelands by forming European or American alliances. Natives were frequently left out of decisions about their land, which resulted in protests like the Red River uprising and the North-West rebellion. Even greater efforts to assimilate Natives into the dominant white culture followed. In modern society, Natives are still fighting land claims in court and the process of reclaiming Native history from the dominant culture goes on. But non-Native Canadians are now redefining their concept of Canada. The more we understand about the past, the better equipped we'll be for the future. Includes a bibliography and index.
[Abstract by Alice Lawlor]
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: The Land as History Book
Chapter 2: The Cultural Mosaic
Chapter 3: Legends of the First Encounters
Chapter 4: Welcoming Newcomers
Chapter 5: New Friends and Foes
Chapter 6: Trade and War in the Western Interior
Chapter 7: Opportunities in the Fur Trade
Chapter 8: The Sea-Otter Bonanza
Chapter 9: Choosing Sides
Chapter 10: Fighting the Loyalists for Land
Chapter 11: The Changing Order in the Northwest
Chapter 12: Placed on a Little Spot
Chapter 13: The Metis and "Indian" Question
Chapter 14: Treaty Making
Chapter 15: It Is a Strict Law That Bids Us Dance
Chapter 16: From Buffalo Hunting to Farming
Chapter 17: The Modern Fur Trade
Chapter 18: Working for the Industrial Fishery
Chapter 19: Getting Organized
Chapter 20: Searching for Settlement
Selected Biography
Acknowledgement of Picture Sources
Index
Excerpts:
Aboriginal people had cultures in which the elders had the primary responsibility for orally passing on histories and traditions to succeeding generations. The ravages of European diseases-which often had the most devastating impact on the elderly - government and missionary assimilation programs, and the near obliteration of a number of Native languages - have made it extremely difficult for many First Nations to continue this custom.
Linguistic divisions did not create insurmountable communication barriers: European accounts of early contact relate that most of the groups living near these boundaries had members who were bilingual as a consequence of centuries old trading, writing, and diplomatic traditions.
The idea that Europeans explored Native Canada is part of the mythology that the newcomers created to justify seizing territory and to glorify their own deeds in the bargain. In reality, Aboriginal men and women guided European "explorers" across the continent. They also established the trading and provisioning networks that Europeans subsequently took over and welded to their own expanding empires during the age of mercantilism.
In the beginning, the acculturation program focused on promoting interracial marriages, providing education, and persuading Aboriginal groups to abandon their hunting lifestyle. By encouraging common-law marriages between French men and Native women, the authorities hoped to create one people, replacing the indigenous population in the process. These union came to be known as marriages a la facon du pays. Although cannon law prohibited the marriage of Catholics to "pagans,' priests often blessed such couples anyway and sometimes baptized their children. The French Crown reversed its position on at the beginning of the eighteenth century and began to discourage such unions in the belief that interracial marriages were producing a "bad race" in North America.
In addition to eroding the economic base of woodland Native people, the fur trade struck at the heart of their social organization.
The right for the business of local nations undermined the ability of elders to lead their people. Traders appointed local persons to represent them if the chief refused to do so. The competing traders then showered their respective "captains" with goods to promote them in the eyes of their fellow group members. In the end these efforts proved to be counterproductive: establishing rival leaders simply created new social problems, which repeatedly surfaced during drinking bouts at the posts and promoted domestic and inter-nation violence. Sometimes fur traders found themselves caught in the crossfire. By 1820 it was clear to Native people and traders alike that the fur trade could not survive much longer unless some kind of order was restored.
The Canadian government, however, was not willing to negotiate with Native people on a wide range of issues; the politicians simply wanted to obtain land as cheaply as possible.
The growing effort to stamp out the potlatch intensified new divisions in the Native community. Many Christian converts opposed the ancient custom and urged the government to enforce the law. They deeply resented the attempts by traditionalists to claim their hereditary titles and rights because they did not confirm them in the customary way.
In 1886 the government introduced this shameful scheme, which required Plains Indians to carry passes for all off-reserve activities. To obtain a pass, a person had to get the approval of the local farming instructor and the Indian agent who issued the passes, which gave these officials dictatorial control over the lives of Indians. Agents denied passes to anyone they thought was troublesome, and the police backed them up by patrolling the borders of the reserves day and night looking for absentees. In this way Indian Affairs essentially imprisoned Native people on reserves.
Although rigorously enforced in the beginning, the pass system fell into disuse after the early 1890s because no one feared the Native people once the memory of the North-West Rebellion had faded.
At the same time, local public support for the Indian Affairs department's effort to undermine Native cultures began to weaken. White settlers no longer believed the Indians were a threat. In fact, they became interested in Native ceremonies and wanted to include them in their county fairs and stampedes.
Of the many problems associated with the education that the Indian children received, two stand out. First, the zeal with which most teachers sought to divorce their pupils from their cultural ancestry had the effect of undermining the children's self-confidence. They were made to feel ashamed of their heritage. And second, the Native students did not receive the same level of education as their non-Native counterparts.
While trapping incomes became unpredictable, supplemental or alternative employment opportunities for Aboriginal people in the North diminished. The completion of railways, the expansion of steamboat service in the Athabasca and Mackenzie river districts, and the increased use of bush planes after the First World War meant that the HBC and its rivals needed far fewer Native people to haul furs and supplies.
Cannery companies were on a constant lookout for cheap and reliable labour. Chinese and Japanese immigrants, especially the latter, provided new labour pools and the prospect of driving wages down by putting the two groups against each other and the Native people.
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