Canadian North West

"The Dakota came to the Red River area in 1862, bringing with them their skills in hunting and gathering, fishing and farming. Each of the bands that came to the Canadian prairies had a different combination of skills and adapted in a different way to the conditions they found. This volume recounts the history of the Dakota in Canada by examining the economic strategies they used to survive"--Back cover.

Volume XVI of the Canadian Centenary Series Now available as e-books for the first time, the Canadian Centenary Series is a comprehensive nineteen-volume history of the peoples and lands which form Canada. Although the series is designed as a unified whole so that no part of the story is left untold, each volume is complete in itself. This pioneer study traces Canada’s northward expansion in the years after Confederation. In the forefront of the movement were fur-traders, missionaries, and gold-seekers. Behind them came provincial and federal governments, concerned for their authority, and anxious to develop the riches of the North. Under the Laurier government (1896--1911) the advance quickened, and the roles of the Geological Survey, North-West Mounted Police, and Departments of the Interior, Indian Affairs, and Marine and Fisheries, gained new importance. Professor Zaslow, in examining the opening of social, cultural, economic, and industrial frontiers, chronicles the outstanding achievements, as well as the far-reaching failures of the period. A country which, by Confederation in 1867, had barely extended beyond the Gulf of St. Lawrence and St. Lawrence Lowlands region, had by 1914 occupied the prairies. Aided by new transcontinental railways, its people had begun moving into the forests of the Middle North along a front that extended from Lake St. John to Dawson, and the Arctic frontier beyond received increasing attention. But the governments failed in their treatment of the Indigenous population, and in their eagerness to foster development they allowed the resources to be exploited blindly, for and by foreign interests in the main. These were exciting, complex years; in Professor Zaslow’s words, “years of apprenticeship, when Canada began to come to grips with the facts of its northern nature.” First published in 1971, Zaslow’s important contribution to the Canadian Centenary Series is available here as an e-book for the first time.

There is a missing chapter in the narrative of Canada’s Indigenous peoples—the story of the Métis Nation, a new Indigenous people descended from both First Nations and Europeans Their story begins in the last decade of the eighteenth century in the Canadian North-West. Within twenty years the Métis proclaimed themselves a nation and won their first battle. Within forty years they were famous throughout North America for their military skills, their nomadic life and their buffalo hunts. The Métis Nation didn’t just drift slowly into the Canadian consciousness in the early 1800s; it burst onto the scene fully formed. The Métis were flamboyant, defiant, loud and definitely not noble savages. They were nomads with a very different way of being in the world—always on the move, very much in the moment, passionate and fierce. They were romantics and visionaries with big dreams. They battled continuously—for recognition, for their lands and for their rights and freedoms. In 1870 and 1885, led by the iconic Louis Riel, they fought back when Canada took their lands. These acts of resistance became defining moments in Canadian history, with implications that reverberate to this day: Western alienation, Indigenous rights and the French/English divide. After being defeated at the Battle of Batoche in 1885, the Métis lived in hiding for twenty years. But early in the twentieth century, they determined to hide no more and began a long, successful fight back into the Canadian consciousness. The Métis people are now recognized in Canada as a distinct Indigenous nation. Written by the great-grandniece of Louis Riel, this popular and engaging history of “forgotten people” tells the story up to the present era of national reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. 2019 marks the 175th anniversary of Louis Riel’s birthday (October 22, 1844)

This text looks at the dual relationship of the Canadian north as both resource frontier and homeland of many Aboriginal groups. Since the last edition of this text, many changes have occurred, raising the possibility that both the frontier and homeland concepts can become a northern reality. These concepts are coherently presented throughout the book and brought to the fore in the concluding chapter.

Includes appendix, The trial of Louis Riel: p.391-408.

Acknowledgements Introduction: Approaching the North 1. The Land, Original Peoples and First Contacts 2. The Early Fur Trade 3. The Gold Frontier and the Klondike 4. The Doldrums in the Middle North 5. Boom and Bust in the Arctic 6. The Army's North 7. The Bureaucrats' North 8. Whither the North Further Reading Index