The long-lasting impact of clearing the plains

Some books are more enlightening than others, and I’ve read quite a few in these covid months. In recognition of the racial conflict we’re experiencing in North America, I would recommend one in particular: Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life by James Daschuk.  

It’s an eye-opener. Not only does it provide a detailed history of first contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples, it gets to the origins of our current conflicts. While it’s not Daschuk’s intention to place blame, the facts are laid bare. Our first prime minister actually said that emergency rations would be refused to families "until the Indians were on the verge of starvation, to reduce expense.” Along with malnutrition, disease and spoiled food would kill thousands of Indigenous people, just as settlers began to occupy the Canadian Prairies. 

When Indigenous leaders signed the treaties in the late 1800s, they knew any leverage they once had was gone. After Canada became a nation, the First Nations would begin their decline. And it had everything to do with the buffalo. 

The buffalo were a source of food, tools and life. The best parallel to our modern age is our dependency on oil and gas. Imagine how quickly anarchy would erupt if every oil well went dry tomorrow. 

For Indigenous peoples, the loss of the buffalo meant societal collapse, accompanied by disease and starvation. Fortunately, they had the treaties, or so they thought. Instead of offering the assistance needed to get through this transition, the government would oversee their near demise. 

No longer required for the lucrative fur trade of the early 1800s, the Indigenous population was now a burden rather than a source of profit. They were, to put it mildly, in the way. In the way of the railroad, in the way of land, in the way of European values. 

They needed to be put to the side. And so the reserve system began, where disease and hunger run rampant. In his book, Daschuk includes a picture of a large First Nations family who look relatively healthy and proud. In a few years, all of them had died due to malnutrition and disease.

I often wondered why treaties were so valued by Indigenous groups, when they left them with so little. But now I understand that they were then what they are today: the only legal guarantee of a better life. And up until quite recently, the government has been willfully ignorant of our side of the bargain. 

Those of us who ended up with the favourable interpretations of the treaties complain when these ancient agreements are brought up. Why do we still adhere to these artifacts, we ask? The same reason we still adhere to ancient laws like the Constitution, I suppose. Old documents like these still form the basis of our lawful society. 

Interpretations of our laws change, which is only natural, but it doesn’t mean we can throw them out. The treaties are much the same. 

As we approach Canada Day, over 150 years since Confederation and almost the same for the first numbered treaties, I sometimes wonder if the atrocities described would have been avoided if we were transported back to that time. We tend to look back at the past with pious eyes, as though we are a more enlightened bunch. 

As much as I want to say I would have been less indifferent than the early settlers or government of the day, I can’t say so in all honesty. Am I any less indifferent today? 

We view things through a societal lens, which typically takes crises to break; whether that be train blockades or street protests spurned by violations of treaty rights or police brutality – an unfortunate reality in both the U.S. and Canada.  

Then we grumble and complain that our world is being threatened.  

Rest assured, it was nothing like the experience of those 150 years ago.