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grateful for his continued willingness to read and discuss ... David and my dear friend Seth Clarke throughout the ... 4.3 Agriculture and the Home Market' . ...... another context, see Martin Legassick, "The Frontier ...... brings about the downfall of the protagonist in a Greek ...... Chippewas [Ojibwa] and Sioux, were largely.
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AGAINST CAPITAL: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ABORIGINAL RESISTANCE IN CANADA

DEBORAH LEE SIMMONS

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought York University North York, Ontario November, 1995

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ISBN 0-612-10317-X

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Name

DEBOHAII L1m S INMONS Inlemational is arranged by br~d, genflral subi!Ct categorie~ Please select the one subject which mo~t nearly describes the !:onlent of your disserlotion. Enter the corresponding four·digit code in the spaces provided DlSserlohOll Abslrods

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CANADIAN STUDIES SUlJKT TERM

SUBJECT COOE

U·M·I

Subied CategoM. 1111 HUMANlnl. AND .OCIAL ICIINCII (OMUMl(A'IIOMS AND THE AITS Arc:ftitectur. "".."." 0729 M Hilloly 03n Cinemo 0900 Donee " 0378 Filii Arts " " 0357 Infonnotion Scie~ 0723 ·1I11 0391 Li Science 0399 Mo" nications 0708 M.isic 0413 Soeech COI'MIunicati6n 0459 Theoter 0465

~

lDUCATIOH

General " " 0515 Administration .. .0514 Adu:t ond Continui~ 05 16 Agricultural 05 17 Art 0273 BilirllJUOl and Multicultural 0282 Businen .. •. 0699 Community Callege 0275 Curriculum ond Inltruction . 0727 Early Childhood , 0518 Elenienlory 0524 Finance 0277 Guidance and Coun~ling 05 19 Health .. 0690 Higher ../ " 07 sk~ ... ~ H. Drost

P. Kulchyski November 1995



____________..J.

_...>0._ ._.. _.~------------------------------4-J

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iv ABSTRACT

This thesis evolved out of an attempt to analyze aboriginal agency and resistance in the aftermath of the Mohawk conflict at Oka, Quebec, which took place in the summer of 1990. However, the existing political economy literature on aboriginal oppression founded in the "staple theory" outlined by Harold Adams Innis does not account for the historical significance of aboriginal resistance in Canada. The thesis undertakes a critique of the inherent assumptions in staple theory -- its anthropologism, its fetish of the commodity form, and its geographical determinism -- which effectively reduce aboriginal peoples to the position of passive victims in contemporary capitalist society. An alternative historiography is then proposed which considers Canadian economic and political development as the outcome of struggle. The agency of aboriginal peoples is understood in terms of their specific and changing historical position as producers, from the early fur trade to the forging of a capitalist economy and post-colonial state. If the rise of commodity wheat production is the key to the transition to capitalism in Canada, it follows that the aboriginal struggle to retain their land rights was an important obstacle to such development. The aboriginal struggle for land continues to be an obstacle to capitalist expansion; in the current context of economic integration under the North American Free Trade Agreement, such resistance has international implications. In the current climate of scapegoating and cutbacks which accompany the restructuring process, aboriginal aspirations for land and selfdetermination also coincide with the aims of other social movements to oppose such attacks. In fact, aboriginal selfdetermination is central to the broader project for social change in Canada.

v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT~

Many years ago, the Fort Norman Dene people with whom I lived on the Keele River in the Northwest Territories -particularly elders Gabe Etchinelle and Madeline Karkagie taught me much about the importance of their relationship with the land which cannot be derived from books. Throughout the years in which this thesis was developed, I have relied upon the support and collaboration of my professors, colleagues, friends, and family. The intellectual debt most evident in the thesis is to David McNally, who keeps alive a Marxist tradition which is undogmatic, politically committed, and theoretically rigorous during a period in which the Left is an extremely confusing and difficult place to be. I would also like to extend special thanks to loan navies, whose wealth of knowledge, synthetic imagination, and love of the democratic aspects of popular culture I have always appreciated, and who has supported me through all my intellectual twists and turns since I entered the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought. I acquired my sense of the importance of the visual image in part through working with loan on the editorial collective of Border/lines: Cultures Contexts Canadas for three years in 1985-1988. Ato Sekyi-Otu has been infinitely patient each time I disappeared, sometimes for years at a time, to pursue a new line of research; I am grateful for his continued willingness to read and discuss my work. He is a valued asset in my attempts to broaden my research to Latin America and the Caribbean. I owe an especially large debt to the Center for Research on North America (ClSAN) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and particularly Julian Castro Rea. Under the directorship of Monica Verea Campos, ClSAN sponsored a landmark trinational conference in August of this year on "Contemporary Aboriginal Struggles in North America" in which the participants were largely aboriginal activists -this was a unique opportunity for me to meet some of the leaders whose work I've long admired, to share ideas, and to test the broader applicability of my approach. The conference could not have taken place without the tireless efforts of Dr. Castro Rea to make a dream reality. He generously supported and improved my unconventional conception of the conference; his willingness to take'the risk involved in breaking new ground is a rare and unforgettable quality in academia.

vi Through years of argument and despite my initial resistance, Joe ~ispal-Kovacs provided me with a grounding in Marxist theory. Peter Kulchyski asked me why I was not working on aboriginal issues well before the idea of this thesis entered my head; I relied heavily on the comprehensive synthesis and critique of existing literature in his thesis. Ongoing debates and exchanges with Julia Emberley through the years have repeatedly jarred me out of intellectual complacence. The students in Social and Political Thought have created a non-competitive climate of collective learning in the program which is unique in universities; I have benefitted immeasurably from discussions and debates with colleagues too numerous to list here. The Native Studies and Cultural Studies programs at Trent University gave me opportunities to test and clarify my ideas through the experience of teaching; I owe much to the questions and challenges posed by my students. My parents have given me unconditional support even when they disagreed with my intellectual trajectory; I thank them for their ongoing interest in reading and discussing my work, and for their infinite patience. My father's demands for relevance and clarity of expression may not have been entirely fulfilled here, but they remain a goal to which I aspire. Completion of the thesis would not have been possible without the moral and practical support of my brother .David and my dear friend Seth Clarke throughout the difficult final year of writing. Hamid Sodeifi, the man behind Left Eye, generously donated the photographs which were created especially for this thesis. The final polishing of the text was completed thanks to a detailed reading by Mary Fox. Needless to say, I am solely responsible for any remaining errors in the thesis.

vii TABLE 01" CONTENTS

. .' ..

ABSTRACT • • • •

· iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

v

INTRODUCTION

1

1

TRAGEDY AND REDEMPTION: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL MOMENT IN CANADIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

1.1

Traditional Ecologies:

.........................

1.2 Disappearing Identities: The Fatal Frontier . . . Polanyi and Rotstein: The Anthropological Imperative . 1.3 Veblen and Rousseau: Technologies of Redemption. 1.4 Cartography of the State . 2

STAPLE THEORY AND THE MORAL ECONOMY OF THE FUR TRADE

Adam Sm.lth: A Natural Monopoly Catastrophic Demand A Sustainable Harvest • • . . . . . Into Irr~levance . . . '. 2 . 5 The Fo\trth -Way . . . .

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

3

22



The Discourse of Land Rights

.

.....

· 25

· 33 · 59 • 68

· 95 · 97 107 124

133 144 152

THE CRISIS OF ii'EUDAL.tSM IN EUROPE AND THE FUR TRADE IN NEW FRANCE

3.1

."Exploitation ......................... through Trade": Dobb on the

156

Transition . . . . . . . . .' . . . . . . . . . . .

161

3.2

Precapitalist Production and,the Market:

Bourgeault

3.3

Commodity Feudalism and Co~onial Expansion. Feudalism and the French Fur Trade " . . . . . . . Aboriginal Agency in the Early'Fur rrade . . . . . Crisis and Change in.New 'Franqe after 1640 . Crisis and Depen~ency" . '," ~ '. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

170

176

181 196 209 222

y

4

SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE AC~TION AND THE RISE OF THE CANADIAN STATE

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.1 4.2 4.3

4.4 4.5

wakefield: The Art 6f Colonization . . . . . Marx and Lenin on the Development of Agrarian Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Agriculture and the Home Market' . . . . . . . The Decline of Feudalism in Lower Canada. . . wheat Production and Primitive Accumulation in Canadas

4.6

. . . . . . . . . .\ . .

~ .'..

224

231

. . . . . . the

257 264 269

...

270

Labour Resistance and the Developm~nt of the Canadian State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

viii 5

AGAINST CAPITAL: THE BATTLE FOR THE NORTHWEST 5.1 The Hudson's Bay Company and the IIForced 5.2 5.3 5.4

6

278

Commercialization ll of the Fur Trade 281 Settlement and Conflict in Red River. . 288 The IIPacification ll of the Northwest . . . . . . . 304 Behind Their Backs: The Dispossession of Aboriginal Hunters and Trappers . . . . . .. . 324

CONCLUSIONS . 331 6.1 State, Class, and Oppression. . . . . . . . . 336 6.2 Late Marx and lithe Peripheries of Capitalism ll •• 349 6.3 Aboriginal Self-Determination and the Working Class 359

BIBLIOGRAPHY .

...

. ..

361

ix TABLE OP PIGURES 1 2

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

TRAILS AND TRAPLlNES AROUND FORT MCPHERSON • • • • • • 40 DOIG RIVER RESERVE: BERRY PICKING AREAS •• • 45 DOIG RIVER RESERVE: FISHING AREAS • • • • • • • • • 46 DOIG RIVER RESERVE: CAMPING SITES • • • • • 47 DOIG RIVER RESERVE: HUNTING • • •• • 48 ALIENATION: WHITE SETTLEMENT • • • • • • • • 54 FORESTRy......... • • • • 55 OIL AND GAS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 56 SPORTS HUNTING FOR MOOSE • • • • • • • • •• • 57 THE COMPANY OF ADVENTURERS/THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY • • 99 THE NORTHWEST COMPANY AND THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY 100 THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY AND THE SHAPING OF CANADA • •• 101 MERCHANTS OF CHANGE - - THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 1 02 THE BAY _. PEOPLE LIKE You, WORKING FOR YOU 103 HISTORIC TRADING POSTS AND TERRITORIES • • • • 108 PREHISTORIC TRADE ••••••••••••••• 157 TRADE PATTERNS AND WARFARE, CA 1600 • • . • • • . • • 159 PROCLAMATION LINE OF 1763 . • • . . • • • • • . . • • 226 PONTIAC' S WAR 1763: BRITISH FORTS AFFECTED • • • • 229 THE SETTLEMENTS, 1811-1869 • • • . • • • • • • . 291 CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY OF NORTHERN ONTARIO AND MANITOBA TO 1690

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

TRIBAL DISTRIBUTION, CA. 1765 • • • • •••• TRIBAL DISTRIBUTIONS IN 1860 CANADA 1871 • . . • • • • • '0. . . • • • • • • • • • THE VACANT CHAIR: A RrEL BOND OF UNION •••••• INDIAN TREATIES BEFORE 1930 • • • • • •••• HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY FUR TRADE, 1911 • • . . • . . HONOUR NATIVE LAND -- SUPPORT THE OCCUPATION OF REVENUE

3

4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13

14

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. .. .. .. ........

CANADA













































295 296 297 311 312 315 327 346

1

INTRODUCTION

This thesis evolved out of an attempt to account for the social impact of the Mohawk conflict at Oka, Quebec, which took place in the summer of 1990.

A stand taken by a

handful of aboriginal militants to defend their traditional lands in the face of municipal plans for a golf course was met with the full force of the Canadian state:

thousands of

troops, armoured tanks, and millions of taxpayers' dollars. Clearly aboriginal peoples were not, as had been so often claimed by political economists and popular journalists, irrelevant and marginal to the state.

In purely military terms, the state response to the Mohawk rebellion at Oka was absurdly disproportionate.

Yet the

significance of the rebellion resonated far beyond the borders of the land under dispute.

Aboriginals across

Canada were inspired to organize local actions in solidarity with the Mohawk Warriors; this was probably the broadest mobilization of aboriginal peoples in the history of Canada.

In military terms, the state would inevitably smash the resistance at Oka.

Nevertheless, its traces may be found in

a series of subsequent adaptations by the state -- most significantly, the unprecedented inclusion of a clause in

2

the Charlottetown Constitutional Accord of 1992 which affirmed the inherent aboriginal right to self-government.

Marxist accounts of aboriginal oppression in Canada which could assist me in my project are few and far between.

What

little literature exists is founded in the "staple theory" of Canadian development outlined by Harold Adams Innis and reaffirmed by contemporary neo-Marxist theories of economic dependency.

The major tenet of this paradigm is that Canada

has been systematically underdeveloped as a staple-based hinterland both exploited by and dependent upon the United States, its metropolis.

But most important for our purposes

is the correlative argument that the current form of Canadian capitalism is rooted in the fur trade.

The assumed continuity of the Canadian economy since the peak of the fur trade implies that the contemporary Canadian state is the bearer of traditions established in the trade. In particular, these traditions would include the system of alliances between aboriginal groups and mercantilists which facilitated the trade.

During the peak of the trade,

aboriginal sovereignty was recognized, and aboriginals were able to maintain an independent way of life.

It was only

the decline of the fur trade and the advent of agricultural settlement and industrial production that created problems

3

for aboriginal peoples'.

Such a presupposition opens up the

possibility that sovereign and independent First Nations can once again coexist peacefully with Canadian capitalism and the Canadian state, recovering the original tradition of "compromise."

In effect, aboriginal peoples are reduced to mere objects of history.

There is no space for agency in a political

economy that posits commodity circulation as the determinant factor:

The fur trade brought aboriginal peoples into

alliances with Europeans, and the decline of the fur trade led inevitably to their marginalization; thus only the inheritor of the fur trade tradition, the Canadian state, can create the conditions for aboriginal sovereignty.

This

logic is linked to a grim pragmatism about the enormous imbalance in current power relations between the state and aboriginal peoples.

The potential benevolence and

protective capacity of the state is the only way out of aboriginal oppression from such a perspective.

'Legal documents such as the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774 are from this perspective evidence that the British gov~rnment sought to protect Native peoples from the predations of settlers. In contrast, as Hall puts it, the provinces "have historically been at the cutting edge of Indian dispossession ll (1991, 16) .

4

In order to account for the historical content of events such as the Oka rebellion, it is necessary to recover a theoretical basis for understanding aboriginal peoples as historical agents.

Following Robert Brenner's important

work on the origins of capitalist development (1977), this thesis aims to layout groundwork for understanding Canadian economic and political development as the outcome of struggle.' This requires a move from commodity-based staple theory to a classical Marxist method which takes the of production as its starting point.

proce~s

The agency of

aboriginal peoples must be understood in terms of their specific and changing historical position as producers.

The struggle for land rights is the indisputable basis for aboriginal self-determination, and the discourse of land rights is correspondingly the litmus test for the theory of aboriginal oppression in Canadian political economy. Aboriginal land rights are predicated upon an anthropological notion of a relationship with the land which predates European settlement.

The centrality of the land

question invites a spatial account of aboriginal oppression. At the same time, the history of systematic displacement gives rises to a tragic narrative in which aboriginal peoples are fated to marginization or even extinction by the imperatives of capitalism.

The first chapter of this thesis

5

undertakes an archeology of this tragic narrative, tracing through the economic anthropology of Polanyi, to Veblen's critique of capitalism at the turn of the century, back to the original anthropological yearnings to be found in the Enlightenment philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

The fur trade has taken up a pivotal position in Canadian political economy -- especially since the emergence of lnnis's exhaustive account, The Fur Trade in Canada.

For

lnnis, the emergence of the fur trade as a staple industry occurred at the original moment of Canadian incorporation into a world capitalist system, and was the source of Canadian underdevelopment and dependency.

However, lnnis

celebrates the moral economy of the fur trade as a partnership between aboriginal peoples and Europeans which laid the basis for a united Canada.

The factual errors in

lnnis's account have since been documented; the focus of chapter two is rather on the Smithian roots of the overall conception of the fur trade developed by Innis and his descendents.

Smithian political economy views capitalism as the natural outcome of commodity trade relations --

accordin~

to this

view, the fur trade gave rise to capitalism in Canada. point of departure disallows any understanding of the

This

6

contradictions which constituted the mercantilist enterprise beyond the level of unequal exchange, and makes it impossible to theorize the agency of aboriginal peoples in the formation of the fur trade.

Chapter three invokes the

Marxist concept of modes of production in order to give contrary evidence that the early fur trade was founded in the crisis of European feudalism.

Continued aboriginal

resistance and sovereignty constituted a key limitation to the development of the trade.

However, the trade did

provoke a dual crisis in both the French colony and in aboriginal fur trading

societi~s

which set the stage for the

development of capitalism in Canada.

Chapter four engages in a primarily textual discussion of the transition to capitalism in Canada.

Edward Gibbon

Wakefield's political economy of colonization written in the early 19th century established the preconditions for capitalist development in the Canadas.

Lenin's account of

class formation in rural Russia is read as an important contribution to the Marxist theory of the transition.

The

conclusion is drawn that the capitalist mode of production ga~ned

dominance in Canada only with the rise of commodity

wheat farming and the growth of a landless labouring dlass. The expansion of the new economy depended upon the systematic subjugation of the new working class; but

7

repeated enforced.

~esistance

ensured that discipline would have to be

Thus the formation of a state apparatus was in

part a response to conflicts arising from class formation.

If the expansion of agrarian capitalism was the key to the transition, the

approp~iation

of aboriginal land and its

reduction to private property was a crucial precondition to that process.

The Hudson's Bay Company played an important

facilitating role in achieving dominance over production x"elations in the fur trade for the first time, such that aboriginal producers were reduced to the status of debtors. But as chapter five demonstrates, this did not prevent aboriginal peoples from mounting a determined resistance to state-sponsored land grabs; the battle for the Northwest established both the supremacy of capital, and its limits. To the present, the limits to both capital and the state are continually being reasserted through the persistance of aboriginal struggles for the land.

This thesis is necessarily much narrower in scope than my overall project as it was originally conceived.

I had

assumed that I would be on already well-travelled terrain in the field of historical materialism, and

t~us

had not

predicted the amount of basic theoretical groundwork which

8

had to be laid.

As a result, three of the chapters earlier

proposed have been expanded here to five chapters. Moreover, an unforseen problem of rising land value and its determination of the pressures exerted on aboriginal lands was raised in the final stages of my research; this,needs to be further explored.

I hope to have established the basis

for completing the remaining unrealized chapters elsewhere; what follows is a summary of the main issues raised by the material in this thesis which remain to be developed.

1

Land, Power, Honey:

Resource Extraction and

Conservation on Aboriginal Territories

The pressure on aboriginal lands has intensified manifold with the expansion of the extractive resource industries in Canada, particularly since the boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the key aboriginal battles which have galvanized the imaginations of the entire Canadian public since the 1970s have involved the extractive industries, including the petroleum industry (the Dene Nation of the Northwest Territories; the Lubicon Cree of northern Alberta), forestry (the Teme-Augama Anishnabai of northern Ontario; the Nu'chah'nulth of British Columbia), uranium mining (the Inuit of the Northwest Territories; the Chipewyan of northern Saskatchewan), and the contruction of hydroelectric dams (the Cree and Innu of northern Quebec).

Does this

9

support the contention that aboriginal oppression is structured by the nature of the Canadian economy?

st~~les

which dominate the

Certainly the latter view is reflected in

a corresponding shift in the discourse of aboriginal rights. The extractive industries have a dramatically more destructive impact on the environment than the more sustainable harvesting of fur.

Aboriginal advocates have

increasingly pointed to the restoration of aboriginal land rights as the antidote to environmental destruction.

However, it is my hypothesis that the. pressure on aboriginal lands is determined not by the nature of the staple industries which continually impinge upon them; rather, the challenge for rural aboriginal communities is the dramatic increase in the value of land effected by the presence of potentially profitable natural resources.

The resources are

not in themselves profitable; their value depends upon the strength of the home market, and thus the vitality of the manufacturing industries which process these primary products.

Thus the expansion of the extractive industries

onto aboriginal lands is a central aspect of the accumulation of industrial capital.

Insofar as they

continue the struggle for land rights against the incursions of the extractive industries, the aboriginal peoples who

10

call the hinterlands of Canada their home are by no means marginal to the Canadian political economy.

The state has not ignored the environmental destruction wreaked by the expansion of the extractive industries.

But

the establishment of limits to such expansion in the form of national and provincial parks has been to the further detriment of aboriginal land righcs.

In fact, until the

recent conclusion of land claims agreements in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, aboriginal land entitlement constituted only one-fifth of lands set aside for parks.

In

the early 1970s, a dramatic expansion of national parks was directly linked to a policy of termination of special aboriginal rights in the person of Jean Chretien, thenMinister of Indian and Northern Affairs.

Such an agenda has

more recently been given impetus by the powerful nonaboriginal lobbies which argue that special aboriginal hunting and fishing rights are causing the depletion of these resources.

An

investigation of the relationship between the expansion

of the extractive industries and land value, as well as the role of the state in facilitating the access of such industries to aboriginal

l~nds,

logically follows upon the

historical research completed in this thesis.

The

11

contingent creation of national parks will also be analyzed as a mechanism of state-controlled resource management which also leads to the dispossession of aboriginal peoples.

But

the social conflicts at play with respect to aboriginal lands in the 20th century are much more complex than a simple battle waged by capital and the state; it will be necessary to examine as well the agonistic relationship which has evolved between aboriginal peoples and the labour movement in the extractive industries on the one hand, and aboriginal peoples and the environmentalist movements on the other.

2

The Theory of Internal Colonialism and the Canadian State

Staple theory and the concept of internal colonialism often coexist in neo-Marxist writings on aboriginal oppression in Canada (see for example Abele and Stasiulis, Colborne and Zlotkin, Usher, and Watkins), although I have been unable to find a systematic theorization of the links between them. As I understand it, internal colonialism in the Canadian case is assumed to be an adaptation by the state to the decline of the fur trade, where an array of paternalist institutions were installed to facilitate the marginalization of aboriginal peoples, clearing the way for new capitalist developments.

12 Responsibility for the notion of internal colonialism is usually attributed to Robert Blauner, who elaborated it in relation to the urban racial conflicts of the 1960s in the United States; the concept has also been frequently used in the analysis of South African apartheid.

The notion of

internal colonialism implies a national liberation project paralleling the anti-colonial movements of the Third World. However, unlike the colonies of the Third World, the geographical location of the internal colony in relation to its colonizer makes it unrealistic to aim for the defeat and withdrawal of the latter.

The internally colonized have no

alternative but to seek some form of self-government which involves coexistence or collaboration with the state 2.

Is it possible to comprehend the changes in aboriginal society since the 18th century without having recourse to notions that the disappearance of distinct aboriginal societies is inevitable? The theory of internal colonialism would seem to address the dangers of such social Darwinism by situating aboriginal societies in a separate and differentiated sphere.

However, such a concept of

aboriginal oppression neglects to account for the ways in

2A critique of the notion of "internal colonialism" may be found in Legassick's pathbreaking essay, "South Africa: Capital Accumulation and Violence" (1974, 255, 287).

13

which the history of aboriginal resistance has been fundamental to the particular form taken by Canadian capitalism and the Canadian state.

On the other hand,

aboriginal agency cannot be collapsed into that of the working class; to do so would necessitate ignoring the specificity of the aboriginal experience as well as the sectionalism and racism of the labour movement in Canada. What is required is a notion of the way in which the collective experience of systematic oppression has given rise to aspirations which are national in character, expressed in the term "First Nations."

The concept of an oppressed "nation in formation" fOlomulated by Leon Trotsky (1978) allows for a more radical view of the emancipatory project than that permitted by the theory of internal colonialism.

If the nation is an outcome of

resistance to a capitalist state, it follows that emancipation must be bound to a fundamental transformation of Canadian society.

Such a process would necessarily

involve a corresponding transformation in aboriginal societies, since the latter have been cut through with the class contradictions and the various forms of oppression which surround them.

14

3

Aboriginal Nationalism from Below

A critique of the theory of internal colonialism

d~es

not

automatically translate into a dismissal of aboriginal nationalism as a locus for emancipation.

On the contrary,

once the concept of internal colonialism is out of the way, it is possible to recover the radical potential of aboriginal nationalism.

The latter is arguably a relatively

recent phenomenon forged out of the history of aboriginal resistance to capital accumulation and state organized oppression.

Its roots in capitalist development means that

it has given rise to contradictory strategies.

The official

government-funded aboriginal organizations have combined cultural traditionalism with a reformist strategy.

They

have vehemently opposed the revolutionary alternative which was first articulated in the Red Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Although this militant tendency is

culturally dynamic and hybrid, it may be argued that it is the real inheritor of the centuries-old legacy of aboriginal resistance.

The criteria for such an assertion must stem

from the historical specificities of that resistance, and not a notion of some static cultural authenticity.

15 4

Aboriginal Self-Determination and the "New Social Movements"

To the extent that activists in the Red Power movement saw themselves as revolutionaries, they linked the struggle for aboriginal self-determination to the struggle against class exploitation.

Even so, they did not succeed in breaking

down the historic tendencies of the labour movement to sectionalism and racism.

The outcome was. the emergence by

the 1980s of a deep pessimism among aboriginal activists about the possibility for gaining meaningful support from labour; the only apparent alternative was the strategy of separate national struggle implied by the concept of internal colonialism.

The concept also fit with a

prevailing consensus on the academic left about the specific logic of late capitalism which displaced the working class from centrality as an agent of social transformation. Instead, a proliferation of autonomous "new social movements" were to be understood as the historical subjects of this epoch (see especially Laclau and Mouffe 1985).

These social movements are considered to be selfconstituting, given particular experiences of oppression or exploitation. formulation:

The result is a reversal of Marx's original Subjective experience, and not objective

material conditions, is taken as a strategic point of

16

departure.

Aboriginal struggles are privileged over those

of the working class, given their experience of extreme marginalization and oppression.

This effectively wipes out

any theoretical basis for systematically linking aboriginal and working class interests or strategies.

In fact, the

theory of new social movements opens the way for counterposing aboriginal interests to those of other movements, given the constraints imposed by the partiality and autonomy of these movements.

Although the theory of new social

moveme~ts

might have

reflected the fragmentation of the 1980s\in Canada, it does not withstand the test of history.

A hi~torical method

which takes objective social relations

a~ its

starting point

will discover a much higher level of compiexity in the relationships between aboriginal peoples classes of Quebec and English Canada.

\

~nd

the working

Th~ emergent bases

for such relationships are elaborated here\in discussions of the

crystalli~ed (declinir.~)

feudal fur

tr~de

of New France,

as well as the later trade run by the Hudson's Bay Company in the context of a developing agrarian capitalism.

Insofar

as aboriginal peoples have resisted dispossession and the development of capitalism, they have unveiled the class basis for unity.

Germinal moments of solidarity may be

found scattered across the history of Canadian capitalism,

17

although sectionalism has also risen to the surface with every defeat.

In addition, the nationalism which has

dominated the Canadian Left during this century has undermined the potential for conscious solidarity.

Thus

evaluation of working class sectional ism with respect to aboriginal rights should focus not on some lIessential" divergence of interests, but on the divisions consciously sown by the Canadian state and reproduced by the Canadian Left.

5

Self-Government in the Current Crisis

The Canadian state has also succeeded in weakening aboriginal resistance by promoting divisions within aboriginal communities.

The key to the preservation of

aboriginal sovereignty was control of the land.

Once

resistance to the theft of aboriginal lands was broken and aboriginal peoples were herded onto reserves, the state was able to attack the social structures which constituted a last base for opposition.

The first layer of divisions was

imposed with the legislation of racial categories of IIIndian ll status.

The second layer of divisions came with

the imposition of government-controlled band councils, which introduced class contradictions into the communities. Linked to this was the transformation of gender relations, since the state allocated political power and control of

18

funding only to men.

Each of these attacks were always met

sooner or later with strong resistance.

The history of

these forms of resistance are another challenge to the theory of the new social movements, which would take the divisions themselves as its point of departure.

Resistance

to the creation of internal divisions is also the foundation for links stretching beyond the boundaries of aboriginal communities.

The limits of aboriginal self-government in the current context must be seen in the light of , the divisions which crisscross the First Nations. governments will be

s~bject

For example, aboriginal

to pressure by aboriginal

business interests to make reserves into maquiladora-style low wage zones in the name of "economic development" (Daniels 1985).

Furthermore, self-governing aboriginal

peoples will not be immune to the pressures of capitalist crisis -- on the contrary, aboriginal

organi~ations

are

already bearing the brunt of funding cutbacks by the Canadian government as a result of the current crisis.

The

Canadian government has also prepared the ground for increased corporate access to aboriginal lands as part of the reorganization of the economy involved in the new North American 'Free Trade block.

19 6

After Chiapas:

Aboriginal Land and Self-Determinati.on

in the New North America

The inauguration of the North American Free Trade Agreement in January 1994 was heralded by a massive uprising of aboriginal peoples in Chiapas, Mexico.

The Zapatista army

which spearheaded the rebellion explicitly linked NAFTA to government attacks on traditional land rights.

In

preparation for intensified agricultural competition under NAFTA, the Mexican government had introduced legislation allowing corporations access to communal lands occupied by the aboriginal peasantry.

Numerous solidarity actions in Canada and the United States pointed to the negative impact of NAFTA on aboriginal rights throughout the region.

The corporate agenda enshrined in

NAFTA will tend to erode the meagre collective land rights won through five centuries of aboriginal resistance; this is most starkly evident in Mexico and Canada, where aboriginal populations are proportionally largest.

Increased corporate

competition in the new order will exert further pressure on aboriginal lands; in Canada this pressure will especially be acute where land claims are still in process.

At the same

time, the economic viability of aboriginal communities is threatened by attacks on social spending being implemented under the guise of national survival by all three states in

20

North America.

In Mexico, cuts to agricultural subsidies

have precipitated a crisis of the communal economy.

In

Canada, aboriginal peoples are not only faced with social service cuts; they are now compelled to mobilize against government attempts to impose taxes on reserves.

I am aware of no current research in political economy which systematically addresses the problem of aboriginal land rights on a continental scale in the context of NAFTA. However, a method for approaching the question would seem to be offered by the staple theory of dependency which has formed the foundation of Canadian political economy. Indeed, the responses to NAFTA by such political economists as Mel Watkins and Daniel Drache remain firmly implanted within the staple theory tradition. render~d

The approach is

more attractive by the past efforts of Watkins and

others to explain aboriginal oppression in Canada through a combination of staple theory with the concept of the "internal colony."

In the pages of Studies in Political

Economy, Grinspun and Kreklewich (1994) have adapted the

more general dependency metaphors "core" and "periphery" to describe the social impact of NAFTA.

Regardless of which

metaphor is used, this dependency framework leads to the unanimous conclusion that the state has the double capacity

21

to protect the national economy and defend aboriginal rights.

But the weaknesses of the theory have been exposed in the aftermath of the recent aboriginal rebellions, including the Mohawk rebellion at Oka as well as the Zapatista uprising. The massive military responses to the two rebellions indicate that aboriginal interests are not bound up with the forging of a strong state.

On the contrary, the aboriginal

struggle for land rights has the effect of provoking a crisis of the state.

Moreover, the zapatista rebellion has

crystallized the convergence of aboriginal interests with those of the labour movement.

Aboriginal societies are not

internal colonies existing outside the economy of the nation-state; rather, they are struggling against corporate interests from within the contradictions of capitalism. From this perspective, it is possible to explain the juxtaposition of demands for jobs and land in the Zapatista manifesto3 •

3The methodology for approaching this issue has already been outlined in Simmons (1995).

22 1

TRAQIDY AND RBDBHPTION:

TIll AN'rHllOPOLOQICAL MOMENT IN CANAnIAN

POLITICAL ECONOMY

The Marxist political economy of aboriginal oppression in Canada has invariably been premised on an anthropological conception of aboriginal societies as "traditional."

This

theoretical tendency has recently been reinforced by the demands of aboriginal communities themselves; since the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, traditional lands have been placed under intense pressure by corporations involved in resource extraction, forcing aboriginal communities to legitimate their rights. The battle for land rights through the courts and the negotiations process established by the state has required proof of continuous "traditional" land use from time immemorial 4 • 4For a critique of state land claims policies, see Turpell (1994). Of particular relevance for our purpose is the comprehensive claims process, in which claimants must show that they are an organized society, that they have occupied a certain territory since time immemorial, that their occupation and use was continuous, and that they have excluded other aboriginal peoples in the pursuit of traditional pursuits within the territory. The proof of these criteria requires substantial documents -- on the issue of occupation since time immemorial this can be a ludicrous requirement for some claimants when early colonial history is fragmentary .... (12). Turpell argues that the fundamental flaws in these policies have forced claimants to turn to litigation to resolve disputes with the state, "even though almost everyone involved in claims recognizes that litigation is not the best method for addressing land disputes" (2).

23

Such a project is exemplified in the collection edited by Mel Watkins (1977), Dene Nation:

The Colony Within,

possibly one of the earliest publications of its kind.

The

collection, consisting primarily of statements to the Berger Inquiry on the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline in the Northwest Territories, was specifically compiled as an advocacy tool supporting Dene opposition to the pipeline. Subsequently, a number of publications addressing specific aboriginal land struggles have followed in its path, constituting what might now be identified as an emergent genres.

The rhetoric of legitimation in these texts follows

a pattern which is evidence of common aboriginal experiences and aspirations. traces of the

However, this pattern

~lso

manifests

discipline6 involved in the claims process,

SFor example, see Hugh Brody (1988) on the Beaver people of British Columbia's northeastern frontier, in opposition to the Alaska Highway natural gas pipeline; John Goddard (1991), Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree, Miles Goldstick (1987) on resistance by the Chipewyan and Metis community of Wollaston, Saskatchewan to uranium mining on their lands; Bruce W. Hodgins and Jamie Benidickson (1989), The Temagami Experience: Recreation, Resources, and Aboriginal Rights in the Northern Ontario Wilderness; Boyce Richardson (1991) regarding the aboriginal struggle against the James Bay hydroelectric project; an important collection edited by Richardson (1989) highlights eight land conflicts along with a global perspective on land rights presented by then-AFN chief Georges Erasmus; Geoffrey York and Loreen Pindera (1991), People of the Pines: The Warriors and the Legacy of Oka. .

6r use this term in the Foucauldian sense, referring to the role played by state institutions in constructing knowledge. See The Archeology of Knowledge (Foucault 1972).

24

such that methods are found to stress the historical continuity of claimant communities, minimizing discontinuity and processes of social change.

The result is a narrative

structure that is coherent even when constructed through the medium of a multiplicity of voices.

A reading of the voices compiled in Dene Nation along with ~

Justice Thomas R. Berger's two-volume report on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (1977) will serve to highlight rhetorical strategies which are more generally applicable to the genre of land rights advocacy texts.

What

emerges is a discourse which defines aboriginal societies in terms of their continuing relationship with the land, a bond which renders them irreducibly alien to an encroaching market economy.

However,

because it remains inextricably

bound up in the legal logic of property rights, such a discourse

do~s

not shed light on the social relations

involved in the conflict over aboriginal land.

Rather, the

legitimation of aboriginal land rights is articulated spatially, through a meticulous mapping of traditional landbased activities.

The spatial trope marks the point of

access to the anthropological for the Canadian political economy tradition. Aboriginal maps are inevitably located on the frontier of territory dominated by industrial market forces; this is their tragic character.

The rhetoric of the

25

frontier is doubly fatalistic; the imminent demise of aboriginal peoples presents the spectacle of the pathological imperative inherent in their other, caught in sphere of the market.

An extended discussion of Hugh

Brody's Maps and Dreams will test the limits of such a geographical determination.

Yet the tragic narrative of the frontier also contains the seeds of redemption.

The anthropological sphere of

aboriginal societies presents the image of a moral society which conforms with the benign laws of nature.

At the same

time, the technological innovations offered by the industrial sphere have the potential to create the conditions for the self-determination of aboriginal peoples in peaceful coexistence with their other.

The final two

sections of the chapter examine the theoretical antecedents of the moral and technological imperatives outlined by contemporary advocates of aboriginal land rights.

1.1

Traditional Ico10gie8:

The Discourse of Land Right.

The Berger Inquiry on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline was central to the development of a political economy of aboriginal oppression, involving a cross-fertilization of ideas among the numerous social scientists who participated

26

in an advisory capacity.

Mel Watkins himself was employed

as an advisor to the Northwest Territories Indian Brotherhood during the Inquiry.

Other influential

participants beyond those contributing to Dene Nation are Peter Usher and Hugh Brody -- both of whose work will be discussed here.

The influence of the perspective

articulated in Dene Nation is evident in the Berger report, which draws heavily from the submissions of Watkins, Usher, and Brody.

The foundational legitimating device in Dene Nation draws from a certain aboriginal consciousness of an ongoing creative or mutually nurturing relationship with their traditional land; this translates in disciplinary terms into a perspective drawn from ecological anthropology, where the categories of nature and the aboriginal become rhetorically almost interchangeable.

Berger best articulates this by

contrast to the alienation of non-aboriginals from their land base on the frontier, as described by de Tocqueville: In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the United States he visited in 1831: "The Americans themselves never think about [the wilds], they are insensible to the wonders of inanimate nature ... their eyes are fixed upon another sight, [they] march across these wilds,

27

draining swamps, turning the course of rivers, peopling solitudes, and subduing nature" (1953, 47).

We should recognize the links between

attitudes to the environment and attitudes to native peoples.

The assault upon the environment

was also an assault on their way of life.

(1977,

vol. 1, 29) In fact, the interdependence of the aboriginal peoples and the environment were, at the time of the Pipeline Inquiry, recognized in the official policy of the Northwest Territorial Fish and Wildlife Service, as described by thenDirector Norman Simmons:

"The management programs of the

Fish and Wildlife Service are designed primarily to satisfy the food and psychological requirements of [the] indigenous people" (Berger 1977, vol. 2, 106).

Similarly, Dene Nation is strewn with testimonies regarding the ecological aspect of traditional practices.

The most

eloquent articulation of this perspective is the statement by Rene Lamothe of Fort Simpson: The love of the Dene for the land is in their tone of voice, a touch, the care for plants, the life of the people, and their knowledge that life as a people stems directly from the land.

The land is

seen as mother because she gives life, because she

28

is the provider, the protector, the comforter. She is constant in a changing world, yet changing in regular cycles.

She is a story-teller, a

listener, a traveller, yet she is still, and when she suffers we all suffer with her; and very often in many parts of the world, whether they believe this or not, many people suffer because they have abused their land.

She is a teacher, a teacher

who punishes swiftly when we err, yet a benefactress who blesses abundantly when we live with integrity, respect gives.

he~,

and love the life she

We cannot stand on her with integrity and

respect and claim to love the life she gives and allow her to be ravaged. (Watkins 1977, 11) Here the land is animated, a source of vitality in aboriginal society.

The evocation of a collective bond to

the land transcends the specific interests of the claimant group, appealing to more universal social interests.

The

logical conclusion to Lamothe's statement is made explicit by Phillip Blake of Fort McPherson: I strongly believe that we do have something to offer your nation, something other than our minerals.

I believe it is in the self-interest of

your own nation to allow the Indian nation to survive and develop in our own way, on our own

29 land.

For thousands of years, we have lived with

the land, we have taken care of the land, and the land has taken care of us .... I believe that your nation might wish to see us, not as a relic from the past, but as a way of life, a system of values by which you may survive in the future.

This we

are willing to share. (Watkins 1977, 8)7

A correlative perspective applies to the intrusion of industrial capit~l and state institutions (schools, the Church, welfare, liquor agencies) into aboriginal communities; these destroy the ecological balance which permits the

survi~ral

of the community.

Such pressures are

linked to what Watkins refers to in his theoretical contribution to Dene Nation as "the destruction of local self-determination" (1977, 91), or, with Michael Asch, "dependency" (1977, 58, 87).

Dependency takes the form of

social pathology; as Watkins puts it, "$ocially, it manifests itself in alcoholism, family breakdown, and suicide.

Politically, it manifests itself in feelings of

7In Justice Berger's words, "The question then turns on the depth of our commitment to environmental [aboriginal] values when they stand in the way of technological and industrial advance" (1977, vol. 1, 29).

30

hopelessness and apathy" (1977, 92)8.

Or, in the words of

Phillip Blake, the system of domination is a "system of genocide" against aboriginal societies (Watkins 1977, 6).

The dominant Canadian society is implicitly represented as a tragic actor9 engaged in the process of its own selfdestruction even as it wreaks destruction on subjugated communities: In many important respects our position in Canada today is a magnification of the experience of a vast number of Canadians

A society as

wealthy as Canada's which continues to perpetuate, even compound, the miseries' of certain of its members is a sick snciety" (Phoebe Nahanni in Watkins 1977, 23). Thus the dominant society manifests its own pathology in the destruction of aboriginal societies.

This pathology may be

diagnosed in terms of the symptomatic failure of the same 8Justice Berger echoes this view in his Letter to the Minister: "The evidence is clear: the more the industrial frontier displaces the homeland in the North, the greater the incidence of social pathology will be" (1977, vol. 1, xxii). In his report on the Pipeline Inquiry, Berger refers to the "pathology of rapid growth," paying particular attention to the influence of alcohol use in aboriginal communities affected by industrial development (1977, vol. 1, 154-156; vol. 2, 58-60). 9Thanks to Samir Gandesha (1995) for suggesting the relevance of this trope.

31

liberal ideals which are supposed to form the basis of the dominant society.

Blake, for example, articulates his

diagnosis with an ironic turn on the ideals of justice and democracy: Where is your great system of justice today?

Does

your nation's greed for oil and gas suddenly override justice? civilization?

What exactly is your superior

How is it that it can

60

blindly

ignore the injustice occurring continually over one-third of the land mass in Canada?

Obviously, if we lived in any kind of a democratic system, there would be no further talk of the Arctic Gas pipeline. been made very clear.

The will of the people has If this consensus, if the

will of the people, is not respected, then I appeal to you and all people of southern Canada to respect and support us in our efforts to reestablish democracy and democratic decision-making in our homeland. (Watkins 1977, 7, 9)

The tragic self-destructiveness of the dominant society may also be diagnosed from another angle through the medium of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) on resource extraction projects.

The assessments produced for

32

aboriginal claimants against the Mackenzie Valley pipeline are not reproduced by Watkins'o.

However, EIAs are crucial

elements of most subsequent land rights advocacy texts (see Richardson, 1991; Goldstick, 1987).

The EIA approach is

arguably of limited scientific value; however, its pretensions to scientific status render it authoritative in debates over land use policy.

At stake is the issue of

sustainability in land management, an issue which has universal social implications; in this respect, the EIA parallels the abstract universals of justice and democracy. Every aboriginal battle over land rights has provoked the production of contradictory EIAs by consultants for the opposing parties.

Thus the discourse of aboriginal land

rights has come to involve a scientistic rhetoric which contrasts the sustainability of the traditional way of life to the (tragic) environmental destructiveness of the resource extraction industry".

'OSee Berger 1977, vol. 2, Part 2: Land," 85-212.

,

"Environment and

"The contentious nature of the EIA, despite its claim to objectivity, is reflected in Marilyn Kansky's report for the Indian Association of Alberta, Native Indian and Inuit Views on the Federal Environmental Assessment and Review Process (1988). The report includes Dene views on the assessment process linked to the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. Interestingly, the respondents are unanimous that "land claims should be settled before the Project is approved" (23, 41-42), implying that the EIA should be secondary to the question of aboriginal rights.

33

1.2

Disappearing Identities:

The Fatal Frontier"

Watkins articulates the environmental effects of the resource extraction industry with reference to the impact of the "non-renewable resource sector" on the "l."enewable resource sector."

Each of the two economic sectors are

situated in a specific social sphere; while the nonrenewable resource sector is an attribute of "white settlers," "it would appear that the Dene prefer involvement in

th~

renewable resource sector" (1977, 96).

In political

economy terms, the non-renewable resource sector leads inevitably to the "underdevelopment" of the traditional Dene economy and society: Today, the economy is a two-sector economy with the mineral sector added to the pre-existing onesector economy [the fur trade].

But the two

sectors are anything but separate.

Rather, the

operation of the "new" sector works, through a variety of mechanisms, to underdevelop the "old" sector .... the white settlers attracted by the "new" sector impose alien institutions and preempt the power of the native people; the native people experience degradation and anomie.

Activity in the non-renewable resource sector does damage to the renewable resource base and thereby

34

threatens the continuing viability of that sector. (1977, 94, 96)12

The economic and social distinction between two sectors is accompanied by a parallel geographic rhetoric of the "frontier."

Referring to the work of Harold Adams Innis,

Watkins situates the conflict over the Mackenzie Valley pipeline proposal in terms of a historic geographical imperative in Canada:

"The history of Canada, as written by

the greatest of our historians, is as a succession of staple exports from successive geographic frontiers to serve the needs of more advanced industrial areas" (1977, vol. 1, 85). This view is paraphrased by Berger and supported with a similar quote from Innis's Empire and Communications (1950, 5i cited in Berger 1977, vol. 1, 117).

The title of the

Berger report, Northern Frontier Northern Homeland, points to the geographic question which frames it:

"Should the

future of the North be determined by the South? .... The choice we will make will decide whether the North is to be primarily a frontier for industry or a homeland for its [aboriginal] peoples" (1977, vol. 1, 1-2).

12Berger quotes a similar statement made by Watkins to the Inquiry in his discussion of the aboriginal "mixed economy" (1977, vol. 1, 121-122).

35

The original theorist of the frontier in North America was Frederick Jackson Turner, who created a sensation with a series of essays in the last decade of the nineteenth century'3.

ri'he first essay, "The Significance of the

Frontier in American History," contained the most succinct articulation of Turner's thesis.

According to this view,

the challenge of the frontier, "the meeting point between savagery and civilization" (1962, 3), gave rise to a national culture in America which was radically differentiated from its European antecedents: At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast.

It

was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.

As successive terminal moraines result

from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics.

Thus the advance of the

13J . M. S . Careless traces the influence of Turner's frontier determinism in Canadian historiography, although he goes no farther than to call for a recasting of this form of environmentalism in terms of the metropolis (1954). Harold Adams Innis refers in passing to the work of Turner, remarking mainly upon the limitations of his frontier school with respect to the specificities of Canadian history (1956, 11, 39, 107). But Turner's influence is marked in this very disavowal. W.J. Eccles finally succeeds in breaking with the Turner tradition in his revisionist essay, "New France and the Western Frontier" (1987, 50-60).

36 frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.

And to study this

advance, the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic and social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history.

(1962, 4)

Turner repeatedly conflates the aboriginal presence with the wilderness environment in his notion of the "Indian frontier" (1962, 15).

Savage society and

wi~derness

must

both ultimately succumb to the civilizing influence of the frontier, which stretched beyond its own borders by way of the fur trade: Thus the disintegrating forces of civilization entered the wilderness.

Every river valley and

Indian trail became a fissure in Indian society, and so that society became honeycombed.

Long

before the pioneer farmer appeared on the scene, primitive Indian life had passed away.

(1962, 13)

But Turner does not perceive this as a destructive process. On the contrary, the frontier is a space of great creative ferment. The confrontation between civilization and savagery on the frontier is a "crucible" (1962, 23) -- precisely the "consolidatin~J

agent" (1962, 15) which is required for the

establishment of a unified

American nation.

Moreover, the

37

creativity and individualism required by the frontier is an essential democratizing force, in Europe as well as America; this Turner considers to be its most important effect (1962, 30) • 14 15

Even as he heralded it as the basis of American identity, Turner declared the frontier to have reached its limits by the end of the nineteenth century.

But the discourse of

14Turner almost certainly was influenced by the earlier writings of Francis Parkman on the encounter between savagry and civilization: When the European and the savage are brought in contact, both are gainers, and both are losers. The former loses the refinements of civilization, but he gains, in the rough schooling of the wilderness, a rugged independence, a self-sustaining energy, and powers of action and perception before unthought of. The savage gains new means of comfort and support, clothes, iron, and gunpowder; yet these apparent benefits have often proTed but instruments of ruin. They soon become necessities, and the unhappy hunter, forgetting the weapons of his fathers, ~ust thenceforth depend on the white man for ease, happiness, and life itself. (1962, 136) 150f course, the American fantasy of the frontier may also be traced through the ambivalent history of Western pulp novels and movies. The Mountie looms at the forefront of the corresponding Canadian myth. See Visions of Order: The Canadian Mounties in Symbol and Myth, by Keith Walden (1982) •

For further discussion of the frontier concept in another context, see Martin Legassick, "The Frontier Tradition in South African Historiography" (1980).

38

aboriginal land rights seeks to refute such a foreclosure of the frontier 16 .

The continuing viability of traditional land use must be dem?graphically asserted to counter the allegations of developers that the aboriginal frontier is a thing of the past 17 . As in the contributions to Dene Nation by Phoebe Nahanni ("The Mapping Project") and Scott P ;:;hforth ("Country Food"), the demographic device establishes an

16Joe Lockard finds a similar impulse in the technological sphere; the frontier ideology of the Turner school is apparently alive and well in cyberspace: A deeply conservative strain of American political 'life needs and cherishes a living frontier ... It seizes on technology to reinvent an imagined apotheosis of the American national spirit, a phnomenon that Walter McDougall has examined in the Space Age rhetoric of the early 1960s. These periodic bouts with techno-frontierism, such as we are now witnessing in cyberspace, are an exercise in avoiding history's ugliness. (1995, 10) The co-founder of the "Electronic Frontier Foundation," John Perry Barlow, likens net surfers to American pioneers who "were able to tolerate harsh conditions, like fur traders" (1994; cited in Lockard 1995, 13). The "discovery" of this new unregulated space has given rise to notions that it is a force for social transformation. Electronic technology has supposedly created a democratizing space of equal opportunity, and it has the potential to forge "virtual communities" against the disintegrating forces of (post) modernity. The linkage between geographical and technological determinism in political economy will be further explored later. 17"Developers, such as the pipeline applicants, frequently allege that the Dene no longer rely substantially on country food derived from traditional use of the land" (Rushforth, in Watkins 1977, 32).

39

objective measure of land use, such that the land is irrefutably proved to be an attribute of Dene society.

In

this respect, the fine mesh of trails and traplines traced on the map reproduced by Nahanni constitute a particular representation of Dene identity.

Moreover, the map shows

the land to be animated by the Dene; the Dene travel across the land, they know it, they name it: Dene people have considerable experience in surveying the environment we live in.

Our

ancestors travelled throughout the lands and, when the white men travelled on our land, it was with the advice and help of our ancestors.

We have our

own Dene place names for all our camps, for the lakes, the rivers, the mountains -- indicating that we know the topography of our land intimately.

Before Mackenzie came and claimed the

river to be named after him, for example, we called it Deh-cho. (Nahanni, in Watkins 1977, 27) Thus the practice of mapping may be understood in the 3ense described by Jameson (1991) as a cognitive project 18 , 18 1

refer here to the mimetic concept of cognitive mapping which Jameson draws from Kevin Lynch in The Image of the City. This formulation refers to a political project of disalienation, involving "the practical reconquest of a sense of place and the construction or reconstruction of an articulated ensemble which can be retained in memory and which the individual subject can map and remap along the moments of mobile, alternative trajectories" (Jameson 1991,

40

'.

Sample map showlna tralIs and tnpUnea uouncl Fort McPhmon. It wu'compUo

I( lilt

=-'----=-

a

~

llu

f

I

..... " ".

HIW;

"

"--,, ... -

-.

.. J

~ -1- ~

-I-C·

Figure 2

DOIG RIVER RESERVE:

BERRY PICKING AREAS

From Brody, "The Indians' Maps" (1988) 155.

46

s

N

t

"

_._

.i

o

'~" I

o

IS mi

.

~--

Zf kn.

~j' ,

")\ -

"I .f

...

CLE....R ~

, t......

".

HILL'; ~,,-- ......

_-

ii

1

"-.- I

-'-1--,

Figure 3

DOIG RIVER RESERVE:

FISHING AREAS

From Brody, liThe Indians' Maps" (1988) 157.

47

.. ..

. ., ~

It

o

H

=--'-'- -

nil t.m

·Cl.E\R

. -,

-

I

- -.. _11..J

-.-.-.-,

I

Figure 4

DOIG RIVER RESERVE:

I

CAMPING SITES

From Brody, "The Indians' Mapsll (1988) 159.

48


))

.

. i > ~ \ )

)

( ,,"'~

\~~

.\'

t

I

,

--

\ place the hiddenness of his subject under erasure; as he puts it, the facts are "in order" (1982b, 180) .

Notwithstanding the facts, the hybrid or disenchanted map participates in the same tragic mode which is imputed to the regime of capital.

This is what Brody observes in the

ambivalent voice of Beaver mapmaker Joseph Patsah, which "oscillates between pessimism and optimism": Several times ... Joseph Patsah reiterated his foreboding of the end of the world to me. also said he

WaS

But he

sure that the people's maps would

23For a similar view, see Brody 1988, 273.

S3

make a difference to the future of our own way of life almost as much as the Indians'.

What Joseph Patsah knows, and what leads him to make

his own pessimistic prophecy, is that the

resilience of even his people has its limits.

The

coming years will show whether or not the frontier will push them beyond those limits.

The outcome

is not decided, which is why fatalists are wrong, and hunting territories are right.

Fatalism can

be the only quality that Joseph Patsah shares with those who, in a mindless if enthusiastic acceptance of the frontier, have the means but not the need to bring an end to his world. (1988, 28)

It is the fatality of the frontier which informs the anthropological moment in Canadian political economy.

For

this political economy, the origin of the tragic in Canadian society is located in the decline of the fur trade.

The

magisterial precursor text for the tragic narrative is The

Fur Trade in Canada, by Harold Adams Innis.

Innis and his

successors viewed the fur trade as an economic institution which could accommodate the survival of traditional aboriginal societies.

But the fur trade created the

conditions for its own demise through the accumulation of

.' . t

.Pre 1918

54

.194S -1!j60

.1918 - 194S ~1!j60 -1918

Figure 6

ALIENATION:

WHITE SETTLEMENT

Source: Community Information Research Group for Union of British Columbia Chiefs

From Brody 1988, 239.

55

f"."'I1Ii