Synopses & Reviews
"Required reading for all Canadians." -Candace Savage, author of A Geography of Blood
Named a "Book of the Year" by the Globe & Mail,Quill & Quire, the Writers’ Trust, and booksellers across Canadan, Clearing the Plains reveals how Sir John A. Macdonald used a policy of starvation against Aboriginal people in the pursuit of his "National Dream."
"Clearing the Plains is a tour de force that dismantles and destroys the view that Canada has a special claim to humanity in its treatment of indigenous peoples. Daschuk shows how infectious disease and state-supported starvation combined to create a creeping, relentless catastrophe that persists to the present day. The prose is gripping, the analysis is incisive, and the narrative is so chilling that it leaves its reader stunned and disturbed. For days after reading it, I was unable to shake a profound sense of sorrow. This is fearless, evidence-driven history at its finest." -Elizabeth A. Fenn, author of Pox Americana
Clearing the Plains "should make us question what it means to be Canadian." -Globe & Mail
Synopsis
Named a "Book of the Year" by the Globe & Mail, Quill & Quire, the Writers' Trust, and booksellers across Canada, Clearing the Plains reveals how Sir John A. Macdonald used a policy of starvation against Aboriginal people in the pursuit of his "National Dream."
Synopsis
The award-winning book about how Canada's first prime minister starved Indigenous peoples in the pursuit of nationhood
Revealing how Canada's first Prime Minister used a policy of starvation against Indigenous people to clear the way for settlement, the multiple award-winning Clearing the Plains sparked widespread debate about genocide in Canada.
In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics--the politics of ethnocide--played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of Indigenous people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald's "National Dream."
It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day.
This new edition of Clearing the Plains has a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Fenn, an opening by Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, and explanations of the book's influence by leading Canadian historians. Called "one of the most important books of the twenty-first century" by the Literary Review of Canada, it was named a "Book of the Year" by The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, the Writers' Trust, and won the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, among many others.
Synopsis
In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics--the politics of ethnocide--played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of aboriginal people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s "National Dream."
It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between First Nations and non-Native populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day.
About the Author
James Daschuk has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Manitoba. He is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina and a researcher with the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Indigenous Health, Environment, and Disease before Europeans
2. The Early Fur Trade: Territorial Dislocation and Disease
3. Early Competition and the Extension of Trade and Disease, 1740-82
4. Despair and Death during the Fur Trade Wars, 1783-1821
5. Expansion of Settlement and Erosion of Health during the HBC Monopoly, 1821-69
6. Canada, the Northwest, and the Treaty Period, 1869-76
7. Treaties, Famine, and Epidemic Transition on the Plains, 1877-82
8. Dominion Administration of Relief, 1883-85
9. The Nadir of Indigenous Health, 1886-91
Conclusion
Maps
Notes
Bibliography
Index