History and what it might mean for the future…

Jim Daschuk Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit University of Regina Nov.11, 2013 Saskatchewan Demographic Projection “Canada near top of UN human development rankings but dragged down by inequalities” (2011)

• Annual ranking of countries by a number of factors, (quality of life) • 2011 Norway, Australia, Netherlands • USA, New Zealand Canada • Canada has always been in the top ten, usually in the top 5 • BUT-if the indicators were applied to Aboriginal People, they would rank in the 60s-Developping world conditions How did we get here?

• Shorter life expectancy (5-9 yrs.) • Poorer educational outcomes • Higher incarceration rates • More of a chasm than a gap for just about every measure of well being • Even among neighbours

Cahokia-Metropolis of Prehistoric North America (800-1300 C.E) Cahokia

Prehistoric Trade Routes of North America (including Moose Bay burial mound)

Source: http://www.lasalle.edu/~mcinneshin/wk10/images/Indian%20trade%20routes.jpg Collapse of Woodland Societies Crow Creek South Dakota

Columbus The Taino

The Columbian Exchange

• After 1500, the greatest interaction between previously separate ecosystems in history the entire world was transformed 1-Animals and plants 2-People 3-Varmints (rats, mice) 4-Germs

Columbian Exchange-Foods

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The “Virgin Soil Epidemic”

• The first outbreak of a disease in a population that has no experience with it. Extremely high mortality-75% in the case of smallpox Breakdown of social mechanisms-famine, loss of knowledge-(elders) Societies never quite the same in their aftermath • the most significant single demographic event in the history of a population

smallpox

Smallpox as historical force

• Literally shaped the Aboriginal map of North America

• Gen. Amherst and “infested blankets”

• Factor in the success of the American Revolution Steckel, Richard H., and Joseph M. Prince. 2001. "Tallest in the World: Native Americans of the Great Plains in the

Nineteenth Century." American Economic Review, 91(1): 287-294.

1869 The Rupert’s Land Purchase The Numbered Treaties

Treaty 6 Negotiations Ft. Carlton 1876

Treaty6-North Saskatchewan River • Newly negotiated provisions… • Assistance in establishing agriculture • A medicine chest • A guarantee of assistance in times of famine or pestilence • Negotiated as equals- between Indigenous leaders and the Crown, the Monarchy “The Great Mother” Concern over food and the future of the bison

• Morris to Chief Beardy, (a holdout at Fort Carlton),

• “In a national famine or general sickness, not what happens in everyday life, but if a great blow comes on the Indians, they would not be allowed to die like dogs.”

• “That in the event hereafter of the Indians comprised within this treaty being overtaken by any pestilence, or by a general famine, the Queen, on being satisfied and certified thereof by Her Indian Agent or Agents, will grant to the Indians assistance of such character and to such extent as Her Chief Superintendent of Indian Affairs shall deem necessary and sufficient to relieve the Indians from the calamity that shall have befallen them.” 1878-Famine on the prairies April 1878, Indian Agent M.G. Dickieson reported that, over the winter, “the Indians were very poorly off, starving in fact.”

Regina Airport Sculpture

“Forty Thousand Buffalo Hides” overhunting for industrial belts USA Purposeful extermination

Fall 1878 Tories return to Power “The National Policy” *Macdonald Minister of Indian Affairs 1878-1883

Southern Route chosen for the CPR “Pacification” of the plains Indians was an integral, if not always explicit, component of the Tory government’s program of development.

Severity of the famine…

• “Lost and Found,” Saskatchewan Herald, 16 Dec. 1878 • “FOUND Where the Indians starved to death, about the 1st of October, a white mare. The owner can have the same by proving property and paying expenses. Apply to Antoine Morin, .” •

Amartya Sen-Nobel Laureate • “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat. While the latter can be the cause of the former, it is but one of many causes.” Within months, tons of rations brought from Montana

Millions in food contracts NWMP and DIA (few settlers yet)

(1879)…Niitsitapi had travelled to Battleford for help since “many of them were dying because they could not subsist on a diet of roots.”

• Source: A. Hungry Wolf, The Blackfoot Papers, Volume 1

Saskatchewan Herald, 1879 “the condition of these Indians is deplorable in the extreme. Accustomed all their lives to a diet consisting largely of animal food, the rations of flour and tea they receive here leave them but one remove from starvation.”

(1880 DIA) pork at Touchwood Hills “both musty and rusty and totally unfit for use — although we are giving it out to the Indians, in the absence of anything better, but we cannot use it ourselves.” Sick and dying animals a source of human disease…

Questions about the quality of food and the honesty of the providers… 1880 • At Edmonton, Indian Agent James Stewart reported on the crisis: • “… I have never seen anything like it since my long residence in this country. … [T]he poor people were naked, and the cold was intense, and remained so during the whole winter … • They ate many of their horses, and all the dogs were destroyed for food.”

• (Siksika)Edgar Dewdney “found about 1,300 Indians … on the verge of starvation.” In his diary, he described “strong young men … now so weak that some of them could hardly walk.”

•

Only Treaty bands were provided with food

• In 1879, a number of bands traded their independence for food. In the Battleford Agency, Mosquito, Moosomin, Thunderchild, and Little Pine all accepted treaty in exchange for rations.

1881 Sk. Herald “… amongst many bands of Plain[s] Indians … the disease broke out in this case, the afflicted ones had been eating the flesh of horses that had died of the scab or mange…” • Fort Ellice… daily ration of twelve ounces of flour and four ounces of bacon, three people starved to death in Jan. 1881 [ 1881-thousands dependent on rations • Sir Leonard Tilley, the finance minister, stated the policy directive succinctly: “They must work or starve.” “a policy of submission shaped by a policy of starvation.” • Push by the govt. to get everyone settled on reserves, once there under the control of DIA officials

1882 Removal from s.w. Sask. • 24 March 1882 (H of C) • all Indians in the territory of would be removed, by force if necessary, from the land south of the proposed railway • Within a year, 5,000 people were expelled from the Cypress Hills-food withheld until they left Herald “marching to the govt. grubpile” •

• Macdonald (H of C) “We cannot allow them to die for want of food. ... [W]e are doing all we can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation, to reduce the expense.”

Mistahi-maskwa Big Bear • 1882, Dr. Augustus Jukes (NWMP)

• “it would indeed be difficult to exaggerate their extreme wretchedness and need.” • Rations were deliberately withheld until the chief capitulated on 8 December 1882. Freedom exchanged for food

Tuberculosis and Privation TB very rare in the early 1870s by 1880, primary cause of sickness and death Blackfoot Chief and Children 1880s Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce health conditions at residential schools

• 1907 Bryce systematic investigation of schools “they had commonly begun as small buildings, which soon became overcrowded, and few of which had any claims to sanitary construction, were veritable hot-beds of tuberculosis” • 25% to 33% of all the children who’d been to school had died File Hills Agricultural Colony

• Bryce- “Regarding the health of the pupils,…. 75 per cent, were dead at the end of the 16 years since the school opened.” Duncan Campbell Scott his goal “no more Indian Problem…”

“Kill the Indian save the child” Starved Canadian Aboriginal Children Were Used In Government Experiments During 1940s Friday, July 19, 2013

A century of poor health…

Infant Death Rates in Canada, Saskatchewan, SK Indians* and SK Non- Indians (rates per 1,000 live births)

350

300

250

Canada 200 Saskatchewan SK Indians 150 SK Non-Indians

Rate per 1,000 births live 100

50

0

1921 1923 1925 1927 1929 1931 1933 1935 1937 1939 1941 1943 1945 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 Year J. Gatehouse, Canada’s Worst Neighborhood, How did the province where medicare was born end up with a city this frightening? Maclean’s, Jan. 2007