National Indigenous History Month is in its final days for this year. I’ve spent the month reading the memoir of Murray Sinclair, who is also a descendant of my distant grandmother Nahoway, and new information that honours and celebrates the rich cultures of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit. Instagram was filled with dancing and drumming, along with beautiful symbolic clothing, a host of amazing images. More and more is being written down by Indigenous people, their stories and experiences, made available for everyone.
I read volumes of material in my research about the fur trade, the Hudson’s Bay Company claiming land in 1670, a company whose success and longevity was due to the significant role that Indigenous women played, yet very little is written about these women, very few are identified by name, and most went to their graves without being recognized for the wisdom they shared and the “homes” they created for European men who worked in the fur trade. Without Indigenous people this company, marked as a cornerstone in Canada’s history, would have had a much different legacy.
Indigenous women were interpreters, navigators, steerswomen, hunters, trappers. Women were skilled mapmakers and were often the ones steering canoes through difficult waters. Matonabbee, a Dene leader and close friend and guide of Samuel Hearne (whom most of us will remember from elementary school Social Studies), told Hearne that women could carry and haul as much as two men and travelling any distance could not be done without the participation of women with their skills at hunting small game and putting up and taking down the shelters each night. This proved to be true when Hearne heeded Matonabbee’s advice and in his third attempt finally found his way to the mouth of the Coppermine River on the Arctic Ocean. Temperatures in the 1770s at Fort Prince of Wales at the mouth of the Churchill River were recorded as low as -59 Fahrenheit. The clothing that European men came to North America with would not have provided for survival. Indigenous women made clothing for these men. The Cree had dogs who were vital to their lives, but HBC post logs recorded that the dogs would not serve European men.
Indigenous women boiled white spruce bark to make a tea that prevented scurvy but oddly, European men paid little heed to this practice. Two million sailors died between the 16th and 18th centuries from the effects of scurvy before the British started storing citrus fruit aboard ships in the 19th century.
I tuned in to CBC Radio “Unreserved” on June 5, when host Rosanna Deerchild welcomed Dr. Amy Cardinal Christianson, a Metis from Treaty 8 territory. Dr. Christianson has a deep pedigree in the knowledge of fire. “She was a Research Scientist with the Canadian Forest Service and an Indigenous Fire Specialist in the National Fire Management Division of Parks Canada. She works with indigenous Nations across Canada on fire stewardship practices like cultural burning and collaborates with Indigenous peoples from around the world on decolonising land management. She also studies wildfire evacuations and advocates for Indigenous wildland firefighters.”
Dr. Christianson explained how Indigenous communities used fire as a land management tool long before Canada was formed. The HBC post journals refer to the prescribed burning practices with little understanding of what purpose they served. Forests are fire dependent to prevent unhealthy landscapes. Indigenous people burned the area around where they lived to provide for a greater variety of species. A mosaic is a much healthier forest with aspen, poplar, willow along with the conifers. The fire allows for fireweed for medicinal purposes, an abundant supply of berries, manages invasive species and restores natural habitats. Metis used fire in the buffalo hunt to burn areas that provided for better grazing for the buffalo and drew them in. After the hunt, the area would be burned again, which allowed for ease in the collection of white buffalo bones to be used for tools. Colonization came and with it the European model of forest management and Indigenous burning practices were forbidden.
Early writers of observations made during the fur trade formed most of our accepted history of life within the Hudson Bay watershed. These writers classified the behaviour and lifestyle of Indigenous people in terms of how it compared to European lifestyle and criticized what they observed, taking very little notice of the survival techniques, the respect for the land and animals, the love shown to children, and the sense of autonomy that existed within tribes. I believe our life today would be far different had Europeans come to this land with a sense of curiosity rather than arrogance.
wendistewart@live.ca
