In a review of The Inconvenient Indian, Michael Bourne notes that “at both the political and personal level Native people are far more visible [in Canada] than in the States”:
[Historian] Patricia Limerick offers a fascinating historical insight into why this might be so. As she notes, the fur trade was integral to the original exploration of both Canada and the US, but thanks to differences in climate and animal habitat, the American fur trade was pushed to the margins by the enormous inrush of farming settlers, whereas in Canada fur trading with Indians remained central to the national enterprise for much longer. By its nature, trade in fur tends to be less destructive of indigenous culture than farming. To settle a farming community, one has to rid the land of its previous occupants, either by killing them or driving them far away where they can’t steal one’s crops or livestock. Fur trading, no matter how corrupt or one-sided, remains a trade, a partnership between two groups, each of which needs the other.
(Image via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 
