The fur trade and recent Aboriginal history

Summary

Scholarly interest in the western Canadian fur trade tends to focus on a time of intense European commercial competition, exploration and colonial appropriation (ca. 1763 to 1821). As the fur trade declined over the subsequent 150 years, both it and its Aboriginal participants became increasingly marginalized in the national historical synthesis. Aboriginal history, deriving in part from the Oral Tradition, documents how the fur trade figured in an evolving hunter-gatherer ‘reality’ that persists into the living memory of First Nations communities. However, virtually no archaeological attention has been focused upon this ‘recent past’, with its adaptation (and resistance) to new economic realities and acculturative pressure from mainstream Canada. After offering an overview of this recent historical past, some ethno-historical, ethnological and archaeological examples from far northern Ontario are reviewed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Creating the Past in the Present: Critical Reflections on Fur Trade Archaeology

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-54,02