Have We Made Any Progress in the Struggle to Make First Nation Poverty History? A 40-Year Perspective

Abstract

The late 1700s and the early 1800s were marked by displacement, starvation and the continuing ravages of disease, sharply reducing First Nation population numbers and setting the stage for widespread incursions on First Nation lands as well as exclusion from access to natural resources.6 Yet, regionally specific histories suggest a gradual regrouping in the late 1800s and early 1900s as the Indigenous population carved out a place on the margins of the White economy, working as guides to hunters, domestics in homes, workers in canning factories and labourers in brick plants.7 Others managed to continue their traditional subsistence life style. The intergenerational effects of the residential schools require investments in individual, family and community healing and represent a significant challenge for community development * The continuing loss of access to lands and resources through the incursion of immigrant populations, the treaty process and the nonfulfilment of treaty provisions, and through the process of regulation (e.g., migratory birds, hunting and fishing, logging) * The relocation and displacement of communities from their traditional lands as a result of centralization policies or the construction of hydro electric dams The Great Depression seemed to knock the pins out from under the meagre employment gains that had been made in earlier decades. While necessary on humanitarian grounds in the short term and a welcome change from the rejection of appeals in earlier decades, it proved to be a short-sighted and limited approach to the challenge of First Nation poverty in the longer term. [...]order, there were many responses to the document, among the most thoughtful the 1971 statement issued by the Indian Tribes of Manitoba, titled Wahbung: Our Tomorrows.