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9. Nimble Fingers and Strong Backs: First Nations and Métis Women in Fur Trade and Rural Economies
- University of Illinois Press
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chapter 9 Nimble Fingers and Strong Backs First Nations and Métis Women in Fur Trade and Rural Economies Sherry Farrell Racette Nurse Tracy, from Wally Dion’s Red Worker Series (2005–6) is the Saulteaux artist’s visual response to those who suggest that the demographic shift toward an Aboriginal majority in the province of Saskatchewan will lead to economic collapse (figure 9.1). Dion’s Red Workers, with their obvious references to the heroic workers of Soviet Socialist Realism and the propaganda art of the Chinese Cultural Revolution challenge the prevalent and persistent construction of Figure 9.1. Wally Dion, “Nurse Tracy,” 2005. Acrylic on wood panel, 48 × 38¾ inches. Collection of the Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, Ontario. Reproduced with permission of the artist. Aboriginal people (both male and female) as nonproductive and nonworking. The large portrait of Nurse Tracy sets a strong young woman gazing into the future, her shoulders squared, against a stormy prairie sky. The subtle grid that cuts the painted surface into squares suggests the categories and attitudes that confine and restrict her. Among these confining and restricting paradigms, are the two principal, and contradictory, constructions projected onto the female Indigenous body: the lazy squaw and the squaw drudge. In that paradigm, women are both lazy (unwilling to work) AND engaged in drudgery (hard, boring work). Aboriginal women are constructed as nonproductive and peripheral , yet in many regions of Canada, from the fur trade to the twentieth century, aspects of Euro-Canadian economies have been dependent on a pool of female Aboriginal laborers. This relationship between women and European economies began during the fur trade, although hard work has always been part of women’s lives. Survival in the northern forests and plains required constant activity and strategic thinking. It was that harsh reality that pushed European men and their enterprises toward the skills of women. The necessity of having First Nations women as companions and helpmates was an accepted aspect of life during the fur trade unacknowledged in Canadian historiography until Jennifer Brown’s Strangers in Blood (1980) and Sylvia Van Kirk’s Many Tender Ties (1980). These seminal works emphasized women’s roles in the network of fur trade families and communities, recognizing the importance of their knowledge of the country, their work as mothers, guides, negotiators, and interpreters. Other aspects of their lives as workers are less known. They Are Virtually Your Honor’s Servants While female skills and women’s power were essential to connect European men into social and economic networks necessary for physical survival and business success, the two major fur trade enterprises, the Hudson’s Bay Company (est. 1670) and the North West Company (est. 1779) were ambivalent about the reciprocity that developed between men and women. By 1683, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s London Committee saw women as an alarming and expensive distraction, writing a directive stating we have been much prejudiced by the entertaineing [sic] of Indian women in our Forts & factories for thereby our serveants [sic] have not only been debauched but our goods and provisions have been extravagantly spent wherfor [sic] in the next place we doe [sic] absolutely prohibit you to permitt [sic] any such familiaritys [sic] as formerly have been and . . . suffer no women to be entertained or admitted into our Forts or houses under penallty [sic] of the forfeiture of their wages (Rich 1948: 75). The London Committee’s position was difficult to enforce, as Andrew Graham observed after his retirement in 1775: “The Company permits no European women Nimble Fingers and Strong Backs 149 [18.212.102.174] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:01 GMT) to be brought within their territories, and forbid [sic] any natives to be harboured in the settlements. This latter has never been obeyed” (Calloway 2008: 157). The North West Company’s strategy was to take the trade inland, increasing reliance on Indigenous networks and knowledge, but they also were concerned with the growing populations at fur trade posts. Alexander Henry the Younger, a North West Company clerk and later partner, frequently enumerated men and their families in his journals (1799–1814). The journals documented his movement from 1799 to 1814 from one North West Company post to another in presentday Manitoba, Minnesota, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. In 1800 Henry’s Red River outfit consisted of twenty-one men, four women, and four children (Gough 1988: 23–24). By 1809, he was in charge of Fort Vermillion, home to thirty-seven...