Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life by James Daschuk (review)

The publication of James Daschuk’s study of the historic effects of disease for the First Nations population of western Canada is well timed, given its excoriating portrait of John A. Macdonald’s Aboriginal policy. Next year will be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Macdonald. Alongside the federal government’s pledge of $500,000 towards the celebrations, public commentators in Toronto are currently debating councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s proposal that the newly renovated Union Station be renamed in honour of Sir John. In a related editorial, Tim Anderson of the National Post has defended Macdonald as a true liberal, who was sensitive to the plight of minorities and an early suffragette. (4 March 2014) While Anderson acknowledges that Macdonald’s National Policy “resulted in hardships for aboriginals,” he seems to perceive Macdonald’s racism as a product of his era rather than as a stain on his character. But Daschuk reveals a more sinister portrait, of how Macdonald cut medical services for Aboriginal people in the midst of epidemic sickness and unapologetically used famine as a weapon to crush the resistance of Aboriginal people.

In Part One of Clearing the Plains, Daschuk describes the role that introduced diseases played in shaping the territorial history of Aboriginal people up to 1870. Written in the tradition of scholarship by Arthur Ray and Theodore Binnema, the book gives a dynamic portrait of how introduced European diseases were “the primary factor in the wholesale redistribution of aboriginal populations of western Canada.” (26) Not only does Daschuk reveal the horrifying repercussions of “virgin soil epidemics,” but he also elaborates how First Nations peoples encountered these pandemics divergently, depending on their unique social structures and participation within the European fur trade economy. Amid the chaos, some communities such as the Plains Cree and Saulteaux, who were vaccinated in large numbers by the Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc), expanded their territories and took on new roles as provisioners to the fur trade companies. In contrast, other First Nations such as the Assiniboine and Niitsitapi suffered higher mortality rates and consequently a loss of territorial control and influence. As Daschuk emphasizes, prior to 1870 “the spread of foreign diseases among highly susceptible populations comprised a tragic, unforeseen, but largely organic change.” (xvi) By the time European newcomers arrived in the West, introduced diseases had already decimated the region’s Aboriginal population. But while European newcomers were incapable of ameliorating many of the epidemiological results of the Columbian Exchange, the exertions of the hbc to vaccinate Aboriginal people against smallpox saved many lives and reveal the benefits of European medical aid in this era.

In Part Two, Daschuk considers the role of the Canadian Dominion in exacerbating disease-related mortality among First Nations. As Daschuk himself admits, the Crown’s historic failure to honour its treaty obligations in the 1870s and 1880s is a familiar story that has been well documented by historians of the Canadian West. With the sudden collapse of bison herds in the late 1870s, Aboriginal peoples faced famine conditions. Their customary lifestyles were no longer tenable, and little to none of the promised support from the Dominion to help First Nations transition to agriculture materialized. Into this context, Macdonald’s Conservative government returned to power in 1878 and immediately cut funding to famine relief, stating publicly that “[we] are doing all we can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation to reduce the expense.” (123) Here Daschuk is ground-breaking for his analysis of the connections between the “politics of famine” and the outbreak of an epidemic of tuberculosis within Aboriginal communities across the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (xix)

Tuberculosis was endemic to the Americas prior to the arrival of European newcomers in the Americas, but it did not formerly represent a significant threat to First Nations because “the high level of nutrition offered by bison predation...