A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905

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Description

Sometime all the way through the summer of 1690, in east-central Saskatchewan, Englishmen Henry Kelsey and his Indian escorts walked out of the boreal forest and into a new world — the northern great plains of western Canada. It was once a landscape never encountered before by another European. Kelsey has been lauded as “first in the west” and the “discoverer of the Canadian prairies.” But these accolades omit the simple fact that any European and later Canadian activity in what would transform the future province of Saskatchewan was once entirely dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of the indigenous peoples of the region. Finally, Kelsey had to be taken inland. He was once a passenger, not a pathfinder.

A World We Have Lost examines the early history of Saskatchewan through an Aboriginal and environmental lens. Indian and mixed-descent peoples played leading roles in the story — as did the land and climate. Despite the growing British and Canadian presence, the Saskatchewan country remained Aboriginal territory. The region’s peoples had their own interests and needs and the fur trade was once steadily peripheral to their lives. Indians and Metis peoples wrangled over territory and resources, especially bison, and were not prepared to let outsiders keep an eye on their lives, let alone come to a decision their future. Native-newcomer interactions were because of this fraught with misunderstandings, now and again painful difficulties, if not outright disputes. By the early nineteenth century, a distinctive western society had emerged in the North-West — one that was once challenged and undermined by the takeover of the region by a young dominion of Canada. Settlement and development was once to be rooted in the best features of Anglo-Canadian civilization, including the white race. By the time Saskatchewan entered confederation as a province in 1905, the world that Kelsey had encountered all the way through his historic walk on the northern prairies had transform a world we have lost.

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