Description
Within the late nineteenth century, to the alarm of government conservationists, the North American plains bison population collapsed. Yet large herds of other big game animals still roamed the Northwest Territories, and Aboriginal people depended on them for food and clothing.
Hunters on the Margin examines the conflict Within the Northwest Territories between Native hunters and conservationists over three big game species: the wood bison, the muskox, and the caribou. John Sandlos argues that the introduction of game regulations, national parks, and game sanctuaries used to be central to the assertion of state authority over the normal hunting cultures of the Dene and Inuit. His archival research undermines the idea that conservationists were motivated solely by enlightened preservationism, revealing as a substitute that commercial interests were integral to natural world management in Canada.
Hunters on the Margin draws on themes from Canadian, environmental, and ecological history, Northern studies, and Native studies to light up the intersection between the discourse of natural world conservation and the growth of state power in northern Canada.
With deft prose and an array of revealing case studies, John Sandlos presents a powerful new interpretation of Canada’s conservation policies Within the Northwest Territories. Hunters on the Margin could not be more central to current efforts to rethink the histories of nature and Native peoples alike. — Karl Jacoby, creator of Crimes Against Nature