Canadian Social History

Huronia represented one of the largest concentrations of First Nations people in the eastern part of what is now Canada. Both the Huron, and their enemies, the Five Nations Iroquois, were Iroquoian speaking nations that produced much of their food from horiculture.

Although the Five Nations Iroquois vanquished the Huron, the recent arrival to the region of French fur traders and missionaries raise questions about the European influence.

An anthropologist, Carol Devens has focused on gender and aboriginal peoples. In her article, Separate Confrontations: Gender as a Factor in Indian Adaption to European Colonization in New France, Devens argues that the efforts of the aboriginal women of New France to protect their interests as women may have been the means to ensure, even down to the present, the persistence of Native culture and ideology through women’s identity.

The “Eskimo Problem” emerged in the 1950s. The Canadian government introduced a policy to remove Inuit people to unsettled Arctic islands. The idea behind the policy was to allow the Inuit to re-establish self-sufficient “traditional” societies away from the insidious influences of Euro-Canadians.

The removal of the Inuit reflected the immense faith that non-Aboriginal Canadians shared in the ability of experts to solve problems such as poverty and disease through social engineering.

The “Eskimo Problem” was defined at a conference on Eskimo Affairs held on 19-20 May, 1952. The “Eskimo Problem” was defined as having three components: an unstable economy, poor health, and a growing dependence on government benefits.

See article by Alan Rudolph Marcus, Relocating Eden: The Image and Politics of Inuit Exile in the Canadian Arctic