The Initial Pre-European Settlement Economy

The Basic Issue

The work economics in Greek means housekeeping. That is why the older term for "Human Ecology" was "Home Economics". Economics simply is the consideration of our global housekeeping: Putting brad on our tables, a shirt on our back and a roof over our heads.

Whenever housekeeping chores become the major factor in our lives, there is something drastically wrong. Housekeeping at any level is fundamental to life, but it is not all of life. Our world community is going through a period of adjustment in our life together, and the housekeeping arrangements have started to take a larger proportion of life than is their due. This phenomenon maybe circumstantial and short-lived, or it may be symptomatic of a much deeper problem.

This section of the web site outlines some of the central themes in our present life on the prairies, something of how they arrived at the present situation and what might be done about it. The focus is on the "housekeeping" aspects of life and their effects on the other aspects of life

Adolf Berle, in his book Power, notes that the outcomes of actions are easier to predict in the short run than the long run ( ). The current environment of constant flux in most areas of life on the Canadian Prairies are results of dynamics set in motion many years ago, most of which nobody could have predicted. Our story starts in this area of Western Manitoba prior to the arrival of European settlers on this continent.

I came to understand something of the First Nations' early housekeeping arrangements which are relevant to our situation today when I lived on a remote Northern Ontario reserve in the early 1970's. It seems there had been a severe famine in the early years of that century, and several people died. There were people alive who had lived through the event and could remember it. One day I was talking with a few men and asked them about it. They told me some of the details; it was a bad situation. There was no social safety net, and they were cut off from the rest of Canada by several hundred miles of bush. There was not enough game that year and several people died.

At one point, one of the men stopped and said, "there's one part of it which you may find hard to understand". He continued, "there was no hoarding. If somebody got a moose, everybody shared it. If somebody got a squirrel, everybody shared it. There was not enough game in the bush and the whole community went down together. Some of the weak ones died. We could not stop that. But there was no hoarding."

I replied, "Well, you're right, I don't understand. I know that Christianity did not come into this area until forty years later, so what sort of philosophy would inform that sort of action?"

He thought for a few minutes about how to explain it and then said, "I have no interest in being the last one to survive." A few years later one of the elders who had taken training to be the local minister in that community had been Ordained and was celebrating his first Communion service at the Dryden Ontario United Church during the Presbytery Meeting. I was photographing the event and was looking down the isle through my viewfinder to catch the time when he broke the bread and held up the two pieces of bread and said "This is my body, broken for you". As I waited for the peak moment, suddenly those words came back to me and I understood what the attraction of Christianity had been for many of those people. I had been raised to understand the popular notion that White Missionaries had rammed their religion down the throats of the First Nations people. However, I had already figured out that nobody rams anything down any of those elders throats, so I knew that did not explain it. Now I understood. They had heard Biblical stories of Jesus who had taken much the same approach to life as they had, and had said , "Oh you found that out too did you?" They saw no conflict between the two outlooks. .

Chief Dan George used to say, "I really like the Bible, but I don't care all that much for the people who brought it". The housekeeping system of the dominant culture in Canada is not in keeping with the outlook of the people I had talked to in Ontario. We in our culture have a great deal of interest in being the last one to survive. Our economy is built upon the principle of everyone operating upon his or her own best interests, with not too much concern about the marginalized in society.

In the years of settlement here, prior to the arrival of European settlers, there had emerged a degree of homeostasis and unity with the ecological world around its first inhabitants.

At one time, I developed an adaptation to a simulation game which enabled participants to experience three different philosophies towards the natural resources around them and then discuss their experiences. The game randomly divided the participants into three groups. Each was sent off with different sets of rules for the game. They were to find some way to identify their group and were not to explain their rules to others. They were not told what they were each representing by acting on their rule-set until after the game was over.

Needless to say there are very interesting dynamics as the chips diminish. The game is accelerated in action by

The debriefing at the end is usually hilarious. It amazing what people will do to live out their "social rule set", and how few people will ever challenge them. Behavior seemed to be conducted by the rules which gave many people much to think about in reflection as they looked freshly at the issue of resource stewardship in today's world. It is a great way to open discussion.

The initial pre-European settlement economy was drastically changed by the impact of the new arrivals on this continent with their colonial-based economy and their drive to extract and export staple goods.

Rural Development Institute Research Studies

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