From Labrador to Leipzig: Film and Infrastructures Along the Fur Trail

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Webb Jekanowski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Film Analysis ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
Peuples Autochtones ◽  
Le Canada ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

Background: Since 1919, the Hudson’s Bay Company has sponsored films to document and advertise its trading operations. Films such as Hudson’s Bay Company Centenary Celebrations (1919), The Heritage of Adventure (1920), and Leipzig Exhibition footage (1930) offered views of North American landscapes and Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts and department stores alongside ethnographic footage of Indigenous Peoples. Analysis: Drawing on archival research conducted at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives and textual film analysis of these “fur films,” this article theorizes their production and circulation within settler visual culture. Conclusions and implications: Tracing the films’ paths from the Eastern Arctic to Montréal, and from London, England, to Leipzig, Germany, this article demonstrates how these moving pictures participate in the entanglement of settler and infrastructural projects that characterize early twentieth-century Canada. Contexte : Depuis 1919, la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson a commandité des films pour rendre compte de ses opérations commerciales et pour faire connaître celles-ci. Des films comme Hudson’s Bay Company Centenary Celebrations (1919), The Heritage of Adventure (1920), et Leipzig Exhibition Footage (1930) offrent des perspectives sur des paysages nord-américains et sur les postes de traite et les magasins à rayons de la Compagnie ainsi que des scènes de peuples autochtones à valeur ethnographique. Analyse : Cet article se fonde sur une recherche menée aux Archives de la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson et sur une analyse textuelle de « films à fourrures » pour examiner la production et la circulation de ces derniers dans un contexte de culture visuelle colonisatrice. Conclusions et implications : Cet article retrace les parcours de ces films de l’Arctique de l’Est jusqu’à Montréal, et de Londres, Angleterre jusqu’à Leipzig, Allemagne, en démontrant comment ceux-ci contribuent à l’enchevêtrement de projets coloniaux et infrastructurels qui caractérise le Canada au début du 20e siècle.  

scholarly journals Bay Days: The Managerial Revolutions and the Hudson’s Bay Company Department Stores, 1912‑1939

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Monod
Keyword(s):  
Business History ◽  
Scientific Management ◽  
American Business ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
History Of ◽  
Business Structures ◽  
Marketing Methods ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

Abstract North American business history has long been dominated by a belief in the centrality of entrepreneurial innovation to corporate success. This paper looks at the history of the Hudson's Bay Company Stores Department and attempts to explain from within the traditional business-history framework the company's prolonged inability to create a profitable chain of department stores in Western Canada. During the interwar years the HBC was highly competitive in its marketing methods and up-to-date in its business structure. Indeed, the company's failure seems to have stemmed in large measure from these very factors, from its excessive reliance upon scientific management formulas and organizational theories. It was only during the Depression that the Bay was able to recoup its losses by moving away from the professional orthodoxies of the twenties, returning to older business structures, and deciding on a more consumer-oriented approach.

Family allowances in the Canadian Arctic

Polar Record ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 6 (43) ◽  
pp. 345-347
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Chant Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Police Officer ◽  
Canadian Arctic ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
Royal Canadian Mounted Police ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Allowances ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

Family allowances for all Canadian children under 16 years of age were instituted in 1944. The amount per child varies from $5.00 to $8.00 per month, according to the age of the child and the number of children in the family. In the well-settled parts of the Dominion, the allowances are paid by cheque each month to the mother of the family. In isolated areas, such as the Arctic, the allowances are paid “in kind”; in other words, the family are allowed to purchase goods from their usual trader up to the amount to which they are entitled. In the Canadian Eastern Arctic nearly all trading posts are maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company. In order to report the number of Eskimo children in the families, registrars and sub-registrars are appointed in the various areas. In localities where detachments of Royal Canadian Mounted Police are posted, a police officer acts as the registrar. In other localities the trader or traders act as sub-registrars. The Eskimo families notify one or other of these officials as soon as possible after a new baby is born, that is, when they next visit the trading post or settlement.

scholarly journals Kanehsatà:ke: Canadian Colonial Aporias

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W Koptie
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Self ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Peuples Autochtones ◽  
Le Canada

This paper presents a reflective topical narrative following the research of Irihapeti Ramsden (2003), an Ngai Tahupotiki (Maori) nursing instructor of Aotearoa (New Zealand). It is a reflection on the nature of Indigenous inquiry, or what Irihapeti Ramsden recognized as an often melancholic journey of self-discovery. It has been a continuous struggle for Indigenous scholars to understand how, where, and why the injustices of colonization reduced Indigenous peoples to dependent remnants of the self-reliant and independent nations our stories remember. By connecting ideas like Jacques Derrida’s work on Aporias to the intentionality of the Kahswenhtha (Two Row Wampum), my hope is to contextualize one unresolved injustice, the Kanehsatà:ke (Oka) conflict. The symbolism of the Two Row Wampum addresses the possible but also the impossible of a new brotherhood between colonial Canada and its Indigenous peoples. Reconciliation will only be possible when Canada honours Indigenous resistance, resentment and rebellion against European myths of prerogative power. Our ancestors sacrificed a great deal, and we must wipe our tears and open our eyes, listen deeply, clear our throats and raise our voices to bear witness to our ancestors’ prayers for enduring hope, liberty and peace. Cette contribution présente un récit réflexif contemporain, dans la lignée des recherches de Irihapeti Ramsden, un formateur Ngai Tahupotiki (Maori) des infirmiers de Aotearoa (la Nouvelle Zélande). C’est une réflexion sur la nature de l’introspection Autochtone ou ce que Irihapeti Ramsden a reconnu comme le voyage, souvent mélancolique, de la découverte de soi. C’est une lutte continue pour les chercheurs Autochtones de comprendre comment, où, et pourquoi les injustices de la colonisation ont réduit les peuples Autochtones à des résidus dépendants des nations autonomes dont nos histoires se souviennent. En faisant le lien entre des travaux comme ceux de Jacques Derrida sur Aporias et l’intentionnalité du Kahswenhtha (Two Row Wampum), mon espoir est de mettre en contexte une injustice non résolue, le conflit de Kanehsatà:ke (Oka). Le symbolisme de Two Row Wampum interroge la possibilité mais aussi l’impossibilité d’une nouvelle fraternité entre le Canada colonial et ses peuples Autochtones. La réconciliation ne serait possible qu’à condition que le Canada rende honneur à la résistance, au ressentiment et à la rébellion des Autochtones contre les mythes européens de l’état d’exception. Nos ancêtres ont fait beaucoup de sacrifices et nous devons essuyer nos larmes et ouvrir nos yeux, écouter profondément, éclaircir et élever nos voix afin de témoigner des prières de nos ancêtres pour l’espoir, la liberté et la paix perpétuelle.

scholarly journals Keeping Loyalty and Regulating Insubordination: Freemen and the Edmonton House Fur Trade, 1821-1828

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hereward Longley
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Columbia River ◽  
Red River ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
The West ◽  
Autonomous Communities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company

This paper examines the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) Edmonton House Journals and district reports from 1820-1829 to assess the relationship between the HBC and Freemen over the decade immediately following the merger between the HBC and Northwest Company (NWC). I argue that although numbers of Freemen associated with Edmonton House decreased substantially as Freemen moved to the Red River and Columbia River regions after the merger, Freemen associated with Edmonton House provided an essential supply of food and fur that bolstered both the viability and profitability of the post, and served as an invaluable buffer between the HBC and Indigenous peoples. Freemen often moved fluidly between bush and post, procuring food and furs for the fort, at times engaging in contract labour around the fort, or accompanying trapping and exploration missions alongside fort employees. By the end of the decade, it appears that many Freemen were able to eliminate their debts with the HBC and establish more autonomous communities. In the fort Edmonton region, the 1820s can perhaps be viewed as a point of emergence for Freemen communities as they gained greater autonomy from fur trade companies and increased the size of their families. Growth in the independence and size of Freemen bands in the 1820s may be considered as a root of Métis ethnogenesis in the West.

scholarly journals From Rupert’s Land to Canada West: Hudson’s Bay Company Families and Representations of Indigeneity in Small-Town Ontario, 1840–1980

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-97
Author(s):  
Krista Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Hudson's Bay Company ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
Rupert's Land ◽  
Hudson’S Bay Company ◽  
Canada West

By the mid-nineteenth century, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) officers were retiring in greater numbers with their Indigenous families outside Rupert’s Land. Much work has been done to uncover the experiences of fur trade families who remained at HBC trading posts or settled in what became the American and Canadian Wests, but there has been little research on those families who left for Britain or colonial Canada. In Canada West, the racial and gendered terrains of their new home communities were complex ones for Indigenous women and their children to navigate. They played roles in both the reification and subversion of racial and gendered imperial hierarchies, and thus came to occupy unexpected and even contradictory positions in family and local historical narratives.

Dreams of a Black Commons on Turtle Island

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 454-473
Author(s):  
Rachel Zellars
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Wild Mushrooms ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty ◽  
Black Land ◽  
The Human Condition

This essay opens with a discussion of the Black commons and the possibility it offers for visioning coherence between Black land relationality and Indigenous sovereignty. Two sites of history – Black slavery and Black migration prior to the twentieth century – present illuminations and challenges to Black and Indigenous relations on Turtle Island, as they expose the “antagonisms history has left us” (Byrd, 2019a, p. 342), and the ways antiblackness is produced as a return to what is deemed impossible, unimaginable, or unforgivable about Black life.While the full histories are well beyond the scope of this paper, I highlight the violent impossibilities and afterlives produced and sustained by both – those that deserve care and attention within a “new relationality,” as Tiffany King has named, between Black and Indigenous peoples. At the end of the essay, I return briefly to Anna Tsing’s spiritual science of foraging wild mushrooms. Her allegory about the human condition offers a bridge, I conclude, between the emancipatory dreams of Black freedom and Indigenous sovereignty.  

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