Place and Replace 2010

The view that First Nations people were not agricultural prevailed in the nineteenth century. However, there is evidence that in the nineteenth century in Manitoba there were First Nations agricultural settlements, cultivated land in many localities, and individual farmers. This paper focuses on the deliberate and strenuous efforts that were required to erase First Nations agriculture from the landscape, except within reserves, and the efforts to draw clear distinctions between the “settlers” and the “Indians” so that no one identified as “Indian” would actually possess land, even in cases where land was occupied and farmed before the treaty.

Agriculture has played a role in the livelihood strategies of First Nations people since before European contact. In the contemporary period, government programming and management of agriculture has been ad-hoc and often can be accused of being racist in its application. The Manitoba Indian Agricultural Program was designed solely to assist First Nations agriculture. Nickel’s documents the program as a component of contemporary First Nations agriculture, investigates its accomplishments and its weaknesses, and makes policy recommendations for future First Nations agriculture based on his investigation.

A Complicated Kindness is set in East Village, a small village in rural Manitoba in the 1970s. Like so many other fictitious towns on the prairies, Toews’ East Village does not designate a place but an attitude to place and uneasiness to dwelling. However, Omhovere argues that Toews’ book diverges from her predecessors through prairie horizontality. Omhovere’s paper focuses on this notion of horizontality.

This paper focuses on the practices of land-taking in the Icelandic Reserve of Manitoba, and how this reflected general patterns of land-taking in the Canadian northwest during the 1870s and 1880s. Eyford discusses some of the uniquely Icelandic traits of land-taking during this period. He then illustrates the relationship between an exclusive reserve structure and the overarching structure of the dominion lands policy.

In the 1960s and 1970s, 400 back-to-the-landers moved to the Slocan Valley. The people that moved introduced global ideas, family forms and lifestyles that upset many long-term residents of the area. Opposition developed to their lifestyle and the community’s attempts to build alternative services and institutions in the area. In this paper, Janovicek deals with articles written for The Arrow, an alternative newspaper published in Castlegar from 1971-1978. She argues that the articles are illustrative of how back-to-the-landers developed political strategies based on a deep understanding of the political culture and place where they lived.

Both place and identities are integral in defining systems of belonging. However, ways that people respond to and define place and identity are not static. For indigenous groups like the Sto:lo, place grounds individuals within their collective history and culture. But what happens when these connections are disrupted? For Sto:lo people, the linkages between kinship, place and identity have changed over time, resulting in changes in their approach to their cultural landscape. In this paper, Danyluk explores how Sto:lo people’s interactions with government policies have led them into an active consideration of the connections between kinship and place, and what implications this has on their actions.