| Summary: | During a recent field trip to Canada, First Nations colleagues recommended me to read a hard hitting and best-selling text written by a University of Regina's staff member, Dr. James Daschuk. 'Clearing the Plains' is the commercialisation of Daschuk's PhD dissertation and decades of research into the history of Canadian expansion into the northwest and the nature and evolution of Canadian Indian policy predominantly in the 19th century. Having a basic understanding of settlement in Canada, especially the involvement of the Hudson Bay Company and the complications of the fur strapping economy and eventual social and environmental destruction of pre-colonial Canada I was riveted to read of the destruction of the Indigenous peoples on the prairies and plains by a sustained programme of extirpation fuelled colonial greed and the wanton racist attitudes of successive governments, agencies, religious groups and mankind in general against a diverse rich culture that was and is First Nations Canada.
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