Blog Post #2 Innis on Canadian Culture

 Innis has previously expressed that he has read very few novels and has had minimal interest in reading about culture and its various aspects. He would much rather experience culture and understand it from a personal living perspective. He was an individual who would involve himself with agencies which would result in him helping to fund cultural and intellectual Canadian organizations. In Charles Acland’s “Histories of Place and Power- Innis in Canadian Cultural Studies”, he states that through Innis’s cultural essays he expresses both how the counterweight of time and the function of the intellectual move alongside that of the harsh critique of modernity. Innis believes that Canada's culture came from and was shaped by a vast amount of “staple” goods it had, such as fur, fish, wood, wheat, etc. By having all of these essential needs it made Canada a country on which other nations can depend on for exports. Nevertheless, these staples wouldn't have been known without the help of indigenous people. I found it disappointing that even though these essentials stemmed from Indigenous people, they got very little credit for it in our history books due to the fact that Canadian nationalism was deliberately assisted and supported by American finance, news, and other forms of exploitation. Innis on the other hand, highly credited the Indigenous community for Canada's cultural development. When reading Aclands’ work he quotes Innis’ saying “ We are fighting for our lives”, in which Innis refers to both Canadian independence and various ways of thought that were not supported properly and truthfully by media monopolies. Both Canadian independence from America and Indigenous people within Canada share this similar media misrepresentation, which has devastating consequences. 

Do you believe that if the narrative was shifted and we attributed the success of the fur trade to Indigenous people that colonization would have been different? If yes, how so? 

Comments

  1. Ashley Di PernaOctober 7, 2022 at 10:34 AM

    Hi Angela,

    Fantastic post. I definitely agree that our history textbooks tend to lean more towards an American viewpoint rather than an Indigenous one. I think that if the narrative was shifted to recognizing Indigenous contributions, it would definitely be beneficial to the First Nations communities. However, I do think there would need to be far more action in order to actually change the history of colonization. After recognizing that the Indigenous fur trade was an essential part in creating Canada, the Canadian settlers could have given the Indigenous people control over the trade and fertile portions of land, while also allowing them to keep their language and customs. If all that happened, then colonization would have played out differently. Similarly to how Land Acknowledgements are really only a stepping stone, it would have taken much more to truly change the impact of colonization than simply recognizing the history of the fur trade.

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