The traditional lifestyle they champion harkens to the fur trade; an episode that constitutes but a flicker of time in their own history and hardly embodies the climax of human civilization.
Pikangikum Rez: Exemplar of Canada’s Environmentalist Gulag
The fur trade transformed the Canadian aboriginal’s way of life. The trade, mainly in beaver pelts, began in the 1500s, peaked in the 1800s, and then declined until today when it supplements the incomes of a few thousand people. Trapping and trading consumed aboriginal communities. They traded pelts for tools, cookware, firearms and blankets – technologies that re-made their culture.
The fur trade changed where natives lived; and where they could live. It facilitated the adoption of European language and religion. Trade-induced contact with Europeans spawned peoples of mixed ancestory. By 1830 aboriginal culture bore little resemblance to any pre-contact way of life.
