From One Colonization Road to Another? Everyday Memories of the Social and Economic Conditions in Minnewakin, Stone Lake, and Lundar, Manitoba, 1940-1960

Abstract

Proceeding World War II, Canada moved into a period of economic prosperity that brought considerable social change to the Interlake region of Manitoba, and in turn, Metis and Halfbreed ways of life in the area. The research that would inform these changes began with Manitoba’s postwar reconstruction committee in 1945. By 1959, the anthropologist Jean H. Legassé had also published a three-volume report on the Indian and Halfbreed populations in Manitoba. In his report he made many recommendations that sought to ‘improve’ the lives of Indian and Halfbreed people. By the 1960s, in partnership with the federal government, the provincial government pursued adoption of the Fund for Rural Economic Development (FRED) that could aid in industrializing the Interlake Region. In both instances, Legassé’s report and FRED documents, Halfbreed life was cast in racialized and classed ways that describe life as impoverished and in need of state-intervention and development. The burgeoning postwar social and economic development in Canada and Manitoba, in FRED policy, became obvious places where Halfbreed and Metis lives could be reformed to fit into national and provincial industrial and social goals. While FRED and Legassé may have framed Halfbreed life in impoverished terms, this thesis is about more than what government had to say about Halfbreeds in postwar Interlake Manitoba. Through the application of Indigenous Studies theorizations of immediacy by Brendan Hokowhitu and density by Chris Andersen, I articulate through family interviews how the Monkman family from Minnewakin, Manitoba, remember their social and economic conditions, and how such conditions drew them to move off of the lands that they grew up on, and into cities where they sought economic and social freedom.