From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare: Why Indian Policy Failed in the Prairie Provinces

David R. Hutchinson is a consultant in Saskatchewan’s Indian and
Métis Education Branch.

This book reflects a significant shift in aboriginal historical research
and analysis. From her vantage point as an economist, Buckley proceeds
to uncover the ideological underpinnings of historical and contemporary
Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) aboriginal economic-development
policy. Focusing specifically on agricultural policy in the Prairie
Provinces, Buckley ironically discovers that rather than proving
assimilatory, much of the DIA-sponsored agricultural legislation served
to maintain treaty Indian isolation and poverty.

Contributing to the creation of a system of forced dependence that
ultimately evolved into its modern counterpart—welfare—were a number
of factors: inadequate farming equipment and supplies; nonarable land;
land development restricted to small 40-acre plots (subsistence or
“peasant” farming); Indian agents counseling land lease to white
farmers; the closure of successful Indian agricultural schools; the
illegal sale of reserve land to white farmers; and the privileging of
small, select groups of Indian farmers politically favored by the DIA.

Buckley illustrates how a general attitude of mistrust and moral
superiority permeated DIA work in the West (much more so than in the
East), and how this attitude, despite movement toward aboriginal
self-determination, continues to characterize DIA/aboriginal
intergovernmental relations. The author criticizes not only the
hegemonic nature of DIA agricultural policy, but also the similar
non-Native perceptions that underscored attempts to Christianize and
civilize aboriginal peoples through Western religious training. This
critique of the cultural genocidal impact of residential schools has
been around for some time. What Buckley adds, however, is a parallel
analysis of early treaty Indian economic-development policy.

What makes Buckley unique is that unlike most historians, she chooses
not to hide her politics, and unlike most economists, she isn’t afraid
to turn the critique inward.