CANADA'S INDIAN PROBLEMS. — JENNESS 371 



cause only is responsible for it, but a number of related causes. 

 Changes in the economic activities and in diet have played their part ; 

 for example, our Mackenzie River Indians are now more or less per- 

 manently undernourished, as are many natives in other parts of the 

 British Empire. Then, again, epidemics of previously unknown dis- 

 eases have ravaged the native population in all parts of the world 

 (measles, for instance, wiped out 40,000 Fijians in one year). Per- 

 haps the most important factor, however, has been the failure of the 

 natives to reorient their lives under European hegemony and to estab- 

 lish themselves on a secure economic basis that preserved both their 

 dignity and their feeling of independence. The loss of their economic 

 security and the degradation of their social status has destroyed their 

 self-respect, robbed them of all aim and ambition in life, and lowered 

 their morale to such an extent that they consent more or less con- 

 sciously to the signing of their own death warrants. Very often the 

 fault has lain not with the natives themselves, but with their European 

 overlords; for only too commonly white governments have failed to 

 realize their responsibilities toward their native subjects, and have 

 allowed individual whites either to exploit them, as they exploited 

 the Kanakas on the Queensland plantations, or to push them to one 

 side as encumbrances, as happened to the Australian blacks. 



One prairie tribe, the Blackfoot, suffered less from the economic 

 shock and the ravages of diseases than the rest, for a reason we shall 

 see presently; and, within the last 20 years, all the plains' peoples 

 have shown signs of recovery and of a slow increase in population, 

 even though the economic conditions on some reserves are still far 

 from satisfactory. A recovery of this kind is not uncommon eitlier; 

 it is occurring today, for example, among the Eskimo, and among the 

 Maoris of New Zealand. And just as many causes operated, often in 

 conjunction, to produce the previous decline, so there seem to be many 

 causes for the recovery. In the Tropics, climate undoubtedly exerts 

 an important influence, because Europeans cannot develop the Tropics 

 without native labor, and a growing realization of their indispensa- 

 bility increases the natives' economic security and social independence. 

 Both within and without the Tropics, again, natives whose economy 

 was already based on agriculture have generally fared better than 

 those who, like the Australian blacks and most of our Canadian Indians, 

 supported themselves entirely by hunting and fishing; for the new 

 regime, while greatly modifying their daily life, has not demanded 

 a complete transformation. It is partly for this reason that in eastern 

 Canada our agricultural Iroquoian tribes have prospered more than 

 the previously nonagricultural Algonkian, even where the latter have 

 been placed on reserves with equally fertile soil. 



We can discern still another reason, however, for the greater pros- 



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