Plundering the North

A History of Settler Colonialism, Corporate Welfare, and Food Insecurity

Kristin Burnett, Travis Hay

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781772840490
• eBook ISBN: 9781772840513
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Business History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The manufacturing of a chronic food crisis

Food insecurity in the North is one of Canada's most shameful public health and human rights crises. In Plundering the North, Kristin Burnett and Travis Hay examine the disturbing mechanics behind the origins of this crisis: state and corporate intervention in northern Indigenous foodways.

Despite claims to the contrary by governments, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and the contemporary North West Company (NWC), the exorbitant cost of food in the North is neither a naturally occurring phenomenon nor the result of free-market forces. Rather, inflated food prices are the direct result of government policies and corporate monopolies. Using food as a lens to track the institutional presence of the Canadian state in the North, Burnett and Hay chart the social, economic, and political changes that have taken place in northern Ontario since the 1950s. They explore the roles of state food policy and the HBC and NWC in setting up, perpetuating, and profiting from food insecurity while undermining Indigenous food sovereignties and self-determination.

Plundering the North provides fresh insight into Canada's settler colonial project by re-evaluating northern food policy and laying bare the governmental and corporate processes behind the chronic food insecurity experienced by northern Indigenous communities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Map of Current Northern Store/NorthMart Locations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Food Sovereignty: The Assault on Indigenous Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, and Trading
• Chapter 2: Constructing Dependency: The Hudson’s Bay Company before the Second World War
• Chapter 3: “Making Proper Use”: The Family Allowance Program and Forced Purchasing Lists
• Chapter 4: “Left at the Trader’s Mercy”: The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Northern Stores Department
• Chapter 5: “Preferred Perishable Foods”: Origins and Outcomes of the Food Mail Program
• Chapter 6: “We Blanket the North”: The Expansion of the North West Company, 1987–2007
• Chapter 7: “Direct, Effective and Efficient”: Nutrition North Canada and the Restructuring of Federal Food Subsidy Programs, 2008–2017
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index