Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations

by John Sutton Lutz

John Lutz traces Aboriginal people’s involvement in the new economy, and their displacement from it, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the 1970s. Drawing on an extensive array of oral histories, manuscripts, newspaper accounts, biographies, and statistical analysis, Lutz shows that Aboriginal people flocked to the workforce and prospered in the late nineteenth century. He argues that the roots of today’s widespread unemployment and “welfare dependency” date only from the 1950s, when deliberate and inadvertent policy choices – what Lutz terms the “white problem” drove Aboriginal people out of the capitalist, wage, and subsistence economies, offering them welfare as “compensation.”

Genres: Canada, History, Politics

460 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

Area of expertise: British Columbia History, Pacific Northwest History, History of Indigenous-Settler Relations.

Professor John Lutz studies and teaches the history of Victoria, British Columbia, in the Pacific Northwest. This is the traditional home of the Coast Salish People whose word for “worthless people” also meant “people who do not know their history.” John chose to study history because it gave him a chance to learn the past of this place and in doing so make it his “home”. He also likes to explore the hidden corners of the region: backpacking, canoeing, kayaking and driving the roads. "Without roots we are mere tumbleweeds, blowing from place to place, colonizing disturbed landscapes."

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, not knowing much about the history of white/aboriginal relations in BC, this book was fantastic. Lutz shows how aboriginals have been major players in the capitalist economy from the beginning of the fur trade days and their dependence on welfare a relatively recent development. Well written, well researched, and highly recommended.

[Uwe · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many stages to immigrating into another culture. Even though my native culture is German (not exactly a huge step into Canadian culture) and I have been in (western) Canada now for 25 years, I still learn. After having read Makuk, life in Canada as an immigrant will never be the same. Not necessarily better or worse - just more informed, and understanding of the depth of the chasm between me and the person who just passed me. I imagine that living in Canada without knowing the facts that Makuk presents so well, must be akin to living in Italy or Spain believing the world to be flat.

[AskHistorians]

John Lutz moves beyond older paradigms of Aboriginal History, which posit the subjugation of native peoples either at the moment of contact or with European settlement, to argue that aboriginals were able to co-exist with the developing capitalist economy. Lutz expands this argument through case studies of two aboriginal groups, and a broader discussion of the “moditional” economic system experienced by first nations peoples.

[Theodora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strikes me as extremely well-researched and also balanced in its perceptions, trying to give the indigenous communities a voice in their own history, which I feel has often been ignored in favour of the white perspective.