Lauren Unger’s Reviews > Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg > Status Update

“Despite [Métis Communities’] demands, the Canadian state refused to provide running water, electricity, sewer connections or improved housing…in the hopes that they would eventually disappear.”

“It is worth noting that the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike—a forceful, and fondly commemorated, emancipation—missed a tremendous historical opportunity by failing to oppose the white supremacists and settler-colonial underpinnings of capitalism in the Winnipeg region.”

An eye-opening new perspective on the 1919 Strike. Wow.

“…one morning being invaded by a foreign army, driven away, confined to a tiny patch of land, kidnapped by priests, and monitored by foreign agents while the rest of the world is fenced–off into other tiny rectangles and, to top it off, filled with strangers where unfathomably hostile. The Anishinabe and the Métis struggled under conditions of such extreme captivity.”

“Whereas Indigenous spatial networks had been immensely valuable to fur-trade capitalism- the HBC relied on the independent labour and established trade networks of Indigenous peoples'-the new economic vision saw them as obstacles to be removed from the path of development, like rocks from a prairie field.”

“Canada lethally enforced apartheid by leaving Indigenous peoples outside of reserves to die, refusing them access to emergency relief such as food during famines and medicine in the midst of epidemics.”

“Canada paid Black doctors in Oklahoma and Kansas to advise African Americans not to migrate to Canada…and paid border guards a bonus for each Black person turned away at the border.”

“By disregarding both the Anishinabe plan and the Manitoba Treaty and opting instead tor armed occupation, Canada commenced a modern tradition of racist conquest at Red River that felt as key to
persists to this day-one in which anti-Native violence came to be telt as key to regional and national well-being.”

“The reign of terror against the Métis people of Red River-which Canada [IMPLICITLY AUTHORIZED] and encouraged betrayed the promises of land and self-determination contained in the Manitoba Treaty.”

“Garnet Wolseley…paid off his men, gave them three days license, thus letting them…[carry] out armed raids and evictions while raping, assaulting, abducting, and lynching Métis residents of Red River.”

Utterly fascinating. How can they not teach this in schools? It should be required reading in Manitoba.