From Crafts to Production

Jocelyn Paul
March 26, 2011
Wendake

"All economic activity revolved around our Indigenous identity."

Jocelyn Paul, Wendat

The production of necessities didn’t only meet the needs of the communities. For some nations, it was on an industrial scale. In the 19th century, the Wendat of Wendake supplied the British army with snowshoes and moccasins, then supplied the Canadian army with canoes. The annual production of thousands of moccasins required very large quantities of moose and caribou skins that hunters and trappers brought back from their territories. The creation of parks and administrative measures have dried up the sources of raw materials and therefore begun the decline of industrial production, slowed the momentum of prosperity and undermined the transmission of ancestral know-how.