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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Byfield for Christmas
I've still got a couple of boxes of the seminal, The Book of Ted: Epistles from an Unrepentant Redneck, a collection of Ted Byfield's best columns from the mid-seventies through the late nineties. There's some good stuff in here, as relevant -- or perhaps more so -- as ever in these ultra PC days. Here's Ted on the eternal subject of Canada's Indian industry, from an August, 1994 column:
...Take, for instance, the contention sometimes advanced on behalf of aboriginal culture. What is it that modern society can learn from it? It was unswervingly conservationist, we are told. The natives did not waste, and they lived in harmony with their environment. That's why the prairies teemed with buffalo before the white man came.
But was this harmony produced by native culture or by a deficiency of native technology? If it was their culture, then when the natives gained that technology, they would have remained conservationist. The facts are the opposite. Within a hundred years of acquiring both the horse and the gun from the whites, the natives and the Métis eradicated the buffalo. In Canada, the great herds were gone before the white farmers and ranchers ever arrived, they were driven over the buffalo jumps and killed by the hundreds, most of the meat left to rot once the finer cuts were removed.
(Now watch. Having written this, I will be accused of bigotry, racism and so on. But there will be very little, if any, historical evidence to prove the contention wrong. "Oral history" may be cited of course, but if you ask for its credentials -- i.e., some kind of evidence that it existed when it was said to have existed -- this is declared impossible, because of it's nature. Before there were tape recorders, how could you record "oral history?" But then how are we to know that somebody didn't just, well, make it up? Maybe it doesn't go back to the "elders." Maybe it only goes back to the professors. Maybe they invented it. How are we to tell?")
For more on Ted today, read my last but one blog-posting at www.ricdolphin.com. You'll also find stuff there on my latest work experience (a congenial hell).
If you want to buy a copy of Ted's book send a cheque for $50 to me at and I'll mail one out to you.
Ric Dolphin
15916 Patricia Drive
Edmonton, AB
T5R 5N4
If you want it couriered and autographed by Ted himself, add $15 to the price of each book.
Posted by Ric Dolphin on December 16, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
Poor old Ted didn't get out much. The Buffalo were killed off in Canada? What a dumb SOB. Buffalo were migratory creatures. If they died south of the border, the "Canadian herd" dissappeared. American hunters wiped out the herds to starve the Indians. The buffalo just weren't smart enough to seek sanctuary in Canada. He must have been eating fermented preserves when he dreamed up that little jewel.
Posted by: dp | 2008-12-16 6:51:55 AM
Oral History works both ways and from what I have heard passed down from elders on the Coast, the myth of "one with nature" that revisionists like to parrot was actually feast, REAL FAMINE, and inter-tribal treachery, a likely explanation of why the Coastal FNs pretty much surrendered to their "oppressors" without a fight.
Posted by: John Chittick | 2008-12-16 11:25:56 AM
Hey Ric, my mom said she got her book all safe and sound. Very happy. Thanks muchly and Merry Christmas!
Posted by: Daryl | 2008-12-16 8:15:40 PM
excellent!
Posted by: rigolo | 2009-03-17 4:23:20 PM
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