Inventing the Thrifty Gene: The Science of Settler Colonialism (book review)

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By Samir Shaheen-Hussain

The “thrifty gene” has a decades-long history that can be traced back to James V. Neel, an American physician-scientist, considered by many in his field as the “father of modern human genetics” [90]. Neel expounded his hypothesis in 1962 by proposing that such a gene would have emerged in hunter-gatherer societies as an adaptive response to a feast-and-famine lifestyle [2], but that it would have detrimental effects if food scarcity was eliminated. His idea was based on the assumption that “Indigenous bodies were genetically predisposed to diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic syndromes because of the foodways of their ancestors” [1-2], and relied on the now widely discredited “myth of forager food insecurity” [14-15, 146]. Neel’s own quest to discover the thrifty gene led him to conduct questionable studies on Indigenous populations in Brazil and Venezuela throughout the 1960s [2, 86-97]. In 1989, Neel sought to bury his own idea, writing that “the data on which that (rather soft) hypothesis was based has now largely collapsed” [100].

Yet, in 1999, Canadian scientists working with the Sandy Lake First Nation to address increasing rates of diabetes-related complications in the northern Ontario community announced to great fanfare that they had identified a genetic variant that “certainly had all the earmarks of what a thrifty gene would be” [136, 141]. Critics, including Indigenous scholars [144-5], questioned the layers of flawed premises upon which their conclusions rested and highlighted how they diverted attention away from the impacts of decades of colonial policies on Indigenous food sovereignty and mobility. Several years later, the lead authors of the study backtracked on their findings: there was no thrifty gene to be found [145-6].

This is the history that Travis Hay compellingly develops in Inventing the Thrifty Gene: The Science of Settler Colonialism. The persistence of the thrifty gene hypothesis to this day is itself reflective of the enduring consequences of the science of settler colonialism [19, 137, 149, 152].

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Rediscovering Private Hasan Amat: Canada’s First Muslim Soldier Killed in the First World War

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Warrant Officer Daniyal Elahi, 337 Queen’s York Rangers Royal Canadian Army Cadets

Growing up, I often felt as though Muslim Canadians were a recent part of this country — as if our connection began only in 1965, when my grandfather immigrated from Pakistan. In school, the Canadian soldiers we learned about seemed to share the same background and the same story. Nothing suggested that someone like me, a young Muslim Army Cadet, had any place in that history.

That changed when I discovered Private Hasan Amat.

His name first appeared to me not in my history textbooks, but in a passing online reference. A Malay Muslim seaman born in Singapore in 1894, he enlisted twice in Canada, trained in England, and ultimately died fighting with the 1st Canadian Infantry Battalion at Hill 70 in 1917. The more I read, the more incredible his story became — and the more confused I felt that I had never heard it before.

My family and I, through our public history project Our Shared Sacrifice, obtained his full service file from Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Thirty-seven pages, filled with fragments of a life: his attestation papers, his medical records, his pay sheets, the two wills he signed, and the short, devastating entry confirming his death on that fateful day of August 20, 1917. These were not abstract facts. They were the pieces of a young man’s journey, recorded in his own hand.

Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force attestation paper from 1916. The form shows handwritten responses to questions. Multiple signatures and official stamps appear throughout the document.


Private Hasan Amat’s first attestation paper, completed in Halifax in January 1916. Library and Archives Canada, Personnel File of Private Hasan Amat (Reg. Nos. 478860 & 1075269).

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Crossing the Line: Women’s Opposition to the Winnipeg General Strike

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Ella Prisco

This essay is part of a 2-part series. See the other entry here.

Two women strikebreakers working at a gas station, posing beside a gas pump.
Women Volunteers at Gas Pumps. May 1919. University of Manitoba Digital Collections.  http://hdl.handle.net/10719/2694587.

“They have borne the lonely hours with fortitude,” stated the Winnipeg Citizen in its coverage of scabbing women during the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.[1] Indeed they had, taking up positions as telephone switchboard operators and waitresses in response to the nearly thirty thousand workers who walked off the job in Canada’s largest general strike to date.[2] The strike had put the middle and upper classes on edge. They understood the strike as moving beyond a demand for collective bargaining and signaling a desire for socialist revolution.[3] This anxiety only increased as the strike expanded beyond the purview of the public sphere and encroached on the private sphere of the home, resulting in middle- and upper-class women being unable to fulfill their traditional domestic duties. As a result, these women were motivated to intervene, becoming scabs and engaging in anti-strike activity to prevent the strike’s immoral force from further impacting the domestic sphere and ‘tainting’ society at large. In doing so, these women extended their accepted social roles as nurturers, caregivers and guardians of the domestic sphere into the public sphere, justifying their entrance into the workforce as a form of socially acceptable political activism rooted in traditional femininity.

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13th Annual (?) Year in Review (100 Years Later)

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By Aaron Boyes & Sean Graham

We offer our two cents on the events of 1925. Let us know in the comments what you would have ranked as the year’s top event.

It’s hard to believe that we’re already half-way through the 2020s, which means that we are now one hundred years removed from events of 1925. As with past editions (see the end of the post for links to all our previous editions), we use historical hindsight to analyze and debate what was the most important event of that year. It is only with the vision of one hundred years, we argue, can you truly declare an event “the most important”. And as always, events that heavily overlap with previous winners are ineligible for consideration.

For this year’s instalment, we have four brackets: the Foreshadowing Bracket, the Culture Bracket, the International Bracket, and everyone’s favourite the Potpourri Bracket.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy discovering what we think is the most important event from 1925.

Round One

Foreshadowing Bracket

Benito Mussolini Declares Himself Dictator

v.

Mein Kampf Published

Aaron: The political atmosphere in post-First World War Italy, like many nations in Europe, was fraught with dissent and division, largely between two incompatible views on the state: socialists and fascists. This, of course, is an oversimplification, but we don’t have enough space here to write about the entire rise of fascism in Europe in the interwar years (Aaron recommends To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw for an accessible overview). For Italy specifically, the rise of fascism is linked to Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, who, following the March on Rome in 1922, became Prime Minister on October 30 when he was appointed to the position by King Victor Emmanuel III. As the years progressed, Mussolini and his Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) assumed more control over Italy’s government, and Mussolini gained more power for himself. On December 24, 1925, a law was passed that changed Mussolini’s title from “President of the Council of Ministers” to “Head of Government”. Mussolini was no longer responsible to Parliament and only the King could remove him from office. Italy, from 1925 until the Second World War, was a police state controlled by Il Duce.

As we wrote in last year’s edition, in November 1923, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler and General Erich Ludendorff launched the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Government and seize power. In April 1924, after a three-month trial, Hitler was sentenced to a paltry five years in prison at Landsberg. It was here at Landsberg that Hitler wrote (or narrated) Mein Kampf – My Struggle. The book outlined Hitler’s worldviews, his rabid antisemitism, his hatred for communism, the need for a pure German “race”, the need for lebensraum (living space) in Soviet-occupied territory, and the weakness of the German Weimar democracy. The first volume was published on July 18, 1925, but had slow initial sales. Once the Nazis assumed power in 1933 with Hitler as dictator, sales jumped significantly. Within the book, Hitler clearly outlined his ideas for the world to see, many of which became evident once the Holocaust was exposed. A highly controversial work even to this day, its publication was banned in Germany until the copyright expired in 2015. Although highly influential for its promotion of Nazism, the book has been criticized by contemporaries and translators for Hitler’s poor writing and style.

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“We’ll Fight To The End:” Working Women and the Winnipeg General Strike

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Ella Prisco

This essay is part of a 2-part series. The second post will be published next week.

“Girl Strikers Urged to Stand Firm by Unions.” The Winnipeg Tribune, May 26, 1919. http://hdl.handle.net/10719/1605837.

Depending on who you asked, Winnipeg on May 15, 1919 was either a city in chaos or on the precipice of a brave new world. It was the first day of the Winnipeg General Strike, the culmination of weeks of tension between employers and unions, and upwards of 25,000 workers abandoned their posts.[1] Over the next six weeks, this number grew to nearly 30,000, encompassing a wide variety of workers, from transit workers to those in the metal and building trades, as well as postal service workers. The sheer number of those on strike shut the city down – shops were empty, restaurants were closed, the water supply was limited, and milk and bread deliveries were halted.[2] The strikers’ demands were both simple, calling for collective bargaining rights and a living wage, and transformational, calling to reorient society around people’s needs, striking fear into the hearts of the city’s upper class, and evoking the spectre of revolution, societal upheaval, and uncertainty.

Amidst the widening ranks of striking workers, women played a significant role and did so in ways that transgressed predominant gender norms. By stepping out of their assigned roles in the private sphere to join the fight for a living wage and collective bargaining rights, working women actively contributed to the strike in many ways. As leaders, newspaper saleswomen, and hecklers, striking women were a force to be reckoned with. Their contributions, often characterized as hostile and aggressive, diverged greatly from existing gender norms that highlighted women’s passivity and caregiving nature. Ultimately, this transgression of gender norms contributed to a broader characterization of the strike as a threat to the status quo and possibly a revolutionary movement. Indeed, as striking women took up public roles that countered traditional expectations for women, they contributed to the growing image of upheaval in the city.

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Teenage Consumers – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

This week I talk with Katherine Rollwagen, author of The Scramble for the Teenage Dollar: Creating the Youth Market in Mid-Century Canada. We discuss the creation of the ‘classic’ teenager, how marketing shifted to attract young people, and how much family considerations shaped advertisements. We also chat about Eaton’s, how it attracted teenagers to the store, and the legacy of mid-century marketing today.

Historical Headline of the Week

All Things Considered, “How Tech Companies Are Catering to Generation Z Teens,” NPR, November 27, 2017.

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Between Two Worlds

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Carol F. Lee

My mother’s name was Mary Quan. She was born in Canada in 1921. I grew up hearing about my mother’s transpacific experiences in the 1930s and her sense of dual Canadian and Chinese identity in the 1940s, which was shaped in large part by openings and closings of opportunities and the structural realities of exclusion in Canada.  

I was reminded of my mother’s stories recently while reading Letian Wang’s master’s thesis about the Vancouver Chinese community’s active support for wartime aid to China, 1937-1945. Wang contends that the Chinese Canadians who worked so hard and gave so much money to the Chinese war effort were motivated in large part by a strategy to improve their own situation in Canada by strengthening China, so that China could intervene effectively with Canada to grant them equal rights.  He questions a commonly held view that Chinese Canadians were principally motivated by patriotic attachment to China in reaction to Canada’s unwillingness to grant them equal citizenship.  Wang’s thesis adds a new dimension to the scholarly literature. However, based on the experience of my mother’s family in BC, I would like to draw attention to another consideration.  Until the late 1940s, China offered career opportunities for Canadian-born Chinese with university educations.  Canada did not.  This reality affected the ways in which they identified with China and Canada.  

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Women United – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

This week I talk with Peggy Nash, one of the co-authors of Women United: Stories of Women’s Struggles for Equality in the Canadian Auto Workers Union. We discuss women’s contributions to the union in its early years, how negotiating priorities were shaped, and the Second World War’s influence on the labour movement. We also chat about the impact of the Autopact and free trade on labour, women’s leadership in the modern labour movement, and what it’s like to be in the room negotiating against an employer.

Historical Headline of the Week

René Morisette, “Unionization in Canada, 1981 to 2022,” Stats Canada, November 23, 2022.

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“to take a normal place in the business and social world”: The Work of Women’s Voluntary and Service Associations in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals

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Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner

This essay is part of a series. See the other entries here.

Black and white photograph of a large three-storey brick building.
Edmonton YWCA building on 12th Ave. S.W. 1960s (Glenbow Archives)

In late 2019, we were awarded a contract to produce a report about the role played by YWCA Canada in the Residential School and Indian Hospital systems in Canada. As we previously noted, the report is available on request (reconciliation@ywcacanada.ca). We were excited by the opportunity because we saw it as a chance to further our understanding of the ways the settler colonial project was enacted across Canadian social, political, and economic institutions including, in this instance, through women’s voluntary and service associations and social welfare agencies. Given the operating restrictions to Library and Archives Canada during the Covid 19 global pandemic, our access to the archives was very limited. As such, we understand our work to be very preliminary.

Nevertheless, we were fortunate to uncover a particularly rich source that offered a glimpse into YWCA Canada’s post-WWII service work in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals across Canada. In 1968, YWCA Canada’s Intercultural Coordinator issued a call to member associations seeking examples of work carried out with Indigenous Peoples and communities. The request was made with the hope that the “exchange of program ideas and social action w[ould] stimulate many more creative activities,”[1] and reflected a growing interest within YWCA Canada to extend its work more formally to Indigenous Peoples and communities. Member Associations across Canada responded by outlining activities that primarily covered the 1960s, with some references to the 1940s and 1950s, with the most detailed response coming from the Edmonton YWCA branch. In response, they submitted a report from February 1964 that was originally prepared for Indian Affairs, which, at the time, was housed in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (DCI). The focus on preparing Indigenous Peoples for off-reserve employment and Indigenous women for European-Canadian domesticity was a cornerstone of Indian policy after WWII. Heidi Bohaker’s and Franca Iacovetta’s examination of citizenship programs showed that across the 1950s and 1960s, the DCI “sponsor[ed], fund[ed], monitor[ed] the activities of voluntary groups (such as church organizations) and volunteer agencies and academic experts dealing with [Indigenous] Peoples in urban settings.” [2] The YWCA was well situated to support the DCI’s efforts.

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Respecting Data Sovereignty Starts With the Stories We Tell About the Past

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Miranda Jimmy

This post is part of a series. See the other entries here.

Photo of a typed passage. It reads "Anecdotes by Ruth Fadum. G[redacted], Ward 5A, a little girl was in a body cast. She had T.B. of the spine. She was in a crib with a cover on to keep her in it. When Governor General, The Rt. Hon. Mr. Massey visited, she quietly looked at him, with her mischievous eyes, and he said, "I'll bet you're a holy terror when I'm not here." This was so true because she found all kinds of ways to lower the side of her crib and get out. [Redacted] was sent down from..." The remainder of the text is cut off.
Provincial Archives of Alberta PR1991.0443/21 (redacted)

Last year I was invited to the Owning History: Indigenous Histories and Records Access Conference organized by Dr. Mary Jane McCallum at the University of Winnipeg to talk about my experiences working with residential school survivors and their loved ones to access archives. As one of the only non-academics in the room, I titled my presentation, “Novice Navigator: Tales of My Time Breaking Down Barriers in Public Archives,” to reflect how I situated myself as a curious disrupter within institutions of colonial memory. Having spent more than a decade in public archives looking for the truth about my family’s history, and supporting other Indigenous community members in their searches, it has become very clear to me that public archives are withholding information from those who need it the most in order to preserve a heroic vision of Canadian history premised upon deeply racist beliefs about Indigenous Peoples. An obvious example of this is how many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people remain unnamed in photographs and historical narratives while lengthy lineages exist for their white counterparts.

My volunteer work has primarily been centered on publicly held records related to residential schools and Indian hospitals in government and private records, working well outside the confines of academia and blurring the lines between living memory and documented proof. The more I looked, the more obvious the intention to hide the truth was, both in the records that existed and in the ignorance of the people who manage those records to do so in a responsible way that presents a balanced understanding of the past. I feel the need to learn what I can about archival practices and processes to help the people who needed the information – survivors and their loved ones – and figure out how to infiltrate the system that was keeping the information from those who needed it most.

As I reflect further on archives and western approaches to historical research, it is clear that institutions of colonial memory are consistently used against Indigenous Peoples as a weapon. This unjust weaponization comes from what is considered accurate information, who has access to its collection, management, and manipulation, and who has the right to challenge its validity. When it comes to representation of Indigenous Peoples in the archives, the responsibility of ‘the what’ and ‘the who’ has often rested solely within documentation obtained from colonial governments and their agents.

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