Plains First Nations still impacted by near extinction of bison, research suggests

The collapse of the teeming bison herds that once blackened the prairie was an economic catastrophe that still affects those who once depended on them, new research suggests.

"Economic opportunity is determined in part by history," said Donn Feir, an economic historian at the University of Victoria and one of three authors of a recently published paper on the lingering economic impact of that near-extinction.

"When you look at the landscape of economic development and Indigenous economic growth in Canada and the U.S., you have to keep in mind that history is still very much with us."

Feir and her colleagues used historic data collected by government agents and anthropologists to compare how the loss of the bison affected First Nations that depended on them with those that didn't.

They conclude that loss, together with reduced access to institutions such as banks, marked those nations physically and economically.

"Those historical injustices are being perpetuated today through poverty traps," said Feir, whose paper is published in Oxford University Press' Review of Economic Studies.

Tasha Hubbard, a filmmaker and native studies scholar at the University of Alberta, said the paper's conclusions are valid — as far as they go.

"This is part of it," she said. "[Loss of bison] was a hugely negative impact on Indigenous people."

But she cautioned that ongoing loss has to be seen in a larger context. To Plains First Nations, bison were a cultural as well as an economic resource and their loss went beyond property and jobs and incomes.

"Yes, economy," Hubbard said. "But also wellness."

As many as eight million bison roamed the plains in the mid-19th century. Plains First Nations depended on them for food, clothing, trade goods, homes and tools.

Bison made them rich. Anthropologists say their living standards and lifespans were comparable to contemporary Europeans.

But by the turn of the century, all but about 500 bison had been slaughtered — a collapse that happened in some regions within a decade.

To examine the effect of that collapse, the authors looked at data collected between 1889 and 1903 from about 9,000 Indigenous people across the continent.