David Murray. Pendennis Archives
The George Dawson map of 1879-80, found in the Pendennis Hotel. It contains extensive details of gold and coal deposits, agricultural potential, important geological and landscape features, cart trails, tree species and river navigation information.
Dawson included systematic ethnological inventories in his geological surveys, intending his reports on Native peoples to advise government in the formulation of policy. His Sketches of the Past and Present Condition of the Indians of Canada (1879) surveyed the distribution and declining numbers of aboriginal peoples in the light of the apparent inevitability of political dominion in the west by European Canadians. Dawson’s 1879-80 survey map makes little mention of Indigenous Peoples despite all the information on earlier maps, an omission perhaps influenced by what the United States called 'The Indian Question'. Dawson's erasure of Indigenous Peoples as equal nations followed the American example, ascribing to a program of education and assimilation into white society. Influenced by American ethnologists who followed John Wesley Powell on 'the Indian Question' – the wish to promote social evolution to prevent what was seen as the inevitable extinction of Indigenous Peoples – Dawson was against segregation on reserves, which was Dominion government policy at the time, instead subscribing to education and assimilation. 4
4 Suzanne Zeller and Gale Avrith-Wakeam, “DAWSON, GEORGE MERCER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography , vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–; accessed November 23, 2022 http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/dawson_george_mercer_13E.html A compact explanation of how this ideology of education and assimilation led to the Indian residential school system (IRS), can be found in Gregory Younging, Elements of Indigenous Style . Edmonton: Brush Education, 2018. p 131. www.brusheducation.ca/books/elements-of-indigenous-style
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on site review 42: atlas :: being in place
:: colonial processes
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