The settler flour: Sarah Carter, ‘Pure, White, British, and Canadian: The Moose Jaw Origins and Rise of Robin Hood Flour, 1909–1930s’, Prairie History, 13, 2024, pp. 19-33 | settler colonial studies blog

The settler flour: Sarah Carter, ‘Pure, White, British, and Canadian: The Moose Jaw Origins and Rise of Robin Hood Flour, 1909–1930s’, Prairie History, 13, 2024, pp. 19-33

20Aug24

Abstract: In a settler colony such as Western Canada, colonizers came to stay and to claim and re-fashion the land permanently as theirs, displacing Indigenous Peoples, and limiting their former access to their land and resources. An important component of establishing settler ascendancy was the undermining of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems and converting them to a settler diet. Flour was at the heart of this settler diet and the wheat the core of the new economy of the West. Flour was provided to and withheld from First Nations following the Numbered Treaties of the 1870s as rationing was a central tool of control used by Canadian authorities to clear the plains, and enforce government objectives. Robin Hood flour played a role in the creation of a new food regime on the prairies; through its massive advertising campaigns, Robin Hood emphasized the superiority, cleanliness and purity of settler, particularly British, foods.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed