Spaces and exchanges: what do borders mean to first people in Canada?

I’m going to talk about the notion of spaces and exchanges. This notion deals with the geographical and symbolic areas that all societies occupy and the interactions between men and different societies. The different cultural, economic, sociological and language interactions have shaped and characterised our modern-day world. I would like illustrate this notion through the origin of Canada. Concentrations of different cultures in Canada have made inevitably changed native people's lives. We may answer the question : what do borders mean to first people in Canada? In a first part, we are going to talk about the natives people's , the first people in Canada and in a second part, the changes caused by white people's arrival.

The first people in Canada leave in the North of country in the Canadian Arctic or on reserves. As we can think with their names, they are the first people who leave in Canada. We can notice two types of first people, the inuits and the Black.

( The most easily recognizable categorie of indigenous inhabitant of Canada are «first nations» and « Inuits». The culture of Inuits is deeply rooted in vast land they inhabit. They have an intimate knowledge of their land and they have used it to develop skills and technology adapted to one of the harshest environment in the world. Indeed, as we can see in the document « a gappers's first-hand account », a girl named Jenifer who during the journey saw that the Inuits knew how to make everything and knew how to build everything. They treat nature with respect and they use its resources in order to preserve future generations. Indeed family is the center of Inuit culture, they want to protect their culture and their values. As we can see in the oral comprehension « Life on the reserve », a student during its journey in a reserve noticed that family was one of main values of Inuits and that they built schools for their children for example. For me, Inuits consider that borders do not exist.

Nevertheless, Inuit culture has been exposed to many outside influence over the past century, that's what we are going to study in the second part. So native people's way of life changed after the arrival of certain countries to Canada. First some Inuits were displaced by force most often to build military bases during the cold war as we can see in the document « Stop stealing our land ». Always in this document we were able to see that permanent settlement was created in Artic, schools and health care center were built by superpowers like United States or European countries. They take control of the land, they take over their land and all the resources. The Inuits don't stand a chance to resist against the world. Because of the melting of the ice from now on all of the ships can sail across Artic Region to exploit natural ressources. Moreover, there were experiences led on Inuits as we can see in an oral comprehension. Indeed, children were deprived of their family and sent to English-speaking families. Because of these experiences, these Inuits, cannot communicate any more and can't retie any more with traditions Inuits. For example, they are incapable to build an igloo or to go hunting and today, these grown-up Inuits demand gratitude of the damages from which they suffer. )

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