Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Indigenous Life [Hardcover]

One of MacLean's 25 Most Important Books of the Last 25 Years

One of CBC's 30 Books On the Indigenous Experience in North America

Revealing how Canada's first Prime Minister used a policy of starvation against Indigenous people to clear the way for settlement, the multiple award-winning Clearing the Plains sparked widespread debate about genocide in Canada.

In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politicsthe politics of ethnocideplayed in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of Indigenous people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonalds National Dream.

It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day.

This new edition of Clearing the Plains has a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Fenn, an opening by Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, and explanations of the books influence by leading Canadian historians. Called one of the most important books of the twenty-first century by the Literary Review of Canada, it was named a Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, the Writers Trust, and won the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, among many others.