. . . there is no evidence of cannibalism
That's right, Canada. You say you were never a slave nation. You're a liar. You were an active slave nation well into the 1900s. That's a fact.
This is what set me on course to square the facts. I object to calling the arrival of Europeans in North America an act of 'colonial dispossession.' when the act of arriving turned into saving a lot of people from their worst nightmare. The facts don't exactly agree with the existing narrative.
Aren't Indigenous freed from a form of entrapment? Shouldn't there be a celebration or at least a sense of gratitude for the changes wrought by newcomers? After all, there is only so much to celebrate about being Indigenous before Europeans arrived.
A completely overlooked fact was what Captain James Cook discovered when he landed in Nuu Chah Nulth Nation on the west side of present day Vancouver Island, Canada, which he did in 1778.
(It's ironic that Cook would next discover cannibalism when he was eaten in Hawaii, not all of him, just the parts the Hawaiians removed. I grant you there are revisionists disputing whether the purloined parts were eaten.)
Cook discovered slavery in the land to become known as Canada. Hard core slave economics were underway across the entirety of North America, formidably underway, and I say this because I hear a lot about how dreadful colonizers were to form Canada and one presumes their descendants are equally wretched.
Now of descendants of Indigenous people, we hear a different story, the modern narrative ignores the wretchedness of slavery. Today we hear the coastal nations were hapless victims of a heartless juggernaut rolling over and stopping them in their tracks.
Stopping them from conducting slavery.
The reality is the British didn't get around to banning slavery until 1833, building up to the ban starting in 1807: "Great Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act, which prohibited the buying and selling of slaves within the British Empire. Slavery itself was abolished in most of the British Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which came into effect on August 1, 1834. This act freed enslaved people in the colonies, with some exceptions like Ceylon and India, where slavery continued until later. Full emancipation, including transitional arrangements, was completed by 1838 for most territories."
I wrote to the historian, as a response on X:
Hi, Historian! and this was what I said:
Do you have a copy of the Indigenous constitution, Historian, declaring which tribes make the best slaves? How long are slaves supposed to be enslaved before they are executed in the territories under the slave masters authority? Any idea of the menu this week in the Big House? Are we cooking neighboring tribes? Or are we settling for leftovers?
The fact is, the Potlatch was eventually outlawed on the west coast because they learned the purpose of this cadastre of art, imagery, and boundary was to record, and a keep record of accounting for the slave-based economy, therefore burning the art, the paintings, the masks, the carvings, the totem poles meant freeing vassals from bondage.
The design and contents of the drumming, dancing, whistling, snotting, singing (chanting) pointed to who was a slave. The potlatch, with masks, and totems, and welcome poles, and imagery in all pointed to the slave trade, which composed up to 40 percent of a village in some cases, and was a major part of the economy on the west coast from Alaska to Oregon, recorded details of ownership in the Potlatch and Hamatsa artist renderings, which made a legal statement everywhere they went in this civilization.
Hamatsa society, the Cannibal Society as it is sometimes called, kept the slave economy functioning. It was their surveillance and authority keeping this economy alive, in a sense, they were a functional equivalent to lawyers under the Magna Carta, and it was Hamatsa recordings in these images, which, to repeat, they composed as the artifice, statements of the cadastre, the legal binding of what kept slaves in place and doing what they were told.
In fact, this slavery was a functional system until the 1900's, some of it operating in secret. But by then the decimation of population by disease had radically altered the demographics of these nations.
Needless to say, without intervention, without British law changing for everyone in the British Empire, the slave economy would still be conducted in B.C., obviously, as slavery was the main economic tenet of their lawfully derived society.
Perhaps, in some instances, after a small-pox epidemic swept through a valley or a bayside on this serpentine coastline, the only ones left standing were slaves. I presume this was a liberation if ever there was one. Who knows?
Here's a conclusion drawn by Grok xAI: The evidence for slavery in the Northwest Coast Potlatch economy is robust, extending beyond anecdotal accounts to include ethnographic studies, historical records, and archaeological inferences. Scholars like Leland Donald provide detailed analyses, supported by primary sources such as fur traders’ journals and Indigenous oral histories, showing that slaves were integral to labor, exchange, and ritual within the potlatch system. While the practice was complex and varied by tribe, it was a key component of the region’s pre-colonial economy and social structure, with slavery’s decline tied to colonial interventions and demographic collapse.
There is no evidence of cannibalism.
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