The Metis Work Ethic and the Impacts of CCF Policy on the Northwestern Saskatchewan Trapping Economy, 1930-1960
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In 1944, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) entered northern Saskatchewan with the goal of utilizing natural resources and restructuring the northern economy through conservation and social policy in order to rehabilitate what they viewed as an impoverished Aboriginal population. This thesis analyzes the affects of government policy on the northwestern Saskatchewan Metis during the mid-twentieth century. Specifically, this study will examine how CCF policy affected the trapping economy and the socio-cultural traditions of the northern Metis. The northwestern Saskatchewan Metis participated in trapping as one of their main sources of income, while facing deflating market prices and government intervention. Through an analysis of archival records that included government documents, government employee and northern Metis correspondence, newspapers, community and government research initiatives and transcribed interviews done by previous projects, this study found that the new government policies were met with resistance by Metis trappers who wished to maintain their traditional trapping practices. Trapping for the Metis, was not only a source of income, it was a livelihood inseparable from their socio-cultural identities and worldview. Therefore, Metis worldview had a direct connection to their acceptance and resistance of CCF policy. More specifically, the northwestern Saskatchewan Metis had a specific “work ethic.” In order to explain Metis reactions to CCF policy Max Weber’s theoretical framework of a “work ethic” derived from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was utilized. In this thesis it is posited that the Metis work ethic was based upon the concept of wahkootowin, which placed high value on kinship systems and reciprocity. Wahkootowin encompassed all aspects of northern Metis life including the economy. These cultural values were also juxtaposed with living a “northern style of life,” which involved hard work and survival skills that allowed the Metis to flourish within the northern landscape. In the mid-twentieth century CCF conservation and social policy conflicted with the northwestern Saskatchewan Metis work ethic that was based on the principles of wahkootowin and the northern style of life.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".