A series of sixty-second commercials shown on Canadian television tell us that Canadians invented basketball and Superman and that Winnie the Pooh is based on the mascot of a Canadian regiment sent to fight for Britain in the First World War. One of these Heritage Minutes is about the Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader, Sitting Bull. After the defeat of General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, he and five thousand other Sioux fled from the US Army to Canada. They were met by a few Mounties, who welcomed them and gave them sanctuary. The cosy myth of a benevolent Canada continues to shape attitudes about native people and contemporary government policy, and Survival International's report on its treatment of the Innu - comparing it with that of China in Tibet - has met with some anger. The authors are quick to make clear that Canada has not imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands of Innu over the last forty years, but they point out that the difference in strategy is not as important as we usually assume.

LRB 8 March 2001 | PDF Download