Canada's Fur Trade as Colonization: The "War" Card Game
The history of anti-Indigenous racism in Canada cannot be left out of the narratives we create as teachers. I was asked to plan Interdisciplinary History and Geography lessons on the Fur Trade for a group of energetic and engaged Grade 7 class in a all-girls school in Toronto, and decided to make a game. My "Fur Trade War Game" is a historical simulation played in four phases of slightly-altered card games, where teams of students compete to win each "phase" of the "war" in order to sail along the St. Lawrence river to create permanent European settlements and fur trade routes.
I wanted to frame the history through the many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples stories of oppression that originated in fur trade. As a teacher-candidate, however, I needed to be mindful of my evaluation. The CBC's Canada: A People's History series is a popular resource for teachers in Ontario, so I grounded my game in excerpts from episodes 3, 5, and 6. I matched this academic content with the classic card game, War, in which players flip a card from their unseen deck for the highest card to win each round, and win the game by collecting all the cards. It seemed to provide a framework to explore the early racism experienced by First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples, and because the game is designed to reflect a European's journey, it allowed for discussion of the forms of oppression (like religious conversion, manipulated military alliances, and lethal force, to name a few). The girls were engaged and we debriefed the competitive mindset inherent in collecting natural and human-made resources, a topic already explored through other classroom activities. Specifically, we were able to make conclusions about why resources are valuable and why colonization happened. By simulating the process of colonization on the the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, I hope to educate for the purpose of Truth & Reconciliation in Canada in light of George Santayana's well-known belief "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."