This Episode follows three expeditions that entered the MacKenzie River zone between 1830 and 1845. It details the Indigenous contributions to the success of the expeditions as well as the consolidation of using Indigenous knowledge to enhance the scientific findings important to the institutions of Great Britain.

This podcast summarizes the travel narratives and records of three well-known fur trade explorers to fully articulate the contributions of Indigenous peoples to the exploration and the subsequent mapping of Northwest North America. The travels and exploration of Alexander Mackenzie, Peter Fidler and David Thompson will be examined to show that the process of Indigenous knowledge extraction and the codification of that knowledge erasing Indigenous contributions.

This episode focuses on the extraction of Indigenous knowledge from HBC territory from 1670 to 1800. More specifically we detail the HBC officer reliance on Indigenous people to provide zoological and botanical information for the consumption of the scientific institutions of Great Britain.

Episode two introduces the idea of the ‘contact zone’ as framework to understand history in Western Canada rather than the traditional frameworks of history such as the idea of ‘frontier.” Further, this work details the intimate relationship between the HBC and the institutions of science in Great Britain. The episode concludes with the idea that Indigenous people fully participated not only in the fur trade but also in the production of science.

This episode questions preconceived notions of Indigenous contributions to Canadian and western European societies. It argues that we require a new perspective on Indigenous people’s participation in and influence on historical events and social setting. The episode concludes with the idea that we all become better informed when we recognize Indigenous participation in the production of science.