Unmaking Saskatchewan (Harbinger Media Network)

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Saskatchewan was sold to settlers as empty space for men to carve up and own. We still live with the consequences of that lie today.

Host Alex Birrell is a settler, sometimes journalist, writer, and anti-capitalist from southern Saskatchewan. Transcripts for episodes can be found at unmakingsaskatchewan.medium.com

In Saskatchewan, governments and corporations have long used hunger as a strategy to save money, make money, and acquire land and resources. People are hungry in Saskatchewan today, because people have always been hungry in Saskatchewan.

You can support the show on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

This episode is an interview about Land Back and Indigenous sovereignty with Mike Gouldehawke, a Cree and Métis writer whose family is from kistahpinanihk (City of Prince Albert) and nêwo-nâkîwin (Mont Nebo) in Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan. Mike currently lives in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories (Vancouver, British Columbia).

You can support the show (and find transcripts for episodes) on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

Episode 4: Saskatchewan frames itself as a man's land - it's one of only three provinces that have never had a woman premier, and its capital city elected its first female mayor in 2020 - but the province couldn't exist without the free labour of women. This episode looks at women in the province.


You can support the show (and find transcripts for episodes) on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

Although the train plays little part in the lives of most Saskatchewan residents today, there was a time when the rail line had almost unlimited power over the province's development. In this episode we'll talk about the legacy of the CP Rail.

You can support the show (and find transcripts for episodes) on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

Support the Sask Dispatch:
https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/help-the-sask-dispatch-grow

In the first half of the 20th century, an Indian Agent named William Morris Graham decided to set in motion one of the largest human experiments in so-called Canada. Graham moved Indigenous graduates from residential schools onto the Peepeekisis First Nation, arranged their marriages, and set them to work farming. Graham's control over their lives was absolute, and it has ramifications to this day. Cheyanne Desnomie, a scholar from Peepeekisis shares the story of the File Hills Colony.

Find out more about Cheyenne's academic work:
https://www.schoolofpublicpolicy.sk.ca/iphrc/about/our-people/cheyanne-desnomie.php


You can support the show (and find transcripts for episodes) on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

(Warning: This episode contains strong language) Colter Wall is one of Saskatchewan's most popular musicians. But what is Brad Wall's son actually singing about? Jeremy Davis joins Alex to talk about pan-hickism, murder ballads, and whether Swift Current is a small town, as Colter often claims (spoiler: it's not).

You can support the show (and find transcripts for episodes) on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

On July 17, 2022, Colby Tootoosis was attacked and beaten by settlers as he returned a trailer to a friend. The assault, which was caught on camera and happened not far from where settler farmer Gerald Stanley shot and killed Colten Boushie in August 2016, laid bare the juxtaposition between how colonial law is applied to Indigenous people and how it is applied to settlers. aLEX talks with Colby’s brother, Mylan, about the assault and how it fits into the context of Indigenous-settler relations in Saskatchewan. Mylan is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Saskatchewan and can be found at the Radicle Narrative podcast: https://radiclenarrative.com/.

Support the show on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

Guest Julie Yu calls it "the story everyone knows, but no one knows anything about." Chinese restaurants are a small-town Saskatchewan staple, especially along the rail lines. But who are the people behind them and what was life like for the first Chinese restaurateurs who made their home on the prairies?

You can support the show (and find transcripts for episodes) on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

Saskatchewan has a long history of incarcerating physically and intellectually disabled people. Megan Linton of Invisible Institutions comes on the show to talk about the history and present of disability confinement in the province.

Find Megan on Twitter at @invinstitutions and find Unmaking Saskatchewan on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

On November 29, 1990, the body of Neil Christopher Stonechild, a 17-year-old Saulteaux high school student, was found frozen in a field on the outskirts of Saskatoon. Despite his family's suspicions of foul play, less than a week after he was found, the Saskatoon Police closed the investigation into his death. It would take another 10 years - and two more freezing deaths - before Neil's death was properly investigated and it was revealed to the world what many Indigenous people in Saskatoon had known for years: the Saskatoon Police had a habit of driving Indigenous people far beyond the city limits and dumping them on the roadside to walk home, or die.

Support us on Patron (and find episode transcripts) at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

For better or for worse, Tommy Douglas is the figure most closely associated with Medicare in Canada. But long before the CCF was first elected in 1944, Saskatchewan people were organizing and strategizing to ensure their communities had access to doctors, nurses, hospitals, and infectious disease treatment. This episode looks at the evolution of public healthcare in the province between 1872 and 1944.

Follow Sara on Twitter at @sbirlios.
Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan

Sources:
Boychuk, Gerard Explaining Public Health Insurance in the United States and Canada

Countess of Aberdeen What is the use of the Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada?

Daschuk, James Clearing the Plains

Houston, C. Stuart Steps on the road to medicare: why Saskatchewan led the way

Houston, C. Stuart Leading the way: A Matter of Life and Breath. The 75 Year History of the Saskatchewan Anti-Tuberculosis League and the Saskatchewan Lung Association

Middleton, F.C. Evolution of Tuberculosis Control in Saskatchewan

Ostry, Alec National History of Medicine: The Foundations of National Public Health Insurance

Rands, Stan Privilege and Policy: A History of Community Clinics in Saskatchewan

Shandel, Tom Bitter Medicine, Part One: The Birth of Medicare

Taylor, Malcom G. Health insurance and Canadian public policy: the seven decisions that created the Canadian health insurance system and their outcomes

Hoshins? Check. Kaizens? Check. The support of actual healthcare professionals? No check. Lean management has been with the Saskatchewan health care system for over a decade and if we know one thing for sure, it's that health care workers hate it. This episode hears from University of Victoria professor Justin Leifso about how and why the government of Saskatchewan decided to try to run the health care system like a manufacturing plant.

You can find us on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan. Huge thanks to our supporters, Courtney, Stefan, Devon, Nicole, Daniel, Avianna, Jeremy, Joel, epaul, Tara, Kevin, Conor, Aiden, Rob, Rod, Sandra, Leblanc Jensen Law, Conlin, Erica, Brent, and Julian!

In 1944 the CCF was elected on a platform of implementing medicare. It would take 18 years for that promise to be realized...but the dream realized was a shadow of what had been proposed. How did we get here, what was the vision, and what did we lose?

Find us on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan.

From the anti-trans "parents' rights" bill to the rise of the Sask United Party, the province is moving aggressively to the right. People are increasingly using the term fascism to describe what they're seeing. But fascism is a specific type of right wing politics, and it's not a term to be used lightly. So Alex dug in to the political philosophy of fascism to figure out whether the fash in Sask are really ascendant.


Sources:

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton
The Nature of Fascism by Roger Griffin
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley

More like GONE Gormley. On November 24th conservative hack and area goblin John Gormley will go off the airwaves for good after a quarter century of bloviating from the Rawlco studio. Jeremy Davis joins Alex to talk about Gormley’s legacy. Rest in piss, John!

The Sask United Party was registered as a political party in Saskatchewan in November 2022 and since then they've espoused a deeply fascist politic. SUP leader, Nadine Wilson, left the Sask Party caucus in September 2021 after lying about being vaccinated. The party ran its first candidate, oil executive and Evangelical Christian Jon Hromek, in the Lumsden Morse byelection in August 2023. On this episode Alex digs into Wilson and Hromek and unpacks the party's constitution, platform, and propaganda.

Find us on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan.

The evangelical movement is becoming increasingly salient in Saskatchewan politics, most recently with the passage of the anti-trans "parents' rights" legislation passed in fall 2023, legislation that had substantial backing from evangelical churches and organizations. Alex talks with Dallas Verity, a Regina resident who was raised in the church and worked as a youth pastor before leaving the church after coming to question its reactionary doctrines.

Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan.

Evangelical Christians have impacted the social and political fabric of Saskatchewan for over a century, from fur-trade era missionaries to the temperance movement to the anti-trans "parent's rights" legislation. At the same time, the movement in Canada has tended towards moderation in comparison to their counterparts in the U.S. This episode examines the history of evangelicals in Saskatchewan and Canada and how the rise of Trump and the COVID era has put new energy into Canada's Christian right.

Sources:

This U.S.-based ‘hate group’ is using a shadowy network of lawyers and doctors to infiltrate Canada


How Canadian evangelicalism is reinventing purity culture as ‘pro-women’


Canada’s marginal ‘Christian right’


Trinity Western loses fight for Christian law school as court rules limits on religious freedom 'reasonable'

Exorcism at Sask. children's Bible camp could be criminal, say experts

Fact Sheet: Public Opinion on Abortion

In 1982 Saskatchewan elected the second Conservative government in the province's history. By the time the dust settled nine years later the province is $12 billion in debt, 12 members of the Devine government are convicted of fraud, and the Progressive Conservatives cease to exist as a political force in Saskatchewan ever again. Alex talks with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Saskatchewan director Simon Enoch about the Devine era and its legacy, which haunts the province to this day.

Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/unmakingsaskatchewan.

In the 1990s Saskatchewan was in almost as dire a position as it had been during the Great Depression. The province was on the verge of bankruptcy, people were leaving in droves, the PC party was collapsing under the weight of the fraud scandal, the Liberals were in freefall, and the NDP, led by Roy Romanow, was slashing services to the bone. The collapse of the PCs and Liberals, coupled with the NDP’s hard right turn away from everything it had ever claimed to stand for created the conditions for the rise of the party we live under today. First in a three-part series on the Saskatchewan Party. 

In 1999 Brad wall was elected for the first time as a Sask Party MLA. Within 8 years, Wall would be premier. A free market capitalist and charismatic salesman, over the next decade Wall would weave a new narrative for saskatchewan to understand itself, changing the province's political culture forever. 

Scott Moe became leader of the Saskatchewan Party (and premier of the province) in 2018, after a hotly contested (and often unpleasant) leadership race. Considered "centre right" and someone who was likely to keep close to the party's status quo, Moe has instead marched the party (and the province) steadily rightward. 

Read more:

https://breachmedia.ca/corporate-landlords-financiers-ceos-are-top-donors-to-scott-moes-saskatchewan-party/

https://breachmedia.ca/in-saskatchewan-poilievre-allies-with-tycoons-who-treat-province-like-fiefdom/