The Pacific Salmon Experiment in Northern Ontario and the “Indian Problem”

Abstract

Between 1954 and 1956, the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests at-tempted to naturalize two species of Pacific salmon in the Hudson Bay region. While this experiment failed, it accidentally resulted in the naturalization of pink salmon in North America’s Great Lakes, accounts of which typically foot-note the experiment. Reversing the focus, this article foregrounds the Pacific salmon experiment, placing it in the context of “experimentalist” wildlife management projects and state nutritional surveys directed at Indigenous communities in northern Canada. Drawing on Hugh Shewell’s analysis of social science approaches to Canada’s so-called “Indian Problem,” this article argues that fisheries management in northern Ontario was animated by similar colonial as-sumptions about Indigenous communities and nutrition in the postwar era.