Link Byfield Historical Revisionist

Link Byfield, son of Ted and Virgina Byfield, former Editor Publisher of the now bankrupt (fiscally as well as politically) Alberta Report, scion of the Right in Canada has a column in todays Sun, Calgary, blasting the Sun, Toronto, for belittiling Harpers Tarnished Image.

No problem with that. Let the right wing regionalists fight amongst themselves about Wiley E. Harper, who is also a White Wascist like the missing-Link.

What I have a problem with is his historical revisionism where he blames the victim and extolls the virtues of colonial expansion into Western Canada.

Link says: "The historical fact is that after Ottawa stood by and let the Natives wipe out the last remaining Canadian buffalo in the Cypress Hills in 1879, the empty western plains soon filled up with unfenced cattle ranches bigger than present-day Toronto. These were owned and operated by newcomers from Britain, Canada and the U.S. -- the Waldron, the Cochrane, the Oxley, the Northwest Cattle Co., the Beresford, the Bar U. "

Excuse me, Natives wiped out the last remaining buffalo? Sure the Natives hunted buffalo, but they were not responsible for wiping them out, that was already done by the Western Expansion of American and Canadian railway barons, mercantilists and settlers.

Tell that to Poundmaker, Old Crow, and the rest who testified to the destruction of the buffalo with the coming of the white man. And Ottawa didn't stand by it encouraged the destruction of the plains buffalo in order to expand the CPR which opened the west to the Big Ranchers.

"After the whites came, the buffalo became fewer and fewer. We all know that. We began to hate the white persons. They were robbing us of our birthright. We became very poor. We wandered to the south. The buffalo were not coming back. We were told, "the land is not yours anymore. We were to stay only on our small patches of land that were leftover (iskonikana). Our grandfathers travelled on these great plains and called it their own." Poundmaker's last speech.

See my Rebel Yell for the history of the Northwest Rebellion. Yep Link is being a deliberately provacative Dink, so typical of the historical revisionism of the Byfield clan. Well read a book you twit. And not one your dad wrote and you edited. And get your facts straight.

Actually you know your facts you just like to twist them to justify the white mans colonialization of the so called 'empty western plains".

Like we argued on Medicine Hat radio during the Federal Election, yours are the politics of Alberta First, mine are the politics of Alberta in Canada. You still have to anwser my point I made then that since most of the Oil in Alberta is on Native land then following your provincial rights arguement, it is logical to cede control of resources back to those who were here first.

Clever now to argue that the plains were empty.