Canada Challenge: Maximum Native Population

With a PoD no earlier than 1850, how would you maximize the population of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples? Bonus points if it can include improved living standards.
 
You have several options.

1) Increase the food supply and hope for the best.
2) Have the culture set the goal of increasing the population by whatever means come to hand.
3) Create an event or program that causes the population to increase either as an incentive or as the consequence of a unique cultural event.
4) Expand the definitions of membership in these cultures and increase the population by intermarriage with outsiders.
5) Do a combination of the above.
6) ASB

HOPE THIS HELPS.
 
Maybe keep the French around, they were not big coloniser and (as far as I know) had no problem with colonist hooking up with natives

Asside from the fact that it doesn't respect the term of the challenge the very fact they weren't a big coloniser made them staying ASB.

Since the Metis where included having Riel succeed could be a good start.
 

fashbasher

Banned
The US decides to "preserve" its Indians by sending them north, and Britain/Canada agrees. Maybe they believe that they can pit the different ethnic groups against one another and maybe they think that "detribalized" Native Americans could serve as a middleman between the Metis/First Nations on the one hand and white settlers on the other.
 
Asside from the fact that it doesn't respect the term of the challenge the very fact they weren't a big coloniser made them staying ASB.

Since the Metis where included having Riel succeed could be a good start.

France retaining Canada is not ASB. They could have won the battle of the Plains of Abraham with a better strategy. Alternatively, IOTL the British supposedly even offered Canada back during the peace negotiations, if the French would cede Guadeloupe instead.
 
You have several options.

1) Increase the food supply and hope for the best.
2) Have the culture set the goal of increasing the population by whatever means come to hand.
3) Create an event or program that causes the population to increase either as an incentive or as the consequence of a unique cultural event.
4) Expand the definitions of membership in these cultures and increase the population by intermarriage with outsiders.
5) Do a combination of the above.
6) ASB

HOPE THIS HELPS.
The definition of membership is already about as exanded as it resonably can be in otl Canada, to the point where I have a blonde haired blue eyed fair skinned friend with a status card.
 
France retaining Canada is not ASB. Not only could the war have gone differently, but IOTL the British supposedly even offered Canada back if the French would cede Guadeloupe.

Thats one war, sure it could have gone differently but the power discrepency between New France (60k population, entirely depending on the metropolis) and the 13 colonies (2 millions and with a good capacity for warfare by themselves, as they would prove a few years latter) was so ridiculously large that it was bound to happen eventually. Thats not even taking into account the overall focus of british policy on the overseas while France was centered on Europe, witch explain the discrepency in population in the first place. Both attitude have roots so profound that a POD changing them would make both Europe and NA unrecognisable by the time of the OTL conquest. To consider that a french success in the Seven Years War could have saved Canada for good is pretty much the equivalent of saying that Franz Ferdinand surviving Sarajevo could have prevented a europe-scale conflict in the beguing of the 20th century. It give an inflated importance to the direct events and pretty much ignore the root causes at work.
 
France retaining Canada is not ASB. They could have won the battle of the Plains of Abraham with a better strategy. Alternatively, IOTL the British supposedly even offered Canada back during the peace negotiations, if the French would cede Guadeloupe instead.
It still requires a PoD a full century before what's allowed in this scenario.
 
Have Latin Americans somehow decide to identify as proud indigenous Americans and when immigration from that part of the world picks up, so does the number of native Americans?
 

Vuru

Banned
Britain gets screwed somehow, and can't support the colonists, so instead it sets up native puppet states that develop sort of on their own
 
Britain gets screwed somehow, and can't support the colonists, so instead it sets up native puppet states that develop sort of on their own

How? Who do they support? There weren't enough natives to support. During the buffalo wars the plains Indians populations went into a state of free-fall because of the decline of the buffalo, something the British didn't really have a hand in. The double whammy of disease (1790-1820 being the big one) and destruction of buffalo means that you have to go back to the pre-revolutionary days to even find a group with enough power to even be remotely capable of supporting. The Cree got a pretty free hand by being the middlemen of the HBC for 200+ years and even they suffered collapse due to circumstances beyond anyone's control.

The best case scenario I see is in the 1870-80s the Canadian government does a far better job with the creation of reserves and doesn't use starvation as a tactic to force Indian compliance. At least on the great plains you could see a 20-30% jump in population.
 
How about, natives get assimilated earlier and become a permanent underclass analogous to African Americans in the United States, whose population growth exceeds that of the whites due to a combination of poverty and a conservative stance on birth control inherited from Catholic missionaries? With a larger, urban population, they form a significant voting bloc which helps to put a socialist government in power, creating a robust welfare state which raises the standard of living for most poor Canadians, natives among them.
 
How about, natives get assimilated earlier and become a permanent underclass analogous to African Americans in the United States, whose population growth exceeds that of the whites due to a combination of poverty and a conservative stance on birth control inherited from Catholic missionaries? With a larger, urban population, they form a significant voting bloc which helps to put a socialist government in power, creating a robust welfare state which raises the standard of living for most poor Canadians, natives among them.
I dislike the terminology of 'assimilated' (that's a very iffy word here in regards to natives), but earlier urbanisation might help. Was planning a general earlier urbanisation of the nation in general, and an important of Indian labour sooner (for cheaper railroad construction), so more multi-ethnic cities could see earlier Native urbanisation?
 
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