The collapse of the teeming bison herds that once blackened the prairie was an economic catastrophe that still affects those who once depended on them, new research suggests.
"Economic opportunity is determined in part by history," said Donn Feir, an economic historian at the University of Victoria and one of three authors of a recently published paper on the lingering economic impact of that near-extinction.
"Those historical injustices are being perpetuated today through poverty traps," said Feir, whose paper is published in Oxford University Press' Review of Economic Studies. But by the turn of the century, all but about 500 bison had been slaughtered -- a collapse that happened in some regions within a decade.
People lost the bison around the same time they were being moved onto difficult-to-leave reservations. As well, those bison-dependent nations had relatively fewer nearby banks than other nations, Feir said. "Because there was this large economic shock and you restricted the ability of people to adjust to this shock, you end in a poverty trap."American data suggests the bison-dependent nations lagged behind other First Nations in manufacturing and employment industries. In-migration was lower until the 1980s. That data suggests economic hardship persists, with per capita income 25 per cent lower for bison-dependent nations than other First Nations.
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