Quote:
Originally Posted by wave46
There are several reasons I can speculate to the migration happening later:
1. The Native population was more tied to the reserve by government than the Black population was tied to the US South.
2. The economy of the Prairies was largely family based and agricultural prior to the 1950s. The large, unskilled, labor intensive industries were located in the eastern portion of the country until then.
3. While a large portion of the Black population in the US had at least some exposure to 'mainstream American life' of the day thus making adaptation easier, I suspect that a lot of the Native population did not have this, aside from those forcibly exposed to the residential school system. They were largely isolated from what 'mainstream Canada' was at the time.
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Those are very good points.
The differences between Black Americans' relationship to the South vs. Natives' relationship to the reserves is also totally different, now that I think of it. Even though both migrations involve leaving behind an "old culture" and family ties, and familiar comforts in a poorer area, to an unfamiliar but lucrative urban environment.
Many Native populations have a connection to, and are more culturally defined by, living on the ancestral lands, to have cultural continuity with their past generations.
While for Black Americans, the US South was not their ancestral homeland, and in fact the place where they were brought against their will and forced to labor for generations. They'd already been taken from, and lost much of their African connection and forced to develop a "new identity" stateside. So moving from one part of the US to another thus perhaps might not imbued with the same significance as moving from one's ancestral land to elsewhere.
So, that might also account for eagerness to "leave" the rural area to the city.
Though that might not explain the timing of movement to the cities when it
did happen after all -- why it did within 50 years ago, and not say 100 years ago or 75 years ago, which probably also has to do with the economic/social changes you mentioned.