The Myth of the Mounties as neutral arbiters between Aboriginal peoples  and incoming settlers remains a cornerstone of the western Canadian  narrative of a peaceful frontier experience that differs dramatically  from its American equivalent. Walter Hildebrandt eviscerates this myth,  placing the NWMP and early settlement in an international framework of  imperialist plunder and the imposition of colonialist ideology. Fort  Battleford, as an architectural endeavour, and as a Euro-Canadian  settlement, oozed British and central Canadian values. The Mounties,  like the Ottawa government that paid their salaries, “were in the  West to assure that a new cultural template of social behaviour would  replace the one they found.” The newcomers were blind to the  cultural values and material achievements of the millennia-long  residents of the North-West. Unlike their fur trade predecessors, the  settler state had little need to respect or accommodate Aboriginal  people. Following policies that resulted in starvation for Natives, the  colonizers then responded brutally to the uprising of some of the  oppressed in 1885. Hildebrandt’s ability to view these events  from the indigenous viewpoint places the Mounties, the Canadian state,  and the regional settlement experience under an entirely different  spotlight.

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