Ryan C. Eyford

Ryan C. Eyford,  “Quarantined Within a New colonial Order. The 1876-77 Lake Winnipeg Smallpox Epidemic”

Ryan’s C. Eyford’s beautifully written paper, “Quarantined Within a New Colonial Order: The 1876-77 Lake Winnipeg Smallpox Epidemic,” brings together the themes of colonization, settlement, and the dispossession of Aboriginal people in western Canadian history.  Theoretically sophisticated, it was deemed an “important” work by reviewers.  Eyford traces the intricate relations between the Aboriginals, Icelandic settlers, and the federal government during a devastating epidemic, in which government management allowed the Icelanders to colonize the area in a way that denied Aboriginal land claims.  Taking an apparently ‘small’ story, Eyford has created a model of analysis that will serve other historians of immigrant/Aboriginal relations well.