Near the old perfume counters on the ground floor of the Hudson’s Bay department store in Winnipeg, Canada, a commerce dripping with symbolism went on.
The 39th “governor” of Hudson Bay — the oldest company in North America and one of Canada’s most iconic — accepted two beaver pelts and two elk pelts from an indigenous leader in exchange for the building, ownership of the company once a Canadian flagship.
The ceremony took place a year ago when Hudson’s Bay, the corporation once set up to found the colony that became part of Canada, handed over its 600,000-square-foot, six-story downtown building to a group of First Nations . But what seemed like an act of reconciliation became the subject of intense debate as the value of the building and the cost of its transformation became clearer: was it a real gift or an empty one?
The gift of the building focused attention on the evolving relationship between Hudson Bay and Indigenous people in Canada, as well as their central role in the history of a country founded on the fur trade between them and the company.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others who attended the ceremony praised the building’s move as an act of reconciliation between Canada and its oppressed indigenous population. But with the welfare effects of the ceremony dissipating, the details of the deal are raising questions about economic fairness as Canada works to achieve reconciliation with its indigenous communities.
The indigenous owners aim to transform the sprawling structure into a multi-use building for their community including restaurants, a rooftop garden and a healing center incorporating both Western and traditional medicine.
In 2019, commercial real estate appraisers said the building It was worth nothing, or even less, because getting it to code alone would have cost as much as C$111 million ($82 million).
The company declined to comment on this article and provided a blanket statement that did not address delivery details.
For generations, at least for shoppers who weren’t indigenous, a visit downtown was incomplete without a stop inside the bay’s ornate, neoclassical monolith that sprawls into the shopping district’s more upscale neighborhoods.
So the move was a powerful act, especially for people like Darian McKinney, 27, one of two Indigenous architects entrusted with the building’s transformation. Like many other Indigenous Canadians, Mr. McKinney never went to the store, even though he grew up in Winnipeg.
Besides not being able to afford to shop in the Bay, he also knew that the natives often felt unwelcome; from his grandparents, he knew of a not-too-distant past where they couldn’t leave reserves to visit cities without a pass from a so-called Indian agent.
“If you could even afford to shop at the Bay,” she said, “you felt like you didn’t belong.”
In parts of Canada, the pass system remained in place until the 1940s.
“The environment in downtown Winnipeg was rooted in Indigenous exclusion,” said Reanna Merasty, 27, the other Indigenous architect working on the building’s renovation.
The building’s new owners, the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which represents 34 First Nations in Manitoba, plan to transform it “in a space of economic and social reconciliation” for their community in Winnipeg, home to Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population.
The organization is still struggling to raise 20 million of the C$130 million it says is needed to renovate the building.
For now, the giant structure is mostly empty, with undressed mannequins, a Justin Bieber in Calvin Kleins poster, and dusty signage: “Store Closing. Everything must go”, recalling the last days of the department store.
By the 20th century, Hudson’s Bay had reinvented itself from a fur trader to a modern retailer, opening department stores in downtown commercial areas. But nearly a century after it opened, the Bay’s Winnipeg store closed in 2020, a victim of the pandemic and online shopping.
As of 2020, only two of the building’s six floors were still in use, and its flagship restaurant, the Paddlewheel, had closed years earlier. Hudson’s Bay, which had been trying to get rid of the building for years, tried to give it to the University of Winnipeg, but the university refused due to the cost of repairs and maintenance.
Owned since 2008 by Richard Baker, the American real estate tycoon, Hudson’s Bay was blocked by a worthless structure which – designated as heritage building in 2019, against the will of the company, it could not be demolished, but for which it was required to continue paying taxes.
But then the Southern Chiefs’ Organization approached Hudson Bay with an offer to take over the building and turn it into a center for Indigenous life, said the organization’s head, Grand Chief Jerry Daniels.
“It’s quite fitting, because it’s the Indigenous people who really built Hudson Bay,” Mr. Daniels said. “And that’s the story that needs to be told, that we really built this country.”
But others were more critical of the deal and the rationale behind it.
“The fact that the Hudson’s Bay Company exploited our community, took whatever resources and money they could from our community, and then left this monstrous problem in the middle of the city, just walked away from it – that’s colonialism personified “, he said niigaan sinclairan assistant professor of native studies at the University of Manitoba who is a member of the Anishinaabe First Nations.
Inseparable from the European colonization of Canada, Hudson Bay was founded in 1670 to exploit the fur trade in Rupert’s landa territory equal to about a third of today’s Canada.
King Charles II had claimed the territory as that of England and given it to his cousin, Prince Rupert, who became the company’s first head, or “governor”. Hudson Bay enjoyed exclusive rights to exploit and colonize the land until the land was sold in 1870 to the new country of Canada.
With trading posts in remote parts of Canada, Hudson Bay relied on indigenous hunters for the beaver pelts and other natural resources that made up the company’s business, but many indigenous people say their ancestors were not compensated enough.
Without Indigenous people, the company would never have flourished, relying on Indigenous knowledge of their ancestral lands and the relationships that exist between different Indigenous communities.
“The Hudson’s Bay Company’s wealth was rooted in Indigenous lands, Indigenous labor, Indigenous knowledge, and Indigenous government,” he said Adele Perryprofessor and expert on colonialism at the University of Manitoba.
In recent years, Ms. Perry said, Canada has been forced to “recognize that the core of Canada as an entity is a colonial project.”
Mr Daniels said his organization had secured C$110 million from government sources, including loans, grants and tax breaks, and was seeking funding for the remainder. He also said he hoped Hudson Bay would offer assistance.
The 39th “Governor” of Hudson Bay, Mr. Baker, declined a request to be interviewed for this article, instead sending an emailed statement. “The Southern Chiefs’ Organization wholly owns and operates the building, with oversight and control of all aspects of its future development,” he said, adding that the company supported the indigenous organization’s vision for the building.
But there is deep skepticism in Winnipeg that its makeover can be completed without significantly more financial support. In addition to the University of Winnipeg, the provincial utility, Manitoba Hydro, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery also declined to take over the building as too expensive.
Hudson’s Bay jumped at the opportunity to get rid of a building “that was worth nothing in the first place” and the government isn’t backing the building’s costly conversion “with enough money to do it really well,” Wins Bridgman said, a Winnipeg based architect who has worked with Indigenous groups, including Southern chiefs.
“Then we wonder why it doesn’t work somehow,” he said.
“Be careful what people give you and why they give it to you.”