Grasses tame and wild: Imperial entanglements in settler colonial cereal breeding and botany

Abstract

This article argues that imperial and local state-supported science played a key role in the discursive and material changes – including political, economic, and ecological – in Canadian settler colonialism. I advance this argument through two case studies from Canada's Experimental Farm Service: the breeding of Marquis wheat and attempts to domesticate wild rice as ornamental feed for game birds. Marquis wheat has been celebrated for its role in expanding the wheat growing regions of Canada's Prairies, whereas wild rice's role was transferred from food to ornamental. The movements of these plants through the scientific milieu of the Experimental Farm Service demonstrate how the state used science to lift up settler communities while holding down Indigenous communities.