Insatiable Hunger Colonial Encounters in Context

An exploration of the worldviews that underpinned settler colonialism. 

The sixteenth-century European wars of religion set the stage for mass migration to the New World. Of course, there was nothing new about the New World to Indigenous peoples who had lived there for millennia. Insatiable Hunger compares European historical accounts and Indigenous stories of contact to illustrate the wide cultural chasm that separated the two civilizations. Joseph Graham tells a story of religiously obsessed Europeans pouring onto the continent and consuming everything in their path and the attempts Indigenous peoples made to reason with the hungry newcomers. Tracing events from Jacques Cartier’s first visits in the sixteenth century to the War of 1812, Insatiable Hunger attempts to understand the root causes of the mutual incomprehension baked into these two civilizations’ worldviews. As descendants of European settlers in Canada and the United States confront the legacy of colonialism and genocide of Indigenous peoples, Insatiable Hunger will be an important primer on the worldviews at the root of this violent political project.

Joseph W. Graham is a self-taught historian who homesteads an organic farm near Mont-Tremblant, Quebec. He is the author of Naming the Laurentians and has founded two heritage protection committees while working to bridge divides in the community.