Culture of Saskatchewan

Culture of Saskatchewan views the patterns of human activity in the central prairie province of Canada examing the way people live in the geography, climate, and social context of Saskatchewan. Cultural activities involve technology, science, as well as moral systems and the characteristic behaviours and habits. Culture is the summation of how Saskatchewan has cultivated or tilled the soil of knowledge, improvements, and neighbourly courtesies. The choices people make in the way they live reflect their values and norms. Saskatchewan institutions and artifacts record historical cultural patterns and beliefs. Provincial cultural studies combines political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in Saskatchewan. Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender. The culture of Saskatchewan seeks to understand the cultural identity within the various regions of Saskatchewan. What makes an individual of Saskatchewan have the (feeling of) identity within the provincial culture, or how the aspect of an individual is influenced by belonging to Saskatchewan and its activities. Culture does not remain stagnant, it evolves. Culture changes with advances and changes in public opinion, technology, geopolitics, and science.

A person identified with Canada is a Canadian, and with the province of Alberta an Albertan. However a native resident of Saskatchewan could be called Saskatchewanian, or Saskatchewanite.

According to Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, basic needs must be satisfied in order to progress on to creativity and the need to create and/or experience beauty, balance, and structure. Prehistoric man spent a great deal of time searching and hunting for food to satisfy the basic primitive need. First nations and fur traders adopted a transhumance and hunting and gathering lifestyle to fulfill their economic and sustenance needs. Early homesteaders and settlers in the 19th and early 20th centuries likewise spent the majority of their time proving up their homesteads, tilling the land and providing subsistence agricultural products for their families. The early 20th century developed successful agricultural practices, and society rejoiced in the Roaring Twenties. The depression and drought years of the dirty thirties took agricultural sustenance away. The Industrial Revolution which came with the Second World War developed some mechanized improvements in both travelling and agricultural labour saving devices. Electricity became established throughout the various Saskatchewan regions. The economy saw a growth not only in the agricultural sector, but labour was freed up to also pursue choices other than agriculture. A major breakthrough was seen in the arts and culture scene in Saskatchewan from the 1940s onward. Arts and cultural activities before this date were of the main on a family, individual and unpaid level. Local schools would host plays, family or tribal members would engage in handcrafts of various sorts which may become heirlooms, communities would come together for engagement in various sports activities for recreation. The Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences prepared the Massey Report in the early 1950s. This commission noted the strengths and weakness of the cultural community and led to the establishment of the Canada Council which promoted burgeoning talent.

The Saskatchewan government also showed support on a cultural level, with the creation of the Arts Board, and promotion of the Golden Jubilee celebrations hosted in 1955.