Did the first nations get anything from hudsons bay company?

Answer 1

Lots. To start with they got technology they were likely to never develop on their own, (if you accept the idea that such advancements depended on environmental factors).

Iron items made everything easier, from hunting to warfare, metal was very valuable in a land that produced nothing but soft copper.

They also got a bit of a reprieve from the European onslaught.

The HBC had a simple business model for the massive lands they were given. They would set up forts and trading posts on the coasts and have Aboriginals and other traders come to them to trade. This model allowed Aboriginals a significant level of self government as the HBC was only interested in getting furs and other goods from them. The HBC even had policies that required trading forts to carry enough food to see everybody in the area through starvation events all too common with hunter gathers. It was a simple and profitable model.

But it was not long before traders, many of them French, started to attack the HBC monopoly by trading inland using any method that resulted in lots of furs and all too often as a bonus no exchange of anything in trade other than some alcohol or a bullet. The HBC had many rules about trading alcohol, but those operating outside the HBC faced no such limitations or enforcement. Anything went and we know it did. Eventually the Northwest Company was set up and trading practices improved and provided real competition for HBC.

This resulted in HBC having to move inland and between them and other traders they brought the world giving Aboriginals everything the world had to offer both the good and all the bad.