Our Chiefs and Elders (School of American Research Advanced)
by David Neel
This series of portraits of British Columbia Native chiefs and elders counters earlier depictions of "noble savages" or representatives of a "vanishing race". David Neel's photographs and conversations with his own people introduce us to a group of individuals who know who they are and whose comments on the present, coupled with their perspectives from the past, reveal a people who have a rich and unique heritage while fully realizing that they are living in the latter part of the 20th century....
Jacqueline Beaudouin-Ross examines the evolution of form or silhouette in nineteenth-century feminine dress, applying theories developed by art historians such as Henri Focillon and Heinrich Wofflin to demonstrate that an inner dynamic of change appears to be responsible for the evolution of contour in fashionable attire in the nineteenth century. Beaudouin-Ross evaluates the dissemination of fashion images in Montreal to show to what extent Montrealers were "fashionable" and reveals that fashio...
In the mid 1960s the city of Halifax decided to relocate the inhabitants of Africville—a black community that had been transformed by civil neglect, mismanagement, and poor planning into one of the worst city slums in Canadian history. Africville is a sociological account of the relocation that reveals how lack of resources and inadequate planning led to devastating consequences for Africville relocatees. Africville is a work of painstaking scholarship that reveals in detail the social injustic...
The ArQuives, the largest independent LGBTQ2+ archive in the world, is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and celebrating the stories and histories of LGBTQ2+ people in Canada. Since 1973, volunteers have amassed a vast collection of important artifacts that speak to personal experiences and significant historical moments for Canadian queer communities. Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinship in Canada is a fascinating exploration and examination of one nation's queer history and...
For fifty years anthropologist June Helm studied the culture and ethnohistory of the Dene, "The People," the Athapaskan-speaking Indians of the Mackenzie River drainage of Canada's western subarctic. Now in this impressive collection she brings together previously published essays--with updated commentaries where necessary--unpublished field notes, archival documents, supplementary essays and notes from collaborators, and narratives by the Dene themselves as an offering to those studying North A...
Kiumajut [Talking Back]: Game Management and Inuit Rights 1900-70 examines Inuit relations with the Canadian state, with a particular focus on two interrelated issues. The first is how a deeply flawed set of scientific practices for counting animal populations led policymakers to develop policies and laws intended to curtail the activities of Inuit hunters. Animal management informed by this knowledge became a justification for attempts to educate and, ultimately, to regulate Inuit hunters. The...
The release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) findings and recommendations in the spring of 2015 was an immensely important day for the people of Canada. It marked the hopeful beginning of change-a change of thinking, a change of opinion, a change in understanding. But how do we begin? Chief Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the TRC, says that the most common statement the commission heard from the public was: "I didn't know any of this, and I acknowledge that things are not wh...
The aboriginal people of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand became minorities in their own countries in the nineteenth century. The expanding British Empire had its own vision for the future of these peoples, which was expressed in 1837 by the Select Committee on Aborigines of the House of Commons. It was a vision of the steps necessary for them to become civilized, Christian, and citizens - in a word, assimilated. This book provides the first systematic and comparative treatment of the social p...
Since the Time of the Transformers (Pacific Rim Archaeology)
by Alan D. McMillan
This book examines over 4000 years of culture history of the related Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht, and Makah peoples on western Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula. Using data from the Toquaht Archaeological Project, McMillan challenges current ethnographic interpretations that show little or no change in these peoples' culture. Instead, by combining historical evidence, recent archaeological data, and oral traditions he demonstrates conclusively that there were in fact extensive cultural cha...
In 1989, Charles Gordon wrote a book about the joys of life at the cottage called, well, At the Cottage. It was a huge success, selling thousands of copies every year since then. A copy sits, dog-eared and smeared with sunscreen, in every cottage worthy of the name, right beside the bird book with the missing pages. Now, showing the same creative spirit when it comes to names, comes Still at the Cottage. Readers will be surprised to learn that some things have changed in cottage country, which...
Will Ferguson has spent the past three years criss-crossing Canada. In a helicopter above the barrenlands of the sub-arctic: in a canoe with his four year-old-son: on board seaplanes and along the Underground Railroad, Ferguson's travels have taken him from Cape Spear on the remote coast of Newfoundland to the sun-dappled streets of Olde Victoria. Through his engaging and witty prose style he takes us on a journey of discovery through Canada's hidden history and landscape. Funny, poignant and in...
In this book, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, and Aboriginal leaders focus on how Coast Salish lives and identities have been influenced by the two colonizing nations (Canada and the US) and by shifting Aboriginal circumstances. Contributors point to the continual reshaping of Coast Salish identities and our understandings of them through litigation and language revitalization, as well as community efforts to reclaim their connections with the environment. They point to s...
The Game Planners studies the policy-making process in six Canadian national sports organizations, each of which deals with a different high-profile Olympic event. The authors argue that the creation of a "high-performance" sport system in Canada is due to pressure from three areas: the Canadian government, the physical education profession, and the sports community.
The award-winning, bestselling author of While Canada Slept gives his view of a country wasted on Canadians. What is national character? What makes the Americans, the British, the French, the Russians, and the Chinese who they are? In this homogenized world, where globalization is a byword for a deadening sameness, why do peoples who live in the same region, use the same money, read the same books, and watch the same movies remain different from one another? As much as Canada may be seen as a...
In Celebration of Our Survival
For years, aboriginal people have been studied, observed and written about, usually by members of the non-native community. The present volume has been written, compiled and edited by aboriginal peoples from British Columbia who, in telling their own stories, celebrate the survival of the distinct cultures of the First Nations people in the face of decades of colonization and attempts at assimilation.
"A remarkable life story. . . Angela Sterritt is a formidable storyteller and a passionate advocate."—Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves "Sterritt's story is living proof of how courageous Indigenous women are."—Tanya Talaga, author of Seven Fallen Feathers and All Our Relations Unbroken is an extraordinary work of memoir and investigative journalism focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, written by an award-winning Gitxsan journalist who survived life on the s...
Ubuntu is a Bantu term meaning humanity. It is also a philosophical and ethical system of thought, from which definitions of humanness, togetherness, and social politics of difference arise. Devi Dee Mucina is a Black Indigenous Ubuntu man. In Ubuntu Relational Love, he uses Ubuntu oratures as tools to address the impacts of Euro-colonialism while regenerating relational Ubuntu governance structures.Called 'millet granaries' to reflect the nourishing and sustaining nature of Indigenous knowledge...
An examination of the cultural assumptions embedded in the theories propounded by white feminists, this important contribution to fourth-world theory provides a distinctive perspective on the dichotomy between Eurocentric and Aboriginal thought. Challenges to the hegemony of contemporary feminist theory are extended to facilitate consideration of self-government on Aboriginal terms. This thoughtful, culturally relevant analysis reconsiders the tacit resuppositions that have guided dominant femin...
Facing the monumental issues of our time. In a 2012 performance piece, Rebecca Belmore transformed an oak tree surrounded by monuments to colonialism in Toronto's Queens Park into a temporary "non-monument" to the Earth. For more than 30 years, she has given voice in her art to social and political issues, making her one of the most important contemporary artists working today. Employing a language that is both poetic and provocative, Belmore's art has tackled subjects such as water and land r...
"Home and Native Land" takes its vastly important topic and places it under a new, penetrating light - shifting focus from the present grounds of debate onto a more critical terrain. The book's articles, by some of the foremost critical thinkers and activists on issues of difference, diversity, and Canadian policy, challenge sedimented thinking on the subject of multiculturalism. Not merely 'another book' on race relations, national identity, or the post 9-11 security environment, this collecti...
Works on Cloth
Wenona Giles takes a new look at migration in this innovative study of Portuguese women by examining the gender, class, and race relations of the immigrant Portuguese population from the micro level of personal experience to the macro level of the long-lasting societal repercussions of immigrant status and welfare on their children. Comparing across two generations of Portuguese Canadian women, the book delves into issues such as cultural heterogeneity among Portuguese immigrants, the ambiguity...
Newton argues that socialist women and their concerns posed a radical challenge to the male-dominated left. Early socialist women fought to be treated as equals and actively debated popular women's issues, including domestic work, women in industry, sexuality, and women's suffrage. They provided a unique and vibrant perspective on these issues and challenged the middle-class bias inherent in the women's movement. Broadening our understanding of Canadian social history, Newton analyses the inter...