This masterful social and environmental history raises questions about how decisions being made about the natural world today will shape the cities of tomorrow.

In 1865, John Smoke braved the ice on Burlington Bay to go spearfishing. Soon after, he was arrested by a fishery inspector and then convicted by a magistrate who chastised him for thinking …

For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as th …

Northern British Columbia has always played an important role in Canada’s economy, but for many Canadians it has existed as an almost forgotten place: a vast territory where only a few roads and a ferry system connected small cities, towns, and villages to the outside world. Now as the appetite for natural resources intensifies, this resource-ric …

Globally, suicides account for a significant number of premature deaths every year. Traditional approaches to suicide research and prevention are not working for everyone, but why is this? And what can be done about it?

In Critical Suicidology, a team of international scholars, practitioners, and people directly affected by suicide argue that the f …

Every year, over 1.3 million people apply to visit, work, or settle in Canada and discover that their future rests in visa officers’ hands. How do these officers decide who gets in? Seeking answers to this question, Vic Satzewich gained access to eleven overseas visa offices. Points of Entry reveals immigration officers in action as they determin …

Going to university is exciting, but it can also be stressful. What courses should I take? What program should I choose? Will I get a job after graduation? This book shows that the best preparation for success on the job, and in life, is succeeding at university. Teamwork, meeting deadlines, overcoming challenges, writing well, and dealing with peo …

Canada is a country founded on relationships and agreements between Indigenous peoples and newcomers. Although recent court cases have upheld Aboriginal title rights, the cooperative spirit of the treaties is being lost as Canadians engage in endless arguments about First Nations “issues.” Each new court decision adds fuel to the debate raging …

Eye-catching headlines such as “Sixty people charged in child-porn crackdown” explode in the media with alarming frequency, giving the impression that our communities are awash with perverts. But what exactly do we know about these crimes and those who commit them? Who produces child cyberpornography? Who distributes it? Who consumes it? And is …

Drawing on Samuel Hearne’s gruesome account of an alleged massacre at Bloody Falls in 1771, Emilie Cameron reveals how Qablunaat (non-Inuit, non-Indigenous people) have used stories about the Arctic for over two centuries as a tool to justify ongoing colonization and economic exploitation of the North. Rather than expecting Inuit to counter these …

Oral stories form a portal through which rich cultural and linguistic information is passed from generation to generation. Tellings from Our Elders, Volume 2, presents stories in the Skagit Valley dialects of Lushootseed, the language of the indigenous people of the southern and eastern shores of Puget Sound. Transcribed from recordings made of the …

When the G20 Summit was held in Toronto in 2010, people were shocked to see Canadian police officers acting in ways that appeared foreign and frightening. The riot gear, surveillance, mass arrests, and physical abuse of citizens were all indicative of an out-of-control policing operation. The conflict sparked widespread outrage and calls for a publ …

Jean Barman rewrites the history of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of the French Canadians involved in the fur economy, the Indigenous women whose presence in their lives encouraged them to stay, and their descendants. For half a century, French Canadians were the region’s largest group of newcomers, facilitating early overland crossi …

The ranchers who resettled BC’s interior in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depended on grassland for their cattle, but in this they faced some unlikely competition from grasshoppers and wild horses. With the help of the government, settlers resolved to rid the range of both.

Resettling the Range explores the ecology and history …

Aboriginal people want an education that reflects their cultural values and linguistic heritages, an education that will foster their children’s engagement and identity and not marginalize them as learners. This book turns the spotlight on a rare success story – one Ontario high school’s attempt to recognize Aboriginal students’ cultural an …

Since it was first published in 1998, The First Nations of British Columbia has been an essential introduction to the province’s first peoples. Written within an anthropological framework, it familiarizes readers with the history and cultures of First Nations in the province and provides a fundamental understanding of current affairs and concerns …

Changes in technology and media consumption are transforming the way people communicate about politics. Are they also changing the way politicians communicate to the public? Political Communication in Canada examines the way political parties, politicians, interest groups, the media, and citizens are using new tactics, tools, and channels to dissem …

During the “long sixties,” baby boomers raised on democratic postwar ideals demanded a more egalitarian society for all. While a few became vocal leaders at universities across Canada, nearly 90% of Canada's young people went straight to work after high school. There, they brought the anti-authoritarian spirit of the youth revolt to the labour …

During the Second World War, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished Canadians to "Eat Right" because "Canada Needs You Strong" while cookbooks helped housewives become "housoldiers" through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household …

Ask any Canadian what “Métis” means, and they will likely say “mixed race.” Canadians consider Métis mixed in ways that other indigenous people are not, and the census and courts have premised their recognition of Métis status on this race-based understanding.

According to Andersen, Canada got it wrong. Our very preoccupation with mixedn …

The Jianghan Plain in central China has been shaped by its relationship with water. Once a prolific rice-growing region that drew immigrants to its fertile paddy fields, it has, since the eighteenth century, become prone to devastating flooding and waterlogging. Over time, population pressures and dike building left more and more people in the regi …

Over the span of seven years, hundreds of people displaced by mass violence told their stories to the Montreal Life Stories project. From the outset, the project’s organizers sought to develop an alternative model to traditional oral history practice, one where community members “shared authority” as equal partners. Together, they challenged …

When the Franklin Motor Expedition set out across the Canadian Prairies to collect First Nations artifacts, brutal assimilation policies threatened to decimate these cultures and extensive programs of ethnographic salvage were in place. Despite having only three members, the expedition amassed the largest single collection of Prairie heritage items …

The political concept of recognition has introduced new ways of thinking about the relationship between minorities and justice in plural societies. But is a politics informed by recognition valuable to minorities today? Contributors to this volume examine the successes and failures of struggles for recognition and self-determination in relation to …

Breaking open colonization to reveal tangled cultural and economic networks, Webs of Empire offers new paths into colonial history. Linking Gore and Chicago, Maori and Asia, India and newspapers, whalers and writing, Ballantyne presents empire building as a spreading web of connected places, people, ideas, and trade. These links question narrow, na …

Following the Second World War, liberal nation-states sought to address injustices of the past. Canada's government began to consider its own implication in various past wrongs, and in the late twentieth century it began to implement reparative justice initiatives for historically marginalized people. Yet despite this shift, there are more Indigeno …

Tsilhq?t'?n, also known as Chilcotin, is a northern Athabaskan language spoken by the people of the Chilco River (Tsilhq?x) in Interior British Columbia. Until now, the literature on Tsilhq?t'?n contained very little description of the language. With forty-seven consonants and six vowels plus tone, the phonological system is notoriously complex. Th …

The Canadian Rangers stand sentinel in the farthest reaches of our country. For more than six decades, this dedicated group of citizen-soldiers has quietly served as Canada’s eyes, ears, and voice in isolated coastal and northern communities. Drawing on official records, interviews, and participation in Ranger exercises, Lackenbauer argues that t …

Research on Indigenous issues rarely focuses on life in major metropolitan centres. Instead, there is a tendency to frame rural locations as emblematic of authentic or “real” Indigeneity. While such a perspective may support Indigenous struggles for territory and recognition, it fails to account for large swaths of contemporary Indigenous reali …

This updated edition of Treaty Talks in British Columbia traces the origins and development of treaty negotiations in the province and includes a postscript, co-authored with Peter Colenbrander, that provides an extensive overview of the treaty process from 2001 to 2009. The authors outline the achievements of and challenges for the treaty process …

Canada has abundant natural wealth, beautiful landscapes, vast forests, and thousands of rivers and lakes. The land defines Canadians as a people, yet the country has one of the industrialized world’s worst environmental records. Building on his previous book, The Environmental Rights Revolution (2012), David R. Boyd describes how recognizing the …

Thomas Isaac looks at the broad picture of trends that are developing in the law and the background, highlighting aspects of Canadian law that impact Aboriginal peoples and their relationship with the wider Canadian society. While covering issues such as Aboriginal and treaty rights, constitutional issues, land claims, self-government, provincial a …

Preserving What Is Valued explores the concept of preserving heritage. It presents the conservation profession's code of ethics and discusses four significant contexts embedded in museum conservation practice: science, professionalization, museum practice, and the relationship between museums and First Nations peoples.

Museum practice regarding han …

These legends, translated by Chief Kenneth Harris, tell of the origin of the Native people who live in the region between the Skeena and Nass rivers of British Columbia. Other stories tell of occurrences particularly significant in the 'history' of the people -- the origins of the 'Killer Whale' and 'Thunderbird Twtjea-adku,' and the revenge of 'Me …

Fire is a defining element in Canadian land and life. With few exceptions, Canada's forests and prairies have evolved with fire. Its peoples have exploited fire and sought to protect themselves from its excesses, and since Confederation, the country has devised various institutions to connect fire and society. The choices Canadians have made says a …

Human rights complaints attract a great deal of public interest, but what is going on below the surface? When people contact a human rights lawyer, how do they think about and use human rights discourse? How are complaints turned into cases? Can administrative systems be both effective and fair? Defining Rights and Wrongs investigates the day-to-da …

The moment of contact between two peoples, two alien societies, marks the opening of an epoch and the joining of histories. What if it had happened differently?

The stories that indigenous peoples and Europeans tell about their first encounters with one another are enormously valuable historical records, but their relevance extends beyond the past. …

Relations between Canada and Quebec have never been easy. Beginning with the Conquest and working through the many political permutations before Confederation and since, there has always been conflict between the two governments and, in particular, between two points of view. The rebellions of 1837-8, conscription, the Quiet Revolution, language la …

Theories of liberal multiculturalism seek to reconcile cultural rights with universal liberal principles. Some focus on individual autonomy; others emphasize communal identity. Andrew Robinson argues that liberal multiculturalism can be justified without privileging either. By appealing to the deeper value of meaningful life, he shows how autonomy …

People, Politics, and Child Welfare in British Columbia traces the evolution of policies and programs intended to protect children in BC from neglect and abuse. Analyzing this evolution reveals that child protection policy and practice has reflected the priorities of politicians and public servants in power. With few exceptions, efforts to establis …

Hunters at the Margin examines the conflict in the Northwest Territories between Native hunters and conservationists over three big game species: the wood bison, the muskox, and the caribou. John Sandlos argues that the introduction of game regulations, national parks, and game sanctuaries was central to the assertion of state authority over the tr …

Hunters, medicine men, and missionaries continue to dominate images and narratives of the West, even though historians have recognized women’s role as colonizer and colonized since the 1980s. Kristin Burnett helps to correct this imbalance by presenting colonial medicine as a gendered phenomenon. Although the imperial eye focused on medicine men, …

The current Status criteria of the Indian Act contains descent-based rules akin to blood quantum that are particularly discriminatory against women and their descendants, which author Pamela Palmater argues will lead to the extinguishment of First Nations as legal and constitutional entities. Beginning with an historic overview of legislative enact …

First-hand accounts of Indigenous people's encounters with colonialism are rare. A daily diary that extends over fifty years is unparalleled. Based on a transcription of Arthur Wellington Clah's diaries, this book offers a riveting account of a Tsimshian man who moved in both colonial and Aboriginal worlds. From his birth in 1831 to his death in 19 …

The global pathways that connect cities and nations are congested with people, money, and cultural transmissions. Transnational Yearnings maps a new way to look at modern contact zones and the personal interconnections that inform them by tracing circuits of migration and leisure travel between postcolonial Jamaica and Toronto, a city that has beco …

The passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 focused attention on the ways in which Indigenous peoples are adapting to the pressures of globalization and development. This volume extends the discussion by presenting case studies from around the world that explore how Indigenous peoples are engaging with and challeng …

Delgamuukw. Mabo. Ngati Apa. Recent cases have created a framework for litigating Aboriginal title in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This book brings together distinguished scholars who show that our understanding of where the concept of Aboriginal title came from – and where it may be going – can also be enhanced by exploring legal develo …

In 2008 the Canadian government apologized to the victims of the notorious Indian residential school system, and established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose goal was to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that engineered the system.

Unsettling the Settler Within argues that in order to truly participat …

Until recently, most residents of Puvirnituq, an Inuit settlement in Northern Quebec, made their living off the land. Successful hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering, so vital to people’s survival, were underpinned by the expectation that food should be shared. As the Inuit moved into – both forced and voluntary – they have had to incorpo …

Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes poses a number of probing questions about the role and responsibility of museums and anthropology in the contemporary world. In it, Michael Ames, an internationally renowned museum director, challenges popular concepts and criticisms of museums and presents an alternate perspective which reflects his experiences from …

Conventional ideas about gender and sexuality dictate that people born with male bodies naturally possess both a man’s identity and a man’s right to authority. Recent scholarship in the field of gender studies, however, exposes the complex political technologies that construct gender as a supposedly unchanging biological essence with self-evide …