Stories of Indigenous children forced to attend residential schools have haunted Canadians in recent years. Yet most Indigenous children in Canada attended “Indian day schools,” and later public schools, near their home communities. Although church and government officials often kept detailed administrative records, we know little about the act …

Many Canadians believe their nation fell on the right side of history in harbouring black slaves from the United States. In fact, in the wake of the American Revolution, Loyalist families brought slaves with them to settle in the Maritime colonies of British North America.

The transition from slavery in the American colonies to slavery in the Marit …

The US security state is everywhere in cultural products: in army-supported news stories, TV shows, and video games; in CIA-influenced blockbusters and comics; and in State Department ads, broadcasts, and websites. Hearts and Mines examines the rise and reach of the US Empire’s culture industry – a nexus between the US’s security state and me …

In 1988, after years of failed negotiations over the status of the Northwest Passage, Brian Mulroney gave Ronald Reagan a globe, pointed to the Arctic, and said “Ron that’s ours. We own it lock, stock, and icebergs.” A simple statement, it summed up a hundred years of official policy. Since the nineteenth century, Canadian governments have cl …

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 …

Oil and gas companies now recognize that industrial projects in the Canadian North can only succeed if Aboriginal communities are involved in decision-making processes. Where the Rivers Meet is an ethnographic account of Sahtu Dene involvement in the environmental assessment of the Mackenzie Gas Project, a massive pipeline that, if completed, would …

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 …

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 …

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 …

In recent decades, educators have been seeking ways to improve outcomes for Indigenous students. Yet most Indigenous education still takes place within a theoretical framework based in Eurocentric thought.

In Teaching Each Other, Linda Goulet and Keith Goulet provide an alternative framework for teachers working with Indigenous students – one tha …

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 …

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 events of 9/11 turned North American politics upside down. US policy makers focused less on how they could better integrate the economies of Mexico, Canada, and the United States and more on security and sovereignty. Security experts have tended to view the developments that followed within a bilateral framework, but Game Changer broadens the c …

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 …

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 …

Standing Up with G̲a’ax̱sta’las tells the remarkable story of Jane Constance Cook (1870-1951), a controversial Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw leader and activist who lived during a period of enormous colonial upheaval. Working collaboratively, Robertson and Cook’s descendants draw on oral histories and textual records to create a nuanced portrait of 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 …

In 1999 the Nisga’a First Nation in northwestern British Columbia signed a landmark agreement which not only settled their land claim but outlined significant powers that could be exercised by its government. The Nisga’a Final Agreement granted powers over land, resources, education, and cultural policy to the Nisga’a government, a major depa …

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 …

British Columbia inherited a legal system that granted married men control over most family property and imposed few obligations on them toward their wives and children. Yet from the 1860s onward, lawmakers throughout the Anglo-American world, including legislators on the Pacific Coast, began to grant women and children new rights. Domestic Reforms …

In the past few decades, the narrow intellectual foundations of the university have come under serious scrutiny. Previously marginalized groups have called for improved access to the institution and full inclusion in the curriculum. Reshaping the University is a timely, thorough, and original interrogation of academic practices. It moves beyond cur …

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 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 …

Since the mid-twentieth century, sustained contact between Inuit and newcomers has led to profound changes in education in the Eastern Arctic, including the experience of colonization and progress toward the re-establishment of traditional education in schools. Heather McGregor assesses developments in the history of education in four periods – t …

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 …

This volume examines Tsimshian culture from the prehistoric period to the recent past and includes contributions from such diverse perspectives as archaeology, linguistics, and social anthropology. The contributors demonstrate a balance between current fieldwork and careful archival analysis, as they build on the voluminous materials that are a leg …

Captain James Cook first made contact with the area now known as British Columbia in 1778. The colonists who followed soon realized they needed a written history, both to justify their dispossession of Aboriginal peoples and to formulate an identity for a new settler society. Writing British Columbia History traces how Euro-Canadian historians took …

Do Canada and the United States share a special relationship, or is this just a face-saving myth, masking dependency and domination? The Politics of Linkage cuts through the rhetoric that clouds this debate by offering detailed accounts of four major bilateral disputes. It shows that the United States has not made coercive linkages between issues. …

Countless books and articles have traced the impact of colonialism and public policy on Canada’s First Nations, but few have explored the impact of Aboriginal thought on public discourse and policy development in Canada. First Nations, First Thoughts brings together Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal scholars who cut through the prevailing orthodoxy t …

The social suffering and self-determination of Indigenous peoples are important public policy issues in Canada today. This book asks a fundamental question regarding Canadian-Aboriginal relations: Are self-government agreements an effective path to self-determination?

Finding Dahshaa describes self-government negotiations between Canada and the Deh …

The concept of environmental justice has offered a new direction for social movements and public policy in recent decades, and researchers worldwide now position social equity as a prerequisite for sustainability. Yet the relationship between social equity and environmental sustainability has been little studied in Canada. Speaking for Ourselves dr …

Real and imagined encounters among Aboriginal peoples, European colonists, Chinese migrants, and mixed-race populations produced racial anxieties that underwrote crossracial contacts in the salmon canneries, the illicit liquor trade, and the (white) slavery scare in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia. Colonial Proximities …

Since 1970 in Quebec, there has been immense change for the Cree, who now live with the consequences of Quebec’s massive development of the North. Home Is the Hunter presents the historical, environmental, and cultural context from which this recent story grows. Hans Carlson shows how the Cree view their lands as their home, their garden, and the …

Aboriginal peoples in Canada have diverse cultures but share common social and political challenges that have contributed to their experiences of health and illness. This collection addresses the origins of mental health and social problems and the emergence of culturally responsive approaches to services and health promotion. Healing Traditions is …

Recent Canadian foreign policy has fixated upon Canada’s former status as a middle power within a small club of western, democratic states. The emergence of a US-dominated world and of an integrated North American economy and the decline of multilateral rules and institutions as prime instruments of global governance have left Canadian foreign po …

Landing Native Fisheries reveals the contradictions and consequences of an Indian land policy premised on access to fish, on one hand, and a program of fisheries management intended to open the resource to newcomers, on the other. Beginning with the first treaties signed on Vancouver Island between 1850 and 1854, Douglas Harris maps the connections …

The Reluctant Land describes the evolving pattern of settlement and the changing relationships of people and land in Canada from the end of the fifteenth century to the Confederation years of the late 1860s and early 1870s. It shows how a deeply indigenous land was reconstituted in European terms, and, at the same time, how European ways were recal …

First Nations Cultural Heritage and Law explores First Nations perspectives on cultural heritage and issues of reform within and beyond Western law. Written in collaboration with First Nation partners, it contains seven case studies featuring indigenous concepts, legal orders, and encounters with legislation and negotiations; a national review essa …

John Lutz traces Aboriginal people’s involvement in the new economy, and their displacement from it, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the 1970s. Drawing on an extensive array of oral histories, manuscripts, newspaper accounts, biographies, and statistical analysis, Lutz shows that Aboriginal people flocked to the workforce and prospered …

With material provided by the Gitxsan Hereditary Chiefs’ office, court transcripts from Delgam’Uukw v. British Columbia, and her own research, Dawn Mills paints a compelling picture of the Gitxsan and their right to land and self-government. While the book focuses on the judgments rendered in the Gitxsan’s struggle in the Supreme Court and an …

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 …