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 …

John Dupre, a junior at West Virginia University, is an English major on the Dean's List dressed up as a Beatnik cowboy, the folk-singing resident outsider before nonconformity became a youth uniform.

Morgantown is a masterful ensemble piece centering around John and peopled by his unforgettable friends in the out crowd: Bill Cohen, the sharpshootin …

"Most long poems contain lyric occasions. Here is an amazingly sustained lyric that contains traces of other commodities." -Robert Kroetsch Sheila Murphy and Douglas Barbour extend their singular poetic vision of that elusive third I/eye in Continuations 2. The new lyric voice sustained (within) these labyrinthine verses does so by virtue of its au …

Dr. Frank Arthur Calder of BC’s Nisga’a First Nation was the first indigenous person to be elected to any Canadian governing body. For twenty-six years he served as an MLA in the legislature of British Columbia. He was the driving force behind Canada’s decision to grant recognition of indigenous land title to First Nations people throughout t …

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 …

This collection of essays provides a historical and contemporary context for Indigenous new media arts practice in Canada. The writers are established artists, scholars, and curators who cover thematic concepts and underlying approaches to new media from a distinctly Indigenous perspective. Through discourse and narrative analysis, the writers disc …

In this collection of essays, A.A. den Otter explores the meaning of the concepts "civilizing" and "wilderness" within an 1850s Euro-British North American context. At the time, den Otter argues, these concepts meant something quite different than they do today. Through careful readings and researches of a variety of lesser known individuals and ev …

The expansive ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Nation ranged from the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta to the Missouri River in Montana and from the Rocky Mountains east to the Cypress Hills. This buffalo-rich land sustained the Blackfoot for generations until the arrival of whiskey traders, unscrupulous wolfers, smallpox epidemics, and the …

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 …

Originally published in 1837 in Europe in German, French, and Slovenian editions, and appearing here in English for the first time, Frederic Baraga's Short History of the North American Indians is the personal, first–hand account of a Catholic missionary to the Great Lakes area of North America.

When Frederic Baraga, a young Roman Catholic Pries …

Indhold: Military Occupations: Some Reflections from Recent and More Distant History( Hugh Seton-Watson); The British Army of Occupation in the St. Lawrence Valley 1760-74: The Conflict Between Civil and Military Society(Fernand Ouellet); The Regime du Sabre-West African Style: The French Marines in the Western sudan, 1880-99(A.S.Kanya-forstner); W …

Sovereignty. Sugar. Revolution. These are the three axes this book uses to link the works of contemporary women artists from Haiti—a country excluded in contemporary Latin American and Caribbean literary studies—the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. In From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions of Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, Myriam Ch …

The Star Trek franchise represents one of the most successful emanations of popular media in our culture. The number of books, both popular and scholarly, published on the subject of Star Trek is massive, with more and more titles printed every year. Very few, however, have looked at Star Trek in terms of the dialectics of humanism and the posthuma …

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 …

Since the 1970s, Aboriginal people have been more likely to live in Canadian cities than on reserves or in rural areas. Aboriginal rural-to-urban migration and the development of urban Aboriginal communities represent one of the most significant shifts in the histories and cultures of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The essays in Aboriginal Peoples i …

A collection of articles that examine many of the struggles that Aboriginal women have faced, and continue to face, in Canada. Sections include: Profiles of Aboriginal Women; Identity; Territory; Activism; Confronting Colonialism; the Canadian Legal System; and Indigenous Knowledges. Photographs and poetry are also included. "This volume brings us …

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 …

In the current age of globalization, collaboration between nations is paramount. In September 2003, a group of academics, government officials, and business leaders gathered at the University of Calgary under the auspices of its Latin American Research Centre (LARC) to discuss issues related to international trade negotiations in agriculture. This …

Many Faces of Gender is an interdisciplinary volume that addresses the dearth in descriptions and analyses of gender roles and relationships in Native societies in North America's boreal reaches. This collection complements existing conceptual frameworks and develops new methodological and theoretical approaches that more fully articulate the compl …

On December 27, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, a distant land unknown to most Canadians. A crucial fall-out was the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, which Canada eventually joined, forcing 212 Canadian athletes to shelve their Olympic dreams, some temporarily, many forever. For the athletes, there was and is sad …

'Teenage Head changed the face of music in this country. I would not be who I am today without their first record ... In 1979 they were the only band that mattered.’—Hugh Dillon

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, no Canadian band rocked harder, louder or to more hardcore fans than Hamilton, Ontario's own Teenage Head. Although usually lumped in …

Being homeless in one’s homeland is a colonial legacy for many Indigenous people in settler societies. The construction of Commonwealth nation-states from colonial settler societies depended on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands. The legacy of that dispossession and related attempts at assimilation that disrupted Indigenous …

The first book-length study of whether cannibalism existed on the Pacific Northwest coast. McDowell shows how a "cannibal complex" among Westerners coloured many early accounts of "man-eating," and how this perception obscured the importance of ritual cannibalism in the secret Hamatsa ceremony—a crucial feature of Native spirituality.

Le premier mai 1876 Louis Riel écrivait à Mgr Courget: "Le Saint-Espirt m'a dit: Tu es le Messie de Gloire humaine que la Maison de Jacob s'attendait à trouver dans le Verbe incarné".

A la suite de quel cheminement psychologique et sous la pression de quels facteurs sociaux Louis Riel en arriva-t-il à cette convition? Quelle fut l'évolution de …

Regional planning is imperative if North America has any hope of retaining continental biodiversity and environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development. This timely collection of essays presents new protected area theory, method, and practice as an explicit part of regional planning. With a North American focus, these essays con …

At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwestern Alberta, Aboriginal people practiced a form of group hunting for nearly 6,000 years before European contact. The large communal bison traps of the Plains were the single greatest food-getting method ever developed in human history. Hunters, working with their knowledge of the land and of buffalo …

Winner, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers
Not every story has a happy ending.

Since her brother's death, eight-year-old Egg Murakami has been living day-to-day on the family ostrich farm near Bittercreek, discovering life to be an ever-perplexing condition. Mama Murakami has curled up inside a bottle, and Papa has exiled himself to t …

In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics--the politics of ethnocide--played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of aboriginal people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s "National Dream."

It was a dream that came at great expense …

The year is 1885 and Abigail Peacock is resisting what seems to be an inevitable future—a sensible career as a teacher and marriage to the earnestly attentive local storeowner.

But then she buys a rifle, and everything changes.

This Godforsaken Place is the absorbing tale of one tenacious woman’s journey set against the dramatic backdrop of the …

The poems in Dark Water Songs begin on the margins of islands and ancestors, and fan out, probing love, loss and life’s dilemmas. They expand and deepen the poetic exploration which began with her earlier collections, mining the reciprocal spaces enabled by the hyphen between Jamaican and Canadian, exploring silences, the weight of memory, and a …

The inspiring story of how one organization has tried to alleviate the struggles faced by First Nations peoples in Canada by building houses and developing livable communities for those in desperate need.

The people who were living here on Turtle Island (North America) before us have been pushed aside from their own land for decades. Mining companie …

A fascinating look at empires and imperialism, and the new kind of empire the United States has become. An excellent introduction for young adults.

The United States presides over the most far-flung imperial system ever established. Empire compares the American Empire to those of the past, finding that much can be learned from the fates of the Briti …

Five Little Bitches chronicles the rise and fall of the all-woman band, Wet Leather. Each of the women is plagued by her own unique demons, but their devotion to music and the punk lifestyle keeps them pushing on. As the band progresses, they tour Canadian, American and European towns and cities—and all the alleys, gutters, back stages, vans, hot …

Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award: Fiction and selected as a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book

Juliet Friesen is ten years old when her family moves to Nicaragua. It is 1984, the height of Nicaragua's post-revolutionary war, and the peace-activist Friesens have come to protest American involvement. In the midst of this tumult, Juliet's …

Titled after the Latin term for “unknown land”—a cartographical expression referring to regions that have not yet been mapped or documented—Terra Incognita is a collection of poems that creatively explores various racial discourses and interracial crossings both buried in the grand narratives of history and the everyday experiences of being …

In this updated edition of Treaty Talks in British Columbia, Christopher McKee traces the origins and development of treaty negotiations in the province. Through an examination of Native concerns, he analyzes conflicting points of view and suggests alternatives for achieving consensus.

The new edition includes:

• an overview of the Supreme Court of …

A fascinating look at hip hop, the world’s most popular music, and what it means to young people all over the globe, written by an acclaimed pop-culture critic. An excellent introduction to hip hop for young adults.

Hip hop is arguably the predominant global youth subculture of this generation. In this book Dalton Higgins takes vivid snapshots of …

Children of the Broken Treaty exposes a system of apartheid in Canada that led to the largest youth-driven human rights movement in the country's history. The movement was inspired by Shannen Koostachin, a young Cree girl named by George Stroumboulopoulos as one of "five teenage girls in history who kicked ass." All Shannen wanted was a decent educ …

Exploring a variety of topics—including health, politics, education, art, literature, media, and film—Aboriginal Canada Revisited draws a portrait of the current political and cultural position of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. While lauding improvements made in the past decades, the contributors draw attention to the systemic problems that con …

In this Anansi Digital Publication, James Laxer analyzes the descent of the United States into civil conflict. At a time when American society is roiled by deep divisions over immigration, guns, the role of the state, and the economic crisis, Laxer makes the case that serious conflict is likely to be generated from the right of the American politic …

Academics have never been Sofie's strong point; shes too busy spending all of her free time with her boyfriend, Paul, the captain of her Surrey high school's soccer team. When her English teacher implements a new program that pairs her with straight-A student Clea, Sofie worries about how Paul will react to her hanging out with the only out lesbian …

Scholar and diplomat Brian L. Evans gives us the first English-language biography of Chester A. Ronning (1894-1984): diplomat, politician, educator, and one of Canada's major public figures. This fascinating story depicts Ronning, the man who received many honours, and deepens readers' knowledge of Canada's post-World War II diplomacy and Canada-Ch …

Enrique Tomás lives a quiet life with a large, loving family in an unnamed South American country. But Enrique has secrets. When his second eldest son, Hector, and Hector’s beloved friend Nadia uncover one of Enrique’s secrets, the course of Hector's life is irrevocably altered. Exiled by his parents to the isolated countryside, Hector is accu …

This unfamiliar territory is the borderlands of women’s histories traversing the American and Canadian Wests. Specialists in women’s history, settler societies, colonialism, storytelling, education, and native and borderlands studies introduced by Elizabeth Jameson and Sheila McManus pool their distinct contributions toward forging the very fir …

Troubling Tricksters is a collection of theoretical essays, creative pieces, and critical ruminations that provides a re-visioning of trickster criticism in light of recent backlash against it. The complaints of some Indigenous writers, the critique from Indigenous nationalist critics, and the changing of academic fashion have resulted in few new s …

The characters from Susan Musgrave’s A Cargo of Orchids are back in this brilliantly engaging novel. Rainy, the Mexican-American woman, and Frenchy, the African-American, along with Musgrave’s narrator X have returned and convincingly insist their story is not done. Once inmates on death row, now reunited and hanging out at an old house in a BC …

The cowboy, as perhaps no other figure, has captured the imagination of North Americans for over a century. Before Owen Wister's publication of The Virginian in 1902, the image of the cowboy was essentially that of the dime novel - a rough, violent, one-dimensional drifter, or the stage cowboy variety found in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Wi …

Eighty-year-old Alberto Camelo has searched for love in all the wrong places. Nevertheless, he claims that his experiences have made him the world’s greatest lover. This claim is belied by his ancient neighbour and closest friend Adriana who taunts: “Perhaps you are the greatest lover of last Tuesday.” Despite his claims, Alberto has never ex …

The debut poetry collection by the actor, director, and writer James Franco

I’m a nocturnal creature,
And I’m here to cheat time.
You can see time and exhaustion
Taking pay from my face—
In fifty years
My sleep will be death,
I’ll go like the rest,
But I’ll have played
All the games and all the roles.
—from “Nocturnal”

“There’s n …

This Drawn & Quartered Moon makes pre-millennial San Francisco its epicenter, and from there ranges out in time and space. Characters abound. The reader will meet a plagiarist, a Vietnam vet named Othello, a Mafia don, a drug mule en route to jail, Elvis Presley (the poet’s father was his doctor), a “Sculptor of the Lower Fillmore Head Shot,” …