In 1990, Gerald Conaty was hired as senior curator of ethnology at the Glenbow Museum, with the particular mandate of improving the museum’s relationship with Aboriginal communities. That same year, the Glenbow had taken its first tentative steps toward repatriation by returning sacred objects to First Nations’ peoples. These efforts drew harsh criticism from members of the provincial government. Was it not the museum’s primary legal, ethical, and fiduciary responsibility to ensure the phy...

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 present disparity in health and economic well-being between First Nations and non-Native populations, and the lingering racism and m...

In 2008, Canada established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that created Canada's notorious residential school system. Unsettling the Settler Within argues that non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation. Settlers must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge ...

The current Status criteria of theIndian 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 enactments defining Indian status and their impact on First Nations, the author examines contemporary court rulings dealing with Indigenous identity, ...

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 between those who want to see an end to special Aboriginal rights and those who demand a return to Aboriginal sovereignty.Greg Poelzer and K...

These twelve essays constitute a groundbreaking volume of new work prepared by leading scholars in the fields of history, anthropology, constitutional law, political science, and sociology, who identify the many facets of what it means to be Métis in Canada today. After the Powley decision in 2003, Métis people were no longer conceptually limited to the historical boundaries of the fur trade in Canada. Key ideas explored in this collection include identity, rights, and issues of governance...

In 1879, a Canadian Blackfoot known as Spopee, or Turtle, shot and killed a white man. Captured as a fugitive, Spopee narrowly escaped execution, instead landing in an insane asylum in Washington, D.C., where he fell silent. Spopee thus “disappeared” for more than thirty years, until a delegation of American Blackfeet discovered him and, aided by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, exacted a pardon from President Woodrow Wilson. After re-emerging into society like a modern-day Rip Van Wink...

Winner of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book AwardDespite what major media sources say, violence against Native women is not an epidemic. An epidemic is biological and blameless. Violence against Native women is historical and political, bounded by oppression and colonial violence. This book, like all of Sarah Deer’s work, is aimed at engaging the problem head-on—and ending it.The Beginning and End of Rape collects and expan...

Western Political Science Association's Clay Morgan Award for Best Book in Environmental Political TheoryCanadian Studies Network Prize for the Best Book in Canadian StudiesNominated for Best First Book Award at NAISAHonorable Mention: Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Book PrizeSince Justin Trudeau’s election in 2015, Canada has been hailed internationally as embarking on a truly progressive, post-postcolonial era—including an i...

The Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest inhabit a vast region extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and from California to British Columbia. For more than two decades, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest has served as a standard reference on these diverse peoples. Now, in the wake of renewed tribal self-determination, this revised edition reflects the many recent political, economic, and cultural developments shaping these Native communitie...

The northern community known as Peawanuck (Cree for Flint) is located approximately 32 kilometres up river from the former village of Winisk on the shore of Hudson Bay. There, prior to a devastating flood on May 16, 1986, the First Nations residents of Winisk had carried on with a traditional lifestyle built largely around hunting and trapping seasons.The late Mildred Young Hubbert of Markdale, Ontario, first visited Winisk in the 1960s as a classroom consultant wi...

Charles Eastman (1858–1939) straddled two worlds in his life and writing. The author of Indian Boyhood was raised in the traditional Dakota (Sioux) way after the upheaval of the 1862 U.S.–Dakota War. His father later persuaded Ohiyesa to take a white name, study Christianity, and attend medical school. But when Eastman served as a government doctor during the Wounded Knee massacre, he became disillusioned about Americans' capacity to live up to their own ideals.While Eastman's cont...