Indigenous Studies

In recognition of the centenary of the North-West Rebellion in May 1985, the Native Studies Department at the University of Saskatchewan hosted a conference on the theme "1885 and After." The conference drew a wide audience, including Native and non-Native scholars who met to reassess the processes leading to the conflict in 1885 and the impact of the Rebellion on Native society and on the North-West.


The eighteen papers included in this volume have been arranged in two sections. The first deals with the events leading up to and including the outbreak of hostilities, while the second focusses on the transition of Native society following 1885.

This mini book is not meant to be accusatory, but is designed to put the basic facts/ truths down in simple words and design, providing an Aboriginal primer.

A is for assimilation, although blunt in its approach, is aimed at teens and anyone who isn’t familiar with the basic history of the nation’s First People.

“I am going to tell you how we are treated. I am always hungry.” — Edward B., a student at Onion Lake School (1923)

“[I]f I were appointed by the Dominion Government for the express purpose of spreading tuberculosis, there is nothing finer in existence than the average Indian residential school.” — N. Walker, Indian Affairs Superintendent (1948)

For over 100 years, thousands of Aboriginal children passed through the Canadian residential school system. Begun in the 1870s, it was intended, in the words of government officials, to bring these children into the “circle of civilization,” the results, however, were far different. More often, the schools provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often abuse.

Using previously unreleased government documents, historian John S. Milloy provides a full picture of the history and reality of the residential school system. He begins by tracing the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trail of internal memoranda, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards. A National Crime shows that the residential system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and documents in detail and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.

This superbly researched, groundbreaking historical atlas presents a history of the civilization and territory of the Stó:l?, a First Nations people. Through words, archival photographs, and 86 full-color maps, the book details the mythic beginnings of the Stó:l? people and how white settlement turned their homeland into the bustling metropolis of Vancouver. An important document packed with fascinating information, the atlas also makes a significant contribution to cross-cultural understanding.

A seminal collection of Haida myths and legends; now in a gorgeous new package.

The linguist and ethnographer John Swanton took dictation from the last great Haida-speaking storytellers, poets and historians from the fall of 1900 through the summer of 1901. Together they created a great treasury of Haida oral literature in written form.

Having worked for many years with these century-old manuscripts, linguist and poet Robert Bringhurst brings both rigorous scholarship and a literary voice to the English translation of John Swanton's careful work. He sets the stories in a rich context that reaches out to dozens of native oral literatures and to myth-telling traditions around the globe.

Attractively redesigned, this collection of First Nations oral literature is an important cultural record for future generations of Haida, scholars and other interested readers. It won the Edward Sapir Prize, awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and it was chosen as the Literary Editor's Book of the Year by the Times of London.

Bringhurst brings these works to life in the English language and sets them in a context just as rich as the stories themselves one that reaches out to dozens of Native American oral literatures, and to mythtelling traditions around the world.

In the last two decades there has been positive change in how the Canadian legal system defines Aboriginal and treaty rights. Yet even after the recognition of those rights in the Constitution Act of 1982, the legacy of British values and institutions as well as colonial doctrine still shape how the legal system identifies and interprets Aboriginal and treaty rights. What results is a systematic bias in the legal system that places Indigenous peoples at a distinct disadvantage.

The eight essays in Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada focus on redressing this bias. All of them apply contemporary knowledge of historical events as well as current legal and cultural theory in an attempt to level the playing field. The book highlights rich historical information that previous scholars may have overlooked. Of particular note are data relevant to better understanding the political and legal relations established by treaty and the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Other essays include discussion of such legal matters as the definition of Aboriginal rights and the privileging of written over oral testimony in litigation. The collection also includes an essay that, by means of ethnographic and historical data, raises concerns respecting how the law might be distorted even further if we are not careful in assuring that what is defined as Indigenous today is detached from its own traditions and divorced from contemporary issues.

In sum, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada shows that changes in the way in which these rights are conceptualized and interpreted are urgently needed. This book then offers concrete proposals regarding substantive, processual, and conceptual matters that together provide the means to put change into practice.

This book reviews the actual situation in terms of Metis, Inuit, and First Nations peoples in Canada using the most recent data available. It explores the issues historically, assesses the costs to both Aboriginal peoples and the country, reviews alternative approaches to solving the problems, and includes innovative analysis of the causes of these problems.

Suggested Grades: 10-12
ABPBC

John Loxley has worked in community economic development as a practitioner, advisor, teacher and scholar for over 30 years. The wealth of that experience is reflected in this book, which grapples with the conceptual and political complexities of addressing northern and Aboriginal poverty. Loxley examines a number of possible approaches to economic development, placing each within a broader theoretical and policy perspective, and considering its growth potential and class impact. Accessible and theoretically sophisticated, the book blends international development theory with northern Canadian and Aboriginal realities. It includes an important chapter on traditional Aboriginal values and culture and their relationship to the land.

Both a tribute to the unique experiences of individual Native Americans and a celebration of the values that draw American Indians together, All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees (or Casinos) explores contemporary Native life.

Based on personal experience and grounded in journalism, this story begins with the repatriation of ancestral remains to the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico. The 1999 return to Pecos of the skeletal remains of two thousand bodies excavated during an archaeological expedition nearly a century earlier was the largest repatriation in American history. In a united, purposeful, and energizing quest, the Pecos and Jemez Indians brought their ancestors home. This event, along with subsequent repatriations, has accelerated similar momentum across much of Native America.

In All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees (or Casinos), Catherine C. Robbins traces this restorative effect in areas such as economic development, urbanization, the arts, science, and health care. Through dozens of interviews, Robbins draws out the voices of Indian people, some well-known and many at the grassroots level, working quietly to advance their communities. These voices speak against the background of the narrative’s historical context. The result is a rich account of Native American life in contemporary America, revealing not a monolithic “Indian” experience of teepees or casinos, but rather a mosaic of diverse peoples existing on a continuum that marks both their distinctions and their shared realities.

The title, ‘Anishinaabemowin Maajaamigad—The Anishinaabe Language Leaves’ describes what can happen when Anishinaabemowin is no longer a part of everyday life. It encourages speakers today to revitalize the language.

Set in the 1940’s on Manitoulin Island, ‘the place of the spirits’, this story celebrates veterans who gave their lives to end a World War, and the survivors who built a hockey arena to help young people understand the importance of memories and community.

Our goal is for readers to understand each and every word and begin to use this beautifully complex language.

This book is a resource to be used by students and teachers working to restore Anishinaabemowin to its rightful place—which is in the homes and in the hearts of people young and old who take the time to listen and learn the language.

A CD is included so you can hear the correct pronunciation of the story.

In every walk of Canadian lifefrom business to education to the everydaythe reality is that increasingly you will be in contact with Anishnaabe World. Knowing something about Aboriginal people and their reality not only gives you an advantage over those who dont, its just plain polite in this country now called Canada.

In the spirit of Thomas King, Drew Hayden Taylor and Tomson Highway, Roger Spielmanns Anishnaabe World is an irreverent, teasing, hilarious, yet cross-culturally astute Survival Guide for Canadians increasingly aware of our countrys chequered past relations between Natives and non-Natives. Chief Ovide Mercredi says I challenge the reader to really listen to what Roger Spielmanns saying.

These diverse yet interrelated chapters show that to understand human lives, researchers must deal with the material world that all peoples create and inhabit. Therefore an anthropology of technology is not a separate, discrete inquiry; instead, it is a way to connect how people make and use things to any activity studied, ranging from religion, to enculturation, to communication, to art.

In this groundbreaking contribution to the field of culture and medicine, twenty-five professionals in medicine, nursing, and the social sciences have contributed fourteen papers on the influence of culture in health care. The topics range from the perception of skills of international medical graduates, to conflicting expectations of patient care of various cultural groups, to cultural issues at the end of life. Health care educators, practitioners, sociologists, policy makers, and learners at all levels will find this book makes a significant foray into an underexplored sector of research.

Early in his career, Judge John Reilly did everything by the book. His jurisdiction included a First Nations community plagued by suicide, addiction, poverty, violence and corruption. He steadily handed out prison sentences with little regard for long-term consequences and even less knowledge as to why crime was so rampant on the reserve in the first place.

In an unprecedented move that pitted him against his superiors, the legal system he was part of, and one of Canada's best-known Indian chiefs, the Reverend Dr. Chief John Snow, Judge Reilly ordered an investigation into the tragic and corrupt conditions on the reserve. A flurry of media attention ensued. Some labelled him a racist; others thought he should be removed from his post, claiming he had lost his objectivity. But many on the Stoney Reserve hailed him a hero as he attempted to uncover the dark challenges and difficult history many First Nations communities face.

At a time when government is proposing new tough on crime legislation, Judge Reilly provides an enlightening and timely perspective. He shows us why harsher punishments for offenders don't necessarily make our societies safer, why the white justice system is failing First Nations communities, why jail time is not the cure-all answer some think it to be, and how corruption continues to plague tribal leadership.

In the 240 years from contact to the present, British Columbia's population has experienced transformations of a kind and magnitude witnessed nowhere else in North America. The introduction of exotic diseases changed the human landscape almost overnight, as did gold rushes, industrialization, two world wars, a baby boom, late twentieth-century immigration from Asia, and a grey wave.

Becoming British Columbia is the first comprehensive, demographic history of this province. Investigating critical moments in the demographic record and linking demographic patterns to larger social and political questions, it shows how biology, politics, and history conspire with sex, death, and migration to create a particular kind of society. John Belshaw overturns the widespread tendency to associate population growth with progress by examining how the province's Aboriginal population of as much as half a million was reduced by disease to fewer than 30,000 people in less than a century. He reveals that the province has a long tradition of thinking and acting vigorously in ways meant to control and shape biological communities of humans, and suggests that imperialism, race, class, and gender have historically situated population issues at the center of public consciousness in British Columbia.

Becoming British Columbia demystifies demographics in an accessible yet scholarly and provocative way. It will appeal to scholars and students in history, sociology, geography, and Canadian Studies, as well as to general readers interested in BC history.