Anthropology

Denied her Indigenous status, Lynn Gehl has been fighting her entire life to reclaim mino-pimadiziwin--the good life. Exploring Anishinaabeg philosophy and Anishinaabeg conceptions of truth, Gehl shows how she came to locate her spirit and decolonize her identity, thereby becoming, in her words, "fully human." Gehl also provides a harsh critique of Canada and takes on important anti-colonial battles, including sex discrimination in the Indian Act and the destruction of sacred places.

Reviews
Gehl is at the cutting edge with her concepts and ideas... She is on a journey and documents it well. — Lorelei Anne Lambert, author of Research for Indigenous Survival

Clear, insightful, and desperately needed... — Lorraine F. Mayer, author of Cries from a Métis Heart

The discussion of the heart and mind knowledge, as well as the discussion on the Anishinaabeg Clan System of Governance, [are] major contributions to the research. — Marlyn Bennett, co-editor of Pushing the Margins

"Throughout Claiming Anishinaabe, the conversation remains rooted in the destructive effects of oppressive power on the human spirit, and an insistence that both knowledge and spirituality are key in reclaiming one’s sense of self." — Quill & Quire

Educator Information
This book would be useful for the following subject areas or courses: Indigenous Studies, Canadian History (Post-Confederation), Social Science, Autobiography/Biography Studies, Spirituality, and Law.

Additional Information
176 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Includes line drawings

Power through Testimony documents how survivors are remembering and reframing our understanding of residential schools in the wake of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a forum for survivors, families, and communities to share their memories and stories with the Canadian public. The commission closed and reported in 2015, and this timely volume reveals what happened on the ground.

Drawing on field research during the commission and in local communities, the contributors reveal how survivors are unsettling colonial narratives about residential schools and how the churches and former school staff are receiving or resisting the “new” residential school story. Part 1 details how residential schools have been understood and represented by various groups and individuals over time and how survivors’ testimonies at the commission are changing those representations. Part 2 examines whether the stories of abuse and trauma now circulating are overpowering less sensational stories, preventing other voices and memories from surfacing in local communities. Part 3 explores how the churches and former school staff have received this new testimony and what their response means for future relations with Aboriginal peoples across the country.

Power through Testimony shows that by bringing to light new stories about residential schools and by encouraging the denunciation of other historical wrongs, the TRC was more than a symbolic act. Ultimately, however, the contributors question the power of the TRC to unsettle dominant colonial narratives about residential schools and transform the relationship between Indigenous people and Canadian society.

As one of the first books published on Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Power through Testimony will be of interest to students and scholars of Aboriginal studies, anthropology, and colonial studies and all Canadians interested in transitional justice and human rights.

Educator Information
Contributors: Janice Cindy Gaudet, Cheryl Gaver, Robyn Green, Jula Hughes, Lawrence Martin/Wapistan, Charles R. Menzies, Arie Molena, Ronald Niezen, Simone Poliandri, and Eric Taylor Woods

Additional Information
252 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Read, Listen, Tell brings together an extraordinary range of Indigenous stories from across Turtle Island (North America). From short fiction to as-told-to narratives, from illustrated stories to personal essays, these stories celebrate the strength of heritage and the liveliness of innovation. Ranging in tone from humorous to defiant to triumphant, the stories explore core concepts in Indigenous literary expression, such as the relations between land, language, and community, the variety of narrative forms, and the continuities between oral and written forms of expression. Rich in insight and bold in execution, the stories proclaim the diversity, vitality, and depth of Indigenous writing.

Building on two decades of scholarly work to centre Indigenous knowledges and perspectives, the book transforms literary method while respecting and honouring Indigenous histories and peoples of these lands. It includes stories by acclaimed writers like Thomas King, Sherman Alexie, Paula Gunn Allen, and Eden Robinson, a new generation of emergent writers, and writers and storytellers who have often been excluded from the canon, such as French- and Spanish-language Indigenous authors, Indigenous authors from Mexico, Chicana/o authors, Indigenous-language authors, works in translation, and "lost" or underappreciated texts.

In a place and time when Indigenous people often have to contend with representations that marginalize or devalue their intellectual and cultural heritage, this collection is a testament to Indigenous resilience and creativity. It shows that the ways in which we read, listen, and tell play key roles in how we establish relationships with one another, and how we might share knowledges across cultures, languages, and social spaces.

Reviews
Edited by experts in Indigenous literature and contextualised beautifully, historical writers like E. Pauline Johnson are placed alongside exciting genres like Indigenous Science Fiction — illustrating the vibrancy and innovation of Indigenous storytelling across time, space and politics. If you want a primer on Indigenous cultural expressions, this is for you. If you want deft, detailed stories in Indigenous written, oral and graphic traditions, these will expand your thinking. Read, Listen, Tell will make you laugh, dream and search for more. — Niigaanwewidam Sinclair

A unique compendium that is the direct result of outstanding and painstaking scholarship, Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island is an impressively informative, deftly organized, and exceptionally well presented volume that is unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Indigenous Cultural Studies collections and supplemental reading lists. — Midwest Book Review

Read, Listen, Tell collects a brilliant and vast array of indigenous short fiction, bolstered by insightful critical essays that prioritize indigenous voices, culture, and methodologies. — Clarissa Goldsmith, Foreword Reviews, July 2017

Educator Information
• Connects Indigenous writing across colonial settler borders (of Canada, USA, and Mexico) at a time when those borders are hardening in light of security measures.
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission report highlights focus on education, prioritizing Indigenous knowledges, pedagogies, and perspectives—this book provides that.
• Provides curriculum material for new Indigenous content mandates in some provinces (Ontario, BC).
• Includes French-, Spanish-, and Indigenous-language.
• Indigenous authors (in translation).

Additional Information
410 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Edited by Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, David Gaertner, and Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill

Since the 1980s successive Canadian institutions, including the federal government and Christian churches, have attempted to grapple with the malignant legacy of residential schooling, including official apologies, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In Residential Schools and Reconciliation, award winning author J. R. Miller tackles and explains these institutional responses to Canada’s residential school legacy. Analysing archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history. This unique, timely, and provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies.

Excerpt
From the Conclusion:
"Canadians cannot approach reconciliation thinking that fine words and amicable gestures are enough. First Nations want their claims settled and many are interested in concluding treaties. Until Canada moves effectively to meet their desires, the country lacks the measures of social justice for Native peoples that are precondition for progress towards reconciliation...The cause of reconciliation is not hopeless; there are encouraging signs of individual and local initiatives designed to bring about reconciliation on a small scale...If enough of these small actions develop and spread, they could create the popular support for large-scale state measures that will redress the hard, material wrongs that stand in the way of reconciliation. Should that blissful day ever come, Canada will be able to advance meaningfully towards the goal of reconciliation."

Reviews
Professor Jim Miller of the University of Saskatchewan pulls back the curtain on the historical blame game. Residential Schools and Reconciliation documents Ottawa’s handling of Aboriginal issues. This is not ancient history. It just happened."
— Holly Doan, Blacklock’s Reporter. Saturday, November 18, 2017

As colonial nations around the world seek pathways to post-conflict reconciliation, J.R. Miller’s timely work is an important reminder of both the potential obstacles and the healing possibilities of such initiatives.
— Leigh Anne Williams, Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2018

Additional Information
368 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Salish Blankets presents a new perspective on Salish weaving through technical and anthropological lenses. Worn as ceremonial robes, the blankets are complex objects said to preexist in the supernatural realm and made manifest in the natural world through ancestral guidance. The blankets are protective garments that at times of great life changes—birth, marriage, death—offer emotional strength and mental focus. A blanket can help establish the owner’s standing in the community and demonstrate a weaver’s technical expertise and artistic vision. The object, the maker, the wearer, and the community are bound and transformed through the creation and use of the blanket.

Drawing on first-person accounts of Salish community members, object analysis, and earlier ethnographic sources, the authors offer a wide-ranging material culture study of Coast Salish lifeways. Salish Blankets explores the design, color/pigmentation, meaning, materials, and process of weaving and examines its historical and cultural contexts.

Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws is a journey through the 10,000-year history of the Interior Plateau nation in British Columbia. Told through the lens of past and present Indigenous storytellers, this volume detail how a homeland has shaped Secwépemc existence while the Secwépemc have in turn shaped their homeland. Marianne Ignace and Ronald Ignace, with contributions from ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, archaeologist Mike Rousseau, and geographer Ken Favrholdt, compellingly weave together Secwépemc narratives about ancestors’ deeds. They demonstrate how these stories are the manifestation of Indigenous laws (stsq'ey') for social and moral conduct among humans and all sentient beings on the land, and for social and political relations within the nation and with outsiders. Breathing new life into stories about past transformations, the authors place these narratives in dialogue with written historical sources and knowledge from archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, earth science, and ethnobiology. In addition to a wealth of detail about Secwépemc land stewardship, the social and political order, and spiritual concepts and relations embedded in the Indigenous language, the book shows how between the mid-1800s and 1920s the Secwépemc people resisted devastating oppression and the theft of their land, and fought to retain political autonomy while tenaciously maintaining a connection with their homeland, ancestors, and laws. An exemplary work in collaboration, Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws points to the ways in which Indigenous laws and traditions can guide present and future social and political process among the Secwépemc and with settler society.

The Whaling People live along the west coast of Vancouver Island and Cape Flattery in Washington. They comprise more than 20 First Nations, including the Nuu-chah-nulth (formerly called Nootka), Ditidaht, Pacheedaht and Makah. These socially related people enjoyed a highly organized, tradition-based culture for centuries before Europeans arrived. As whaling societies, they had a unique relationship with the sea.

In The Whaling People, Eugene Arima and Alan Hoover give an intimate account of the traditional ways in which these coastal people looked at and understood the world they lived in. They present the activities, technologies, and rituals that the Whaling People used to make a living in their complex coastal environments, and their beliefs about the natural and supernatural forces that affected their lives. The book features 12 narratives collected from First Nations elders, each illustrated with original drawings by the celebrated Hesquiaht artist Tim Paul.

This informative and entertaining book celebrates the still-thriving cultures of the Whaling People, who survived the devastating effects of colonial power and influences. It includes a history of treaty-making in BC, leading up to the just-ratified Maa-nulth Treaty signed by five First Nations of the Whaling People.

Additional Information
272 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Authenticity Note: Because of the artwork and narratives contributed to this work from First Nations elders and Hesquiaht artist Tim Paul, it has received the Authentic Text and Artwork labels. It's up to readers to determine if this work qualifies as authentic for their purposes.

Delgamuukw. Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace…

Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories – Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community.

Reviews
"Chelsea attacks issues head on, with humour and wit, sarcasm and cynicism and clear, concise and well-organized information. She makes further research easy, as every chapter includes copious endnotes with links to her curated resources. She explains the terminology of identity — status, non-status, registered, membership, Métis, Inuit, cultural appropriation and two-spiritedness." —Nancy Adams-Kramp

"While subtitled A Guide to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Issues in Canada, it would be a mistake to see Indigenous Writes as a book primarily about Indigenous people. Instead, it is much more about all of us — our relationship as non-Indigenous and Indigenous Canadians, and how it has been shaped (and misshaped) by the historic and contemporary governance of these issues.

For any Canadian who wishes to have an informed opinion about the country that we share — or, more to the point, publicly share that opinion — Indigenous Writes is essential reading."—Michael Dudley

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Debwe Series.

For all teachers.

Approved for Manitoba classrooms.  

ERAC approved.

Additional Information
291 pages | 7.00" x 9.00"

Nta’tugwaqanminen provides evidence that the Mi’gmaq of the Gespe’gewa’gi (Northern New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula) have occupied their territory since time immemorial. They were the sole occupants of it prior to European settlement and occupied it on a continuous basis. This book was written through an alliance between the Mi’gmaq of Northern Gespe’gewa’gi (Gaspé Peninsula), their Elders and a group of eminent researchers in the field with the aim of reclaiming their history, both oral and written, in the context of what is known as knowledge re-appropriation. It also provides non-Aboriginal peoples with a view of how Mi’gmaq history looks when it is written from an Indigenous perspective. 

There are two voices in the book — that of the Mi’gmaq of the Gespe’gewa’gi, including the Elders, as they act as narrators of the collective history, and that of the researchers, who studied all possible aspects of this history, including advanced investigation on place names as indicators of migration patterns. 

Nta’tugwaqanminen speaks of the Gespe’gewa’gi Mi’gmaq vision, history, relation to the land, past and present occupation of the territory and their place names and what they reveal in terms of ancient territorial occupation. It speaks of the treaties they agreed to with the British Crown, the respect of these treaties on the part of the Mi’gmaq people and the disrespect of them from the various levels of governments. This book speaks about the dispossession the Mi’gmaq of Gespe’gewa’gi had to endure while the European settlers illegally occupied and developed the Gaspé Peninsula to their own advantage and the rights and titles the Mi’gmaq people still have on their lands.

Author Note: The Gespe’gewa’gi Mi’gmawei Mawiomi is the organization that represents the three communities of the northern part of Gespe’gewa’gi. Research associates Richard Jeannotte and Donald Jeannotte, both Gespe’gewa’gi Mi’gmaqs, and Danielle E. Cyr, senior scholar at York University, wrote the seven first chapters. Troy Jerome, current Mi’gmawei Mawiomi Secretariat Executive Director / Nutewistoq wrote Chapter 8.

This beautifully illustrated book will be the standard work on the subject for a generation.
-- Brian Fagan, University of California, Santa Barbara

An entertaining, authoritative, and up-to-date review of one of the most contentious issues in archaeology today: the early peopling of the Americas.
-- Ian Tattersall, American Museum of Natural History

The migration of Homo sapiens into the Americas remains to this day a contentious subject amongst archaeologists. Strangers in a New Land represents a clear, interesting and well documented review of the arguments from all sides about how and when migrants came to the New World, where they came from, and what they were doing.
-- Aldona Jonaitis, University of Alaska Museum of the North

In Strangers in a New Land, the authors tell the absorbing story of the first people to explore and colonize the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age with captivating discussions of key concepts and descriptions of the most important First American sites from Alaska to South America. This is a book for anyone interested in learning about the first intrepid people who explored and settled the New World.
-- Michael Waters, Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A and M University

Strangers in a New Land is a profound and challenging account of an intensely controversial subject, the first human occupation of the New World, written by an acknowledged master.
-- Tom Dillehay, Vanderbilt University

Where did Native Americans come from and when did they first arrive? Several lines of evidence, most recently genetic, have firmly established that all Native American populations originated in eastern Siberia.

For many years, the accepted version of New World prehistory held that people arrived in the Western Hemisphere around 13,000 years ago. This consensus, called "Clovis First," has been increasingly challenged by discoveries at numerous archaeological sites throughout North and South America and is now widely considered to be outdated.

The latest findings have convinced most archaeologists that people came to the Western Hemisphere thousands of years prior to Clovis. There is credible evidence of a human presence in the Americas dating to 19,000 years ago and perhaps as early as 38,000 years ago. The prehistory of the very earliest arrivals into the New World is the subject of Strangers in a New Land.

This book documents 35 Clovis and Folsom sites, disputed pre-Clovis sites, legitimate pre-Clovis sites and controversial pre-Clovis sites. This covers an area that stretches from Bluefish Cave, Canada, 70 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle to Monte Verde, Chile, 14,000 kilometers south of Bering Straits. The discovery and history of each site is accompanied by photographs, maps and diagrams that illustrate the excavations and chronicle the evidence of human activity. Strangers in a New Land brings these findings together for the first time in language accessible to the general reader.

An excellent selection for physical and cultural anthropology, archaeology and prehistory collections.

With the rise of urban living and the digital age, many North American healers are recognizing that traditional medicinal knowledge must be recorded before being lost with its elders. A Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle is a historic document, including nearly 200 color photos and maps, in that it is the first in which a native healer has agreed to open his medicine bundle to share in writing his repertoire of herbal medicines and where they are found. Providing information on and photos of medicinal plants and where to harvest them, anthropologist David E. Young and botanist Robert D. Rogers chronicle the life, beliefs, and healing practices of Medicine Man Russell Willier in his native Alberta, Canada. Despite being criticized for sharing his knowledge, Willier later found support in other healers as they began to realize the danger that much of their traditional practices could die out with them.

With Young and Rogers, Willier offers his practices here for future generations. At once a study and a guide, A Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle touches on how indigenous healing practices can be used to complement mainstream medicine, improve the treatment of chronic diseases, and lower the cost of healthcare. The authors discuss how mining, agriculture, and forestry are threatening the continued existence of valuable wild medicinal plants and the role of alternative healers in a modern health care system. Sure to be of interest to ethnobotanists, medicine hunters, naturopaths, complementary and alternative health practitioners, ethnologists, anthropologists, and academics, this book will also find an audience with those interested in indigenous cultures and traditions.

Additional Information
240 pages | 6.00" x 8.99"

The Wyandot were born of two Wendat peoples encountered by the French in the first half of the seventeenth century—the otherwise named Petun and Huron—and their history is fragmented by their dispersal between Quebec, Michigan, Kansas, and Oklahoma. This book weaves these fragmented histories together, with a focus on the mid-eighteenth century.

Author John Steckley claims that the key to consolidating the stories of the scattered Wyandot lies in their clan structure. Beginning with the half century of their initial diaspora, as interpreted through the political strategies of five clan leaders, and continuing through the eighteenth century and their shared residency with Jesuit missionaries—notably, the distinct relationships different clans established with them—Steckley reveals the resilience of the Wyandot clan structure. He draws upon rich but previously ignored sources—including baptismal, marriage, and mortuary records, and a detailed house-to-house census compiled in 1747, featuring a list of male and female elders—to illustrate the social structure of the people, including a study of both male and female leadership patterns. A recording of the 1747 census as well as translated copies of letters sent between the Wyandot and the French is included in an appendix.

Paperback: 316 pages
Physical Dimensions: 6.00" x 9.00"

Bern Will Brown, noted northern author, artist, photographer, and respected community leader living in Colville Lake, Northwest Territories, provides new insights and perspectives on the Sahtu Dene, the people referred to as the "Hareskin" in Alexander Mackenzie's 1793 journal. Having lived among them for over sixty years and as a speaker of their dialect, Brown is well positioned to provide an adventure in history and culture rooted in the Hareskin traditional way of life.

End-of-Earth People, his latest contribution and a valuable record of the North, is a portrait of a people Brown has come to know in ways that anthropologists and ethnologists can only envy.

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 1916, Clah witnessed profound change: the arrival of traders, missionaries, and miners, and the establishment of industrial fisheries, wage labour, and reserves. His many voyages – physical, cultural, and spiritual – provide an unprecedented Aboriginal perspective on colonial relationships on the Pacific Northwest Coast.

Drawing on a painstaking transcription of Arthur Wellington Clah’s diaries, Peggy Brock pieces together the many voyages -- physical, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual -- of a Tsimshian man who moved in both colonial and Aboriginal worlds. Clah’s birth in 1831 coincided with the establishment of a permanent fur trade post, and he became student, teacher, and confidant to missionary William Duncan. Later, Clah’s spiritual voyage into the world of colonial culture transformed him into a devout Christian and an evangelist for the faith.

From the goldfields of BC and Alaska to the hop fields of Washington State, Clah witnessed profound change. His diaries reveal the complexities of personal interactions between colonizers and the colonized and the inevitable tensions within a community undergoing rapid change. They also show how Clah’s hopes for his people were gradually eroded by the realities of land dispossession, interference by the colonial state in cultural and political matters, and diminishing economic opportunities.

Taken together, Clah’s many voyages offer an unprecedented Aboriginal perspective on colonial relationships as they played out on the Pacific Northwest Coast.

This book is required reading for students and scholars of indigenous peoples and colonialism and anyone interested in BC or Canadian history.

Reviews
"The Many Voyages of Arthur Wellington Clah is a striking book offering an on-the-ground viewpoint of colonialism as it evolved on the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada." - Susan Neylan, Wilfrid Laurier University, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, V. 13, No 2, Fall 2012

"A fascinating account...Peggy Brock has made a truly significant contribution to our understanding of the history of the northwest coast in the nineteenth century." - Robin Fisher, Mount Royal University, International Journal of Maritime History, Vol XXIV No 3

"Arthur Wellington Clah’s diary is likely the most remarkable document to come into the light of Pacific Northwest Coast history ... Surmounting the challenges presented by this rich and at times near impenetrable personal record, Peggy Brock has researched and admirably summarized fifty years of the diary, pulling out key themes and highlighting its many contradictions. This much-needed introduction to a man and an indigenous history of British Columbia and Alaska will change the way we think about our past." - John S. Lutz, author of Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations

Clah’s life and diary offer a window into the lives of the Tsimshian political hierarchy of the time and Tsimshian society’s interaction with colonialism ... His voyage is a metaphor for the voyage that his own and other indigenous people were also taking in their encounters with colonialism." - Neil Sterritt, consultant in Aboriginal leadership and governance

Additional Information
324 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 19 photographs, 4 maps | Paperback

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.