History
Synopsis:
“Our stories identify for us the land which surrounds us and tie us to our ancestors. We find ourselves inextricably linked to the past, to the land, to the river, to each other, to the future.” —Shirley Hardman, contributor
This impressive volume tells of the First Peoples of the area through vivid narratives from the past and present.
The traditional territory of the Ts’elxwéyeqw First Peoples covers over 95,000 hectares of land in Southwestern BC. It extends throughout the central Fraser Valley, encompassing the entire Chilliwack River Valley (including Chilliwack Lake, Chilliwack River, Cultus Lake and areas, and parts of the Chilliwack municipal areas). In addition to being an area of natural beauty and abundant resources, it also has a rich cultural history. The Chilliwack region gets its name from the Ts’elxwéyeqw tribe, and this volume delves into what this name means—and also what it means to be Ts’elxwéyeqw. Being Ts’elxwéyeqw portrays the people, artifacts and landscapes that are central to the Ts’elxwéyeqw people, and represents a rich oral record of an aboriginal heritage that has been kept alive—even through adversity—for thousands of years.
Lavishly illustrated with over seven hundred historic and current photos and maps, this book amalgamates a variety of voices and personal histories from elders, while providing background into eighty-five place names within the region. The book’s unique composition—with an emphasis on visual storytelling—showcases a culture with a deep connection to the surrounding land and the watershed.
Educator Information
Recommended for Grades 5-12 for the following subject areas: Geography, Social Studies, Science. Also a useful Teacher Resource.
Note: Educators should pre-read sections of this book that they are considering using from this reference book, as reading levels vary greatly.
Additional Information
304 pages | 11.00" x 14.00"
Synopsis:
This trailblazing history of early British Columbia focuses on a single year, 1858, the year of the Fraser River gold rush - the third great mass-migration of gold seekers after the Californian and Australian rushes in search of a new El Dorado. Marshall's history becomes an adventure, prospecting the rich pay streaks of British Columbia's "founding" event and the gold fever that gripped populations all along the Pacific Slope. Marshall unsettles many of our most taken-for-granted assumptions: he shows how foreign miner-militias crossed the 49th parallel, taking the law into their own hands, and conducting extermination campaigns against Indigenous peoples while forcibly claiming the land. Drawing on new evidence, Marshall explores the three principal cultures of the goldfields - those of the fur trade (both Native and the Hudson's Bay Company), Californian, and British world views. The year 1858 was a year of chaos unlike any other in British Columbia and American Pacific Northwest history. It produced not only violence but the formal inauguration of colonialism, Native reserves and, ultimately, the expansion of Canada to the Pacific Slope. Among the haunting legacies of this rush are the cryptic place names that remain - such as American Creek, Texas Bar, Boston Bar, and New York Bar - while the unresolved question of Indigenous sovereignty continues to claim the land.
Additional Information
6.00" x 9.00" | Bibliography | 30 black & white photos
Synopsis:
Since the 1970s, the Site C Dam in northeastern British Columbia's Peace River Valley has been touted by B.C. Hydro and successive governments as necessary to meet the province's increasing energy needs. With its enormous $10 billion price tag, the dam would be the largest public works project in BC history. It would be the third dam on the Peace River, and destroy traditional unceded territory belonging to Treaty 8 First Nations.
Following the last provincial election, the newly appointed NDP government called for a review of the project, but work on the dam continues. This comes after protests by aboriginal groups and landowners, several lawsuits against the government, and federal government intervention to let the dam go ahead. More recently, there has been a call from a United Nations panel to review how the dam will affect Indigenous land.
This book presents the independent voices of citizen experts describing every important impact of the dam, including:
- Sustainable energy expert Guy Dauncey on future energy demand, and whether there is likely to be a need for the dam's electricity
- An interview with aboriginal activist Helen Knott on the dam's assault on traditional lands and culture, in particular Indigenous women
- Agrologist Wendy Holm on the farm land impact — prime horticulture land important to food security and nutrition
- Family physician Warren Bell on the effect that loss of traditional way of life and connection to the land has had on the health of aboriginal people
- Wildlife biologist Brian Churchill with forty years' experience of studying its land and wildlife
- Former environmental minister Joan Sawicki on government cover-ups and smoking guns
- Energy industry watchdog Andrew Nikiforuk on the links between dams, fracking and earthquakes
- Award-winning broadcaster Rafe Mair on how party politics corrupts political leadership, and the role of activism and civil disobedience in shaping government decision-making
- David Schindler, one of the world's foremost water ecologists, explains the role dams like Site C will play in Canada's climate change strategy
- Joyce Nelson connects the dots between the Site C dam and continental water sharing plans
Reviews
"Wendy Holm brings another perspective to the case against Site C, that of the production of crops." — Nelson Star, January 2018
"A massive, $10 billion hydroelectric dam project on British Columbia’s Peace River could threaten the First Nations peoples who live nearby. This volume dives deep into the potential impacts and decades of governmental cover-ups related to this long-planned project."— John R. Platt, The Revelator, April 2018
"This book provides an organized and rigorous “how to” guide on the intellectual and fact-based opposition to Site C, and in doing this becomes a great model for a book on any long-term protest. Its ambition is to inform on the subject from every possible angle, keeping the Peace River, the region and its people in mind, rather than the expediency of the business and government angle, which is usually given at least equal weight by the mainstream media." — Cathryn Atkinson, Rabble, June 2018
"There is an "elephant in the room" — not the huge white elephant that you see at No-Site C rallies. This elephant is dark and invisible. The government does not talk about it ... No. This elephant is rather more sinister. Wendy Holm confronts it and exposes it. It's about exporting water."— John Gellard, The Ormsby Review, August 2018
"Damming the Peace is an accessible, thoughtful and informative collection of essays that reveal the grave environmental, human and economic costs if the Site C dam is built."— Tim Pelzer, People's Voice, October 2018
Educator Information
Includes Indigenous content/perspectives and an Interview with Indigenous activist Helen Knott.
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272 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
Indigenous perspectives much older than the nation itself shared through maps, artwork, history and culture.
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, in partnership with Canada's national Indigenous organizations, has created a groundbreaking four-volume atlas that shares the experiences, perspectives, and histories of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. It's an ambitious and unprecedented project inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action. Exploring themes of language, demographics, economy, environment and culture, with in-depth coverage of treaties and residential schools, these are stories of Canada's Indigenous Peoples, told in detailed maps and rich narratives.
This extraordinary project offers Canada a step on the path toward understanding.
The volumes contain more than 48 pages of reference maps, content from more than 50 Indigenous writers; hundreds of historical and contemporary photographs and a glossary of Indigenous terms, timelines, map of Indigenous languages, and frequently asked questions. All packaged together in a beautifully designed protective slipcase.
Educator Information
Recommended for ages 13+.
The Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada includes a four volume print atlas, an online atlas, an app, and more!
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322 pages | 10.50" x 12.87"
Synopsis:
Several centuries ago, the five nations that would become the Haudenosaunee—Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—were locked in generations-long cycles of bloodshed. When they established Kayanerenkó:wa, the Great Law of Peace, they not only resolved intractable conflicts but also shaped a system of law and government that would maintain peace for generations to come. This law remains in place today in Haudenosaunee communities: an Indigenous legal system, distinctive, complex, and principled. It is not only a survivor, but a viable alternative to Euro-American systems of law. With its emphasis on lasting relationships, respect for the natural world, building consensus, and on making and maintaining peace, it stands in contrast to legal systems based on property, resource exploitation, and majority rule.
Although Kayanerenkó:wa has been studied by anthropologists, linguists, and historians, it has not been the subject of legal scholarship. There are few texts to which judges, lawyers, researchers, or academics may refer for any understanding of specific Indigenous legal systems. Following the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and a growing emphasis on reconciliation, Indigenous legal systems are increasingly relevant to the evolution of law and society.
In Kayanerenkó:wa: The Great Law of Peace Kayanesenh Paul Williams, counsel to Indigenous nations for forty years, with a law practice based in the Grand River Territory of the Six Nations, brings the sum of his experience and expertise to this analysis of Kayanerenkó:wa as a living, principled legal system. In doing so, he puts a powerful tool in the hands of Indigenous and settler communities.
Contents
Part 1: Context
Part 2: The Nature of the Law: Principles and Processes
Part 3: Bringing the Great Peace
Part 4: The Constitution
Reviews
“Paul Williams’ Kaianerenko:wa The Great Law of Peace is the most comprehensive writing on Haudenosaunee law that I have ever read. As we move forward and work towards implementing the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, works like this, will be an invaluable resource for engaging with Indigenous laws. Kaianerenko:wa The Great law of Peace should be required reading in all Canadian law schools.” — Sarah Morales
"This expansive book illustrates the living nature of Haudenosaunee law. Everyone interested in law's relationship to violence and peace should read it. Haudenosaunee law has the power to change the world." — John Borrows
Additional Information
472 pages | 6.75" x 9.75"
Synopsis:
In Keetsahnak / Our Murdered and Missing Indigenous Sisters, the tension between personal, political, and public action is brought home starkly as the contributors look at the roots of violence and how it diminishes life for all. Together, they create a model for anti-violence work from an Indigenous perspective. They acknowledge the destruction wrought by colonial violence, and also look at controversial topics such as lateral violence, challenges in working with “tradition,” and problematic notions involved in “helping.” Through stories of resilience, resistance, and activism, the editors give voice to powerful personal testimony and allow for the creation of knowledge.
It’s in all of our best interests to take on gender violence as a core resurgence project, a core decolonization project, a core of Indigenous nation building, and as the backbone of any Indigenous mobilization. —Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Contributors: Kim Anderson, Stella August, Tracy Bear, Christi Belcourt, Robyn Bourgeois, Rita Bouvier, Maria Campbell, Maya Ode’amik Chacaby, Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group, Susan Gingell, Michelle Good, Laura Harjo, Sarah Hunt, Robert Alexander Innes, Beverly Jacobs, Tanya Kappo, Tara Kappo, Lyla Kinoshameg, Helen Knott, Sandra Lamouche, Jo-Anne Lawless, Debra Leo, Kelsey T. Leonard, Ann-Marie Livingston, Brenda Macdougall, Sylvia Maracle, Jenell Navarro, Darlene R. Okemaysim-Sicotte, Pahan Pte San Win, Ramona Reece, Kimberly Robertson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Beatrice Starr, Madeleine Kétéskwew Dion Stout, Waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy, Alex Wilson
Educator Information
Useful for these subject areas: Women's Studies, Indigenous History, Sociology, Gender Studies, Social Science: Violence in Society.
Additional Information
400 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
Regardless of Canada's governmental attitude of entitlement, First Nations, Métis and Inuit lands and resources are still tied to treaties and other documents. Their relevance seems forever in dispute, so it is important to know about them, to read them, to hear them and to comprehend their constitutional significance in contemporary life.
This book aims to reveal another side of the treaties and their histories, focusing on stories from contemporary perspectives, both Mi'kmaw and their non-Mi'kmaw allies, who have worked with, experienced and indeed lived with the treaties at various times over the last fifty years. These authors have had experiences contesting the Crown's version of the treaty story, or have been rebuilding the Mi'kmaq and their nation with the strength of their work from their understandings of Mi'kmaw history. They share how they came to know about treaties, about the key family members and events that shaped their thinking and their activism and life's work.
In Living Treaties, the authors offer the stories of those who have lived under the colonial regime of a not-so-ancient time. Herein are passionate activists and allies who uncover the treaties, and their contemporary meanings, to both Mi'kmaq and settler societies and who speak to their future with them. Here also are the voices of a new generation of indigenous lawyers and academics who have made their life choices with credentials solidly in hand in order to pursue social and cognitive justice for their families and their people. Their mission: to enliven the treaties out of the caverns of the public archives, to bring them back to life and to justice as part of the supreme law of Canada; and to use them to mobilize the Mi'kmaw restoration and renaissance that seeks to reaffirm, restore and rebuild Mi'kmaw identity, consciousness, knowledges and heritages, as well as our connections and rightful resources to our land and ecologies.
Additional Information
324 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
In Métis Pioneers, Doris Jeanne MacKinnon compares the survival strategies of two Métis women born during the fur trade—one from the French-speaking free trade tradition and one from the English-speaking Hudson’s Bay Company tradition—who settled in southern Alberta as the Canadian West transitioned to a sedentary agricultural and industrial economy. MacKinnon provides rare insight into their lives, demonstrating the contributions Métis women made to the building of the Prairie West. This is a compelling tale of two women’s acts of quiet resistance in the final days of the British Empire.
Reviews
"[These two women's] individual paths provide interesting parallel stories about Métis women who survived and thrived as the Canadian west transitioned from the fur trade to a more sedentary agricultural economy. Marie Rose’s family was French-speaking Métis and a few served as Louis Riel’s soldiers. Isabella was from the English-speaking Métis stock. Both were born in 1861 and both married non-Indigenous men in unions that were influenced, or arranged outright, by their families. Both families had a strong history in the fur trade; Marie Rose’s were free traders and Isabella as part of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Both were community builders who later relied on their influence and circle of acquaintances for support after they became widows and fell on hard times. And the stories of both women showed how the Métis people continued to make significant contributions to the Canadian west even after the fur trade ended, an area of historical study that MacKinnon thinks is rife for discovery...." — Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald
"MacKinnon's book offers readers an in-depth look at the contributions each of the two women made to the growth of Canada's west, but more than that, it is a book about courage, resilience, determination and strength of character. The book was written to tell the truth..." — John Copley, Alberta Native News
"Whether or not the two women were ever in the same room together, their individual paths provide interesting parallel stories about Métis women who survived and thrived as the Canadian west transitioned from the fur trade to a more sedentary agricultural economy…And the stories of both women showed how the Métis people continued to make significant contributions to the Canadian west even after the fur trade ended, an area of historical study that MacKinnon thinks is rife for discovery."— Eric Volmers, Strength and Resilience
"This book deals with the lives of two frontier women - Isabella Lougheed and Marie Rose Smith. They both were Métis but their histories were miles apart. ... The author has found a rich source of history in these two women and offers them in a detailed account of their lives." — Alberta History
Additional Information
584 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
In this deeply engaging oral history, Doug Williams, Anishinaabe elder, teacher and mentor to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, recounts the history of the Michi Saagiig Nisnaabeg, tracing through personal and historical events, and presenting what manifests as a crucial historical document that confronts entrenched institutional narratives of the history of the region. Edited collaboratively with Simpson, the book uniquely retells pivotal historical events that have been conventionally unchallenged in dominant historical narratives, while presenting a fascinating personal perspective in the singular voice of Williams, whose rare body of knowledge spans back to the 1700s. With this wealth of knowledge, wit and storytelling prowess, Williams recounts key moments of his personal history, connecting them to the larger history of the Anishinaabeg and other Indigenous communities.
Reviews
"This book gives us an alternative perspective on historical record that is both personal and collective. Doug Williams reminds us of the generations of Indigenous knowledge keepers and of a history that stretches back prior to European contact-including the disruption of contact. This book is his gift to the Michi Saagiig and to all Anishinaabek. It is also a gift to Canadians who want to help decolonize this country. - Armand Garnet Ruffo
"Storytelling is not just a gift. It's not just an art. It's also a responsibility: the weaving together of history, philosophy, culture and humour frequently highlighting a culture's perspective on the world. Doug Williams has been doing this as long as I can remember. He lives the culture, not just talks about it. The people and places he talks about in Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg are more a part of our history then all the things going on in Ottawa." - Drew Hayden Taylor
Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 9 to 12 for Creative Writing, English Language Arts, Media Studies, and Social Studies.
Additional Information
168 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"
Synopsis:
During the 60s Scoop, over 20,000 Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their biological families, lands and culture and trafficked across provinces, borders and overseas to be raised in non-Indigenous households.
Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh — Raised Somewhere Else delves into the personal and provocative narrative of Colleen Cardinal’s journey growing up in a non- Indigenous household as a 60s Scoop adoptee. Cardinal speaks frankly and intimately about instances of violence and abuse throughout her life, but this book is not a story of tragedy. It is a story of empowerment, reclamation and, ultimately, personal reconciliation. It is a form of Indigenous resistance through truth-telling, a story that informs the narrative on missing and murdered Indigenous women, colonial violence, racism and the Indigenous child welfare system.
Reviews
“With Canadians slowly awakening to the reality of the 60s Scoop and its ongoing repercussions, Cardinal’s inspiring work here is essential reading and will be an integral resource for generations to come.” — Waubgeshig Rice, author of Legacy
“Offers a window through which readers can see why cultural suppression is such a dark chapter in Canada’s history.” — Winnipeg Free Press
“I highly recommend reading this story for anyone interested in learning more about the Sixties Scoop and understanding what’s really happening under the stereotypes put on many Indigenous by those who do not truly understand.” — All Booked
Educator Information
The Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools list recommends this resource for Grades 10-12 for English Language Arts.
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214 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Foreward by Raven Sinclair
Synopsis:
In recent years, Indigenous peoples have lead a number of high profile movements fighting for social and environmental justice in Canada. From land struggles to struggles against resource extraction, pipeline development and fracking, land and water defenders have created a national discussion about these issues and successfully slowed the rate of resource extraction.
But their success has also meant an increase in the surveillance and policing of Indigenous peoples and their movements. In Policing Indigenous Movements, Crosby and Monaghan use the Access to Information Act to interrogate how policing and other security agencies have been monitoring, cataloguing and working to silence Indigenous land defenders and other opponents of extractive capitalism. Through an examination of four prominent movements — the long-standing conflict involving the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, the struggle against the Northern Gateway Pipeline, the Idle No More movement and the anti-fracking protests surrounding the Elsipogtog First Nation — this important book raises critical questions regarding the expansion of the security apparatus, the normalization of police surveillance targeting social movements, the relationship between police and energy corporations, the criminalization of dissent and threats to civil liberties and collective action in an era of extractive capitalism and hyper surveillance.
In one of the most comprehensive accounts of contemporary government surveillance, the authors vividly demonstrate that it is the norms of settler colonialism that allow these movements to be classified as national security threats and the growing network of policing, governmental, and private agencies that comprise what they call the security state.
Reviews
“An accessible must-read for all Canadians concerned about respectful relations with indigenous people and the decline of civil rights in the war-on-terror era.” — Publishers Weekly
Additional Information
192 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
The two major schools of thought in Indigenous-Settler relations on the ground, in the courts, in public policy, and in research are resurgence and reconciliation. Resurgence refers to practices of Indigenous self-determination and cultural renewal whereas reconciliation refers to practices of reconciliation between Indigenous and Settler nations, such as nation-with-nation treaty negotiations. Reconciliation also refers to the sustainable reconciliation of both Indigenous and Settler peoples with the living earth as the grounds for both resurgence and Indigenous-Settler reconciliation.
Critically and constructively analyzing these two schools from a wide variety of perspectives and lived experiences, this volume connects both discourses to the ecosystem dynamics that animate the living earth. Resurgence and Reconciliation is multi-disciplinary, blending law, political science, political economy, women's studies, ecology, history, anthropology, sustainability, and climate change. Its dialogic approach strives to put these fields in conversation and draw out the connections and tensions between them.
By using “earth-teachings” to inform social practices, the editors and contributors offer a rich, innovative, and holistic way forward in response to the world’s most profound natural and social challenges. This timely volume shows how the complexities and interconnections of resurgence and reconciliation and the living earth are often overlooked in contemporary discourse and debate.
Reviews
"Resurgence and Reconciliation provides a broader critical framework from which readers may begin to reset the charged political landscape of reconciliation. In the quickly expanding literature, law, and activism, some of the urgency of reconciliation has been unnecessarily lost. This book calls for quiet contemplation and a peaceful reframing of discussion and negotiations in what has become a noisy, busy field of Canada’s national reconciliation project." - Jeffery G. Hewitt, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
"This collection represents a sustained and engaged dialogue between eminent and emerging scholars of Indigenous rights as they attempt to conceptualize, critique, collaborate, and document relationships of reconciliation and resurgence. The editors and contributors take on the complex debates, challenges, intersections, and fractions facing Canadians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, making this a profoundly important counter-colonial work." - Jane McMillan, Department of Anthropology, St Francis Xavier University
Additional Information
384 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
Melonville. Smokey Hollow. Bannock Town. Fort Tuyau. Little Chicago. Mud Flats. Pumpville. Tintown. La Coulee. These were some of the names given to Métis communities at the edges of urban areas in Manitoba. Rooster Town, which was on the outskirts of southwest Winnipeg, endured from 1901 to 1961.
Those years in Winnipeg were characterized by the twin pressures of depression and inflation, chronic housing shortages, and a spotty social support network. At the city’s edge, Rooster Town grew without city services as rural Métis arrived to participate in the urban economy and build their own houses while keeping Métis culture and community as a central part of their lives.
In other growing settler cities, the Indigenous experience was largely characterized by removal and confinement. But the continuing presence of Métis living and working in the city, and the establishment of Rooster Town itself, made the Winnipeg experience unique.
Rooster Town documents the story of a community rooted in kinship, culture, and historical circumstance, whose residents existed unofficially in the cracks of municipal bureaucracy, while navigating the legacy of settler colonialism and the demands of modernity and urbanization.
"Rooster Town challenges the lingering mainstream belief that Indigenous people and their culture are incompatible with urban life and opens the door to a broader conversation about the insidious nature of racial stereotypes ubiquitous among the broader Canadian polity. — Brenda Macdougall
"Places like Rooster Town are known and talked about within the contemporary Métis world-everybody knows somebody whose parents or grandparents came from these types of invisible and often marginalized communities-but there has been no acknowledgment of their existence within Canadian historical, geographic, sociological, or political scholarship." — Brenda Macdougall
"Very little is written about Indigenous urban histories. They are typically hidden, or erased, from the histories of Prairie cities, and Canadian cities generally. Rooster Town is an authoritative correction to that colonial erasure in the written record." — Ryan Walker
248 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 33 b&w tables, 14 maps
Ch.1—Settler Colonialism and the Dispossession of the Manitoba Métis
Ch.2—The Establishment and Consolidation of Rooster Town, 1901-1911
Ch.3—Devising New Economic and Housing Strategies: Rooster Town during the First World War and After, 1916-1926
Ch.4—Persistence and Community: Rooster Town During and After the Great Depression, 1931-1946
Ch.5—Stereotyping, Dissolution, and Dispersal: Rooster Town, 1951-1961
Conclusion
Synopsis:
Using extensive first-hand interviews with both Witsuwit'en and settler elders, Shared Histories describes what happened in the 50 years after the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway established Smithers in the middle of Witsuwit'en territory in northwest British Columbia. By examining these relationships in the context of the history of colonization throughout the province, the author has written an open and honest portrayal of the ways in which the Witsuwit'en were marginalized, but still managed to create and maintain a place for themselves in a community that didn't want them.
Written with extensive consultation with members of the Witsuwit'en community and some of the town's earliest settler families, Shared Histories brings to life the often unwritten history of the ways in which these communities both clashed and joined forces. Its careful use of academic sources and the lived experience of participants make it the kind of history we all need to read.
This book will appeal to history buffs, educators, and academics and to those interested in First Nations and British Columbia history, truth, and reconciliation projects.
Awards
- Winner of the 2019 Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing
Additional Information
200 pages | 9.50" x 9.00"
Synopsis:
In Solemn Words and Foundational Documents, Jean-Pierre Morin unpacks the complicated history of Indigenous treaties in Canada. By including the full text of eight significant treaties from across the country—each accompanied by a cast of characters, related sources, discussion questions, and an essay by the author—he teaches readers how to analyze and understand treaties as living documents.
The book begins by examining treaties concluded during the height of colonial competition, when France and Britain each sought to solidify their alliances with Indigenous peoples. It then goes on to tell the stories of treaty negotiations from across the country: the miscommunication of ideas and words from Crown representatives to treaty text; the varying ranges of rights and promises; treaty negotiations for which we have a rich oral history but limited written records; multiple phases of post-Confederation treaty-making; and the unique case of competing treaties with radically different interpretations.
Educator Information
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Timeline
Introduction: Reading a Treaty and Overview of Treaties Addressed by Chapter
1. 1752 Peace and Friendship Treaty
2. 1760 Huron-British Treaty
3. 1805 Treaty 13 (Toronto Purchase)
4. 1850 Robinson-Huron Treaty
5. 1852 Saanich Treaty
6. 1871 Treaty 1
7. 1899 Treaty 8
8. 1923 Williams Treaty
Appendix 1: Cast of Characters
Appendix 2: Glossary of Terms
Reviews
"Solemn Words and Foundational Documents heeds the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call for a better understanding of treaties in what is now Canada. Using a case-study approach, Morin provides students with important and accessible information about the treaties themselves, their continued significance, and the relationship between oral and written historical sources. Aimed at senior undergraduate students, the discussion questions, format, and perspectives included in the text make for a valuable pedagogical tool." - Lianne C. Leddy, Wilfrid Laurier University
"In order for reconciliation to occur, Canadians need to better understand how we came to live on Indigenous land, and Morin’s important new book helps to do just that. Historical documents related to treaty history are often scattered across archives and hard to access. This book brings together the treaties themselves, along with related documents and a sharp analysis. The result is a valuable book that will be read by students, scholars, and the general public who are increasingly coming to realize that still today, we are living in treaty relationships with First Nations." - Alison Norman, Trent University
Additional Information
280 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"