Drum songs :

"The Dene nation is made up of eighteen thousand people speaking five distinct languages and spread over 1.8 million square kilometers in the western Canadian subarctic. In the 1970s and 1980's, the campaign against the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, support for the leadership of Georges Eramus in the Assembly of First Nations, and land claim negotiations with the federal government put the Dene on the leading edge of Canada's Native rights movement. Drum Songs reconstructs important moments in Dene History offering a Sympathetic treatment of their past, the impact of the fur trade, their interaction with Christian missionaries, and evolving relations with the Canadian federal government. Using a wide range of sources, including archival documents, oral testimony, archaeological findings, linguistic studies, and folk traditions, Kerry Able shows that previous interpretations of Canadian history have been excessively narrow and ethnocentric. She stresses the adaptability of the Dene and demonstrates that they were able to maintain a sense of cultural distinctiveness in the face of overwhelming economic, political, and cultural pressures from European newcomers. Abel's classic reinterpretation of the history of the Dene questions the standard perception that aboriginal peoples in Canada have been passive victims in the colonization process. In a new introduction, she discusses Dene experience since the first edition of the book was published in 1993 and describes how scholars in the field are changing their approach." - Provided by Publisher