Colonialism

"Cultural tourism is frequently marketed as an economic panacea for communities whose traditional ways of life have been compromised by the dominant societies by which they have been colonized. Indigenous communities in particular are responding to these opportunities in innovative ways that set them apart from their non-Indigenous predecessors and competitors.

"A well-known member of the circle of Confederation poets, Duncan Campbell Scott is generally considered a kind-hearted and sympathetic portrayer of the nobility of the Canadian Indian. But his real belief about the conditions and future of Canada's Native people is revealed in his official writings during his long tenure as Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs.

"The author challenges the myth of trade dependence which has pervaded histories of this period, by proving the superiority of native weapons over matchlock muskets. A fascinating argument on a contentious ethno-historical issue." -- Provided by publisher

"When Christopher Columbus first encountered the original inhabitants of the New World, he remarked they were 'So tractable, so peaceable . . . that I swear . . . there is not in the world a better nation." Yet wave after wave of European arrivals sought to wipe those nations from the earth. By what right did one race seize the land belonging to another and subjugate its people? Distinguished jurist and Native rights advocate Thomas Berger surveys the history of the Americas since their 'discovery' by Europeans and examines how the colonizing powers wrestled with the moral issues.

"This book is an ethnography of the cultural politics of Native/non-Native relations in a small interior BC city – Williams Lake – at the height of land claims conflicts and tensions. Furniss analyses contemporary colonial relations in settler societies, arguing that “ordinary” rural Euro-Canadians exercise power in maintaining the subordination of aboriginal people through “common sense” assumptions and assertions about history, society, and identity, and that these cultural activities are forces in an ongoing, contemporary system of colonial domination.

"In this compelling second edition, respected lawyer and Native rights advocate Thomas Berger surveys the history of the Americas since their 'discovery' by Christopher Columbus in 1492. His accounts of the slaughter and disenfranchisement of indigenous people throughout North, Central and South American reveal a searing pattern of almost unimaginable duplicity and inhumanity. But as A Long and Terrible Shadow makes clear, Native peoples have defied the odds, waging a tenacious struggle to survive and to re-emerge as distinct cultures.

"The story of the Beothuk, the aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland, is tragic. Their population steadily declined with the influx of European settlement in the 1700s and by 1829 Shanawdithit, the last of the Beothuk, had died. Conflict with other native groups and disease played a role in their demise, but it was “ruthlessness and brutality” by the English that ultimately led to their extinction. The outcome of twenty years of research, this award-winning book illuminates the origins, history, and fate of the Beothuk." -- Provided by Publisher

"Recent debates about the health of First Nations peoples have drawn a flurry of public attention and controversy, and have placed the relationship between Aboriginal well-being and reserve locations and allotments in the spotlight. Aboriginal access to medical care and the transfer of funds and responsibility for health from the federal government to individual bands and tribal councils are also bones of contention. Comprehensive discussions of such issues, however, has often been hampered by a lack of historical analysis.

"The heyday of anthropological collecting on the Northwest Coast took place between 1875 and the Great Depression. The scramble for skulls and skeletons, poles, canoes, baskets, feast bowls, and masks went on until it seemed that almost everything not nailed down or hidden was gone.

"This elegantly written and insightful book provides a geographical history of the Indian reserve in British Columbia. Cole Harris analyzes the impact of reserves on Native lives and livelihoods and considers how, in light of this, the Native land question might begin to be resolved. The account begins in the early nineteenth-century British Empire and then follows Native land policy – and Native resistance to it – in British Columbia from the Douglas treaties in the early 1850s to the formal transfer of reserves to the Dominion in 1938.