Identity & Race

"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.

"In August 2016 Colten Boushie, a twenty-two-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm by white farmer Gerald Stanley. In a trial that bitterly divided Canadians, Stanley was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter by a jury in Battleford with no visible Indigenous representation.

"First published in 1993, First Nations: Race, Class, and Gender Relations remains unique in offering systematically, from a political economy perspective, an analysis that enables us to understand the diverse realities of Aboriginal people within changing Canadian and global contexts. The book provides an extended analysis of how changing social dynamics, organized particularly around race, class, and gender relations, have shaped the life chances and conditions for Aboriginal people within the structure of Canadian society and its major institutional forms.

"A powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager - a boy who is not a 'legal' Indian because he was never claimed by his father - who learns the true meaning of terror. About to commit a devastating act, the young man finds himself shot back through time on a shocking sojourn through moments of violence in American history.

"There is an unconscious racism at work in Canada—an ignorance of Aboriginal peoples and culture that breeds indifference to, and ambivalence about, Aboriginal poverty and ill health. Warry examines conservative arguments and mainstream views that promote assimilation and integration as the solution to Aboriginal marginalization. He argues that we must acknowledge our denial of colonialism in order to reach a deeper understanding of contemporary Aboriginal culture and identity, both on and off the reserve.

"From the Canadian Indian Act to Freud's Totem and Taboo to films such as Nanook of the North, all manner of cultural artefacts were used to create a distinction between savagery and civilization. In Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal , Julia V. Emberley examines the historical production of aboriginality in colonial cultural practices and its effects in shaping the everyday lives of indigenous women, youth, and children.

"In Club Native, filmmaker Tracey Deer uses Kahnawake, her hometown, as a lens to probe deeply into the history and contemporary reality of Aboriginal identity. Following the stories of four women, she reveals the exclusionary attitudes that divide the community and many others like it across Canada. Deer traces the roots of the problem, from the advent of the highly discriminatory Indian Act through the controversy of Bill C31, up to the present day, where membership on the reserve is determined by a council of Mohawk elders, whose rulings often appear inconsistent.

"In Canada, indigenous peoples and official-language minorities benefit from certain rights that are not available to the rest of the population, but exactly who can claim membership in these groups remains a controversial issue. Protecting a group's culture and resources is often seen to be at odds with the freedom of individuals to claim membership in that group.

“Encounters between aboriginal peoples, European colonists, Chinese migrants, and mixed-race populations produced racial anxieties that underwrote cross racial interactions in the salmon canneries, the illicit liquor trade, and the (white) slavery scare in late-nineteenth- and – early- twentieth – century British Columbia. Colonial Proximities explores these contacts as politically charged sites of racial knowledge production in need of colonial governance.

"In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small multicultural communities that actively maintained fluid and inclusive membership through traditional kinship practices. These practices were governed by the Law of the People as described in the traditional stories of Wisashkechak, or Elder Brother, that outlined social interaction, marriage adoption, and kinship roles and responsibilities.