Law & History

"In the late nineteenth century, to the alarm of government conservationists, the North American plains bison population collapsed. Yet large herds of other big game animals still roamed the Northwest Territories, and Aboriginal people depended on them for food and clothing.

"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.

"Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music, a study of subarctic Cree hunting songs, is the first detailed ethnomusicology of the nothern Cree of Quebec and Manitoba. The result of more than two decades spent in the Northern learning from the Cree, Lynn Whidden's account discusses the tradition of the hunting songs, their meanings and origins, and their importance tot he hunt. She examines women's songs, and traces the impact of social change - including the introduction of the hymns, gospel tunes, and country music - on the song traditions of these communities.

"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.

"Base closures, use of airspace for weapons testing and low-level flying, environmental awareness, and Aboriginal land claims have focused attention in recent years on the use of Native lands for military training. But is the military's interest in Aboriginal lands new? Battle Grounds analyzes a century of government-Aboriginal interaction and negotiation to explore how the Canadian military came to use Aboriginal lands for training.

"Behind the Man is the unique "biography" of Alberta political figure John Lee Laurie, a key proponent of Aboriginal rights in the 1940s and 1950s. Before 1961, the Aboriginal people of Canada could only vote in federal elections if they agreed to become "Canadian," that is, to leave their reserves, give up their treaty rights, and leave behind their homes, farms, and families. Laurie was instrumental in securing amendments to the Indian Act in 1961 which gave Aboriginals the unfettered vote.

"In this book, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, and Aboriginal leaders describe the Coast Salish, Aboriginal peoples living in western British Columbia and Washington State. They focus on how Coast Salish lives and identities have been influences by the two colonizing nations and on by shifting Aboriginal circumstances. The volume builds on new scholarship to move beyond existing academic views of the Coast Salish, which largely derive from ecological anthropology, in creating a new view of the Coast Salish world.

"At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwestern Alberta, Aboriginal people practiced a form of group hunting for nearly 6,000 years before European contact. The large communal bison traps of the Plains were the single greatest food-getting method ever developed in human history. Hunters, working with their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour, drove their quarry over a cliff and into wooden corrals. The rest of the group butchered the kill in the camp below.

"In 2007 Joseph Boyden, author of the bestselling novel Three Day Road, was invited by the Canadian Literature Centre to deliver the inaugural Henry Kreisel Lecture at the University of Alberta. Boyden spoke passionately, relating Aboriginal people in Canad to poor African Americans, Whites, and Hispanics in post-Katrina New Orleans. At the end of his lecture he presented a manifesto to the audience, demanding independence from the shackles of North American governments on behalf of these oppressed cultures. The lecture was received with much acclaim and enthusiasm.

"Inuit elders who grew up in camps on the shores of Frobisher Bay can tell you what happened when Martin Frobisher arrived with his vessel in 1576: "He fired two warning shots into the air. So right away there were some grievances." Frobisher's shots were the opening salvos in the search for the Northwest Passage, a search that lasted for more than four hundred years and riveted the Western world, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.