Reserves

"Examines within an historical and judicial context the "federalization" of Indian reserves and the use of the concept of the usufruct in defining the nature of Indian interest in reserve lands after Confederation." - From the preface

"Earth, Water, Air and Fire: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory is a collection of 17 articles that resulted from a conference sponsored by Nin.D.Waab.Jig. and Wilfred Laurier University in 1994. The conference addressed the status of ethnohistory in Canada as it related to Aboriginal People and was designed as multidisciplinary and holistic. Two of the contributors reflect the Aboriginal Perspective and the essays by Dean Jacobs of Walpole Island and renowned historian Olive P. Dickason are important contributions. The remaining topics are wide-ranging and a few are noteworthy.

"Mixed-blood urban Native people in Canada are profoundly affected by federal legislation that divides Aboriginal people into different legal categories. In this pioneering book, Bonita Lawrence reveals the ways in which mixed-blood urban Native people understand their identities and struggle to survive in a world that, more often than not, fails to recognize them.

"Despite the billions of dollars devoted to aboriginal causes, Native people in Canada continue to suffer all the symptoms of a marginalized existence - high rates of substance abuse, violence, poverty. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry argues that the policies proposed to address these problems - land claims and self government - are in fact contributing to their entrenchment.

"The Indigenous people of Nova Scotia, the Mi’kmaq, have been dispossessed of their lands and, since the early 1820s, confined to reserves. African Nova Scotians have also been dispossessed of lands originally granted to them by white colonial governments and settled in communities with names like Africville, Preston or Birchtown. Yet “the story of Africville, and other stories of dispossession,” argues author Paula C. Madden, “cannot be told and understood outside the context of the dispossession of Indigenous peoples.

"While land claims made by Canada's aboriginal peoples continue to attract attention and controversy, there has been almost no discussion of the ways in which First Nations lands are managed and the property rights that have been in place since the Indian Act of 1876. Beyond the Indian Act looks at these issues and questions whether present land practices have benefited Canada's aboriginal peoples.

"Faith in Paper examines the reinstitution of Indian treaty rights in the upper Great Lakes region during the last quarter of the twentieth century, focusing on the treaties and legal cases that together have awakened a new day in Native American sovereignty and established the place of Indian tribes in the modern political landscape.

"Fragile Settlements compares the processes through which colonial authority was asserted over Indigenous people in southwest Australia and prairie Canada from the 1830s to the early twentieth century. At the start of this period, there was an explosion of settler migration across the British Empire. As a humanitarian response led to the unprecedented demand for land, Britain's Colonial Office moved to protect Indigenous peoples by making them subjects under British law.