Writing first nations into Canadian history: A review of recent scholarly works

Canadian Historical Review

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 99-114

  Coates, Ken ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 62949235174     PISSN: 00083755     EISSN: 17101093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/CHR.81.1.99     Document Type: Review

References (77)

1. The following text is not intended to be an exhaustive literature review. It is based, in the main, on books received for review by the Canadian Historical Review since January 1997 and is intended to provide a basic introduction to recent developments in the field.
2. And this important work continues. See, for a recent example, Richard Mackie, Trading beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793 - 1843 (Vancouver: UBC Press 1997).
3. Frank Tester and Peter Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-1963 (Vancouver: UBC Press 1994)
4. Alan Marcus, Out in the Cold: The Legacy of Canada's Inuit Relocation Experiment in the High Arctic (Copenhagen : IWGIA 1992),
5. and Relocating Eden: The Image and Politics of Inuit Exile in the Canadian Arctic (Hanover, NH : Dartmouth College and University Press of New England c. 1995)
6. A short version of Grant's review can be found in Shelagh Grant, 'A Case of Compounded Error: The Inuit Resettlement Project, 1953, and Government Response, 1990,' Northern Perspectives, 19, 1 (1991): 3-29.
7. Ila Bussidor and Ustun Bilgenreinart, Night Spirits (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press 1997)
8. For example, Jennifer Brown and Robert Brightman, eds., 'The Orders of the Dreamed': George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Myth, 1823 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba 1989)
9. Some of this material, like the often-cited work of Black Elk, has been used uncritically. Black Elk, for example, had a long association with Christianity that is not always covered in full in the analysis of his thought.
10. Thomas Parkhill, Weaving Ourselves into the Land: Charles Godfrey Leland, Indians, and the Study of Native American Religions (Albany: SUNY Press 1997)
11. For a series of interesting papers on the opportunities and problems presented by the use of oral evidence, see Laura Murray and Keren Rice, eds., Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999).
12. Georges Sioui is one exception to this comment, although his first major work is problematic as a work of history. See For an Amerindian Autohistory: An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen's University Press 1995).
13. Robinson worked closely with Wendy Wickshire in preparing this material. See, Harry Robinson, Nature/Power: In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller, compiled by Wendy Wickshire (Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre 1993),
14. and Wendy Wickshire, Write It on Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller (Penticton: Theytus Books 1989).
15. Emma Minde, Fred Ahehakew, and H.C. Wolfart, eds. and trans., kwayask e-kipe- kiskinowapahtihicik: Their Example Showed Me the Way (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 1997)
16. Flora Beardy and Robert Coutts, eds., Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree Stories: from York Factory (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1996)
17. See, in particular, her superb collection of articles, The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory (Vancouver: UBC Press 1998).
18. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1996).
19. James Youngblood Henderson, The Mikmaw Concordat (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing 1997)
20. Brandão, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More: Iroquois Toward New France and Its Native Allies to 1701 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1997)
21. William Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Confederacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1998)
22. Roland Viau, Enfants du néant et mangeurs d'ames: Guerre, culture et société en Iroquoisie ancienne (Montréal: Boréal 1997)
23. Michael Harkin, The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1997)
24. Ingeborg Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1996),
25. and Keith Thor Carlson, You Are Asked to Witness; The Sto:lo in Canada's Pacific Coast History (Chilliwack: Sto:lo Heritage Trust 1997)
26. (Vancouver: UBC Press 1998). This book was awarded the John A. Macdonald Prize in 1999 as the 'Best Book in Canadian History.'
27. Blair Stonechild and Bill Waiser, Loyal till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion (Calgary: Fifth House Publishers 1997)
28. Pat Grygier, A Long Way from Home: The Tuberculosis Epidemic among the Inuit (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1997)
29. Janet Chute, The Legacy of Shingwaukonse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1998)
30. John Sugden, Tecumseh: A Life (New York: Harry Holt 1997)
31. Robert Griffin and Donald Grinde, Apocalypse de/of Chiokoyhikoy, Chef des Iroquois/Chief of the Iroquois (Ste-Foy, Que.: Les Presses de l' Université Laval 1997)
32. A. Lavonne Brown, Ruoff Donald, and B. Smith, eds., Life, Letters and Speeches: George Copway (Kahgegagahbowh) (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1997)
33. Marybelle Mitchell, From Talking Chiefs to a Native Corporate Elite: The Birth of Class and Nationalism among Canadian Inuit (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen's University Press 1996)
34. Patrice Groulx, Pièges de la Mémoire: Dollard des Ormeaux, les Amérindiens et nous (Hull: Editions Vents d'Ouest 1998)
35. See, for example, Noel Dyck, Differing Visions: Administering Indian Residential Schooling in Prince Albert, 1867-1995 (Halifax: Fernwood Books 1997).
36. F. Laurie Barron, Walking in Indian Moccasins: The Native Policies of Tommy Douglas and the CCF (Vancouver: UBC Press 1997)
37. Frank Tough, 'As Their Natural Resources Fail': Native Peoples and the Economic History of Northern Manitoba, 1870-1930 (Vancouver: UBC Press 1997)
38. Raymond Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel to the Indians and the Metis: The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Western Canada, 1845-1945 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 1996)
39. Brett Christophers, Positioning the Missionary: John Booth Good and the Confluence of Cultures in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press 1998),
40. and Earle Waugh, Dissonant Worlds: Roger Vandersteene among the Cree (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1996)
41. Morgan Baillargeon and Leslie Tepper, Legends of Our Times: Native Cowboy Life (Vancouver: UBC Press 1998)
42. Sidney Haring, White Man's Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999)
43. Michel Morin, L'usurpation de la souveraineté autochtone: Le cas des peoples de la Nouvelle-France et des colonies anglais de l'Amérique du Nord (Montréal: Boréal 1997)
44. Brown and Vibert, eds., Reading beyond Words: Contexts for Native History (Peterborough: Broadview Press 1996);
45. Coates and Fisher, eds., Out of the Background: Readings on Canadian Native History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Copp Clark 1996);
46. Miller, ed., Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1991)
47. Olive Dickason, Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1997);
48. J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2000);
49. Arthur Ray, I have Lived Here since the World Began: The Illustrated History of Canada's Native People (Toronto: Key Porter 1996)
50. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1997). Calloway's work, to be clear, draws heavily on earlier studies by James Axtell, Bruce Trigger, Richard White, and others who similarly emphasized the reality of indigenous experiences and were not unduly limited by modern national boundaries.
51. Bruce Trigger and Wilcomb Washburn, eds., The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the America, 1: North America (Parts 1 and 2) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996)
52. cd rom (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Canadian Museum of Civilization 1998).
53. Robert Muckle, The First Nations of British Columbia: An Anthropological Survey (Vancouver: UBC Press 1998)
54. Peter Kulchyski, Don McCaskill, and David Newhouse, eds., In the Words of the Elders: Aboriginal Cultures in Transition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999)
55. D.N. Sprague, Canada and the Métis, 1869-1885 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1988)
56. Thomas Flanagan, Métis Lands in Manitoba (Calgary: University of Calgary Press 1991)
57. Gerhard Ens, Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of the Red River Métis in the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1996)
58. Leland Donald, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (Berkeley: University of California Press 1997)
59. Marshall Sahlins, How 'Natives' Think: About Captain Cook, for example (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995);
60. Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of James Cook: European mythmaking in the Pacific (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Honolulu, Hawaii: Bishop Museum Press c. 1992).
61. This debate is described in Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past (New York: Free Press 1997).
62. R. Cole Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia: Essays on Colonialism and Geographical Change (Vancouver: UBC Press 1997);
63. Tina Loo, Making Law, Order and Authority in British Columbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994)
64. Sarah Carter, Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada's Prairie West (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1997)
65. For a provocative study of this issue, see Windshuttle, The Killing of History.
66. Paul Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849-1989 (Vancouver: UBC Press 1990)
67. BC Studies (autumn 1992) produced a special theme issue on the Delgamuukw case, with several of the articles focusing on the historical and historiographical issues raised by the court process.
68. There is one excellent example of the research contributions that will flow out of the court processes. See Tribal Boundaries in the Nass Watershed, by Neil J. Sterrit, Susan Marsden, Robert Galois, Peter R. Grant, and Richard Overstall (Vancouver: UBC Press 1998).
69. A somewhat earlier volume, also derived from Delgamuukw, is Antonia Mills, Eagle Down Is Our Law: Witsuwit'en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims (Vancouver: UBC Press 1994).
70. This important theme has attracted only occasional comments. One more general and anecdotal effort to address this subject can be found in Brian Maracle, Crazy-water: Native Voices on Addiction and Recovery (Toronto: Viking 1993).
71. Christine Miller and Patricia Chuchryk, with Maria Smallface Marule, Brenda Manyfingers, and Cheryl Deering, eds., Women of the First Nations: Power, Wisdom and Strength (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press 1996)
72. A promising contribution in this field is Ruth Philips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700 - 1900 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1999).
73. One important new work in this field is Ives Goddard, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, 12: Language (Washington: Smithsonian Institution 1996).
74. Robin Fisher, 'The Nisga'a Treaty and the Re-Writing of Native History,' paper presented to the Northern History Workshop, Canadian Historical Association, Sherbrooke, Quebec, June 1999. For a very different approach to this subject,
75. see Robin Brownlie and Mary-Ellen Kelm, 'Desperately Seeking Absolution: Native Agency as Colonialist Alibi?' Canadian Historical Review 75, 4 (1994): 543-556
76. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba 1999). Milloy's work follows up on J.R. Miller's similarly excellent study, Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1996).
77. Patrick Donnelly, 'Scapegoating the Indian Residential Schools,' Alberta Report, 26 Jan. 1998. (The article is available in full at 〈http:// albertareport.com/25arcopy/25a06cpy/2506ar01.html〉). The article resulted in an attempt to get the Human Rights Commission to intervene on the issue, an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful.