The author tells a story drawn from oral memories, a story which will soon disappear with the last Inuit generation to have seen the whalers. Illuminated by a remarkable collection of drawings, photographs, and illustrations, many in full colour, tales are told of when the whalers first appeared on the north-east coast of Baffin Island, how they set up land stations in the whale-rich waters of Cumberland Sound, and how they eventually pushed on into Hudson Bay. During this time the Inuit not only fed and clothed the whalers, they hunted with them, adding to the whalers' wealth. Our...

Sioui has produced a work not only of metahistory but of moral reflections. He contrasts Euroamerican ethnocentrism and feelings of racial superiority with the Amerindian belief in the "Great Circle of Life" and shows that human beings must establish intellectual and emotional connections with the entire living world if they hope to achieve abundance, quality, and peace for all. Sioui is proud to be a Huron and an Amerindian and is fully aware of the injustices that the aboriginal people of North America have suffered - and continue to suffer - at the hands of Euroamericans. He is convinced...

The first mega-scale hydro project to be built in the sub-Arctic, capable of generating as much electricity as fifteen nuclear power plants, its impact includes disruption of vast areas in an extremely fragile ecosystem as well as displacement of native peoples and the introduction of dangerous levels of mercury into their food supply. The debate over these complex environmental issues has been further complicated by political issues stemming from the importance of the project to the economic development of Quebec and the sale of at least ten percent of the electricity generated the United...

This collection of essays is a timely exploration of the progress of Aboriginal rights movements in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Contributors compare the situations in Canada and Mexico, in both of which demands by Aboriginal people for political autonomy and sovereignty are increasing, and explore why there is little corresponding activity in the United States. The essays address problems of constructing new political arrangements, practical questions about the viability of multiple governments within one political system, and epistemological questions about recognizing and...

Bounty and Benevolence draws on a wide range of documentary sources to provide a rich and complex interpretation of the process that led to these historic agreements. The authors explain the changing economic and political realities of western Canada during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and show how the Saskatchewan treaties were shaped by long-standing diplomatic and economic understandings between First Nations and the Hudson's Bay Company. Bounty and Benevolence also illustrates how these same forces created some of the misunderstandings and disputes that arose between the...

In The Marshall Decision and Native Rights Ken Coates explains the cross-cultural, legal, and political implications of the recent Supreme Court decision on the Donald Marshall case. He describes the events, personalities, and conflicts that brought the Maritimes to the brink of a major confrontation between Mi'kmaq and the non-Mi'kmaq fishers in the fall of 1999, detailing the bungling by federal departments and the lack of police preparedness. He shows how political, business, and Mi'kmaq leaders in the Maritimes handled the volatile situation, urging non-violence and speaking out against...

Outsiders to the culture have long focused on the physical artifacts of shamanism - like the costume and drum - and on ritual healing practices, but far less is known about the images shamans and storytellers use to entertain, heal, and educate. Van Deusen describes the lives of the people of the Amur during a period of dramatic transition, as they attempt to find some way to relate ancient traditions to an uncertain future. She emphasizes the contributions of women - often overlooked in the literature on shamanism - in traditional and contemporary society, and their concerns with ecology and...

Storytelling bridges culture, history, and spirituality. In The Flying Tiger Kira Van Deusen takes us into the world of the female shamans of the Amur, presenting over fifty traditional stories she recorded in the 1990s from the people of the taiga forest in the Russian Far East. More than a collection of tales, the reader learns about the lives of the story-tellers and their history, their spiritual traditions, adaptation to the environment, relationships with animals, and sense of humour.

In this title, Renee Hulan disputes the notion that the north is a source of distinct collective identity for Canadians. Through a synthesis of critical, historical and theoretical approaches to northern subjects in literary studies, she challenges the epistemology used to support this idea. By investigating mutually dependent categories of identity in literature that depict northern peoples and places, Hulan provides an account of representative genres in which the north figures as a central theme - including autobiography, adventure narrative, ethnography, fiction, poetry, and travel...

Morantz shows that with the imposition of administration from the south the Crees had to confront a new set of foreigners whose ideas and plans were very different from those of the fur traders. In the 1930s and 1940s government intervention helped overcome the disastrous disappearance of the beaver through the creation of government-decreed preserves and a ban on beaver hunting, but beginning in the 1950s a revolving array of socio-economic programs instituted by the government brought the adverse effects of what Morantz calls bureaucratic colonialism. Drawing heavily on oral testimonies...