Unsettling Encounters radically re-examines Emily Carr's achievement in representing Native life on the Northwest Coast, and her goals and achievements in representing Native villages and totem poles in her paintings and writings. Reconstructing a neglected body of Carr's works that was central in shaping her vision and career makes possible a new assessment of her significance as a leading figure in the history of early twentieth-century Modernism.

Unsettling Encounters includes a vivid recreation of the rapidly changing historical and social circumstances in which...