With Good Intentions examines the joint efforts of Aboriginal people and individuals of European ancestry to counter injustice in Canada when colonization was at its height, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These people recognized colonial wrongs and worked together in a variety of ways to right them, but they could not stem the tide of European-based exploitation.

The book is neither an apologist text nor an attempt to argue that some colonizers were simply "well intentioned." Almost all those considered here -- teachers, lawyers, missionaries,...