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Wisdom of the Elders
By David Suzuki, Peter Knudtson. 1992
First Published in 1992, this classic David Suzuki title is now available with a new introduction. A meticulous gathering of…
both scientific insight and Native knowledge, Wisdom of the Elders offers a way to reconcile our place in nature, by listening to our elders.From the foundations of time, the big bang, and the creation of the cosmos, to the fate of the earth as predicted by leading scientists and the sacred stories and traditions of Native peoples, this acclaimed collection of the world's wisdom shows that the future of the planet lies in listening to both these worldviews.Co-published with the David Suzuki Foundation.Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook
By Paula Gunn Allen. 1991
Geronimo
By Meryl Henderson, George E. Stanley. 2001
In this illustrated biography, young Apache Goyahkla and his friend play games in their village that will prepare him for…
his role as a hunter and warrior--and the place he will hold in history as Geronimo, fighter for the rights of his people.The Anguish of Snails
By Barre Toelken. 2003
After a career working and living with American Indians and studying their traditions, Barre Toelken has written this sweeping study…
of Native American folklore in the West. Within a framework of performance theory, cultural worldview, and collaborative research, he examines Native American visual arts, dance, oral tradition (story and song), humor, and patterns of thinking and discovery to demonstrate what can be gleaned from Indian traditions by Natives and non-Natives alike. In the process he considers popular distortions of Indian beliefs, demystifies many traditions by showing how they can be comprehended within their cultural contexts, considers why some aspects of Native American life are not meant to be understood by or shared with outsiders, and emphasizes how much can be learned through sensitivity to and awareness of cultural values. Winner of the 2004 Chicago Folklore Prize, The Anguish of Snails is an essential work for the collection of any serious reader in folklore or Native American studies.Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity
By Steven Leuthold. 1998
What happens when a Native or indigenous person turns a video camera on his or her own culture? Are the…
resulting images different from what a Westernized filmmaker would create, and, if so, in what ways? How does the use of a non-Native art-making medium, specifically video or film, affect the aesthetics of the Native culture?These are some of the questions that underlie this rich study of Native American aesthetics, art, media, and identity. Steven Leuthold opens with a theoretically informed discussion of the core concepts of aesthetics and indigenous culture and then turns to detailed examination of the work of American Indian documentary filmmakers, including George Burdeau and Victor Masayesva, Jr. He shows how Native filmmaking incorporates traditional concepts such as the connection to place, to the sacred, and to the cycles of nature. While these concepts now find expression through Westernized media, they also maintain continuity with earlier aesthetic productions. In this way, Native filmmaking serves to create and preserve a sense of identity for indigenous people.Singing for the Dead: The Politics of Indigenous Revival in Mexico
By Paja Faudree. 2013
Singing for the Dead chronicles ethnic revival in Oaxaca, Mexico, where new forms of singing and writing in the local…
Mazatec indigenous language are producing powerful, transformative political effects. Paja Faudree argues for the inclusion of singing as a necessary component in the polarized debates about indigenous orality and literacy, and she considers how the coupling of literacy and song has allowed people from the region to create texts of enduring social resonance. She examines how local young people are learning to read and write in Mazatec as a result of the region's new Day of the Dead song contest. Faudree also studies how tourist interest in local psychedelic mushrooms has led to their commodification, producing both opportunities and challenges for songwriters and others who represent Mazatec culture. She situates these revival movements within the contexts of Mexico and Latin America, as well as the broad, hemisphere-wide movement to create indigenous literatures. Singing for the Dead provides a new way to think about the politics of ethnicity, the success of social movements, and the limits of national belonging.Sitting Bull: Lakota Leader
By Catherine Iannone. 1998
Back in the Beforetime: Tales of the California Indians
By Jane Louise Curry. 1987
The Jaguar Within
By Rebecca R. Stone. 2011
Shamanism-the practice of entering a trance state to experience visions of a reality beyond the ordinary and to gain esoteric…
knowledge-has been an important part of life for indigenous societies throughout the Americas from prehistoric times until the present. Much has been written about shamanism in both scholarly and popular literature, but few authors have linked it to another significant visual realm-art. In this pioneering study, Rebecca R. Stone considers how deep familiarity with, and profound respect for, the extra-ordinary visionary experiences of shamanism profoundly affected the artistic output of indigenous cultures in Central and South America before the European invasions of the sixteenth century. Using ethnographic accounts of shamanic trance experiences, Stone defines a core set of trance vision characteristics, including enhanced senses, ego dissolution, bodily distortions, flying, spinning and undulating sensations, synaesthesia, and physical transformation from the human self into animal and other states of being. Stone then traces these visionary characteristics in ancient artworks from Costa Rica and Peru. She makes a convincing case that these works, especially those of the Moche, depict shamans in a trance state or else convey the perceptual experience of visions by creating deliberately chaotic and distorted conglomerations of partial, inverted, and incoherent images.Inheriting a Canoe Paddle
By Misao Dean. 2013
If the canoe is a symbol of Canada, what kind of Canada does it symbolize? Inheriting a Canoe Paddle looks…
at how the canoe has come to symbolize love of Canada for non-aboriginal Canadians and provides a critique of this identification's unintended consequences for First Nations. Written with an engaging, personal style, it is both a scholarly examination and a personal reflection, delving into representations of canoes and canoeing in museum displays, historical re-enactments, travel narratives, the history of wilderness expeditions, artwork, film, and popular literature.Misao Dean opens the book with the story of inheriting her father's canoe paddle and goes on to explore the canoe paddle as a national symbol - integral to historical tales of exploration and trade, central to Pierre Trudeau's patriotism, and unique to Canadians wanting to distance themselves from British and American national myths. Throughout, Inheriting a Canoe Paddle emphasizes the importance of self-consciously evaluating the meaning we give to canoes as objects and to canoeing as an activity.First Nations Education Policy in Canada
By Gérald Fallon, Jerry Paquette. 2010
How can First Nations schools in Canada offer a curriculum that is at once authentically and deeply Aboriginal while comparable…
in content, quality, and standards to provincial and territorial education? First Nations Education Policy in Canada is a critical analysis of policy developments affecting First Nations education since 1986 and a series of recommendations for future policy changes.Jerry Paquette and Gérald Fallon challenge the fundamental assumptions about Aboriginal education that have led to a Balkanized and ineffective educational system able to serve few of the needs of students. To move forward, the authors have developed a conceptual framework with which to re-envision the social, political, and educational goals of a self-governing First Nations education system. Offering a sorely needed fresh perspective on an issue vital to the community, First Nations Education Policy in Canada is grounds for critical reflection not only on education but on the future of Aboriginal self-determination.Burning Vision
By Marie Clements. 2003
Burning Vision sears a dramatic swath through the reactionary identity politics of race, gender and class, using the penetrating yellow-white…
light, the false sun of uranium and radium, derived from a coal black rock known as pitchblende, as a metaphor for the invisible, malignant evils everywhere poisoning our relationship to the earth and to each other.Me Sexy
By Drew Hayden Taylor. 2008
Is Cree really the sexiest of all languages? Do Native people have less or more public hair? Does Inuit sex…
have a dark side? These are some of the questions answered in this witty, thoughtful collection. Twelve important voices in the Native culture - including Joseph Boyden, author of Three Day Road, and Marissa Crazytrain, a descendant of Chief Sitting Bull - tackle a variety of previously taboo subjects with humor and insight. Noted comic writer and editor Drew Hayden Taylor wraps it up with an original contribution of his own.Home in the City
By Alan B. Anderson. 2013
During the past several decades, the Aboriginal population of Canada has become so urbanized that today, the majority of First…
Nations and Métis people live in cities. Home in the City provides an in-depth analysis of urban Aboriginal housing, living conditions, issues, and trends. Based on extensive research, including interviews with more than three thousand residents, it allows for the emergence of a new, contemporary, and more realistic portrait of Aboriginal people in Canada's urban centres.Home on the City focuses on Saskatoon, which has both one of the highest proportions of Aboriginal residents in the country and the highest percentage of Aboriginal people living below the poverty line. While the book details negative aspects of urban Aboriginal life (such as persistent poverty, health problems, and racism), it also highlights many positive developments: the emergence of an Aboriginal middle class, inner-city renewal, innovative collaboration with municipal and community organizations, and more. Alan B. Anderson and the volume's contributors provide an important resource for understanding contemporary Aboriginal life in Canada.People of the Deer
By Farley Mowat. 2012
In 1886, the Ihalmiut of northern Canada numbered 7,000 souls; by 1946, when 25-year-old Farley Mowat travelled to the Arctic,…
their population had dwindled to only 40. Living among them, he observed the millennia-old migration of the caribou and endured the bleak winters, food shortages and continual, devastating intrusions of interlopers bent on exploiting the Arctic. In this seminal book, Mowat details a genocide wrought by misunderstanding and neglect. Debated long after its publication, this powerful story of the Ihalmiut continues to haunt the Canadian conscience.Stickhandling through the Margins
By Michael A. Robidoux. 2012
Some of hockey's fiercest and most passionate players and fans can be found among Canada's First Nations populations, including NHL…
greats Jordin Tootoo, Jonathan Cheechoo, and Gino Odjick. At first glance the importance of hockey to the country's Aboriginal peoples may seem to indicate assimilation into mainstream society, but Michael A. Robidoux reveals that the game is played and understood very differently in this cultural context. Rather than capitulating to the Euro-Canadian construct of sport, First Nations hockey has become an important site for expressing rich local knowledge and culture.With stories and observations gleaned from three years of ethnographic research, Stickhandling through the Margins richly illustrates how hockey is played and experienced by First Nations peoples across Canada, both in isolated reserve communities and at tournaments that bring together participants from across the country. Robidoux's vivid description transports readers into the world of First Nations hockey, revealing it to be a highly social and at times even spiritual activity ripe with hidden layers of meaning that are often surprising to the outside observer.'Will the Circle be Unbroken?'
By Jane Dickson-Gilmore, Carol La Prairie. 2005
Embraced with zeal by a wide array of activists and policymakers, the restorative justice movement has made promises to reduce…
the disproportionate rates of Aboriginal involvement in crime and the criminal justice system and to offer a healing model suitable to Aboriginal communities. Such promises should be the focus of considerable critical analysis and evaluation, yet this kind of scrutiny has largely been absent. 'Will the Circle be Unbroken?' explores and confronts the potential and pitfalls of restorative justice, offering a much-needed critical perspective.Drawing on their shared experiences working with Aboriginal communities, Jane Dickson-Gilmore and Carol LaPrairie examine the outcomes of restorative justice projects, paying special attention to such prominent programs as conferencing, sentencing circles, and healing circles. They also look to Aboriginal justice reforms in other countries, comparing and contrasting Canadian reforms with the restorative efforts in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.'Will the Circle be Unbroken?' provides a comprehensive overview of the critical issues in Aboriginal and restorative justice, placing these in the context of community. It examines the essential role of community in furthering both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal aspirations for restorative justice.Spirits of the Rockies
By Courtney W. Mason. 2014
The Banff-Bow Valley in western Alberta is the heart of spiritual and economic life for the Nakoda peoples. While they…
were displaced from the region by the reserve system and the creation of Canada's first national park, in the twentieth century the Nakoda reasserted their presence in the valley through involvement in regional tourism economies and the Banff Indian Days sporting festivals.Drawing on extensive oral testimony from the Nakoda, supplemented by detailed analysis of archival and visual records, Spirits of the Rockies is a sophisticated account of the situation that these Indigenous communities encountered when they were denied access to the Banff National Park. Courtney W. Mason examines the power relations and racial discourses that dominated the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and shows how the Nakoda strategically used the Banff Indian Days festivals to gain access to sacred lands and respond to colonial policies designed to repress their cultures.Fishing in Contested Waters
By Sarah King. 2014
After the Supreme Court of Canada's 1999 Marshall decision recognized Mi'kmaw fishers' treaty right to fish, the fishers entered the…
inshore lobster fishery across Atlantic Canada. At Burnt Church/Esgenoôpetitj, New Brunswick, the Mi'kmaw fishery provoked violent confrontations with neighbours and the Canadian government. Over the next two years, boats, cottages, and a sacred grove were burned, people were shot at and beaten, boats rammed and sunk, roads barricaded, and the local wharf occupied.Based on 12 months of ethnographic field work in Burnt Church/Esgenoôpetitj, Fishing in Contested Waters explores the origins of this dispute and the beliefs and experiences that motivated the locals involved in it. Weaving the perspectives of Native and non-Native people together, Sarah J. King examines the community as a contested place, simultaneously Mi'kmaw and Canadian. Drawing on philosophy and indigenous, environmental, and religious studies, Fishing in Contested Waters demonstrates the deep roots of contemporary conflicts over rights, sovereignty, conservation, and identity.Ponteach, or the Savages of America
By Tiffany Potter. 2010
Pontiac, or Ponteach, was a Native American leader who made war upon the British in what became known as Pontiac's…
Rebellion (1763 to 1766). One of the earliest accounts of Pontiac is a play, written in 1766 by the famous frontier soldier Robert Rogers, of the Rangers. Ponteach, or the Savages of America is one of the only early dramatic works composed by an author with personal knowledge of the Indigenous nations of North America. Important both as a literary work and as a historical document, Ponteach interrogates eighteenth-century Europe's widespread ideological constructions of Indigenous peoples as either innocent and noble savages, or monstrous and violent Others.Presented for the first time in a fully annotated edition, Ponteach takes on questions of nationalism, religion, race, cultural identity, gender, and sexuality; the play offers a unique perspective on the Rebellion and on the emergence of Canadian and American identities. Tiffany Potter's edition is supplemented by an introduction that critically and contextually frames the play, as well as by important appendices, including Rogers' ethnographic accounts of the Great Lakes nations.