Through an examination of the roles of relief and relocation in response to welfare and other perceived problems and the federal government's overall goal of assimilating the Inuit into the dominant Canadian culture, this book questions the seeming benevolence of the post-Second World War Canadian welfare state. The authors have made extensive use of archival documents, many of which have not been available to researchers before. The early chapters cover the first wave of government expansion in the north, the policy debate that resulted in the decision to relocate Inuit, and the actual movement of people and materials. The second half of the book focuses on conditions following relocation and addresses the second wave of state expansion in the late fifties and the emergence of a new dynamic of intervention.
The Dene, a traditionally nomadic people, have no word for homelessness, a rare condition in the Canadian North prior to the 1990s. In No Home in a Homeland, Julia Christensen documents the rise of Indigenous homelessness and argues that this alarming trend will continue so long as policy makers continue to ignore northern perspectives and root causes, which lie deep in the region’s colonial past. Christensen interweaves analysis of the region’s unique history with the personal stories of people living homeless in two cities – Yellowknife and Inuvik. These individual and collective narratives tell a larger story of displacement and exclusion, residential schools and family breakdown, addiction and poor mental health, poverty and unemployment, and urbanization and institutionalization. But they also tell a story of hope and renewal. Understanding what it means to be homeless in the North and how Indigenous people think about home and homemaking is the first step, Christensen argues, on the path to decolonizing existing approaches and practices.
In an adventure of a lifetime, Jennifer Kingsley and her five companions canoe through one of the planet’s most rugged settings. They battle raging winds, impenetrable sea ice, treacherous rapids, and agonizing sores and blisters while contending with rising tensions among the group. But they also experience the lasting joy of grizzly sightings, icy swims, and the caribou’s summer migration. Woven through this spellbinding narrative are often-harrowing accounts of the journeys of earlier explorers, some of whom never made it back home. Paddlenorth paints an indelible portrait of the spectacular Arctic landscape, rendered with a naturalist’s eye and an artist's sensibility, and offers an eloquent exploration of how wilderness changes us.
The Arctic is ruled by ice. For Inuit, it is a highway, a hunting ground, and the platform on which life is lived. While the international community argues about sovereignty, security, and resource development at the top of the world, the Inuit remind us that they are the original inhabitants of this magnificent place - and that it is undergoing a dangerous transformation. The Arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate and Inuit have become the direct witnesses and messengers of climate change. Through an examination of Inuit history and culture, alongside the experiences of newcomers to the Arctic seeking land, wealth, adventure, and power, Our Ice Is Vanishing describes the legacies of exploration, intervention, and resilience. Combining scientific and legal information with political and individual perspectives, Shelley Wright follows the history of the Canadian presence in the Arctic and shares her own journey in recollections and photographs, presenting the far North as few people have seen it. Climate change is redrawing the boundaries of what Inuit and non-Inuit have learned to expect from our world. Our Ice Is Vanishing demonstrates that we must engage with the knowledge of the Inuit in order to understand and negotiate issues of climate change and sovereignty claims in the region.
Mandated to foster a sense of national cohesion The National Film Board of Canada's Still Photography Division was the country's official photographer during the mid-twentieth century. Like the Farm Security Administration and other agencies in the US, the NFB used photographs to serve the nation. Division photographers shot everything from official state functions to images of the routine events of daily life, producing some of the most dynamic photographs of the time, seen by millions of Canadians - and international audiences - in newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, and filmstrips. In The Official Picture, Carol Payne argues that the Still Photography Division played a significant role in Canadian nation-building during WWII and the two decades that followed. Payne examines key images, themes, and periods in the Division's history - including the depiction of women munitions workers, landscape photography in the 1950s and 60s, and portraits of Canadians during the Centennial in 1967 - to demonstrate how abstract concepts of nationhood and citizenship, as well as attitudes toward gender, class, linguistic identity, and conceptions of race were reproduced in photographs. The Official Picture looks closely at the work of many Division photographers from staff members Chris Lund and Gar Lunney during the 1940s and 1950s to the expressive documentary photography of Michel Lambeth, Michael Semak, and Pierre Gaudard, in the 1960s and after. The Division also produced a substantial body of Northern imagery documenting Inuit and Native peoples. Payne details how Inuit groups have turned to the archive in recent years in an effort to reaffirm their own cultural identity. For decades, the Still Photography Division served as the country's image bank, producing a government-endorsed "official picture" of Canada. A rich archival study, The Official Picture brings the hisotry of the Division, long overshadowed by the Board's cinematic divisions, to light.
Far Off Metal River examines how explorer Samuel Hearne’s account of the alleged 1771 “Bloody Falls massacre” in the Central Arctic has shaped ongoing colonization and economic exploitation of the North. As Emilie Cameron demonstrates, the Arctic has for centuries been treated like a blank page onto which a long line of explorers, missionaries, anthropologists, resource companies, and politicians have inscribed stories that serve their own interests. These stories have played a central role in shaping the region, including efforts to open the North to industrial resource extraction. Consequently, Qablunaat (non-Inuit, non-Indigenous people) have a responsibility to question their relationships with the North and northerners, first by placing these stories within their proper historical, geographical, and social context, and then by developing new understandings and new relationships that reflect the actual political, cultural, economic, environmental, and social landscapes of the contemporary Arctic.landscapes of the contemporary Arctic.
The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions is a landmark collection drawing together the history of the Arctic and Antarctica from the earliest times to the present. Structured as a series of thematic chapters, an international team of scholars offer a range of perspectives from environmental history, the history of science and exploration, cultural history, and the more traditional approaches of political, social, economic, and imperial history. The volume considers the centrality of Indigenous experience and the urgent need to build action in the present on a thorough understanding of the past. Using historical research based on methods ranging from archives and print culture to archaeology and oral histories, these essays provide fresh analyses of the discovery of Antarctica, the disappearance of Sir John Franklin, the fate of the Norse colony in Greenland, the origins of the Antarctic Treaty, and much more. This is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of our planet.
Images of Justice resonates with voices of the North and comes alive through interviews with many of those involved in the cases - defendants, judges, and prosecutors. Eber also provides valuable information on the little-known carvers who created these remarkable works of art. At a time when alternative legal systems for Native peoples are being debated, Images of Justice provides a lively, accessible account of the northern courts, their evolution, and their future in a changing northern society.
The manufacturing of a chronic food crisis Food insecurity in the North is one of Canada’s most shameful public health and human rights crises. In Plundering the North, Kristin Burnett and Travis Hay examine the disturbing mechanics behind the origins of this crisis: state and corporate intervention in northern Indigenous foodways. Despite claims to the contrary by governments, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), and the contemporary North West Company (NWC), the exorbitant cost of food in the North is neither a naturally occurring phenomenon nor the result of free-market forces. Rather, inflated food prices are the direct result of government policies and corporate monopolies. Using food as a lens to track the institutional presence of the Canadian state in the North, Burnett and Hay chart the social, economic, and political changes that have taken place in northern Ontario since the 1950s. They explore the roles of state food policy and the HBC and NWC in setting up, perpetuating, and profiting from food insecurity while undermining Indigenous food sovereignties and self-determination. Plundering the North provides fresh insight into Canada’s settler colonial project by re-evaluating northern food policy and laying bare the governmental and corporate processes behind the chronic food insecurity experienced by northern Indigenous communities.
Far from being a measure of progress or humanitarian aid, Indian welfare policy in Canada was used deliberately to oppress and marginalize First Nations peoples and to foster their assimilation into the dominant society. 'Enough to Keep Them Alive' explores the history of the development and administration of social assistance policies on Indian reserves in Canada from confederation to the modern period, demonstrating a continuity of policy with roots in the pre-confederation practices of fur trading companies. Extensive archival evidence from the Indian Affairs record group at the National Archives of Canada is supplemented for the post-World War Two era by interviews with some of the key federal players. More than just an historical narrative, the book presents a critical analysis with a clear theoretical focus drawing on colonial and post-colonial theory, social theory, and critiques of liberalism and liberal democracy.
