This study of the eight Metis settlements in northern Alberta examines their history, legal status, government and politics, external and internal organizations, the issue of self-government and the opinions and attitudes of residents on a number of topics, and presents an unconventional approach to native self government.
"On 1 November 1990, the government of Alberta enacted legislation to enable Metis ownership and government of Alberta's Metis settlement lands. This book explores the legislative history of the Metis settlements and constitutional issues arising from Alberta's initiative."--Cover.
Research on Indigenous issues rarely focuses on life in major metropolitan centres. Instead, there is a tendency to frame rural locations as emblematic of authentic or “real” Indigeneity. While such a perspective may support Indigenous struggles for territory and recognition, it fails to account for large swaths of contemporary Indigenous realities, including the increased presence of Indigenous people in cities. The contributors to this volume explore the implications of urbanization on the production of distinctive Indigenous identities in Canada, the US, New Zealand, and Australia. In doing so, they demonstrate the resilience, creativity, and complexity of the urban Indigenous presence, both in Canada and internationally.
Exploring the relationship between the role of education and Indigenous survival, Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is an ethnographic exploration of how digital storytelling can be part of a broader project of decolonization of individuals, their families, and communities. By recounting how a remote Indigenous (Métis) community were able to collectively imagine, plan and produce numerous unique digital stories representing counter-narratives to the dominant version of Canadian history, Poitras Pratt provides frameworks, approaches and strategies for the use of digital media and arts for the purpose of cultural memory, community empowerment, and mobilization. The volume provides a valuable example of how a community-based educational project can create and restore intergenerational exchanges through modern media, and covers topics such as: Introducing the Métis and their community; decolonizing education through a Métis approach to research; the ethnographic journey; and translating the work of decolonizing to education. Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education is the perfect resource for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of Indigenous education, comparative education, and technology education, or those looking to explore the role of modern media in facilitating healing and decolonization in a marginalized community. .
During the last decade, Alberta municipalities have endured hardships they have not faced since the Great Depression. Changes in the province's political structures appear to have been made primarily to transfer a greater share of the costs of local government to the municipalities, yet surprisingly few municipal politicians have resisted the province's financial policies.
In A People and a Nation, the authors, most of whom are Métis, offer readers a set of lenses through which to consider the complexity of historical and contemporary Métis nationhood and peoplehood. The field of Métis Studies has been afflicted by a longstanding tendency to situate Métis within deeply racialized contexts, and/or by an overwhelming focus on the nineteenth century. This volume challenges the pervasive racialization of Métis studies with multidisciplinary chapters on identity, history, politics, literature, spirituality, religion, and kinship networks, reorienting the conversation toward Métis experiences today.
This edition of "The Canadian Encyclopedia is the largest, most comprehensive book ever published in Canada for the general reader. It is COMPLETE: every aspect of Canada, from its rock formations to its rock bands, is represented here. It is UNABRIDGED: all of the information in the four red volumes of the famous 1988 edition is contained here in this single volume. It has been EXPANDED: since 1988 teams of researchers have been diligently fleshing out old entries and recording new ones; as a result, the text from 1988 has grown by 50% to over 4,000,000 words. It has been UPDATED: the researchers and contributors worked hard to make the information as current as possible. Other words apply to this extraordinary work of scholarship: AUTHORITATIVE, RELIABLE and READABLE. Every entry is compiled by an expert. Equally important, every entry is written for a Canadian reader, from the Canadian point of view. The finished work - many years in the making, and the equivalent of forty average-sized books - is an extraordinary storehouse of information about our country. This book deserves pride of place on the bookshelf in every Canadian Home. It is no accident that the cover of this book is based on the Canadian flag. For the proud truth is that this volume represents a great national achievement. From its formal inception in 1979, this encyclopedia has always represented a vote of faith in Canada; in Canada as a separate place whose natural worlds and whose peoples and their achievements deserve to be recorded and celebrated. At the start of a new century and a new millennium, in an increasingly borderless corporate world that seems ever more hostile to nationaldistinctions and aspirations, this "Canadian Encyclopedia is offered in a spirit of defiance and of faith in our future. The statistics behind this volume are staggering. The opening sixty pages list the 250 Consultants, the roughly 4,000 Contributors (all experts in the field they describe) and the scores of researchers, editors, typesetters, proofreaders and others who contributed their skills to this massive project. The 2,640 pages incorporate over 10,000 articles and over 4,000,000 words, making it the largest - some might say the greatest - Canadian book ever published. There are, of course, many special features. These include a map of Canada, a special page comparing the key statistics of the 23 major Canadian cities, maps of our cities, a variety of tables and photographs, and finely detailed illustrations of our wildlife, not to mention the colourful, informative endpapers. But above all the book is "encyclopedic" - which the "Canadian Oxford Dictionary describes as "embracing all branches of learning." This means that (with rare exceptions) there is satisfaction for the reader who seeks information on any Canadian subject. From the first entry "A mari usque ad mare - "from sea to sea" (which is Canada's motto, and a good description of this volume's range) to the "Zouaves (who mustered in Quebec to fight for the beleaguered Papacy) there is the required summary of information, clearly and accurately presented. For the browser the constant variety of entries and the lure of regular cross-references will provide hours of fasination. The word "encyclopedia" derives from Greek expressions alluding to a grand "circle of knowledge." Our knowledge has expandedimmeasurably since the time that one mnd could encompass all that was known.Yet now Canada's finest scientists, academics and specialists have distilled their knowledge of our country between the covers of one volume. The result is a book for every Canadian who values learning, and values Canada.
In the last twenty years, there has been a growing interest in alternative dispute resolution (ADR), as scholars and practitioners seek more effective, context-sensitive approaches to conflict. Where formerly conflict was tackled and “resolved” in formal legal settings and with an adversarial spirit, more conciliatory approaches – negotiation, mediation, problem-solving, and arbitration – are now gaining favour. These new methods are proving especially appropriate in intercultural contexts, particularly for Aboriginal land claims, self-government, and community-based disputes. The essays collected here by Catherine Bell and David Kahane provide a balanced view of ADR, exploring its opportunities and effectiveness alongside its challenges and limits. The essays are international in scope, with examples of efforts at dispute resolution involving Inuit and Arctic peoples, Dene, Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en, Tsuu T’ina, Cree, Metis, Navajo, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and Torres Strait Islanders. With contributions from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal theorists and practitioners, Intercultural Dispute Resolution in Aboriginal Contexts presents an array of insightful perspectives. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Aboriginal law and alternative dispute resolution; legal and political theorists; dispute resolution practitioners; and anyone involved in struggles around land claims, treaty, and self-government agreements in Canada or abroad.
Historically, Aboriginal People have had little influence on the development of Native policy from within government. As a result, national, provincial, and regional Native political organizations have developed to lobby government on Native Peoples issues. Joe Sawchuk defines the various native groups in Canada and examines the origins of the organizations that represent them. He examines the structure of the organizations, their relationship with government, how the organizations fit within the context of the larger society, and the way in which power is consolidated within the organizations themselves. Many non-Native structures pervade Native, and especially Metis, political organizations. Using examples from his experience as director of land claims for the Metis Association of Alberta in the early 1980's, Sawchuk illustrates how Aboriginal organizations set their political agendas, and how federal and provincial funding and internal politics influence those agendas. The record of Native political organizations in Canada has been impressive. The questions continue to be are how their structures affect their ability to represent an Aboriginal point of view, whether government funding blunts their effectiveness, and how decreases in funding might affect them in the future.
Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to “civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. Legal action by the schools’ former students led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission’s final report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a pathway towards reconciliation. Canada’s Residential Schools: The Métis Experience focuses on an often-overlooked element of Canada’s residential school history. Canada’s residential school system was a partnership between the federal government and the churches. Since the churches wished to convert as many Aboriginal children as possible, they had no objection to admitting Métis children. At Saint-Paul-des-Métis in Alberta, Roman Catholic missionaries established a residential school specifically for Métis children in the early twentieth century, while the Anglicans opened hostels for Métis children in the Yukon in the 1920s and the 1950s. The federal government policy on providing schooling to Métis children was subject to constant change. It viewed the Métis as members of the ‘dangerous classes,’ whom the residential schools were intended to civilize and assimilate. This view led to the adoption of policies that allowed for the admission of Métis children at various times. However, from a jurisdictional perspective, the federal government believed that the responsibility for educating and assimilating Métis people lay with provincial and territorial governments. When this view dominated, Indian agents were often instructed to remove Métis children from residential schools. Because provincial and territorial governments were reluctant to provide services to Métis people, many Métis parents who wished to see their children educated in schools had no option but to try to have them accepted into a residential school. As provincial governments slowly began to provide increased educational services to Métis students after the Second World War, Métis children lived in residences and residential schools that were either run or funded by provincial governments. As this volume demonstrates the Métis experience of residential schooling in Canada is long and complex, involving not only the federal government and the churches, but provincial and territorial governments. Much remains to be done to identify and redress the impact that these schools had on Métis children, their families, and their community.
