Shirleen Smith & Vuntut Cwitchin First Nation. People of the Lakes: Stories of Our Van Tat Gwich’in Elders. Shirleen Smith et Vuntut Cwitchin First Nation. People of the Lakes: Stories of Our Van Tat Gwich’in Elders     Many people have a mental picture of the Canadian north that juxtaposes beauty with harshness. For the Van Tat Gwich’in, the northern Yukon is

Keith Thor Carlson. The Power of Place, The Problem of Time: Aboriginal Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of Colonialism. In this richly textured and innovative study, Keith Thor Carlson reinterprets Stó:lõ identities from the first smallpox epidemic of the late eighteenth century to the burgeoning west coast political movement in 1906.  By situating identities

Leslie A. Robertson with the Kwagu’? Gixsam Clan, Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las: Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012. This book is a revisionist biography of Kwakwaka’wakw leader and activist Jane Constance Cook or Ga’axsta’las (1870-1951), written in response to community and scholarly representations that

Sarah Carter and Patricia McCormack, eds, Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands (Athabasca University Press, 2011).  Honourable Mention Arthur J. Ray. Telling it to the Judge: Taking Native History to Court. (McGill-Queens University Press, 2011).

James Daschuck, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. Regina: University of Regina, 2013. Sharply focused on the nineteenth century treaty-making era, Daschuk’s book analyzes the devastating history of disease and famine endured by First Nations on the northwestern Plains. He demystifies the “naturalization of suffering” narrative long upheld by the colonial

Elsie Paul in collaboration with Paige Raibmon and Harmony Johnson. Written as I Remember It: Teachings (??ms ta?aw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014.  Elder Elsie Paul’s life story is presented with the values and practices known as “our teachings.” Incorporating oral traditions and personal experiences, this collaborative work is rich,

Arthur Manuel and Grand Chief Ronald M. Derrickson, Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call. Between the Lines, 2015. Unsettling Canada tells a captivating narrative of activism, identity, and lived experience, tracing Indigenous rights and land claims struggles in this country between the 1960s and 2000s. Manuel and Derrickson engage with the history of political activism as insiders.

Maureen K. Lux, Separate Beds:  A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, 1920s-1980s. Toronto: UTP, 2016. Separate Beds brings together the perspectives of hospital survivors with the stark reality found in the archive, telling a grim story of institutional racism with compassion, while also emphasizing the strength and resolution of Indigenous communities to manage their own health

Mary Jane Logan McCallum & Adele Perry, Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City Structures of Indifference situates the life and death of Brian Sinclair within the complicated settler colonial histories of the geographic area that came to be known as Manitoba. Sinclair was an Anishinaabe man who died after waiting 34

With The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure On the Grand River (University of Manitoba Press), Susan Hill offers a path-breaking re-interpetation of the history of the Haudenosaunee.  Hill’s work speaks to a wide-range of scholars in history as well as to scholars in Indigenous Studies. Hill’s contribution is significant because it models how historians can

Sarah Nickel.  Assembling Unity: Indigenous Politics, Gender, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019). By contrasting the role played by band leaders, women and the militant base involved in the ideological development of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), Sarah Nickel makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary

Brittany Luby, Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory. University of Manitoba Press, 2020. Looking out from Anishinaabe territory, Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory is an insightful and illuminating examination of Canada’s hydroelectric boom of the 20th century. Taking place in Treaty 3 territory, Brittany Luby shows us that the postwar affluence

CO-WINNERS Helen Olsen Agger, Dadibaajim : Returning Home through Narrative. University of Manitoba Press. Helen Olsen Agger’s Dadibaajim reclaims and re-centres dadibaajim, or oral narratives, about the Namegosibii Anishinaabeg Trout Lake homelands in what is today known as northwestern Ontario, Treaty 3 territory. In grounding her work in critical Anishinaabe methodology, specifically her extensive use of Anishinaabemowin, Agger offers