Laurie K. Bertram

Laurie K. Bertram, “‘Eskimo’ Immigrants and Colonial Soldiers: Icelandic Immigrants and the North-West Resistance, 1885”. Canadian Historical Review, Volume 99 Issue 1, Spring 2018, pp. 63-97.

The committee found that Bertram’s article was an important and timely intervention on the topic of immigration and settler colonialism in Manitoba. This fascinating article complicates our understanding of the North-West Resistance, of ethnic involvement in colonialism, and of our understanding of ethnic relations more broadly. In particular, it asks how members of a marginalized and racialized ethnic group became active agents of the expanding Canadian state in the 1880s. By examining the role of Icelandic immigrants in a broader history of European settlement, this study challenges the common approach to group histories by showing how ethnic communities and the surrounding society interacted and transformed one another.