Historicizing Canadian Anthropology is the first significant examination of the historical development of anthropological study in this country. It addresses key issues in the evolution of the discipline: the shaping influence of Aboriginal-anthropological encounters; the challenge of compiling a history for the Canadian context; and the place of international and institutional relations. The contributors to this collection reflect on the definition and scope of the discipline and explore the degree to which a uniquely Canadian tradition affects anthropological theory, practice, and reflexivity.

Scholarly depictions of the history of Aboriginal people in Canada have changed dramatically since the 1970s when Arthur J. ("Skip") Ray entered the field. New Histories for Old examines this transformation while extending the scholarship on Canada's Aboriginal history in new directions. This collection combines essays by prominent senior historians, geographers, and anthropologists with contributions by new voices in these fields. The chapters reflect themes including Native struggles for land and resources under colonialism, the fur trade, "Indian" policy and treaties, mobility and migration, disease and well-being, and Native-newcomer relations.

Plenary symposium of the third annual conference of the Canadian Ethnology Society which took place in Victoria, British Columbia.

When New Zealand-born and Oxford-educated anthropologist Diamond Jenness set aside hopes of building a career in the South Pacific to join Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition, he had little idea of what lay ahead. But Jenness thrived under the duress of that transformational experience: the groundbreaking ethnographic work he accomplished, recounted in People of the Twilight and in Dawn in Arctic Alaska, proved to be a lasting contribution to twentieth-century anthropology, and the foundation of a career he would devote to researching Canada's first peoples. Barnett Richling draws upon a wealth of documentary sources to shed light on Jenness's tenure with the Anthropological Division of the National Museum of Canada - a forerunner of the Canadian Museum of Civilization - during which his investigations took him beyond the Arctic to seven First Nations communities from Georgian Bay to British Columbia's interior. Jenness was renowned as a pre-eminent scholar of Inuit culture, but he also stood out for the contributions his field work made to linguistics, ethnology, material culture, and Northern archaeology. His story is also an institutional one: Jenness worked as a public servant at a time when the federal government spearheaded anthropological research, although his abiding commitment to the first peoples of his adopted homeland placed him at odds with Ottawa's approach to aboriginal affairs. In Twilight and in Dawn is an exploration of one man's life in anthropology, and of the conditions - at the museum, on the reserves, in society's mainstream, and in the world at large - that inspired and shaped Jenness's contributions to science, to his profession, and to public life. An informative study of the evolution of a discipline focused through the life of one of its leading practitioners, In Twilight and in Dawn is an illuminating look at anthropological thought and practice in Canada during the first half of the twentieth century.

Recent archaeological discoveries in the polar region have reanimated stock images of the intrepid explorer who braves the elements to bring modernity to a frigid northern wasteland. The Iconic North reveals that ideological assumptions, economic priorities, and a shift in government strategy in the postwar era all influenced how northern culture was represented in popular Canadian imagery. Whether it was film, television, or women’s autobiographies, the “primitive” North was often portrayed as the mirror opposite to the “modern” South. In crisp and elegant prose, Joan Sangster redirects current debates about the geopolitical prospects of the North by addressing how women and gender relations have played a key role in the history of northern development.Drawing on archival and cultural sources, Sangster shows how gender, race, and colonialism shape our understanding of northern peoples, economies, and government policy. This work reveals how assumptions about both Indigenous and non-Indigenous women shaped gender, class, and political relationships in the circumpolar north – a region now commanding more of the world’s attention.