A rare and inspiring guide to the health and well-being of Aboriginal women and their communities. The process of “digging up medicines” - of rediscovering the stories of the past - serves as a powerful healing force in the decolonization and recovery of Aboriginal communities. In Life Stages and Native Women, Kim Anderson shares the teachings of fourteen elders from the Canadian prairies and Ontario to illustrate how different life stages were experienced by Metis, Cree, and Anishinaabe girls and women during the mid-twentieth century. These elders relate stories about their own lives, the experiences of girls and women of their childhood communities, and customs related to pregnancy, birth, post-natal care, infant and child care, puberty rites, gender and age-specific work roles, the distinct roles of post-menopausal women, and women’s roles in managing death. Through these teachings, we learn how evolving responsibilities from infancy to adulthood shaped women’s identities and place within Indigenous society, and were integral to the health and well-being of their communities. By understanding how healthy communities were created in the past, Anderson explains how this traditional knowledge can be applied toward rebuilding healthy Indigenous communities today.

First Nations peoples believe the eagle flies with a female wing and a male wing, showing the importance of balance between the feminine and the masculine in all aspects of individual and community experiences. Centuries of colonization, however, have devalued the traditional roles of First Nations women, causing a great gender imbalance that limits the abilities of men, women, and their communities in achieving self-actualization.Restoring the Balance brings to light the work First Nations women have performed, and continue to perform, in cultural continuity and community development. It illustrates the challenges and successes they have had in the areas of law, politics, education, community healing, language, and art, while suggesting significant options for sustained improvement of individual, family, and community well-being. Written by fifteen Aboriginal scholars, activists, and community leaders, Restoring the Balance combines life histories and biographical accounts with historical and critical analyses grounded in traditional thought and approaches. It is a powerful and important book.

A social history of tubercular hospitals and Canada’s indigenous population, built around “poignant and at times heartbreaking” firsthand accounts (Choice). Featuring oral accounts from patients, families, and workers who experienced Canada’s Indian Hospital system, Healing Histories presents a fresh perspective on health care history that includes the diverse voices and insights of the many people affected by tuberculosis and its treatment in the mid-twentieth century. This intercultural history models new methodologies and ethics for researching and writing about indigenous Canada based on indigenous understandings of “story” and its critical role in Aboriginal historicity, while moving beyond routine colonial interpretations of victimization, oppression, and cultural destruction. Written for both academic and popular reading audiences, Healing Histories, the first detailed collection of Aboriginal perspectives on the history of tuberculosis in Canada’s indigenous communities and on the federal government’s Indian Health Services, is essential reading for those interested in Canadian Aboriginal history, the history of medicine and nursing, and oral history.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Canada witnessed an explosion in the production of literary works by Aboriginal writers, a development that some critics have called the Native Renaissance. In Before the Country, Stephanie McKenzie explores the extent to which this growing body of literature influenced non-Native Canadian writers and has been fundamental in shaping our search for a national mythology. In the context of Northrop Frye's theories of myth, and in light of the attempts of social critics and early anthologists to define Canada and Canadian literature, McKenzie discusses the ways in which our decidedly fractured sense of literary nationalism has set indigenous culture apart from the mainstream. She examines anew the aesthetics of Native Literature and, in a style that is creative as much as it is scholarly, McKenzie incorporates the principles of storytelling into the unfolding of her argument. This strategy not only enlivens her narrative, but also underscores the need for new theoretical strategies in the criticism of Aboriginal literatures. Before the Country invites us to engage in one such endeavour.

The traditional mythology of the West is dominated by male images: the fur trader, the Mountie, the missionary, the miner, the cowboy, the politician, the Chief. Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West claims to re-examine the West through women's eyes. It draws together contributions from researchers, scholars, and academic and community activists, and seeks to create dialogue across geographic, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries. Ranging from scholarly essays to poetry, these pieces offer the reader a sample of some of today's most innovative approaches to western Canadian women's history; several of the themes that run throughout the volume have only recently been critically addressed. By rewriting the West from the perspective of women, the contributors complicate traditional narratives of the region's past by contesting historical generalizations, thus transcending the myths and "frontier" legacies that emerged out of imperial and masculine priorities and perspectives. With Contributions by: Kristin Burnett Cristine Georgina Bye Sarah Carter Mary Leah De Zwart Lesley A. Erickson Cheryl Foggo Nadine I. Kozak Siri Louie Graham A. Macdonald Florence Melchior Patricia A. Roome Eliane Leslau Silverman Olive Stickney Aritha Van Herk Muriel Stanley Venne Cora J. Voyageur

Recollecting is a rich collection of essays that illuminate the lives of late eighteenth-century to the mid twentieth-century Aboriginal women, who have been overlooked in sweeping narratives of the history of the West. Some essays focus on individual women - a trader, a performer, a non-human woman - while others examine cohorts of women - wives, midwives, seamstresses, nuns. Authors look beyond the documentary record and standard representations of women, drawing also on records generated by the women themselves, including their beadwork, other material culture, and oral histories.

A Companion to American Indian History captures the thematic breadth of Native American history over the last forty years. Twenty-five original essays by leading scholars in the field, both American Indian and non-American Indian, bring an exciting modern perspective to Native American histories that were at one time related exclusively by Euro-American settlers. Contains 25 original essays by leading experts in Native American history. Covers the breadth of American Indian history, including contacts with settlers, religion, family, economy, law, education, gender issues, and culture. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.