In 1899 the Canadian government passed legislation to replace the appointment of Mi’kmaw leaders and Mi’kmaw political practices with the triennial system, a Euro-Canadian system of democratic band council elections. Officials in Ottawa assumed the federally mandated and supervised system would redefine Mi’kmaw politics. They were wrong. Drawing on reports and correspondence of the Department of Indian Affairs, Martha Walls details the rich life of Mi’kmaw politics between 1899 and 1951. She shows that many Mi’kmaw communities rejected, ignored, or amended federal electoral legislation, while others accepted it only sporadically, not in acquiescence to Ottawa’s assimilative project but to meet specific community needs and goals. Compelling and timely, this book supports Aboriginal claims to self-governance and complicates understandings of state power by showing that the Mi’kmaw, rather than succumbing to imposed political models, retained political practices that distinguished them from their Euro-Canadian neighbours.

Martha Elizabeth Walls teaches Canadian, Atlantic Canadian, and First Nations history. --Book Jacket.

The emergence, dominance, and alarmingly rapid retreat of modernist industrial capitalism on Cape Breton Island during the “long twentieth century” offers a particularly captivating window on the lasting and varied effects of deindustrialization. Now, at the tail end of the industrial moment in North American history, the story of Cape Breton Island presents an opportunity to reflect on how industrialization and deindustrialization have shaped human experiences. Covering the period between 1860 and the early 2000s, this volume looks at trade unionism, state and cultural responses to deindustrialization, including the more recent pivot towards the tourist industry, and the lived experiences of Indigenous and Black people. Rather than focusing on the separate or distinct nature of Cape Breton, contributors place the island within broad transnational networks such as the financial world of the Anglo-Atlantic, the Celtic music revival, the Black diaspora, Canadian development programs, and more. In capturing the vital elements of a region on the rural resource frontier that was battered by deindustrialization, the histories included here show how the interplay of the state, cultures, and transnational connections shaped how people navigated these heavy pressures, both individually and collectively.

Talking Back to the Indian Act is a comprehensive "how-to" guide for engaging with primary source documents. The intent of the book is to encourage readers to develop the skills necessary to converse with primary sources in more refined and profound ways. As a piece of legislation that is central to Canada's relationship with Indigenous peoples and communities, and one that has undergone many amendments, the Indian Act is uniquely positioned to act as a vehicle for this kind of focused reading. Through an analysis of thirty-five sources pertaining to the Indian Act--addressing governance, gender, enfranchisement, and land--the authors provide readers with a much better understanding of this pivotal piece of legislation, as well as insight into the dynamics involved in its creation and maintenance.

While most Canadians have heard of the Indian Chiefs Poundmaker, Big Bear and perhaps even Broken Arm (MASKI PITON), Chief PESEW has remained virutally unkown. He is not mentioned in the popular or academic history of the Canadian west or in the Indian history of the west. In fact, western development owes a large debt to Chief PESEW - Louis Joseph Piche. Coming west as a young Voyageur with Peter Pond, Piche eventually rose to become the Head Chief of the Cree/Nakoda alliance in the west, and their allied tribes. His sway reached from Winnipeg to the Pacific, and from Lesser Slave Lake to Wyoming. It is Piche and his followers who "settled" the west, and it is thanks to him that the west was settled peacefully for those who followed. Piche had a large family, and most of the Western Cree chiefs today can trace descent to him. 468 pages.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Social Life of the Blackfoot Indians" by Clark Wissler. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.