Abstracts of Master’s and Doctoral thesis completed at Canadian universities between 1970-1982 dealing with ethnographic, archaeological, linguistic, and physical anthropological topics relevant to Canada’s Native peoples.

This collection of timely essays by Canadian scholars explores the fundamental link between the development of aboriginal culture and economic patterns. The contributors draw on original research to discuss Megaprojects in the North, the changing role of native women, reserves and devices for assimilation, the rebirth of the Canadian Metis, aboriginal rights in Newfoundland, the role of slave-raiding, and epidemics and firearms in native history.

Focusing upon the Mission Métis of Lac la Biche, the author examines the use of French, Cree, and English as a means of garnering insight into the mechanisms of western Canadian Métis cultural and linguistic variation. He concludes that the relationship of the people to their environment is inextricably bound to an understanding of their language and culture and that the delineation of cultural boundaries is, therefore, a highly complex matter.

An alphabetical and chronological guide to the professional correspondence of anthropologist Edward Sapir during his tenure as Head of the Anthropology Division of the Geological Survey of Canada (1910-1925).

The Manitoba Masterfile, PBHD, is a bibliographic database maintained at the University of Manitoba. Currently, the database contains 6,000 entries relating to population biology, health and illness of Native North Americans. The present volume of 2,100 entries, 80% annotated, presents the Masterfile content on prehistoric, historic, and contemporary Native populations from within the geo-political boundaries of Canada. Research on related populations is reported only when the reports include Canadian content.

An examination of the influence of bilateral kinship principles on the social organization of the Sahtúgot’ine (Bear Lake People), a Northeastern Athapaskan group. The recognition that factors other than kinship and marriage are also pertinent to an understanding of Sahtúgot’ine social organization has ramifications with respect to traditional Northeastern Athapaskan bands.

An ethnographic and documentary study of the subsistence-settlement patterns and social organization of the Red Earth Cree of east central Saskatchewan with particular emphasis upon a “deme” (discrete intermarriage arrangement) they shared with the Shoal Lake Cree. The author argues that demes are characteristic of hunter-gatherers but that environment, the events of the contact period, and modern government have disrupted its practice among Northern Algonkians.