This book is drawn from Haida Monumental Art, the most important work yet published on Haida culture. Chiefs of the Sea and Sky presents an overview of extensive research carried out by archeologist George MacDonald in the 1960s and 1970s to document the history of the Haida villages of the Queen Charlotte Islands. In this abridgement, MacDonald recounts the history of eighteen of the major villages, telling the story of their people and describing the sites of their houses and other known structures. In his introduction he explains how the Haida's immense cedar houses and totem poles are part of a fascinating spiritual and material culture which integrates family history, ritual, and mythology. The historical photographs that accompany the text illustrate the richness and variety of Haida sculpture and they show the villages at the height of their glory in the 1880s and 1890s and in their subsequent and tragic decay. MacDonald reports on the further deterioration of several of the sites since publication of Haida Monumental Art in 1983, but he also praises the successful efforts of the Haida and their supporters and the cooperation of the Government of Canada in establishing protection over important heritage sites in the Southern Queen Charlotte Islands. He sees in this and in the accomplishments of contemporary Haida artists an indication that the future of Haida culture looks “immensely brighter towards the close of the century than it did at the beginning.” Chiefs of the Sea and Sky will be welcomed by those interested in the history of Canada's Native people and by visitors to the heritage sites of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

In 1966 the National Museum of Man launched a major program of prehistoric research on the northern coast of British Columbia, a project which was carried out over two decades. An important part of that program was the mapping and recording of the major villages of the Haida on the Queen Charlotte Islands. In Chiefs of the Sea and Sky, archaeologist George F. MacDonald provides an overview of this extensive research on the Haida. He recounts the history of eighteen of the major villages, telling the story of their people and describing the site of their houses and other known structures. In his introduction, he explains how the Haida's immense cedar houses and totem poles are part of a fascinating spiritual and material culture which integrates family, history, ritual, and mythology. The numerous historical photographs which accompany the text illustrate the richness and variety of Haida sculpture; they show the villages at the height of their glory in the 1880s and 1890s and in their subsequent and tragic decay.

A text which provides an introduction to academic writing. Offers a semester-length course that builds and refines university and college students abilities in writing and research skills. Comprises explanations of concepts and genres and contains a range of exercises and essay topics to develop and explore these ideas. Contains examples of model texts for class discussion and analysis as well as a chapter on accessing computer-based catalogues and indexes for research. Includes an index. The authors are lecturers in the fields of cultural studies, communication and English at the University of Qld. Also available in hardback.

With elegance and candor, Greg Dening offers a panoramic collection of rich and densely textured essays that demonstrate how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living. For Dening, history saturates every moment of our cultural and personal existence. Yet he is keenly aware that the actual past remains fundamentally irreplicable. All histories are culturally crafted artifacts, commensurate with folk tales, stage plays, or films. Whether derived from logbooks and letters, or displayed on music hall stages and Hollywood back lots, history is in essence our making sense of what has and continues to happen, creating for us a sense of our cultural and individual selves. Through juxtapositions of actual events and creative reenactments of them—such as the mutiny on the Bounty in 1787 and the various Hollywood films that depict that event—Dening calls attention to the provocative moment of theatricality in history making where histories, cultures, and selves converge. Moving adeptly across varied terrains, from the frontiers of North America to the islands of the South Pacific, Dening marshals a striking array of diverse, often recalcitrant, sources to examine the tangled histories of cross-cultural clash and engagement. Refusing to portray conquest, colonization, and hegemony simply as abstract processes, Dening, in his own culturally reflexive performance, painstakingly evokes the flesh and form of past actors, both celebrated and unsung, whose foregone lives have become our history.

This charming account of the voyage of two men in a small boat half way round the world from Plymouth to New Zealand in 1953 is a rare insight into a time, not long ago, when sailors had no GPS, electronics, radio or any of the mod cons that we take for granted today. Without lifejacket or a liferaft, they 'just took what came along', hand steering all the way, navigating by sextant, hand-cranking their engine and using oil lamps for light at night and for navigation. Sailors will be staggered how primitive conditions were only a few decades ago, even though it was the norm at the time. Part travelogue and part adventure story, the two friends encountered drunken harbourmasters, the mafia, the legacy of slavery and lost civilisations in the Pacific. Beautifully written, vivid in its descriptions of the two men's exploits ashore and on board, this quirky and entertaining book will be a fascinating read for sailors and non-sailors alike. 'A compelling story - I feel like I have sailed with them.' Yachting Monthly