From the time of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, people of British origin have shared the area of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (traditionally called Acadia) with Eastern Canada's Algonkian-speaking peoples, the Mi'kmaq. Despite nearly three centuries of interaction, these communities have largely remained alienated from one another. What were the differences between Mi'kmaq and British structures of valuation? What were the consequences of Acadia's colonization for both Mi'kmaq and British people? By examining the symbolic and mythic lives of these peoples, Reid considers the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century roots of this alienation and suggests that interaction between British and Mi'kmaq during the period was substantially determined by each group's fundamental religious need to feel rooted - to feel at home in Acadia.

From the time of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, people of British origin have shared the area of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, traditionally called Acadia, with Eastern Canada's Algonkian-speaking peoples, the Mi'kmaq. This historical analysis of colonial Acadia from the perspective of symbolic and mythic existence will be useful to those interested in Canadian history, native Canadian history, religion in Canada, and history of religion.

Colin Grant challenges the popular use of "myth" as a dismissive designation of the superstitions and falsehoods of "other" cultures. The author maintains that myths occupy a place in our present-day lives that is every bit as important to us as the divinities and heroes of classical antiquity were to the ancients. The myths themselves are in a constant state of flux and transformation. They ebb and flow, both within the context of wider culture and individual experience.

The individual and cultural upheavals of early colonial New France were experienced differently by French explorers and settlers, and by Native traditionalists and Catholic converts. However, European invaders and indigenous people alike learned to negotiate the complexities of cross-cultural encounters by reimagining the meaning of kinship. Part micro-history, part biography, Religion, Gender, and Kinship in Colonial New France explores the lives of Etienne Brulé, Joseph Chihoatenhwa, Thérèse Oionhaton, and Marie Rollet Hébert as they created new religious orientations in order to survive the challenges of early seventeenth-century New France. Poirier examines how each successfully adapted their religious and cultural identities to their surroundings, enabling them to develop crucial relationships and build communities. Through the lens of these men and women, both Native and French, Poirier illuminates the historical process and powerfully illustrates the religious creativity inherent in relationship-building.

In more than twenty powerful films, Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has waged a brilliant battle against the ignorance and stereotypes that Native Americans have long endured in cinema and television. In this book, the first devoted to any Native filmmaker, Obomsawin receives her due as the central figure in the development of indigenous media in North America. ø Incorporating history, politics, and film theory into a compelling narrative, Randolph Lewis explores the life and work of a multifaceted woman whose career was flourishing long before Native films such as Smoke Signals reached the screen. He traces Obomsawin?s path from an impoverished Abenaki reserve in the 1930s to bohemian Montreal in the 1960s, where she first found fame as a traditional storyteller and singer. Lewis follows her career as a celebrated documentary filmmaker, citing her courage in covering, at great personal risk, the 1991 Oka Crisis between Mohawk warriors and Canadian soldiers. We see how, since the late 1960s, Obomsawin has transformed documentary film, reshaping it for the first time into a crucial forum for sharing indigenous perspectives. Through a careful examination of her work, Lewis proposes a new vision for indigenous media around the globe: a ?cinema of sovereignty? based on what Obomsawin has accomplished.

With nine out of ten Canadians claiming a religious affiliation of some kind - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Aboriginal, or one of dozens of other religions - faith has huge impact on our personal and social lives. In this book, Robert Choquette offers a comprehensive history of religion in Canada and examines the ongoing tug-of-war between modernity and conservatism within the religious traditions themselves.

In The Shock of Colonialism in New England, archaeologist Meghan C. L. Howey uses excavations in the magnificent seventeenth-century frontier colony of the Great Bay Estuary/P8bagok in today's New Hampshire to trace the direct line of European global colonialism to the present crises. Howey shows how this site, outside of the hub of the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston, holds overlooked stories of what it meant to live through the shock of colonialism. These stories include an unexpected diversity and dynamism among English colonists, nuanced, multifaceted encounters with Indigenous peoples whose ancestors had thrived here for millennia, and lasting degrading environmental legacies of labor-intensive industries.