Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future: The Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples by Katherine A.H. Graham and David Newhouse (editors) Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2021 $31.95 / 9780887558689 Reviewed by Jim Miller * Harry Swain, the deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs when the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP]…
Read more 1385 Royal Commission DOA
All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2021 $22.00 / 9781990071027 Reviewed by Danial Neil * In his debut novel, Brian Thomas Isaac invites us to bear witness to the life of Eddie Toma. He deftly guides us, shocks us, and in the end informs us of the reality of growing…
Read more 1378 Growing up on Salmon River
Rez Rules: My Indictment of Canada’s and America’s Systemic Racism Against Indigenous Peoples by Chief Clarence Louie, with a foreword by Paul Martin Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland & Stewart), 2021 $34.95 / 9780771048333 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * When I first met Chief Clarence Louie at the Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB) office in…
Read more 1374 Chief Clarence Louie of Osoyoos
“Opposition on the Coast”: The Hudson’s Bay Company, American Coasters, the Russian-American Company, and Native Traders on the Northwest Coast, 1825-1846 Edited and introduced by James R. Gibson Toronto: The Champlain Society, 2019 $99.00 / 9780772764416 Reviewed by Peter Grant * A game of monopoly: The Bay, of department store fame, was once the terror…
Read more 1370 Documenting monopoly
The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire by Stephen R. Bown Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Anchor Canada), 2021 $24.95 / 9780385694094 Reviewed by Daniel Francis * When I finished graduate school in the mid-1970s and rejoined the work force I got a job researching the history of the fur trade…
Read more 1361 A cabal of merchant adventurers
Royally Wronged: The Royal Society of Canada and Indigenous Peoples by Constance Backhouse, Cynthia E. Milton, Margaret Kovach, and Adele Perry (editors) Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021 $39.95 / 9780228009030 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller Disclosure: the reviewer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada * In 2016, Dr. Cindy Blackstock…
Read more 1359 A shaky grasp at the Royal Society
St. Michael’s Residential School: Lament and Legacy by Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2020 $21.95 / 9781553806233 Reviewed by J.R. (Jim) Miller * In the summer of 1970 Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubinstein, recently married and just graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, wanted to take some time off to…
Read more 1346 Four months at Alert Bay
Indigenous Repatriation Handbook Prepared by Jisgang Nika Collison, Sdaahl K̲’awaas Lucy Bell, Lou-ann Neel Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2019 $29.95 / 9780772673176 Reviewed by Mark Turin * Anthropologist Aaron Glass remarked that use of the prefix ‘re’ in words such as repatriation, revitalization, rejuvenation, revival, and resurgence points to the undoing of some…
Read more 1345 Museum repatriation and renewal
So Much More Than Art: Indigenous Miniatures of the Pacific Northwest by Jack Davy Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $89.95 / 9780774866552 Reviewed by Alan L. Hoover * In this book Jack Davy discusses the making of miniature objects: model canoes, houses, totem poles, masks, by First Nations artists on the Northwest Coast of BC, Alaska,…
Read more 1334 In praise of the miniature
Paradise Won: The Struggle to Create Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve by Elizabeth May Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 (2nd edition; first published by McClelland & Stewart, 1990) $25.00 / 9781771604581 Reviewed by Ron Dart * Editor’s note: earlier in 2021 we published a review by Ron Verzuh of Paradise Won: The Struggle to Create…
Read more 1329 Return to Moresby Island
Testimonio: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala by Catherine Nolin and Grahame Russell (editors) Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2021 $29.95 / 9781771135627 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Catherine Nolin and Grahame Russell both teach in the Geography Department at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George; she’s department…
Read more 1326 Witness to Canadian mining
To Impersonate the Supernatural: Music, Ceremony and Culture of the Bella Bella by Anton Frederik Kolstee Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2020 $24.95 / 9781926991146 Reviewed by Mark Turin * To Impersonate the Supernatural draws heavily from the author’s 1988 doctoral dissertation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ethnomusicologist, educator, and musician, Anton Frederik Kolstee…
Read more 1319 Heiltsuk ceremonial songs
Murders on the Skeena: True Crime in the Old Canadian West, 1884-1914 by Geoff Mynett Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9781773860671 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Not a Hollywood murder: move aside Deadwood and make room for BC’s wild north When people exist on the extreme edges of a place, unexpected yet sometimes…
Read more 1316 Colonial law vs Gitxsan tradition
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Harper Perennial), 2020 $22.99 / 9781443459181 Reviewed by Harper Campbell * Teaching and healing have always been important aspects to Indigenous writing in Canada. Look at any famous Indigenous author, whether that be Pauline Johnson or Richard Wagamese, and you’ll find that teaching and healing are central…
Read more 1309 The object of Indigenous writing
Geography of British Columbia: People and Landscapes in Transition (fourth edition) by Brett McGillivray Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $55.00 / 9780774864329 Reviewed by Ken Favrholdt * Brett McGillivray’s Geography of British Columbia: People and Landscapes in Transition has withstood the test of time since its first edition in 2000, which I reviewed for BC Studies…
Read more 1305 McGillivray’s essential geography
Linda Rogers reviews two books: Indian in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power by Jody Wilson-Raybould Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2021 $34.99 / 9781443465366 * From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada by Jody Wilson-Raybould Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 $24.95 / 9780774880534 * CHARACTER, a drama with some bad actors and some…
Read more 1302 Lessons from the Big House
Richard Wagamese Selected: What Comes from Spirit by Richard Wagamese, with an introduction by Drew Hayden Taylor Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771622752 Reviewed by Paul Falardeau * When he died at 61, Richard Wagamese still had a lot to say, though he had already said so much. The Ojibwe author was…
Read more 1298 A tribute to Richard Wagamese
Scofflaw by Garry Thomas Morse Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2021 $18.00 / 9781772141726 Reviewed by Danny Peart * Scofflaw has been described as a long poem, a playful exploration of Indigenous-Settler relations and globalized pressures. The long poem is divided into 14 poems, to give us a breather in between, in a paperback edition of 72…
Read more 1270 Scofflaw & the corn-fed media
Lost Kootenays: A History in Pictures by Greg Nesteroff and Eric Brighton Lunenburg, NS: MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, 2021 $29.95 / 9781772761641 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh Editor’s note: the full photo captions below are taken directly from Lost Kootenays. * Kootenay Home: A prize collection of historic images shares the Kootenays’ rugged past Growing up in…
Read more 1269 A choice Kootenay collection
Joseph William McKay: A Métis Business Leader in Colonial British Columbia by Greg N. Fraser Victoria: Heritage House, 2021 $22.95 / 9781772033403 Reviewed by John R. Hinde * By coincidence, Greg N. Fraser’s biography, Joseph William McKay: A Métis Business Leader in Colonial British Columbia, arrived on my desk the same day that the Tk’emlups…
Read more 1252 J.W. McKay & the Métis mystery