Tag Archives: Indigenous History

When History Needs an Intervention

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By Mary Jane McCallum Thank you to Crystal Fraser for guest-editing #AHindigenous at ActiveHistory this week. Her initiative exponentially increased Active History’s content by Indigenous people and likely its Indigenous readership. To Leanne Simpson, Zoe Todd, Claire Thomson, Daniel Sims, Adam Gaudry, Anna Huard, Lianne Charlie, Norma Dunning and Billy-Ray Belcourt, thank you for your thoughtful and inspiring posts. Each piece… Read more »

Paved with Good Intentions: Simply Requiring Indigenous Content is Not Enough

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by Adam Gaudry Over the past year, the University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University have mandated that incoming undergraduate students complete an Indigenous degree requirement before graduating. This requirement takes the form of an Indigenous content class chosen from a number of options relevant to the student’s degree program. Given the popular response, many other universities are following suit, a… Read more »

“Not That Kind of Indian:” The Problem with Generalizing Indigenous Peoples in Contemporary Scholarship and Pedagogy

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By Daniel Sims   As a recent hire at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus, the student newspaper, The Dagligtale, interviewed me. Upon reading the printed story – and much to my surprise – I found that my home community of Tsay Keh Dene had become Tsay Keh Dane, but that it was also a reserve. The first error, I attributed… Read more »

The Contemporary relevance of the Historical Treaties to Treaty Indian peoples

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On the day after the Trudeau government revealed its five-point plan for a renewed relationship with First Nations, ActiveHistory.ca is pleased to announce the publication of Leon Crane Bear’s “The Contemporary relevance of the Historical Treaties to Treaty Indian peoples” By Leon Crane Bear In June of 1969, the federal government announced its Statement of the Government of Canada on… Read more »

Vicarious Trauma: Collecting the Herd

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By Jesse Thistle Author’s Preface “Vicarious Trauma: Collecting the Herd” is written in a first-person narrative style in line with Indigenous ways of knowing and disseminating knowledge, as seen in the works of Campbell (1974), Koebel (2007), and Devine (2010), among other Métis scholars, writers, and activists. This piece opens with oral testimony from a Cree-Métis Elder Rose (pseudonym) recording during… Read more »

The Role of Canada’s Museums and Archives in Reconciliation

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by Krista McCracken The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) held its closing events in Ottawa from May 31 – June 3, 2015. The event included the release of an executive summary of the TRC findings and Calls to Action made by the Commission.  The 388 pages of the summary highlight the work of the Commission and the material… Read more »

Film Friday: British Columbia’s Contact Zone Classrooms, 1849–1925

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Film Fridays give active historians a chance to share their work in a new format. If you would like to submit a film about history, get in touch! By Sean Carleton Canada’s sordid history of colonial education has yet again become a topic of controversy and debate. While the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is coming to an… Read more »

A Review of The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir

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By Kevin Plummer “When I was at that school,” Joseph Auguste (Augie) Merasty writes of his years at St. Therese Residential School, “it seemed always to be winter time” (Merasty, 41). It’s little surprise, then, that certain anecdotes from that season stand out in the memoir he’s written with David Carpenter, The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir…. Read more »

Public Spaces and Indigenous Land: Whitefish Island

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by Krista McCracken Whitefish Island is tucked in near the northern bank of the St. Mary’s River that runs between Sault Ste Marie Ontario and Sault Ste Marie Michigan. The island is minutes from downtown Sault Ste Marie but is devoid of development and has rural feeling.  It is tear shaped, approximately 1 km long, and home to many species… Read more »

“Setting Canadian History Right?: A Response to Ken Coates’ ‘Second Thoughts about Residential Schools’”

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By Crystal Fraser and Ian Mosby As two young historians of Canada’s notorious Indian Residential School System – one finishing her PhD, the other currently in his second postdoctoral fellowship – we were wary when we saw Ken Coates’ recent opinion piece in the Dorchester Review.[1] At a first glance, the title, in particular, had us worried: “Second Thoughts about Residential Schools”… Read more »