By Krista McCracken Over the past few years one of the many hats I’ve worn at Algoma University has involved providing introduction to archives sessions and educational programming around our archival holdings. This work often leaves me thinking about archival literacy and the skills historians need to be successful at archival research. Archival research is a vital part of historical… Read more »
By Deborah Gorham In the biggest refugee crisis in decades, four and a half million Syrians have fled the civil war in their country. As I write, the refugees from the Syrian civil war have become a continuing media event. We can see refugees drowning; refugees boarding trains, or being prevented from boarding trains. We see victims starving in Madaya,… Read more »
Active history is proud to present a video each week from New Directions in Active History. The conference took place at Huron University College on October 2-4, 2015 and brought together scholars, students, professionals and community members to discuss a wide range of topics pertaining to active history. Leading the panel on the discussion of Public History, Mike Dove, acting… Read more »
Stacy Nation-Knapper The Revenant is not history. Yes, as the film trailers, posters, and advertisements boast, the film was “inspired by true events” and it represents an amalgam of multiple historic fur trade events during the years 1820-24, and fantasy. Most of the non-Indigenous characters in the film existed. Other writers, including Clay Landry for the Museum of the Mountain… Read more »
By Thomas Peace “The Bishop of Huron… applied for a grant in aid of the fund being raised by him for the foundation of a university at London, to be called the Western University of London, and intended for the training of both Indian and white students for the ministry of the Church of England in Canada.” These words about… Read more »
By Beth A. Robertson This past December, Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) announced that it was closing its Child, Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic. The announcement came after two independent reviews were released, deeming the approach of psychologist Dr. Kenneth Zucker, founder and then head of the clinic, as out of step with current medical approaches… Read more »
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 »
By Billy-Ray Belcourt It’s tough: knowing that you might not get the world you want and the world that wants you back, that your bones might never stop feeling achy and fragile from the wear and tear of mere existence, from the hard labour of getting through the day. Ours are bodies that have been depleted by time, that have been… Read more »
By Lianne Charlie In 1973 when Chief Elijah Smith and a delegation of representatives from Yukon First Nations travelled from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Ottawa to present Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau with Together Today for our Children Tomorrow (TTFCT), they had my generation (and the many to follow) in mind: “This is a settlement for tomorrow, not for today…This settlement is… Read more »
By Norma Dunning In Canada there is an educational crisis. Within Nunavut the attrition rates of Inuk high school students is 51%.[i] The Inuit population is just under 60,000, making this a national disaster. Out of the three recognized Aboriginal groups Inuit remain at the lowest end of academic success. Within this country, in 2011, there were a total of… Read more »
