Tag Archives: Indigenous History

Chanie Wenjack and the Histories of Residential Schooling We Remember

Today, 23 October, is the 52nd anniversary of Chanie Wenjack’s death. Chanie (misnamed Charlie by his teachers) was a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy who, along with two other classmates, ran away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario in October 1966. Fleeing the school’s abusive environment, Wenjack tried to make it home to Ogoki Post in northern Ontario,… Read more »

Liberation from “That Vicious System”: Jim Brady’s 20th Century Métis Cooperatives and Colonial State Responses

Molly Swain James (Jim) Brady (1908-1967) was a Métis communist community organizer active primarily in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan in the mid-20th century.[i] He played an instrumental role in the formation of the Métis Association of Alberta (now the Métis Nation of Alberta) and the Alberta Métis Settlements. Over nearly four decades, Brady was also involved in organizing resource cooperatives… Read more »

Reconciliation in the Classroom: The #150 Acts as a Pedagogical Tool

This post originally appeared in French on Histoire Engagée on June 7, 2018.  Many thanks to Andrea Eidinger for her work translating this post. Catherine Larochelle In the winter of 2018, I had the opportunity to teach HST2444, Autochtones, État et société au Canada at the Université de Montréal. Over the course of the entire semester, I relied extensively on… Read more »

Podcast: Setting the Plains on Fire: How Indigenous Geo-Politics and the U.S.-Dakota War Shaped Canada’s Westward Expansion

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Episode-11-Michel-Hogue.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadOn April 22, 2017, Michel Hogue delivered his talk “Setting the Plains on Fire: How Indigenous Geo-Politics and the U.S.-Dakota War Shaped Canada’s Westward Expansion.” The talk was part of “The Other 60s: A Decade that Shaped Canada and the World,” a symposium hosted by the Department of History at the University of Toronto… Read more »

Remember/Resist/Redraw #14: The 1864 Tsilhqot’in War

Last month, the Graphic History Collective re-launched Remember / Resist / Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as an ongoing series. Earlier this week, we released poster #14 by Gord Hill and Sean Carleton that examines the Tsilhqot’in War of 1864 and reflects on the recent state apologies in the context of continued colonialism and capitalist development in what is… Read more »

Indigenous Veterans, the Indian Act, and the Origins of National Aboriginal Veterans Day

Eric Story The inaugural National Aboriginal Veterans Day took place on 8 November 1993, and the monument of the same name was unveiled in Ottawa the following year. Since its inauguration, National Aboriginal Veterans Day has grown, as ceremonies are now being held in various cities across Canada with larger crowds each year. With that growth, however, disagreement has arisen…. Read more »

What is Forgotten? Influenza’s Reverberations in Post-War Canada

This is the second in a four-part theme week focused on the Spanish Flu and the newly launched Defining Moments Canada project. By Esyllt Jones For all the times scholars of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic have referred to its “forgotten” aspect, in homage to Alfred Crosby’s 1989 title for the influential book that a decade earlier had been published as… Read more »

Coming Home: Veterans, Pensions and the Canadian State After the Great War

By Eric Story What happened to Canadian veterans after the Great War? In the minds of many, shell shock and physical disfigurement loom large. These two images of veterans have attracted so much attention in both academic writings and cultural representations that they have become representative of the entire population of returning ex-servicemen.[1] However, a group of researchers at the… Read more »

Remember / Resist / Redraw #12: Sacred Rivers Within and Idle No More

In January, the Graphic History Collective (GHC) launched Remember | Resist | Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as a year-long artistic intervention in the Canada 150 conversation. Last week we released Poster #12 by Fanny Aishaa, which – to mark the 5th anniversary of Idle No More – looks at INM co-organizer and water defender Melissa Mollen Dupuis. We… Read more »

Selling the Sixties Scoop: Saskatchewan’s Adopt Indian and Métis Project

Allyson Stevenson In 1962, at seven months of age, Robert Doucette, the former President of the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan, was removed from his home in the northern Saskatchewan community of Buffalo Narrows. He explained: “it was the priest that took me, the priest told social services my mother wasn’t fit, she was too young. She was 16 or 17, and they… Read more »