No comments about Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics.

2 comments about Crowfoot: Chief of the Blackfeet (Goodread Biographies).

1. This book is interesting, adventurous, informative, accurate, captivating - a must read! It involves North American Indian history during the last half of the 1800's, in the Northwest US and Western Canada. The major focus is on the Blackfeet Indians of this area. Learn how critical the land and the buffalo were to so many Indian Nations, and how they lost both of these critical necessities of their life and culture. Read this book and learn that there were peaceful Indians, and there were violent Indians, rather like the rest of the world! Read this book and you will never think or say the North American Indians "were savages", as many people still do! This book should also be a must read for every high school student in North America! I highly recommend it!



2. This book is interesting, adventurous, informative, accurate, captivating - a must read! It involves North American Indian history during the last half of the 1800's, in the Northwest US and Western Canada. The major focus is on the Blackfeet Indians of this area. Learn how critical the land and the buffalo were to so many Indian Nations, and how they lost both of these critical necessities of their life and culture. Read this book and learn that there were peaceful Indians, and there were violent Indians, rather like the rest of the world! Read this book and you will never think or say the North American Indians "were savages", as many people still do! This book should also be a must read for every high school student in North America! I highly recommend it!

No comments about Song of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi'kmaq Poet (American Indian Lives).

No comments about Gabriel Dumont Speaks.

3 comments about Indian School Days (Basil Johnson Titles).

1. When most kids skip school they don't get shipped off to a Residential School where they are treated less than human and have to learn quickly to get a long. From the opening sentence you are hooked as the boys armed with slingshots decide not to waste the day in school but go hunting instead. Trouble brews and soon the Indian agent shows up to take little Basil away to Spanish - a small town on the North Shore north of Manitoulin Island. The only problem is the Indian agent - (heartless white men who loved to play God) wanted a "pay" load and up and took the five year old sister of Basil too. Nobody got to say yes or no it was a done deal.To say this book is all serious - well it isn't. Humour comes through again and again these are surviors here people - not victims. Basil was gratefull for the education he got and where it lead him but the out come always depends on the person. What would challenge one person who drive someone else to the edge and over it. The boys rise to the challenge of chicken farming at the school - collecting eggs they'll never get to eat. A page turner for sure, take a closer look at Canada's dirty little secert that is just now being dealt with in court. A follow up list is in the back of the book to tell you what happened to these boys. Excellent read not to be missed



2. As a daughter of one who attended this very school prior to the author, it brings to light how schooling still affects how my father deals with situations (he is now in his 80s).
   
   As an educator, this chapter of Indian Schools is not taught as part of history class -- not for the children or at the university for upcoming teachers. It should be mandatory reading for anyone searching for historical educational processes/pedagogy.
   
   J.Montour, educator



3. During the past few years, many books have been written by former boarders of Canadian Residential Schools for natives. Most, if not all, were a means for their author to live through the anger that churned inside because of ill treatment and sexual abuse by the staff. Much to my delight, though, the author of INDIAN SCHOOL DAYS does not write of such events. He describes his educational experience under the tutorship of Jesuit priests and brothers whose purpose was to teach their native boarders the white man's ways and thus make good Christians of them. Throughout the book, the author describes the daily schedule of the school, the teachers' attitudes, the children's reactions, etc. all eye-opening for readers, who were expecting a "tell all tale," a scandal. All considering, the author did benefit from the discipline of the school to the extent that he freely decided to return the Residential School in Spanish, Ontario as a highs chool student after having etched out a living as a trapper for a short while. By that time, the highs chool had been approved by the Canadian government, and many native boys matriculated on a voluntary basis, contrary to their forced entry into the Residential School as small children, who had been "kidnapped" from their parents by order of Canadian Law.
   Times have changed since the 1940's and 50's and "conversion" of the natives is no longer part of 20th and 21st century standards. Natives are now rediscovering their culture and, as the author has done, are healing their wounds and that of their parents' generation.

No comments about Arctic Odyssey: The Diary of Diamond Jenness, Ethnologist With the Canadian Arctic Expedition in Northern Alaska and Canada, 1913-1916.

1 comments about Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians (Kahkewaquonaby & the Mississauga Indians).

1. This is the story of the Reverend Peter Jones,(1802-1856) (Kahkewaquonaby), a Methodist missionary and a Chief of the Mississauga.

   Doanld B Smith, a History Professor at the University of Calgary, writes an important story of the conflict between the First Peoples and the Europeans in the first years of settlement of south-Central Ontario. We see this interesting man in the context of the British settlement in Canada at a time when the new nation to the south (the USA)were forcibly moving the Cherokees and other eastern tribes to west of the Mississippi. That this did not happen in Upper Canada is to an important extent due to the leadership of this one man who could interpret the Europeans and Native Peoples to each other.

1 comments about Ellen Smallboy: Glimpses of a Cree Woman's Life (Rupert's Land Record Society Series, 4).

1. I got the book in excellent condition and it is very good to read, I would recommend to anyone that would like to order a book. Very good service.

2 comments about Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School.

1. This short book regarding Indian Boarding School experiences in Canada reads like a masters thesis. It was fairly dry and I had to force myself to finish it. However, it did have a "saving grace". The forward to this book was written by Randy Fred, who wrote about his life prior, during and after entering Kamloops Indian Residential School. Ms. Haig-Brown is a professional educator and tried to reinforce that tribes are taking control of the educational systems involving their children now. She did not address the cultural values involved in the meaning and goals of education, which continue to conflict between the mainstream and traditional cultures.



2. Canadians are not known for hubris, but one thing most Canadians will show some pride about is the belief that Canada is the good guy of the world; an identity that is exhibited in everything from peacekeeping and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to politeness. However, Canada has an ugly not-too-distant past in the treatment of First Nations Peoples that is not commonly acknowledged.
   
   In her book Resistance and Renewal, Celia Haig-Brown compiles first-hand accounts from members of the Shuswap Nation of the west coast, who were forced to attend the Kamloops Indian Residential School. As children, these individuals were taken from their family homes to a giant brick institution operated by nuns and missionaries, where they were subject to all manner of abuse, and punished if they spoke their own language. The mission of these schools was to integrate Native children into white society, or in other words, cultural genocide.
   
   Resistance and Renewal is a cultural and historical study, but Haig-Brown's intentions for the book are to reach beyond the academic world. There is "richness and insight" in the stories her informants tell, and she seeks to reveal to a wide audience the skeletons in Canada's closet. The stories of her informants are organized by common themes and experiences, and lay out a clear portrait of suffering and subversion, the infliction and consequences of deep wounds. Her analysis of the school system elaborates how these injustices originated in the racist notions of Canadian government policy makers who referred to their work as "aggressive civilization."
   
   For the non-Native audience, Haig-Brown gives faces and lives to a particular segment of First Nations people, and attempts to show something of the origins of the social problems those people face today. White Canadian society can easily ignore this tiny percentage of our nation's population, but in ignoring the history of Canada's treatment of indigenous people our national identity as the good guys of human rights becomes a lie.
   
   It is important for all Canadians to bring these issues into their national historical knowledge, and to recognize that they are not in the past, but in contemporary society. The last residential school was only closed in the nineties, and the children of the system are now adults and leaders of their communities.
   
   Since its first publication in 1988, Resistance and Renewal has found a place in the popular realm. Non-Native Canadian readers continue to be educated about the state of the third world within our borders, and Native readers have found their own experiences reflected in its pages, leading to the healing of old wounds suffered by individuals and communities and to the continued fight with the Canadian government for apology and recompense.

No comments about The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Harvard Historical Studies).