New Books July 2009

Jo-Ann Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing, University of Manitoba Press, 2009, DAFOE PS 8089.5 I6 E65 2009.

Professor Episkenew teaches a the First Nations University of Canada. In this book she "...undertakes a range and depth of analysis that no other investigation of the contxt, aims, and effects of indigenous writing in Canada has yet attempted. It engages with the most painful, vexing, and hopeful matters in terms that are compassionate and unequivocal. We need this book!" Jeanne Perrault, U of Calgary.

Mary Lou Larson, et al, editors, Hell Gap: A Stratified Paleoindian Campsite at the Edge of the Rockies, U of Utah Press, 2009. DAFOE E 78 W95 H45 2009.

This book is a collection of papers on Hell Gap, one of the most important Paleoindian sites in North America. People used the site for 3,000 years as a camp, resource procurement location and workshop. Major excavations were done at the site in the 1960's and these papers report on more recent additional work and reevaluations of the 1960's work. The papers provide us with a "much expanded understanding of Paleoindian settlement, subsistence, technology, paleo environments and archaeological site formation." (from the introductory essay, p. 12.)

Doug Evans, Noah's Last Canoe: the Lost Art of Birch Bark Canoe Building, Great Plains Publications, 2008, DAFOE E 99 C 88 E 93, 2008.

This book gives a step by step account of the construction of a Cree birch bark canoe in 1965 by elder Noah Custer. The Manitoba Museum asked Doug Evans to ac;quire the canoe for their collection and he photographed the process and described Mr. Custer's work and his methods of design and testing the work. Illustrated with color photos the book is a valuable record of the construction of a traditional Cree vessel.