New Books October 23, 2009

Nicholas Evans, Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What they have to Tell Us. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Dafoe P 40.5E53 E93 2009.

" A fascinating and colorful view of what we are losing as languages die, by a linguist who understands the significance of our loss more deeply than most." from the book cover.

Steven L. Grafe, editor, Lanterns on the Prairie: The Blackfeet Photographs of Walter Mcclintock. University of Oklahoma Press, 2009. Dafoe E99 S54 L34 2009.


A beautiful collection of photos of Blackfoot people taken between 1904 and 1912 by Walter McClintock. Most have never been published before.











J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty Making in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2009. Dafoe E92 M5427 2009.


J.R. Miller, who teaches history at University of Saskatchewan has written many books on First Nations issues in Canada. This book is described as "...the first successful comprehensive analysis of the treaty making process and its rationale in Canada."













Gordon Rakita, Ancestors and Elites: Emergent Complexity and ritual practices in the Cases Grandes Polity. Altamira Press, 2009. Dafoe E99 C23 R35 2009.

This book "...examines the prehispanic ritual behaviors of the Cases Grandes region of Chihuahua Mexico." The author explores "...the complex reciprocal relationship between ritual practices and developing social complexity at Paquime, one of the best documented arhaeological sites in the region." from the book cover







Lorne Dufour, Jacob's Prayer, Caitlin Press, 2009, Dafoe E99 S45 D84 2009.

"This book centres around one tragic Halloween evening at Alkali Lake in 1975 when two men lose their lives and another is saved by a friend who chooses not to be destroyed by his own tragedy and devastating loss. Set during the time when the community was struggling to overcome its legacy of colonialism, Jacob's Prayer is the haunting and poetic story of a community's suffering, loss and eventual healing. "
publisher's web site.

McNally, Michael, Honoring Elders: Aging Authority and Ojibwe Religion, Columbia U.P., 2009, Dafoe E99 C6 M346 2009
"Ojibwe people esteem the wisdom, authority, and religious significance of old age...this respect ... is the fruit of hard work, rooted in narrative traditions, moral vision, and ritualized practices of decorum that are comparable in sophistication to those of Confucianism. ... Ojibwe and other Anishinaabe communities have been resolute and resourceful in their disciplined respect for elders. Indeed, the challenges of colonization have served to accentuate eldership in new ways." publisher's web site.


Mi'sel Joe: An Aboriginal Chief's JourneyEdited By Raoul R. Andersen and John K. Crellin. Flanker Press, 2009, Dafoe E 99 M6 J62 2009

"Mi’sel Joe: An Aboriginal Chief’s Journey chronicles both the life of an individual and that of his people. Mi’sel Joe is the traditional and administrative chief of Newfoundland’s Conne River Mi’kmaq Reserve. Through a series of taped interviews with Raoul Andersen and John Crellin, Mi’sel Joe tells his life story..." Publisher's web site.




Northern Exposure: peoples, powers and prospects in Canada's North, Leslie Seidle and France St. Hilaire, Institute for Research on Public Policy, 2009. Dafoe JC 11 A78 v. 4.

"The North is an increasingly important focal point of public policy as melting polar ice transforms the Arctic into the epicentre of new global economic and geopolitical interests. This multidisciplinary edited volume explores how the dramatic changes in Canada's North will affect its peoples, its governments, and the social, economic and political future of northerners." from publisher's web site.


Henderson, James Youngblood, Indigenous Diplomacy and the rights of peoples: achieving UN recognition, Purich Publishing, 2008. Dafoe K 3247 H45 2008.


Dowie, Mark, Conservation RefugeesThe Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples, MIT Press 2009, Dafoe GF 50 D69 2009

"Since 1900, more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas have been established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation. In Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie tells this story."


Geniusz, Wendy Djinn. Our knowledge is not primitive : decolonizing botanical Anishinaabe teachings, Syracuse University Press, 2009. Dafoe E 99 C6 G647 2009








LaRue, Frank, Finding Carrie George, Totem Pole Books, 2009. Dafoe PS 8623 A784 F56 2009










LeBeau, Patrick Russell, Term paper resource guide to American Indian history, Greenwood Press, 2009. Dafoe E 76.6 L334 2009

New Books October 1, 2009

These books are on the New Book Shelf in Dafoe Library. You place a request on them in the Libraries Catalogue and they will be put aside for you when the display period is over.

Want to write a review. Send your review to the comments section and I will post it.

Maggie Wilson, Rainy River Lives: Stories told by Maggie Wilson, University of Nebraska Press, 2009, Dafoe E99 C6 W64 2009.

This is a collection of stories told to anthropologist Ruth Landes by Maggie Wilson, 1879 to 1940, an Ojibwe woman who lived on the Manitou Rapids Reserve on the border of Ontario and Minnesota. The transcriptions of the stories were lost when they were misfiled at the Smithsonian Institute and they are presented in here in a new edition by Concordia University anthropologist Sally Cole. The stories recount every day events but are a rich resource for understanding Ojibwe cultural beliefs.

Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, Alfred Knopf, 2005, Dafoe E61 M266 2005.

Mann, an award winning science writer who publishes in Science and the Atlantic Monthly, uses recent research results to paint a picture of the cultures of the Americas in 1491. Many of the discoveries and speculations that he reports on differ from the conventional wisdom about indigenous America. The population of the Americas may well have been larger than that of Europe; Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, was not only larger than any European city but cleaner and healthier to live in. An interesting and readable addition to the ever-growing literature on pre 1492 America.

Kathryn Derounian-Stodola, The War in Words: Reading the Dakota Conflict through the Captivity Literature, University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Dafoe E83.86 D47 2009.

This book is a study of 24 of the many accounts of the war between whites and the Dakota in 1862. A Professor of English at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Derounian-Stodola gives the reader an "ethnography of representative Dakota Conflict narratives and an analysis of the war's historiography." from the cover.

Margaret Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Dafoe E98 C89 J32 2009.

Jacobs is a History professor at University of Nebraska. In this work she contrasts the role of white women in implementing the policy of removing indigenous children from their families and communities in Australia and the U.S..