New Books November 24, 2009

Greg Gillespie, Hunting for Empire: Narratives of Sport in Rupert's Land 1840 - 70. UBC Press, 2007. Dafoe SK 151 G54 2007.



Gillespie, who teaches at Brock University, has written an intellectual history of big game hunting on the Canadian prairie as practised by British tourists and army officers. Using the published accounts written by the hunters he examines their attitudes toward nature as they found it and toward the indigenous people who often worked for them as guides. The book provides many insights into the mentality of the colonizers as they blasted their way across the plains.


Joel Pfister, The Yale Indian, Duke University Press, 2009, Dafoe E90 C48 P45 2009.

A biography of Henry Roe Cloud 1884-1950, the first Native American to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at Yale. Cloud was one of the founders of the Society of American Indians, founded a preperatory school for indian students and while working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs was a "catalyst for the Indian New Deal." (from the book cover).


Shari Huhndorf, Mapping the Americas: The Transnational Politics of Contemporary Native Culture. Cornell University Press, 2009. Dafoe E98 E85 H84 2009.


A collection of essays on modern indigenous culture which focuses on the transnational nature of that culture.



Alexandra Harmon, ed., The Power of Promises, University of Washington Press, 2008. Dafoe E 78 N77 P68 2008.



A collection of essays about treaties which grew out of a conference in 2004, Pacific Northwest Indian Treaties in National and International Historical Perspective. Canadian and American writers look at different aspects of the Treaty process in "...some of the finest work on treaties currently available in the literature." (from the Forward).

New Books November 2, 2009

Todd Leahy and Raymond Wilson, Historical Dictionary of Native American Movements, Scarecrow Press, 2008. Dafoe Reference E93 L43 2008.

This useful reference book, with introductory essay and bibliography by two Kansas academics, contains entries on the political, economic and social movements through which Native Americans have attempted to accomodate themselves to the ongoing pressures of the European invasion of their land.

Dewi Ball and Joy Porter, Competing Voices from Native America, Greenwood Press, 2009. dafoe E77 C743 2009.

Part of the "Fighting Words" series this book presents a collection of first hand accounts and documents dealing with controversial subjects in Native American relations with whites. Differing points of view are represented in original accounts, newspaper stories, letters etc. and the sources are chosen to encourage discussion and further research in high school and University classrooms.





Norman Hallendy, Tukiliit: The Stone People Who Live in the Wind, An introduction to Inuksuit and Other Stone Figures of the North. Douglas and McIntyre, 2009. Dafoe E99 E7 H255 2009.


Hallendy, a former senior civil servant, has travelled extensively in the Arctic and has photographed a huge array of stone figures, both inuksuit and others less familiar. All have meaning as memorials, markers for good fishing, sacred places or guides for important trails. The book is a collection of his photographs with captions and explanations.

Lance Foster, The Indians of Iowa, University of Iowa Press, 2009.

Dafoe E78 I6 F67 2009.

Foster, a member of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, has written a dictionary style account of the various First Nations cultures in Iowa.












Diane Payment, The Free People - Li Gens Libres: A History of the Metis Community of Batoche, Saskatchewan, University of Calgary Press, 2009.
Dafoe E99 M47 P38 2009.


Payment, an historian with Parks Canada who has written extensively on the Metis gives us a revised and updated edition of her 1990 study. "Her inquiry draws on a range of written historical sources, both Metis and non-Metis, as well as more recent oral history narratives and personal observations". (from the book cover.)