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Browsing All posts tagged under »Indians of North America«
William Duncan in Metlakatla
From In the Wake of the War Canoe by William Collison. The story of Metlakatla is a quintessentially British Columbia story, which, in the middle of the 19th century, represented the farthest, deepest reaches of the British Empire. The founding of the community represented an experiment in Christian Utopianism, an experiment that failed, among […]
Meeting the Haida Fleet by WH Collison
May 19, 2013
William Henry Collison arrived on the Northwest Coast in 1873 to begin work as a missionary for the Church Missionary Society. He learned Tsimshian while teaching at the Utopian (and totalitarian) Tsimshian community of Metlakatla, which was then under the management of the famous William Duncan. He also worked with the Nass River Nisga’a at the beginning […]
Hippy-Speak and Aboriginal Education
April 14, 2013
One time I was given a lesson on how to shake a hand by the managing partner of a major downtown law firm. My grip was too limp, he said. You have to keep it firm. I suppose my handshake was limp. I have always considered the classic grip handshake as a little bit too […]
A Handful of Myths
March 11, 2013
History of Aboriginal America 11 Cortés, the conquistadors, and the myth of the “handful of adventurers.” When 19th century historian William Prescott wrote about Hernán Cortés’ and his role in the invasion and destruction of the Aztec empire beginning in 1521, he described the event as “the subversion of a great empire by a handful […]
Nuu-Chah-Nulth Chief to Gilbert Sproat, 1860
February 7, 2013
Alberni, Vancouver Island, 1860 We see your ships, and hear things that make our hearts grow faint. They say that more King-George-men will soon be here, and will take our land, our firewood, our fishing grounds; that we shall be placed on a little spot, and shall have to do everything according to the fancies […]
Thomas Flanagan, Pundit Propagandist
January 31, 2013
Colonial Propaganda and the Law of Aboriginal Title In his book on the creation of Indian reserves in British Columbia, Making Native Space (2002), Cole Harris writes colonialism is increasingly seen as a culture of domination, a set of values that infused European thought and letters; led Europeans confidently out into the world; stereotyped non-Europeans as […]
Snouting Up to the Government Trough
January 9, 2013
You’ve heard it. If you’ve been following a public comment thread on the Idle No More movement, you may have encountered it already today. If you think of Stephen Harper and his government as a source of accurate information about Aboriginal people, you might even believe it. That Aboriginal people allegedly receive more government largess […]
Some Notes on Indigenous California
December 5, 2012
If you look at the Aboriginal people of California through the lens of a language map, you get one notion of cultural organization, but it’s hardly the most important one in respect of understanding California Aboriginal culture. Because of linguistically determined relationships between language stocks, a map of indigenous languages can give us useful hints […]
Whitestream Attitudes and the Fate of Aboriginal Education
November 4, 2012
Aboriginal Education in the City, Part 3 I suppose it was in the late 1990s when the provincial government introduced the grade twelve First Nations Studies course. The Vancouver School Board duly put together a training workshop for Social Studies instructors on how to teach the course, which, rather than being an actual set curriculum, […]
Grandpa Theo
With Malaika
Klick This Pic
An Informal Chronology of the Aboriginal Land Question in BC
Father Theo's Blog 
May 20, 2013
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