Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands

by Sarah Carter (Editor), Patricia A McCormack (Editor)

Overview

This rich collection of essays illuminates the lives of late-eighteenth-century to mid-twentieth-century Aboriginal women, women who have been overlooked in sweeping narratives of the history of the West.

Some essays focus on individuals—a trader, a performer, a non-human woman. Other essays examine cohorts of women—wives, midwives, seamstresses, nuns. Authors look beyond the documentary record and standard representations of women, drawing on records generated by the women themselves, including their beadwork, other material culture, and oral histories. Exploring the constraints and boundaries these women encountered, the authors engage with difficult and important questions of gender, race, and identity. Collectively these essays demonstrate the complexity of "contact zone" interactions, and they enrich and challenge dominant narratives about histories of the Canadian Northwest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781926836324
Publisher:	Athabasca University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Series:	The West Unbound: Social and Cultural Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	433
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Sarah Carter is professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair in both the Department of History and Classics and the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Patricia A. McCormack is associate professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.

Sarah Carter is Professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair in both the Department of History and Classics and the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Her most recent books are The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada and Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own.
Patricia A. McCormack is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on Aboriginal peoples of the northwestern Plains, northern Canada, and Scotland, in the contexts of the fur trade and the expansion of state. She has published extensively about Fort Chipewyan, including a new book to be published shortly by UBC Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations – vii Acknowledgments – ix Lifelines: Searching for Aboriginal Women of the Northwest and Borderlands – 5 Sarah Carter and Patricia A. McCormack PART ONE: Transatlantic Connections (1) Recovered Identities: Four Métis Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rupert’s Land – 29 Susan Berry (2) Lost Women: Native Wives in Orkney and Lewis – 61 Patricia A. McCormack (3) Christina Massan’s Beadwork and the Recovery of a Fur Trade Family History – 89 Alison K. Brown, with Christina Massan&Alison Grant PART TWO: Cultural Mediators (4) Repositioning the Missionary: Sara Riel, the Grey Nuns, and Aboriginal Women in Catholic Missions of the Northwest – 115 Lesley Erickson (5) The "Accomplished" Odille Quintal Morison: Tsimshian Cultural Intermediary of Metlakatla, British Columbia – 135 Maureen L. Atkinson (6) Obscured Obstetrics: Indigenous Midwives in Western Canada – 157 Kristin Burnett PART THREE: In the Borderlands (7) Sophie Morigeau: Free Trader, Free Woman – 175 Jean Barman (8) The Montana Memories of Emma Minesinger: Windows on the Family, Work, and Boundary Culture of a Borderlands Woman – 197 Sarah Carter PART FOUR: The Spirit World (9) Searching for Catherine Auger: The Forgotten Wife of the Wîhtikôw (Windigo) – 225 Nathan D. Carlson (10) Pakwâciskwew: A Reacquaintance with Wilderness Woman – 245 Susan Elaine Gray PART FIVE: Challenging and Crafting Representations (11) Frances Nickawa: “A Gifted Interpreter of the Poetry of Her Race” – 263 Jennifer S.H. Brown (12) Blazing Her Own Trail: Anahareo’s Rejection of Euro-Canadian Stereotypes – 287 Kristin L. Gleeson Notes – 313 List of Contributors – 409 Index – 413