National Network for Equitable Library Service

Research on Indigenous issues rarely focuses on life in major metropolitan centres. Instead, there is a tendency to frame rural locations as emblematic of authentic or "real" Indigeneity. While such a perspective may support Indigenous struggles for territory and recognition, it fails to account for large swaths of contemporary Indigenous realities, including the increased presence of Indigenous people in cities. The contributors to this volume explore the implications of urbanization on the production of distinctive Indigenous identities in Canada, the US, New Zealand, and Australia.

This updated edition of Treaty Talks in British Columbia traces the origins and development of treaty negotiations in the province and includes a postscript, co-authored with Peter Colenbrander, that provides an extensive overview of the treaty process from 2001 to 2009. The authors outline the achievements of and challenges for the treaty process and review some of the most recent jurisprudence affecting Native and non-Native rights.

Non-lethal weapons take many forms – from rubber bullets to electroshock and long-range acoustic devices – which their proponents argue are ethical, legal, and humane. Social scientists, historians, legal scholars, and activists have long challenged the use of non-lethal weapons in policing and war. Until now, little scholarly attention has been paid to the social, historical, and legal relations that animate the concept of non-lethality, nor is there a comprehensive account of how the concept has achieved social and political acceptance.

This groundbreaking book brings to life a forgotten chapter in the history of Canada and Russia - the journey of 4,200 Canadian soldiers from Victoria to Vladivostok in 1918 to help defeat Bolshevism. Combining military and labour history with the social history of BC, Quebec, and Russia, Benjamin Isitt examines how the Siberian Expedition exacerbated tensions within Canadian society at a time when a radicalized working class, many French-Canadians, and even the soldiers themselves objected to a military adventure designed to counter the Russian Revolution.

In this book, Christopher McKee traces the origins and development of treaty negotiations in British Columbia. Through examination of Native peoples'concerns, such as their role in natural resource development and the issue of compensation for lands and resources lost to industry and urban development, he analyzes conflicting points of view on the treaty-making process and suggests alternatives for a consensus.

Bilingualism has become a defining aspect of Canadian identity. But why don’t more English Canadians actually speak French? So They Want Us to Learn French explores the various ways in which bilingualism was promoted to English-speaking Canadians from the 1960s to the late 1990s. It analyzes the strategies and tactics employed by organizations on both sides of the bilingualism debate.

Do Glaciers Listen? explores the conflicting depictions of glaciers to show how natural and cultural histories are objectively entangled in the Mount Saint Elias ranges. This rugged area, where Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory now meet, underwent significant geophysical change in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which coincided with dramatic social upheaval resulting from European exploration and increased travel and trade among Aboriginal peoples.

In Critical Suicidology, a team of international scholars, practitioners, and people directly affected by suicide argue that the field of suicidology has become too focused on the biomedical paradigm: a model that pathologizes distress and obscures the social, political, and historical contexts that contribute to human suffering. The authors take a critical look at existing research, introduce the perspectives of those who have direct personal knowledge of suicide and suicidal behaviour, and propose alternative approaches that are creative and culturally sensitive.

During the twentieth century, child care policy in British Columbia matured in the shadow of a persistent political uneasiness with working motherhood. Charting the growth of the child care movement in this province, Working Mothers and the Child Care Dilemma examines how ideas about motherhood, paid work, and social welfare have influenced universal child care discussions and consistently pushed access to child care to the margins of BC’s social policy agenda. Lisa Pasolli also celebrates those who have lobbied for child care as part of women’s rights as workers, parents, and citizens.

Throughout history, Western women have inhabited a conceptual space divorced from the world of business. But women have always engaged in business. Who were these women, and how were they able to justify their work outside the home? The Business of Women explores the world of those women who embraced British Columbia’s frontier ethos in the early twentieth-century.