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

About the Book

Recollecting is a rich collection of essays that illuminates the lives of late-eighteenth-century to mid-twentieth-century Aboriginal 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.

About the Editors

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.

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Copyright: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.

MARC

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DownloadFront Matter

DownloadTable of Contents

DownloadList of Illustrations

DownloadAcknowledgments

DownloadMap of the North American West

DownloadLifelines: Searching for Aboriginal Women of the Northwest and Borderlands
Sarah Carter and Patricia A. McCormack

PART ONE: Transatlantic Connections

Download1. Recovered Identities: Four Métis Artists in Nineteenth-Century Rupert’s Land
Susan Berry

Download2. Lost Women: Native Wives in Orkney and Lewis
Patricia A. McCormack

Download3. Christina Massan’s Beadwork and the Recovery of a Fur Trade Family History
Alison K. Brown, with Christina Massan & Alison Grant

PART TWO: Cultural Mediators

Download4. Repositioning the Missionary: Sara Riel, the Grey Nuns, and Aboriginal Women in Catholic Missions of the Northwest
Lesley Erickson

Download5. The “Accomplished” Odille Quintal Morison: Tsimshian Cultural Intermediary of Metlakatla, British Columbia
Maureen L. Atkinson

Download6. Obscured Obstetrics: Indigenous Midwives in Western Canada
Kristin Burnett

PART THREE: In the Borderlands

Download7. Sophie Morigeau: Free Trader, Free Woman
Jean Barman

Download8. The Montana Memories of Emma Minesinger: Windows on the Family, Work, and Boundary Culture of a Borderlands Woman
Sarah Carter

PART FOUR: The Spirit World

Download9. Searching for Catherine Auger: The Forgotten Wife of the Wîhtikôw (Windigo)
Nathan D. Carlson

Download10. Pakwâciskwew: A Reacquaintance with Wilderness Woman
Susan Elaine Gray

PART FIVE: Challenging and Crafting Representations

Download11. Frances Nickawa: “A Gifted Interpreter of the Poetry of Her Race”
Jennifer S.H. Brown

Download12. Blazing Her Own Trail: Anahareo’s Rejection of Euro-Canadian Stereotypes
Kristin L. Gleeson

DownloadNotes

DownloadList of Contributors

DownloadIndex