The People Of Denendeh

This impressive collection brings together the results of June Helm's fifty years of studying the culture and ethnohistory of the Dene, Athapaskan-speaking Indians of the Mackenzie River drainage of the western subarctic. In addition to her previously published essays - with updated commentary where necessary - The People of Denendeh includes unpublished field notes, archival documents, supplementary essays and notes from collaborators, and narratives by the Dene themselves. Helm begins with a broad-ranging, stimulating overview of the social organization of hunter-gatherer peoples of the world, past and present, that provides a background for all she has learned about the Dene. The chapters in part one focus on community and daily life among the Mackenzie Dene in the middle of the twentieth century. After two historical overview chapters, part two moves from the early years of the twentieth century to the earliest contacts between Dene and white culture, ending with a look at the momentous changes in Dene-government relations in the 1970s. Part three considers traditional Dene knowledge, meaning, and enjoyments, including a chapter on the Dogrib hand game. Throughout, Helm's encyclopedic knowledge combines with her personal interactions to create a collection that is unique in its breadth and intensity. The People of Denendeh will be of interest to those studying North American Indians, hunter-gatherers, and subarctic ethnohistory and provides a historical resource for the people of all ethnicities who live in Denendeh, Land of the Dene.

This story is a heady mix of human drama, adventure, passion, murder, and love between a man and woman of different cultures. It radiates a warmth that transcends the treachery, pain and anguish abounding in a land geographically, culturally, socially and climatically diverse. The poignant love story is threaded through the fabric of true facts in relation to the land, flora, fauna and descendants of the people who first inhabited it. Eric is catapulted into a land where the ravages of time have left their mark geographically and socially; where visions and dreams are as fleeting as the colourful flowers on the tundra, and the struggle for control of ones destiny flutters and is blown, like a golden fall leaf from the tree, without direction. Erics fascination, with stark beauty and political turmoil of the land, leads him into a cultural liaison with a family whose roots are deeply embedded in a spiritual way of life, but the saplings have rejected the strength of the root. He is ensnared in a love that tears him apart emotionally and physically as it sews the seeds of jealously and mistrust. The result is a drama of murder with devastating consequences. Can Eric emerge as the victor, with the help of the abounding love of a woman whose strength is as stalwart as the land in which she was born.

Published to mark the 15th anniversary of the Dene organization. Excerpts from the writings of the Dene and Father Fumoleau's photographs (135) capture the spirit of this people.

A history of the "End-of-Earth" Native people of Canada’s far-North Sahtu region. Bern Will Brown, noted northern author, artist, photographer, and respected community leader living in Colville Lake, Northwest Territories, provides new insights and perspectives on the Sahtu Dene, the people referred to as the "Hareskin" in Alexander Mackenzie’s 1793 journal. Having lived among them for over sixty years and as a speaker of their dialect, Brown is well positioned to provide an adventure in history and culture rooted in the Hareskin traditional way of life. End-of-Earth People, his latest contribution and a valuable record of the North, is a portrait of a people Brown has come to know in ways that anthropologists and ethnologists can only envy.

What does it mean to be a white settler on land taken from peoples who have lived there since time immemorial? In the context of reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence, Unsettling Spirit provides a personal perspective on decolonization, informed by Indigenous traditions and lifeways, and the need to examine one's complicity with colonial structures. Applying autoethnography grounded in Indigenous and feminist methodologies, Denise Nadeau weaves together stories and reflections on how to live with integrity on stolen and occupied land. The author chronicles her early and brief experience of "Native mission" in the late 1980s and early 1990s in northern Canada and Chiapas, Mexico, and the gradual recognition that she had internalized colonialist concepts of the "good Christian" and the Great White Helper. Drawing on somatic psychotherapy, Nadeau addresses contemporary manifestations of helping and the politics of trauma. She uncovers her ancestors' settler background and the responsibilities that come with facing this history. Caught between two traditions – born and raised Catholic but challenged by Indigenous ways of life – the author traces her engagement with Indigenous values and how relationships inform her ongoing journey. A foreword by Cree-Métis author Deanna Reder places the work in a broader context of Indigenous scholarship. Incorporating insights from Indigenous ethical and legal frameworks, Unsettling Spirit offers an accessible reflection on possibilities for settler decolonization as well as for decolonizing Christian and interfaith practice.

For millennia, plants and their habitats have been fundamental to the lives of Indigenous Peoples - as sources of food and nutrition, medicines, and technological materials - and central to ceremonial traditions, spiritual beliefs, narratives, and language. While the First Peoples of Canada and other parts of the world have developed deep cultural understandings of plants and their environments, this knowledge is often underrecognized in debates about land rights and title, reconciliation, treaty negotiations, and traditional territories. Plants, People, and Places argues that the time is long past due to recognize and accommodate Indigenous Peoples' relationships with plants and their ecosystems. Essays in this volume, by leading voices in philosophy, Indigenous law, and environmental sustainability, consider the critical importance of botanical and ecological knowledge to land rights and related legal and government policy, planning, and decision making in Canada, the United States, Sweden, and New Zealand. Analyzing specific cases in which Indigenous Peoples' inherent rights to the environment have been denied or restricted, this collection promotes future prosperity through more effective and just recognition of the historical use of and care for plants in Indigenous cultures. A timely book featuring Indigenous perspectives on reconciliation, environmental sustainability, and pathways toward ethnoecological restoration, Plants, People, and Places reveals how much there is to learn from the history of human relationships with nature.