front cover of Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat
Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat
Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition
Anita Best
Utah State University Press, 2019
Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat showcases the stories of two Newfoundland storytellers, Philip Pius Power and Alice Lannon. Ethnopoetic transcriptions of these sensitive and artful tales, which have been passed on orally for generations as part of a community tradition, give accounts of living oral performances from the last quarter of the twentieth century and demonstrate the artistry that is possible without the written word.
 
Here, eight tales from Power and five tales from Lannon take up issues of vital concern—such as spousal abuse, bullying, and social and generational conflict—allusively, through a screen of fiction. In commentary following the stories Anita Best, Martin Lovelace, and Pauline Greenhill discuss the transmission of fairy tales in oral tradition, address the relation of these magic tales to Lannon’s and Power’s other stories, and share specifics about Newfoundland storytelling and the two tellers themselves. The text is further enriched by expressive illustrations from artist Graham Blair.
 
Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat presents the fairy-tale oeuvres of two superb storytellers as a contribution to interdisciplinary fairy-tale studies and folklore—countering fairy-tale studies’ focus on written traditions and printed texts—as well as to gender studies, cultural studies, Newfoundland studies, and Canadian studies. Students, scholars, and general readers interested in folk and fairy tales, contemporary Märchen, Newfoundland folklore, or oral tradition more generally will find much of value in these pages.
 
Support for this publication was provided, in part, by the University of Winnipeg.
 
[more]

front cover of The Land Beyond
The Land Beyond
A Memoir
Jack Ives
University of Alaska Press, 2010

Geographer Jack Ives moved to Canada in 1954, and soon after he played an instrumental role in the establishment of the McGill Sub-Arctic Research Laboratory in central Labrador-Ungava. This fascinating account of his fifty-plus years living and working in the arctic is simultaneously a light-hearted, winning memoir and a call to action on the issues of environmental awareness and conservation that are inextricably intertwined with life in the north. Mixing personal impressions of key figures of the postwar scientific boom with the intellectual drama of field research, The Land Beyond is a memorable depiction of a life in science.

[more]

logo for University of Wisconsin Press
Media Sense
The Folklore-Popular Culture Continuum
Smith
University of Wisconsin Press
Essays in this collection exemplify folkloristic approaches to popular culture. The contributors are concerned with the ways in which technological media shape expressive forms; the small group uses of mass media; the relation of traditional forms, content and aesthetics to mass popularity; the changing repertoires and roles of active bearers of tradition who perform for audiences of differing sizes; and the functions of folklore within the conventions of popular culture. This collection demonstrates that folklore and popular culture are not oppositional so much as interdependent categories of cultural activity in modern society.
[more]

logo for University of Manitoba Press
Nitinikiau Innusi
I Keep the Land Alive
Tshaukuesh Elizabeth Penashue
University of Manitoba Press, 2019

front cover of Once Upon A Virus
Once Upon A Virus
Diane E. Goldstein
Utah State University Press, 2004

Once Upon a Virus explores how contemporary, or "urban," legends are indicators of culturally complex attitudes toward health and illness.

Tracing the rich tradition of AIDS legends in relation to current scholarship on belief, Diane Goldstein shows how such stories not only articulate widespread perceptions of risk, health care, and health policy, they also influence official and scientific approaches to the disease and its management. Notions that appear in narratives of who gets AIDS, how and why, are indicators of broad issues involving health beliefs, concerns, and needs.

[more]

front cover of Settlement, Subsistence, and Change Among the Labrador Inuit
Settlement, Subsistence, and Change Among the Labrador Inuit
David Natcher
University of Manitoba Press, 2012

front cover of Skin for Skin
Skin for Skin
Death and Life for Inuit and Innu
Gerald M. Sider
Duke University Press, 2014
Since the 1960s, the Native peoples of northeastern Canada, both Inuit and Innu, have experienced epidemics of substance abuse, domestic violence, and youth suicide. Seeking to understand these transformations in the capacities of Native communities to resist cultural, economic, and political domination, Gerald M. Sider offers an ethnographic analysis of aboriginal Canadians' changing experiences of historical violence. He relates acts of communal self-destruction to colonial and postcolonial policies and practices, as well as to the end of the fur and sealskin trades. Autonomy and dignity within Native communities have eroded as individuals have been deprived of their livelihoods and treated by the state and corporations as if they were disposable. Yet Native peoples' possession of valuable resources provides them with some income and power to negotiate with state and business interests. Sider's assessment of the health of Native communities in the Canadian province of Labrador is filled with potentially useful findings for Native peoples there and elsewhere. While harrowing, his account also suggests hope, which he finds in the expressiveness and power of Native peoples to struggle for a better tomorrow within and against domination.
 
[more]

front cover of Slow Disturbance
Slow Disturbance
Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier
Rafico Ruiz
Duke University Press, 2021
From the late nineteenth through most of the twentieth century, the evangelical Protestant Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, created a network of hospitals, schools, orphanages, stores, and industries with the goal of bringing health and organized society to settler fisherfolk and Indigenous populations. This infrastructure also served to support resource extraction of fisheries off Labrador's coast. In Slow Disturbance Rafico Ruiz engages with the Grenfell Mission to theorize how settler colonialism establishes itself through what he calls infrastructural mediation—the ways in which colonial lifeworlds, subjectivities, and affects come into being through the creation and maintenance of infrastructures. Drawing on archival documents, maps, interviews with municipal officials, teachers, and residents, as well as his field photography, Ruiz shows how the mission's infrastructural mediation—from its attempts to restructure the local economy to the aerial surveying and mapping of the coastline—responded to the colony's environmental conditions in ways that expanded the bounds of the settler frontier. By tracing the mission's history and the mechanisms that enabled its functioning, Ruiz complicates understandings of mediation and infrastructure while expanding current debates surrounding settler colonialism and extractive capitalism.
[more]

front cover of The Terms of Our Surrender
The Terms of Our Surrender
Colonialism, Dispossession and the Resistance of the Innu
Elizabeth Cassell
University of London Press, 2021
An analysis of the laws determining indigenous land ownership in eastern Canada.
 
Based on extensive fieldwork and oral history, The Terms of Our Surrender is a powerful critical appraisal of unceded indigenous land ownership in eastern Canada. Set against an ethnographic, historical, and legal framework, this book traces the myriad ways the Canadian state has evaded the 1763 Royal Proclamation that guaranteed First Nations people a right to their land and way of life.

Focusing on the Innu of Quebec and Labrador, whose land has been taken for resource extraction and development, this book strips back the law of fiduciary duty to its origins. The Terms of Our Surrender argues for the preservation of land ownership and positions First Nations people as natural land defenders amidst a devastating climate crisis. This volume offers a voice to the Innu people, detailing the spirituality practices, culture, and values that make it impossible for them to willingly cede their land.

This book is intended to bridge the gap in knowledge between legal practitioners and those working at the intersections of human rights, social work, and public policy. It offers a potent template for using the law to fight back against the indignities suffered by indigenous communities.
 
[more]

logo for University of London Press
A World You Do Not Know
Settler Societies, Indigenous Peoples and the Attack on Cultural Diversity
Colin Samson
University of London Press, 2014
Lists over 3,500 theses in progress on 1 January 2017 in both history and other departments, classified according to period and area Gives full details of title, supervisor and university Helps postgraduate students to select a topic and a supervisor, to publicise their topic and to discover others working in related fields Provides an overview of the amount and variety of current historical research for higher degrees
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter