Brendan Edwards is a Canadian academic and writer with an MA in Canadian Studies and Native Studies from Trent University, a Master of Library and Information Studies from McGill University, and a PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan.
Abstract: This book captures the essence of what makes the Slovak people unique and explains something of the quirks and memorable aspects of their lifestyle. It opens a window onto their inner world, their customs and celebrations, and describes what to expect and how to behave in different situations. While the country is not without its frustrations for foreigners, most visitors succumb to its charms. Few have left without yearning to return to “the little big country.”
Abstract: Edwards' study ... "is much more than a history of print culture and libraries among aboriginal peoples in Canada, as its title suggests," wrote Wade Kotter in a review published on the College and Research Libraries Web site. "It is also a devastating critique of the narrow, ethnocentric notions of literacy that European colonists imposed on these aboriginal peoples and an account of how this imposition worked against the social, political, intellectual, and economic advancement of these peoples, despite the colonists' claims that this was being done for the betterment of these `primitive' peoples." Settlers saw the written words as a tool for manipulating and changing native cultures to further their own ends--a way in which they could dominate the ways in which Native peoples could present their ideas and concepts to one another. Lack of literacy and access to written culture was a weakness that Europeans exploited to their benefit. Edwards explains, however, that access to literacy cut both ways: while settlers saw literacy as part of a "civilizing" process that undermined native culture and brought Aboriginals into the world of "civilization," the Native Americans saw it as a tool to promote resistance and to preserve cultural traditions." In sum, he recounts compelling stories of cultural appropriation, resistance, cooperation,and invention," declared Susan Nash in Libraries and the Cultural Record. "His focus on instances of frustrated or creative collaboration between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals, groups, and institutions addresses some gaps in Canadian history and outlines others only Indigenous peoples can fill."
Abstract: Charles Angus Cooke (Thawennensere) (1870-1958) was an Aboriginal artist and writer and a federal civil servant who, by attempting to establish a library and publish a Mohawk newspaper and dictionary, and by his recruitment of Native soldiers in World War I, tried to bring the knowledge and ideas of Native people into the educational and political realm of the Department of Indian Affairs. Cooke sought to redefine the Western medium of the printed word for the social, cultural and political benefit of Aboriginal peoples, without compromising Aboriginal cultural interests and beliefs. He was motivated by a sincere interest in protecting, strengthening, and promoting Aboriginal languages, histories, and cultural practices, and desire to create an environment where Aboriginal people could make meaningful contributions to Canadian political affairs.
Abstract: Review essay on three books on the theme of Canadian identity and nationalism: Rudyard Griffith's Who We Are, Ian Angus' Identity & Justice, and John Ralston Saul's A Fair Country.
Abstract: A creative non-fiction piece tracing the intersection between tradition, modernity and food. A reflection of the author's time spent in Slovakia. Specifically he explores the disappearance of traditional Slovakian culinary practices in the context of globalization.
Abstract: Edwards’s account of the multifaceted public life of Squamish Band member Andrew Paull is richly rendered. A political activist, journalist, and sporting personality who played a prominent part, before and after the Second World War, in provincial and federal debates about Aboriginal rights, Paull objected to portrayals of Native persons as lazy and incompetent. His trenchant insistence that his people were capable, thoughtful, and able to handle their own political, social, and economic affairs challenged the consensus of his time, just as his acknowledgment of the positive sides of his experience at residential school complicates present-day depictions of those institutions, which focus on their negative aspects, label them “a great shame,” and ask “what went wrong?” Paull was neither the first nor the last Native person enabled by his or her residential school experience to use “the tools of the white man … to speak for and fight for the rights” of indigenous peoples. And this is no small thing when we remember that Paull became (in the assessment of George Manuel) “the spark and catalyst” of the contemporary First Nations political movement.
Abstract: Indians, as most non-Aboriginal people think they know them, do not exist. Historian Daniel Francis states that "The Indian began as a White man's mistake, and became a White man's fantasy. Through the prism of White hopes, fears and prejudices, indigenous Americans would be seen to have lost contact with reality and to have become 'Indians'; that is, anything non-Natives wanted them to be." Through non-Aboriginal writing, theatre, film, television, comic books, and advertising, Indians have existed as the invention of the European. As such, the popular conception of the Indian has resulted not in accurate representation, but rather an often insulting and misinformed caricature. Teepees, headdresses, totem poles, birch bark canoes, face paint, fringes, buckskin, and tomahawks have thus become the universal symbols of "Indianness," and such monikers as "Injun," "redskin," "squaw," "savage," and "warrior," have too often been used to label Aboriginal characters. As the curators of the 1992 touring museum exhibit, "Fluffs and Feathers" noted, these "are the symbols that the public uses in its definition of what an Indian is. To the average person, Indians, real Indians, in their purest form of 'Indianness,' live in a world of long ago where there are no high-rises, no snowmobiles, no colour television. They live in the woods or in mysterious places called 'Indian Reserves.'" These Indians are the Indians of storybooks, novels, films, that most non-Aboriginal North Americans were exposed to as children and in school. To many contemporary non-Aboriginal people, Indians are no more real than characters of fantasy; they are characters of the imagination, role-played by countless non-Aboriginal children (and adults) in school playgrounds, as Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.
Abstract: In October 2001 thirteen-year-old Skawenniio Barnes from the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve in Quebec wrote a passionate letter to her chief and council requesting the establishment of a public library in her community. 'We do not have any place to go to obtain books, both for leisure reading and for research,' she explained. Barnes's efforts attracted international attention after the American teen magazine Cosmo Girl and the Montreal Gazette ran features on her request; subsequently, donations of books and other reading materials poured in from around the globe. Thanks to Barnes's plea, Kahnawake now has a community library, but this story contrasts sharply with the neglect of library services in Native communities and schools during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.
Abstract: The second half of the nineteenth century was relatively productive in terms of print for Aboriginal communities in Canada. Missionaries and other special interest groups brought out books, newspapers, and newsletters for Aboriginal audiences. Some publications were in Native languages, in alphabetic, syllabic, or hieroglyphic form, and others were designed for instruction in English or French. In some cases, Native people themselves produced these materials. A number of Aboriginal writers emerged in this period, and schoolchildren were sometimes involved in printing at Native residential schools.
Abstract: The period between 1913 (the year of E. Pauline Johnson’s death) and 1960 (roughly when the modern cultural renaissance of Canada's Aboriginal peoples began) is sometimes regarded as having been void of Aboriginal literary production. But some Aboriginal peoples, perhaps for the first time, used print and publishing during this period to communicate with other Aboriginal peoples in Canada and internationally. Works by Edward Ahenakew and Ethel Brant Monture exemplify the continuum of Aboriginal writing in Canada from the early nineteenth century through to contemporary times, as do such widely read Aboriginal authors as Maria Campbell and Basil Johnston (who often signed his letters "Yours Aboriginally").
Abstract: Basil H. Johnston is today one of Canada’s most successful and widely read Aboriginal writers. Emerging in the 1970s, during what is now recognised as a time of Aboriginal cultural renaissance in this country, Johnston’s early books were not met with widespread enthusiasm in the publishing world. If not for the professional support of Jack McClelland, Anna Porter, and a handful of other editors, Johnston’s early classics, Ojibway Heritage (1976) and Moose Meat & Wild Rice (1978), may never have been published.
Abstract: During his lifetime, Reverend Edward Ahenakew received little or no payment for his writing, and struggled financially. Through family ties, Ruth Buck became the steward of Ahenakew’s manuscripts after his death. Her association with the Ahenakew papers, eventually editing and publishing his Voices of the Plains Cree (McClelland & Stewart, 1973), brought Ahenakew’s writing to the reading public and brought Buck herself considerable literary success.
Abstract: In her own words, Ethel Brant Monture was a “one-woman crusade to reverse over four centuries of propaganda.” It was her wish that the contributions of Aboriginal people be known to all Canadians and that school textbooks be revised to eliminate bias and falsehood, to reflect historical reality in relation to First Nations. Her contribution to Clarke, Irwin’s Canadian Portraits series, Famous Indians (1960), was a significant biographical achievement that she employed in her crusade.
Abstract: Maria Campbell’s first book, Halfbreed (1973), was a landmark in modern Canadian Aboriginal literature. To this day, Halfbreed is widely taught in Canadian schools and universities. The archival record reveals much about what is not told in the book, including at least one incident Jack McClelland considered too libellous to publish, despite Campbell’s desire that her story be told in its entirety.
Abstract: From the late fifteenth century onward the new world has been described, imagined, and created via the written word and the printing press. Europeans and Euro-North Americans laid claim to the new world through print culture, both politically (through written treaties and legislation) and culturally (through popular fiction and non-fiction), creating and defining popular and widespread notions of land ownership and cultural otherness. This thesis examines, from an historical-cultural point-of-view, the efforts of five early twentieth century Aboriginal writers in Canada, Charles A. Cooke, Edward Ahenakew, Bernice Loft Winslow, Andrew Paull, and Ethel Brant Monture. These individuals were writing in the period after 1915 (the death of E. Pauline Johnson) and before 1960 (roughly when the modern cultural renaissance of Aboriginal peoples in Canada began), and each used print and literary endeavour as a means of writing-back to the widespread stereotypes about Aboriginal peoples and land ownership which permeated non-Aboriginal writing about Indians in this era. The period between 1915 and 1960 has been described by previous scholars as having been void of Aboriginal literary production, but this thesis shows that some Aboriginal peoples used print and publishing, for perhaps the first time, to communicate with other Aboriginal peoples provincially, nationally, and in some cases, internationally. Writing and print were used as a kind of call-to-arms in the early twentieth century by the Aboriginal writers discussed in this work, and their efforts demonstrate that there has been a continuum of Aboriginal writing in Canada from the early nineteenth century through to contemporary times. Through the adoption and careful articulation of western print culture, Aboriginal peoples have made efforts at laying claim and asserting control over the cultural and political literary (mis)representations of Indians in Canada.
Abstract: A pictorial history of Slovakia: a brief and abbreviated story of history, which reveals the Slovak past to the rest of the world through photographs.
