New Book List

"Essays and photographs that document the anti-Asian riots of 1907 in the context of contemporary anti-Asian sentiment. White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver explores the conditions leading up to and the impact of a demonstration and parade in Vancouver, Canada, organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League and the ensuing mob attack on the city's Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian communities. Emblematic of a systemically racist era, White Riot reveals the social and political environment of the time, when racialized communities were targeted through legislated as well as physical acts of exclusion and violence. Based on 360 Riot Walk, a 360-degree video walking tour by artist and author Henry Tsang, White Riot offers an intersectional approach to this pivotal moment in the history of racialized communities and a cultural and social context for understanding for the current wave of anti-Asian sentiment. It features photographs of the riots colourized by Tsang as well as those of contemporary Vancouver where the riots took place. Essays by Tsang and others speak to the colonial times that preceded and followed the 1907 riots, as well as issues that Chinese and Japanese communities (and other racialized communities) in North America are facing today. White Riot poses the question: in the current ethos of anti-racism and decolonization, what does it take to reconcile our collective histories within the legacy of white supremacy? Includes essays by the Asian Canadian Labour Alliance, Paul Englesberg, Melody Ma, Angela May and Nicole Yakashiro, Jeffery R. Masuda, Aaron Franks, Audrey Kobayashi and Trevor Wideman, and Andy Yan, with an introduction by Patricia E. Roy."-- Provided by publisher.

"A biography of the extraordinary Nellie Cashman, a well-loved miner, entrepreneur and philanthropist who lived and worked in the roughest boomtowns of the West in the late-nineteenth century. At a time when well-bred women wore tight corsets and entertained each other at tea, Nellie Cashman (1845-1925) was trekking for hundreds of miles through blizzard conditions to deliver food and supplies to trapped miners in northern BC. An Irish immigrant, Cashman travelled from Boston to San Francisco in search of opportunity. She followed the mining boomtowns, all the way from California to northern BC, and Arizona to Alaska opening up restaurants and boarding houses, and staking mining claims. She was friends with the likes of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday during her years in Tombstone, and was known among them for her kind heartedness and charitable acts. This biography is a fresh look at the fascinating life of an under-appreciated historical character."-- Provided by publisher.

"This book is a biography of two British Columbian ships that performed legendary service in the Canadian Arctic. The St. Roch, now on permanent display at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, is the better known of the two, although North Star of Herschel Island is still sailing and still adding to her legend. Historian Bruce Macdonald--who, along with his wife, owns North Star of Herschel Island--has meticulously researched the origins and service logs of each ship and created a book that will enthrall old Arctic hands, maritime history buffs and anyone who appreciates well-written Canadian history. Under the command of Captain Henry Larsen, the sturdy RCMP vessel St. Roch spent years showing the Canadian flag in the Arctic, performing many duties including delivering medical supplies and taking census information in addition to enforcing the law in the North. St. Roch is world renowned for achieving many firsts, including being the first vessel through the Northwest Passage west to east, the first vessel to navigate the passage in both directions and the first vessel to circumnavigate North America. Inspired by St. Roch, renowned trapper and Inuit leader Fred Carpenter designed the elegant North Star, the ultimate ice vessel used to transport furs and people to and from remote Banks Island. Together, the two iconic ships have helped to solidify Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic and have become symbols of unity among Northern communities. In Sisters of the Ice, Macdonald documents in vivid detail the adventurous histories of these two vessels, as well as the history of the Northern communities in which they gained renown. Detailing daring escapes from dangerous ice conditions to thrilling sea voyages to raucous whaling towns, Macdonald reveals the perilous and often lawless climate in which these vessels operated and the ties of Canadian identity that they helped forge."-- Provided by publisher.

"The United States needed a road to Alaska so they could defend the Aleutians from Japan. They sent soldiers to build the Alaska Highway. The segregated Black 97th Engineers built the road in Alaska, and when their disorganized white officers struggled to make progress, the army replaced their commander. The new one got the job done but ignored military protocol and discipline, so the army, worried about undisciplined black soldiers, replaced him too. And to put the fear of God into the soldiers, the army trumped up a mutiny charge against ten of them and sentenced them to long prison terms at hard labor."

The story of Roshier H. Creecy is a portal into a reformative and rapidly changing era in America's history. Born in 1866, he was among the first generation of African Americans who were free to migrate. The societal obstacles Roshier encountered one hundred years ago, and his strategies to circumvent them, are still present for men of color today. Escaping southern culture intent of retaining a racial hierarchy, Roshier joined the U.S. Army's Ninth Cavalry, known as the "Buffalo Soldiers." Following the discharge, Roshier married in Washington, D.C., and had a son but chafed at the indignities of daily life under "Jim Crow" laws. He joined the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 and became the owner of a roadhouse at which the North-West Mounted Police billeted. In 1906, he mushed his dog team to Alaska, bound for the Koyukuk gold fields, where he remained the rest of his life. Roshier's wanderings were prompted by the search for freedom and prosperity, but his journey led him to discover personal growth and sense of belonging in a wondrous wilderness hinting of gold

"This is the first detailed account of the 5,000 black troops who were reluctantly sent north by the U.S. Army during World War II to help build the Alaska Highway and install the companion Canol pipeline. Theirs were the first black regiments deployed outside the 48 states during the war"--Provided by publisher.

Summary"In this exciting first-hand account of an unexpected cinematic discovery, Michael Gates delves into the history behind a hoard of silent films found buried beneath the permafrost of an Arctic gold rush town. In 1978, hundreds of reels of silent films were unearthed from beneath the demolished site of an old hockey arena in Dawson City, Yukon. Author Michael Gates witnessed the cinematic discovery of these once-lost films—and in this book excavates and illuminates the history of a gold rush town like no other. An event in the most unlikely of places and circumstances, the Klondike gold rush was unique in the history of Canada and the development of the North. Dawson City, the “Paris of the North,” was the hub of the Klondike gold rush 125 years ago. There were more saloons, gambling halls and theatres than there were places serving food, and the live theatre was at the centre of it all. Discover the icons who went from the Klondike to Hollywood: Robert Service, Jack London, Charlie Chaplin, Alexander Pantages, Sid Grauman, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Marjorie Rambeau and more. Join Gates on this cinematic journey as he ponders the question: Did the Klondike help make Hollywood, or did Hollywood make the Klondike? Crafted from Gates’s first-hand experience and extensive research, Hollywood in the Klondike casts a spotlight on an exciting piece of Canadian history."-- Provided by publisher.

Using primary source materials from three individuals around whom the narrative revolves, best-selling author Blum tells a story of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush.

We are pleased to share with you Black History in the Last Frontier, published in 2020 and prepared by historian Dr. Ian Hartman through a partnership with the University of Alaska Anchorage and the National Park Service Alaska Regional Office. The book illuminates historical records and oral histories of African Americans who have worked and lived in Alaska for over 150 years – hunting for whales, patrolling the seas, building roads, serving in the military, opening businesses, winning political office, and forging communities.
Black History in the Last Frontier and the seven short companion stories featured below highlight the achievements and contributions of Alaska’s Black community, while demonstrating how these women and men have endured racism, fought injustice, and made a life and home for themselves in the forty-ninth state.

"There is a missing chapter in the narrative of Canada's Indigenous peoples--the story of the Métis Nation, a new Indigenous people descended from both First Nations and Europeans. Their story begins in the last decade of the eighteenth century in the Canadian North-West. Within twenty years the Métis proclaimed themselves a nation and won their first battle. Within forty years they were famous throughout North America for their military skills, their nomadic life and their buffalo hunts. The Métis Nation didn't just drift slowly into the Canadian consciousness in the early 1800s; it burst onto the scene fully formed. The Métis were flamboyant, defiant, loud and definitely not noble savages. They were nomads with a very different way of being in the world--always on the move, very much in the moment, passionate and fierce. They were romantics and visionaries with big dreams. They battled continuously--for recognition, for their lands and for their rights and freedoms. In 1870 and 1885, led by the iconic Louis Riel, they fought back when Canada took their lands. These acts of resistance became defining moments in Canadian history, with implications that reverberate to this day: Western alienation, Indigenous rights and the French/English divide. After being defeated at the Battle of Batoche in 1885, the Métis lived in hiding for twenty years. But early in the twentieth century, they determined to hide no more and began a long, successful fight back into the Canadian consciousness. The Métis people are now recognized in Canada as a distinct Indigenous nation. Written by the great-grandniece of Louis Riel, this popular and engaging history of "forgotten people" tells the story up to the present era of national reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. 2019 marks the 175th anniversary of Louis Riel's birthday (October 22, 1844)"-- Provided by publisher.

Nearly a thousand Yukoners, a quarter of the population, enlisted before the end of the Great War. They were lawyers, bankers, piano tuners, dockworkers and miners who became soldiers, nurses and snipers; brave men and women who traded the isolated beauty of the north for the muddy, crowded horror of the battlefields. Those who stayed home were no less important to the war’s outcome—by March of 1916, the Dawson Daily News estimated that Yukoners had donated often and generously at a rate of $12 per capita compared to the dollar per person donated elsewhere in the country. Historian Michael Gates tells us the stories of both those who left and those on the home front, including the adventures of Joe Boyle, who successfully escorted the Romanian crown jewels on a 1,300-kilometre journey through Russia in spite of robbers, ambushes, gunfire, explosions, fuel shortages and barricades. Gates also recounts the home-front efforts of Martha Black, who raised thousands of dollars and eventually travelled to Europe where she acted as an advocate for the Yukon boys. Stories of these heroes and many others are vividly recounted with impeccable research.

Instead of discovering a land blanketed by dense forests, early explorers of the Pacific Northwest encountered a varied landscape including open woods, meadows, and prairies. Far from a pristine wilderness, much of the Northwest was actively managed and shaped by the hands of its Native American inhabitants. Their primary tool was fire.

This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to one of the most important issues concerning Native Americans and their relationship to the land. Over more than 10,000 years, Native Americans in the Northwest learned the intricacies of their local environments and how to use fire to create desired effects, mostly in the quest for food.

Drawing on historical journals, Native American informants, and ethnobotanical and forestry studies, this book’s contributors describe local patterns of fire use in eight ecoregions, representing all parts of the Native Northwest, from southwest Oregon to British Columbia and from Puget Sound to the Northern Rockies. Their essays provide glimpses into a unique understanding of the environment, one that draws on traditional ecological knowledge. Together, these writings also offer historical perspective on the contemporary debate over “prescribed burning” and management of public lands.

"For over 150 years, Tlingit women artists have beaded colorful, intricately beautiful designs on moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and other garments. Painful Beauty suggests that at a time when Indigenous cultural practices were actively being repressed, beading supported cultural continuity, demonstrating Tlingit women's resilience, strength, and power. Beadwork served many uses, from the ceremonial to the economic, as women created beaded pieces for community use and to sell to tourists. Like other Tlingit art, beadwork reflects rich artistic visions with deep connections to the environment, clan histories, and Tlingit worldviews. Contemporary Tlingit artists Alison Bremner, Chloe French, Shgen Doo Tan George, Lily Hudson Hope, Tanis S'eiltin, and Larry McNeil foreground the significance of historical beading practices in their diverse, boundary-pushing artworks. Working with museum collection materials, photographs, archives, and interviews with artists and elders, Megan Smetzer reframes this often overlooked artform as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. She shows how beading gave Tlingit women the freedom to innovate aesthetically, assert their clan crests and identities, support tribal sovereignty, and pass on cultural knowledge. Painful Beauty is the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork and contributes to the expanding literature addressing women's artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast"-- Provided by publisher.

"Twice Migrated, Twice Displaced explores the lives of Gulf South Asians who arrived in Canada from India and Pakistan via Persian Gulf countries. Tania Das Gupta reveals the multiple migration patterns of this group, analyzing themes such as gender, racial, and religious discrimination; class mobility; the formation of transnational families; and identities in a post-9/11 context. This perceptive study demonstrates the effect of neoliberal labour markets and transnationalism on community building, diaspora, citizenship, and a sense of belonging when in Canada."-- Provided by publisher.

Many of Canada?s most famous suffragists lived and campaigned in the Prairie provinces, which led the way in granting women the right to vote and hold office. In Ours by Every Law of Right and Justice, Sarah Carter challenges the myth that grateful male legislators simply handed women the vote when it was asked for. Settler suffragists worked long and hard to overcome obstacles and persuade doubters. But even as they petitioned for the vote for their sisters, they often approved of that same right being denied to ?foreigners? and Indigenous peoples. By situating the suffragists? struggle in the colonial history of Prairie Canada, this powerful and passionate book shows that the right to vote meant different things to different people.

The North-West Mounted Police: 1873-85 outlines the formative years of the Force in certainly the most momentous twelve-year period observed in Canadian prairie history.

OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ERA is enhanced immeasurably by the extent of information provided, the clear description of the frontier experience, and in its detailed survey of the policing and lifestyle of the “Guardians of the Land.”
In his research, the author relied extensively on primary sources: diaries, letters, newspapers, official reports, NWMP personnel files. The North-West Mounted Police: 1873-85 is an engaging account of Western Canadian history. Three examples illustrate the fascinating scope of study:

IN 1876, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER A.G. IRVINE, while en route escorting prisoners of the Cypress Hills Massacre, chose to temporarily remove their handcuffs, and provided them with rifles to hunt buffalo in order to replenish the party’s food supply.

DURING A JURY TRIAL AT FORT WALSH IN 1877, Colonel James Macleod, aware local opinion prejudged Freeman Burnett guilty, in turn, recruited a jury in Montana Territory. This recruitment of a jury from another country is perhaps unparalleled in legal history.

A MAP PRINTED IN JANUARY 1875 (three months after the North-West Mounted Police reached Fort Macleod) precisely depicts the geographic features of the Canadian prairies, the new NWMP posts and the route taken on the acclaimed '74 March. This land was not an unchartered wilderness when the '74 Originals traveled west. In fact, the next summer, the two sons of Inspector William Jarvis, aged 13 and 14, obtained a gun and with the supplies they could carry, walked the same route as their father’s column across the plains.

Summary"Four hundred years. A vast geography. Making and Breaking Settler Space explores how settler spaces have developed and diversified from contact to the present. Adam Barker traces the trajectory of settler colonialism, drawing out details of its operation that are embedded not only in imperialism but also in contemporary contexts that include problematic activist practices by would-be settler allies. Unflinchingly engaging with the systemic weaknesses of this process, he proposes an innovative, unified spatial theory of settler colonization in Canada and the United States that offers a framework within which settlers can pursue decolonial actions in solidarity with Indigenous communities."-- Provided by publisher.

"How people eat today is a record of food use through the ages, and Famine Foods offers the first ever overview of the use of alternative foods during food shortages. Paul E. Minnis explores the unusual plants that have helped humanity survive throughout history. "-- Provided by publisher.

Gateways to Empire: Quebec and New Amsterdam to 1664 by Daniel Weeks is the first comprehensive comparative study of the North American fur-trading colonies New France and New Netherland. Weeks traces the evolution of Quebec and New Amsterdam from hubs for trade with the Indians to gateways for European settlement.

"Taking a fresh look at the first two centuries of French colonialism in the Americas, this book answers the long-standing question of how and how well indigenous Americans and the Europeans who arrived on their shores communicated with each other. French explorers and colonists in the sixteenth century noticed that indigenous peoples from Brazil to Canada used signs to communicate. The French, in response, quickly embraced the nonverbal as a means to overcome cultural and language barriers. Céline Carayon's close examination of their accounts enables her to recover these sophisticated native practices of embodied expressions"-- Provided by publisher

"The French Jesuit Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix's 1744 journal of his voyage through French North America-New France, Louisiana, and the Caribbean-is among the richest eighteenth-century accounts of the continent's colonization, as well as its indigenous inhabitants, flora, and fauna. Micah True's new translation of this influential text is the first to appear since 1763. It provides the first complete and reliable English version of Charlevoix's journal and reveals the famous Jesuit to have been a better literary stylist than has often been assumed on the basis of earlier translations. Complemented by a detailed introduction and richly annotated, this volume finally makes accessible to an Anglophone audience one of the key texts of eighteenth-century French America"-- Provided by publisher.

A comparative study of Canada, Quebec, Latin America, the Caribbean and the USA reveals both the exclusions and the inclusions, which, in literary, artistic, and media productions, as well as political essays, are founded on the opposition between interior and exterior.

"Privileging Indigenous voices and experiences, Intimate Integration documents the rise and fall of North American transracial adoption projects, including the Adopt Indian and Métis Project and the Indian Adoption Project. The author argues that the integration of adopted Indian and Métis children mirrored the new direction in post-war Indian policy and welfare services. She illustrates how the removal of Indigenous children from Indigenous families and communities took on increasing political and social urgency, contributing to what we now call the "Sixties Scoop." Intimate Integration utilizes an Indigenous gender analysis to identify the gendered operation of the federal Indian Act and its contribution to Indigenous child removal, over-representation in provincial child welfare systems, and transracial adoption. Specifically, women and children's involuntary enfranchisement through marriage, as laid out in the Indian Act, undermined Indigenous gender and kinship relationships. Making profound contributions to the history of settler-colonialism in Canada, Intimate Integration sheds light on the complex reasons behind persistent social inequalities in child welfare."-- Provided by publisher

Generations of prospectors and miners have sought to unlock the mineral treasures from the craggy hills of Dublin Gulch, in the heart of the Yukon wilderness. On this tiny tributary located an hour north of the village of Mayo, families were raised and lives lived, dreaming of finding the motherlode. For a century, miners and their families sifted gold from Dublin gravels while prospectors with grit, drive and determination burrowed into the granite below, seeking elusive veins of gold. Yet it was there all along, invisible to the eye, waiting for the right people to find it and the right technology to release it from the bedrock. This story begins with these dreamers and ends with the opening of the Yukon's biggest gold mine: the Eagle. It is the story of the little company that could, Victoria Gold; of a veteran miner, John McConnell; and of his committed team of determined men and women who beat the odds and turned the dream into a reality. With insight into both the natural and human forces at play, author Michael Gates illuminates the important history of a profoundly significant industry in the Yukon--and in doing so, illuminates the landscape of the North with verve, detail and affection.

Above the Arctic Circle transports the reader back in time to the Alaska of 1911 into the Athabaskan Indian village of Fort Yukon and beyond. It was a time when travel was by trail or river on routes shared by man and wild beast, when communication reached only as far as the echo of one's voice, and when the first order of each new day was survival in the face of unyielding natural elements. This is the time and place chronicled in the personal journals of James A. Carroll: explorer, pioneer, dogsled musher, trapper, trader, husband, and father. It is an authentic first-hand account of a young man's first decade in the territory of Alaska, a straightforward telling of the adversity and adventures of life on the far north frontier. This story, told with honesty and more than a little humor, offers a kind of kinship connecting author and reader thereby extending a personal invitation to take the journey north through time with James A. Carroll -- Above the Arctic Circle.