Description
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 such as a trader, or a performer. Other essays examine cohorts of women such as wives, midwives, seamstresses, and 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. The essays discuss the lives of individual women such as Anahareo; Frances Nickawa; Pakwâciskwew; Catherine Auger; Emma Minesinger; Sophie Morigeau; and Odille Quintal Morison. Other essays discuss the role of midwives; the Grey Nuns; Métis artists; and Aboriginal wives of fur traders. 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. Patricia A. McCormack is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.