Resistance and Recognition at Kitigan Zibi tells the modern history of Kitigan Zibi, the largest and oldest Algonquin reserve in Canada. This local history sheds light on the larger experience of the Algonquin First Nations whose traditional lands span the Ottawa River watershed and cross contemporary boundaries. Drawing on archival sources and interviews with community members, this work elucidates the relationship between culture and politics on the reserve during the twentieth century. Despite the disruptions of settler colonialism, the Algonquin have maintained a distinct identity and have waged a multifaceted struggle against assimilation and economic marginalization. This struggle has played out in political spaces including border-crossing celebrations, grand councils, and courtrooms. This fight has also informed strategic labour choices, interactions with game wardens, and protests against the Catholic Church. Resistance and Recognition at Kitigan Zibi demonstrates that the contest over recognition of treaty rights and traditional lands is longer, broader, and deeper than previously understood.

Kitigan Zibi is the largest, oldest Algonquin reserve in Canada. This local history illuminates the larger experience of the Algonquin First Nations whose traditional lands span the Ottawa River watershed and cross contemporary boundaries. Drawing on interviews with community members and archival sources, Resistance and Recognition at Kitigan Zibi explores the twentieth-century politics and culture of the reserve. Despite the disruptions of settler colonialism, the Algonquin maintained a distinct identity and waged a multifaceted struggle against assimilation and economic marginalization. That struggle played out in political spaces including border-crossing celebrations, grand councils, and courtrooms, and informed strategic labour choices, interactions with provincial game wardens, and protests against the Catholic Church. Resistance and Recognition at Kitigan Zibi convincingly demonstrates that the contest for recognition of treaty rights and traditional lands has been longer, broader, and deeper than previously understood.

In The Secret Struggles of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg Leaders, Anny Morissette examines Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg actors’ political resistance to the Canadian government amidst threats to the tribe’s traditional political structures. Morissette traces the Anishinabeg political identity through the preservation of traditional, spiritual, and symbolic influences, which have endured despite colonial disruptions. Morissette highlights daily forms of resistance, Indigenous narratives, and tactics of political power from the margins, demonstrating how Anishinabeg actors continue to defy political oppression.

In order to interpret and implement a treaty between the Crown and Canada’s First Nations, we must look to its spirit and intent, and consider what was contemplated by the parties at the time the treaty was negotiated, argues Aimée Craft. Using a detailed analysis of Treaty One – today covering what is southern Manitoba – she illustrates how negotiations were defined by Anishinabe laws (inaakonigewin), which included the relationship to the land, the attendance of all jurisdictions’ participants, and the rooting of the treaty relationship in kinship. While the focus of this book is on Treaty One, Anishinabe laws (inaakonigewin) defined the settler-Anishinabe relationship well before this, and the principles of interpretation apply equally to all treaties with First Nations.

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, two traditions clashed in a bruising series of asymmetrical encounters over land use and ownership. One site of conflict was Kahnawà:ke. The Laws and the Land delineates the establishment of a settler colonial relationship from early contact ways of sharing land; land practices under Kahnawà:ke law; and ultimately the Canadian invasion in the guise of the Indian Act, private property, and coercive pressure to assimilate. This meticulously researched book is connected to larger issues of human relations with environments, communal and individual ways of relating to land, legal pluralism, historical racism and inequality, and Indigenous resurgence.

A vision shared. A manifesto. This remarkable work argues that Anishinabeg need to reconnect with non-colonized modes of thinking, social organization, and decision making in order to achieve genuine sovereignty. In Our Hearts Are as One Fire, Jerry Fontaine recounts the stories of three Ota’wa, Shawnee, and Ojibway-Anishinabe leaders who challenged aggressive colonial expansion – Obwandiac, Tecumtha, and Shingwauk. He weaves Ojibwaymowin language and knowledge with conversations with elders and descendants of the three leaders. The result is a book that reframes the history of Manitou Aki, sharing a vision of how Anishinabe spiritual, cultural, legal, and political principles will support the leaders of today and tomorrow.

The Boston Tea Party, the Order of Red Men, Camp Fire Girls, Boy Scouts, Grateful Dead concerts: just a few examples of white Americans' tendency to appropriate Indian dress and act out Indian roles "A valuable contribution to Native American studies."—Kirkus Reviews This provocative book explores how white Americans have used their ideas about Native Americans to shape national identity in different eras—and how Indian people have reacted to these imitations of their native dress, language, and ritual. At the Boston Tea Party, colonial rebels played Indian in order to claim an aboriginal American identity. In the nineteenth century, Indian fraternal orders allowed men to rethink the idea of revolution, consolidate national power, and write nationalist literary epics. By the twentieth century, playing Indian helped nervous city dwellers deal with modernist concerns about nature, authenticity, Cold War anxiety, and various forms of relativism. Deloria points out, however, that throughout American history the creative uses of Indianness have been interwoven with conquest and dispossession of the Indians. Indian play has thus been fraught with ambivalence—for white Americans who idealized and villainized the Indian, and for Indians who were both humiliated and empowered by these cultural exercises. Deloria suggests that imagining Indians has helped generations of white Americans define, mask, and evade paradoxes stemming from simultaneous construction and destruction of these native peoples. In the process, Americans have created powerful identities that have never been fully secure.