Department of History congratulates Graduate History Programme Director Carolyn Podruchny on the appearance of her latest book. Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories, co-edited by Carolyn and Laura Peers (a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford), was published recently by the University of British Columbia Press, 344 pp.
Here is a brief description of the volume from the UBC Press catalogue:
British traders and Ojibwe hunters. Cree women and their metis daughters. Explorers and anthropologists and Aboriginal guides and informants. These people, their relationships, and their complex identities and worldviews were not featured in histories of North America until the 1970s, when scholars from multiple disciplines began to bring new perspectives and approaches to bear on the past. Gathering Places presents some of the most innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to metis, fur trade, and First Nations history being practised today. Whether they are discussing dietary practices on the Plateau, trees as cultural and geographical markers in the trade, the meanings of totemic signatures, issues of representation in public history, or the writings of Aboriginal anthropologists and historians, the authors link archival, archaeological, material, oral, and ethnographic evidence to offer novel explorations that extend beyond earlier scholarship centred on the archive. They draw on Aboriginal perspectives, material forms of evidence, and personal approaches to history to illuminate cross-cultural encounters and challenge older approaches to the past. These fascinating essays on aspects of the history of Rupert’s Land mark a significant departure from the old paradigm of history writing and will serve as models for recovering and communicating Aboriginal and cross-cultural experiences and perspectives.
For further details, including a Table of Contents, see http://www.ubcpress.ubc.ca/search/title_book.asp?BookID=299173168
Many congratulations, Carolyn, on this fine achievement.