Using postmodern and postcolonial conceptions of the body and the power relations of colonization, Kelm shows how a pluralistic medical system evolved among Canada's most populous Aboriginal population. She explores the effect which Canada's Indian policy has had on Aboriginal bodies and considers how humanitarianism and colonial medicine were used to pathologize Aboriginal bodies and institute a regime of doctors, hospitals, and field matrons, all working to encourage assimilation. In this detailed but highly readable ethnohistory, Kelm reveals how Aboriginal people were able to resist and alter these forces in order to preserve their own cultural understanding of their bodies, disease, and medicine.

From Ellen Gabriel to Tantoo Cardinal, many of the faces of Aboriginal people in the media today are women. "In the Days of Our Grandmothers" is a collection of essays detailing how Aboriginal women have found their voice in Canadian society over the past three centuries. Collected in one volume for the first time, these essays critically situate Aboriginal women in the fur trade, missions, labour and the economy, the law, sexuality, and the politics of representation.

Leading scholars in their fields demonstrate important methodologies and interpretations that have advanced the fields of Aboriginal history, women's history, and Canadian history. A scholarly introduction lays the groundwork for understanding how Aboriginal women's history has been researched and written and a comprehensive bibliography leads readers in new directions.

"In the Days of our Grandmothers" is essential reading for students and anyone interested in Aboriginal history in Canada.

Talking Back to the Indian Act is a comprehensive "how-to" guide for engaging with primary source documents. The intent of the book is to encourage readers to develop the skills necessary to converse with primary sources in more refined and profound ways. As a piece of legislation that is central to Canada's relationship with Indigenous peoples and communities, and one that has undergone many amendments, the Indian Act is uniquely positioned to act as a vehicle for this kind of focused reading. Through an analysis of thirty-five sources pertaining to the Indian Act-addressing governance, gender, enfranchisement, and land-the authors provide readers with a much better understanding of this pivotal piece of legislation, as well as insight into the dynamics involved in its creation and maintenance.

In the North American imagination, the rodeo cowboy is one of the
most evocative images of the Wild West. A frontier master, he is
renowned for his masculinity, toughness, and skill. A Wilder
West returns to rodeo's small-town roots to explore how,
beneath its showman's surface, rodeo represents a way of life that
simultaneously embodies and subverts our traditional understandings of
power relations between man and nature, women and men, settlers and
Aboriginal peoples.

Historian Mary-Ellen Kelm demonstrates that rodeo has been an
important contact zone - a chaotic and unpredictable place of
encounter - that challenged expected social hierarchies. Rodeo
has brought people together across racial divides, creating
friendships, rivalries, and unexpected intimacies. It was a place where
competency was celebrated as much in the victories of cowgirls as
cowboys. At the rodeo, if nowhere else, Aboriginal riders became local
heroes, and rodeo queens spoke their minds.

A Wilder West complicates the idea of western Canada as a
"white man's country" and shows how rural rodeos have
carved out communities where different rules applied. Lavishly
illustrated, this creative history will change the way we think about
the West's most controversial sport.

Mary-Ellen Kelm is a Canada Research Chair in the Department of History
at Simon Fraser University. Her previous books include Colonizing
Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia. She is
an avid animal trainer, competing in agility and obedience with her
dog, Rusty. She lives in North Vancouver with her husband, Don, and
spends her summers outdoors, hiking and paddling in British Columbia.