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  • When dealing with Indigenous women’s history we are conditioned to think about women as private-sphere figures, circumscribed by the home, the reserve, and the community. Moreover, in many ways Indigenous men and women have been cast in static, pre-modern, and one-dimensional identities, and their twentieth century experiences reduced to a singular story of decline and loss. In Indigenous Women, Work, and History, historian Mary Jane Logan McCallum rejects both of these long-standing conventions by presenting case studies of Indigenous domestic servants, hairdressers, community health representatives, and nurses working in “modern Native ways” between 1940 and 1980. Based on a range of sources including the records of the Departments of Indian Affairs and National Health and Welfare, interviews, and print and audio-visual media, McCallum shows how state-run education and placement programs were part of Canada’s larger vision of assimilation and extinguishment of treaty obligations. Conversely, she also shows how Indigenous women link these same programs to their social and cultural responsibilities of community building and state resistance. By placing the history of these modern workers within a broader historical context of Aboriginal education and health, federal labour programs, post-war Aboriginal economic and political developments, and Aboriginal professional organizations, McCallum challenges us to think about Indigenous women’s history in entirely new ways. --Publisher's description. Contents: Sweeping the Nation: Indigenous women and domestic labour in mid-twentieth-century Canada -- Permanent solution: the placement and relocation program, hairdressers, and beauty culture -- Early labour history of community health representatives, 1960-1970 -- Gaining recognition: labour as activism among Indigenous nurses -- Wages of whiteness and the Indigenous historian.

  • This book takes its title from the phrase for “I work” in Lunaape, the traditional language of Munsee Delaware people, and was inspired by the work of the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group. Written for the descendants and communities of children who attended Mount Elgin and intended as a resource for all Canadians, Nii Ndahlohke tells the story of student life at Mount Elgin Industrial School between 1890 and 1915. Like the school itself, Nii Ndahlohke is structured in two sections. The first focuses on boys’ work, including maintenance and farm labour, the second on girls’ work, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. In Nii Ndahlohke readers will find a valuable piece of local, Indigenous, and Canadian history that depicts the nature of “education” provided at Canada’s Indian residential schools and the exploitation of children’s labour in order to keep school operating costs down. This history honours the students of Mount Elgin even as it reveals the injustice of Indian policy, segregated schooling, and racism in Canada. --Publisher's description

  • This catalogue of the Nii Ndahlohke exhibition at Art Windsor Essex (September 26, 2023 – June 25, 2024) features work by First Nations artists exploring the history of forced labour of students at Mount Elgin Industrial School (1851-1946). --WorldCat catalogue record

Last update from database: 4/19/25, 4:10 AM (UTC)

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