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Despite the inadequacies of the historiography, a growing number of anthropologists, economists, geographers, sociologists, and historians have taken an interest in native wage earners and independent producers since the publication of Rolf Knight's "Indians at Work" in 1978. This paper will discuss the existing literature (as it relates to our understanding of native labour history), the various methodological approaches involved, the changing nature of sources, and some of the opportunities for research. In doing so, I will demonstrate that there is an emerging consensus that aboriginal peoples not only participated in the capitalist economy during [the] so-called "era of irrelevance," [i.e., since the mid-19th century] but did so selectively in order to strengthen their traditional way of life. Native efforts to incorporate aspects of the capitalist economy into their seasonal round and their resistance to the government's assimilation policy laid the foundation for the future construction of the non-proletarian Amerindian worker. --From author's introduction