PreviewsIssue 77, Fall/Winter 2020/21
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Beaver, Bison, Horse
The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains
R. Grace Morgan
This interdisciplinary account of the ecological relationships the Indigenous Peoples of the Plains had to the beaver, bison, horse, and their habitat for thousands of years prior to contact is a game-changer, and provides critical information on how the beaver manage water systems. The book includes a foreword by James Daschuk and an afterword by Cristina Eisenberg.
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bug
Yolanda Bonnell
This solo performance and artistic ceremony highlights the ongoing effects of colonialism and intergenerational trauma experienced by Indigenous women, as it presents the Girl and her efforts to overcome her addictions, and the Mother, who recounts memories during Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
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Burden
Douglas Burnet Smith
These poems take readers to where journalism can’t reach, as they tell the story of a 17-year-old British soldier who was shot for desertion during the First World War. Told by his friend, who was commanded to be a part of the firing squad, this account makes it clear that Private Herbert Burden committed no crime, but was suffering from PTSD.
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Censorettes
Elizabeth Bales Frank
Lucy Barrett is a Censorette, part of the British Intelligence, who uses her Cambridge education and love of Shakespeare to detect a Nazi spy ring operating out of Brooklyn. Just as she is given a new assignment overseas, her good friend is murdered, and she must decide to leave for her new job, or seek justice for her friend.
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Chalk Dust
Memoirs of a Prairie Teacher
Dianne Miller, Lori Bradford (Illustrator)
This collection of stories by a Prairie teacher, vice-principal, and principal recalls Miller’s full educational journey, first as a student and then as a long-time educator. Miller is both entertaining and introspective as she considers the personal, pedagogical, and societal changes she experienced over the years.
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Childhood Thoughts and Water
John McDonald
Taking the forms of beat poetry, spoken word, performance art, and lyrical verse, this collection journeys into the memories and events of an urban Indigenous warrior’s struggles to reconnect with a language and culture that seem always out of reach.
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Collective Care
Indigenous Motherhood, Family, and HIV/AIDS
Pamela Downe
This engaging ethnography explores how Indigenous women and their communities practise collective care to sustain traditional ways of life in the face of Saskatchewan’s HIV epidemic. The book features in-depth narrative interviews and notes from participant observation, and each chapter opens with an ethnographic vignette that introduces central concepts.
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Compelled to Act
Histories of Women’s Activism in Western Canada
Sarah Carter (Editor), Nanci Langford (Editor)
This volume showcases fresh historical perspectives on the diversity of women’s contributions to social and political change in the Prairies in the 20th century, including but looking beyond the era of suffrage activism, and demonstrating how Prairie women responded to women’s needs, to challenges to family security, and to the need for community.
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Concrete
From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future
Mary Soderstrom
Soderstrom traces the glorious history, the extravagant present, and the uncertain future of this world-changing material with careful research, lively anecdotes, and thoughtful reflections, structuring her exploration around the four elements of earth, fire, water, and air.
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Creating the Future of Health
The University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine, 1967-2012
Robert Lampard, David B. Hogan, Frank W. Stahnisch, James R. Wright Jr.
Drawing on interviews with key players and research into primary material, the authors trace the first 50 years of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, which, with a pioneering focus on innovative, responsive, and systems-based approaches, was one of the first faculties to pilot multi-year training programs in family medicine.
