Jean Barman

The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch, and Brockton Point

Stanley Park's Secret

British Columbia is regularly described in superlatives both positive and negative - most spectacular scenery, strangest politics, greatest environmental sensitivity, richest Aboriginal cultures, most aggressive resource exploitation, closest ties to Asia. Jean Barman's The West beyond the West presents the history of the province in all its diversity and apparent contradictions. This critically acclaimed work is the premiere book on British Columbian history, with a narrative beginning at the point of contact between Native peoples and Europeans and continuing into the twenty-first century. Barman tells the story by focusing not only on the history made by leaders in government but also on the roles of women, immigrants, and Aboriginal peoples in the development of the province. She incorporates new perspectives and expands discussions on important topics such as the province's relationship to Canada as a nation, its involvement in the two world wars, the perspectives of non-mainstream British Columbians, and its participation in recreation and sports including Olympics. First published in 1991 and revised in 1996, this third edition of The West beyond the West has been supplemented by statistical tables incorporating the 2001 census, two more extensive illustration sections portraying British Columbia's history in images, and other new material bringing the book up to date. Barman's deft scholarship is readily apparent and the book demands to be on the shelf of anyone with an interest in British Columbian or Canadian history.

A History of British Columbia

The West Beyond the West

Marie Battiste

Written mainly by First Nations and Metis people, this book examines current issues in First Nations education.

The Circle Unfolds

First Nations Education in Canada

A biography of one of the West Coast's most vibrant characters written by one of the West Coast's top historians.

The Remarkable Adventures of "Portuguese Joe" Silvey

Jan Hare

Emma Crosby's letters to family and friends in Ontario shed light on a critical era and bear witness to the contribution of missionary wives. They mirror the hardships and isolation she faced as well as her assumptions about the supremacy of Euro-Canadian society and of Christianity. They speak to her "good intentions" and to the factors that caused them to "go awry." The authors critically represent Emma's sincere convictions towards mission work and the running of the Crosby Girls' Home (later to become a residential school), while at the same time exposing them as a product of the times in which she lived. They also examine the roles of Native and mixed-race intermediaries who made possible the feats attributed to Thomas Crosby as a heroic male missionary persevering on his own against tremendous odds.

Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast

Good Intentions Gone Awry

Drawing on family correspondence, Jean Barman offers a new interpretation of early settlement across Canada in the stories of two young sisters from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, who took the train west to British Columbia in 1886.

The Lives and Letters of Jessie and Annie McQueen

Sojourning Sisters

Robert A. J. McDonald

Focusing on Vancouver's social history, the essays written for thisspecial edition of BC Studies treat hitherto neglected areas of thecity's past and bring new insights into how its residents lived andworked. Receiving particular attention is the socio-economic andresidential structure of Vancouver with one author arguing that thecity's economy created an urban working class which was at oncemore complex and politically more conservative than that of the highlypolarized communities on Vancouver Island and in the Interior.

Vancouver Past: Essays in Social History

“The ways in which we can redress the past are many and varied,” writes Jean Barman, “and it is up to each of us to act as best we can.” The seventeen essays collected here, originally published between 1996 and 2013, make a valuable contribution toward this laudable goal. With a wide range of source material, from archival and documentary sources to oral histories, Barman pieces together stories of individuals and groups disadvantaged in white settler society because of their gender, race and/or social class. Working to recognize past actors that have been underrepresented in mainstream histories, Barman’s focus is BC on “the cusp of contact.” The essays in this collection include fascinating, though largely forgotten, life stories of the frontier—that space between contact and settlement, where, for a brief moment, anything seemed possible. This volume, featuring over thirty archival photographs and illustrations, makes these important and very readable essays accessible to a broader audience for the first time.

Gender, Space and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia

On the Cusp of Contact

Bruce McIntyre Watson

Native Hawaiians arrived in the Pacific Northwest as early as 1787. Some went out of curiosity; many others were recruited as seamen or as workers in the fur trade. By the end of the nineteenth century more than a thousand men and women had journeyed across the Pacific, but the stories of these extraordinary individuals have gone largely unrecorded in Hawaiian or Western sources. Through painstaking archival work in British Columbia, Oregon, California, and Hawaii, Jean Barman and Bruce Watson pieced together what is known about these sailors, laborers, and settlers from 1787 to 1898, the year the Hawaiian Islands were annexed to the United States. In addition, the authors include descriptive biographical entries on some eight hundred Native Hawaiians, a remarkable and invaluable complement to their narrative history. "Kanakas" (as indigenous Hawaiians were called) formed the backbone of the fur trade along with French Canadians and Scots. As the trade waned and most of their countrymen returned home, several hundred men with indigenous wives raised families and formed settlements throughout the Pacific Northwest. Today their descendants remain proud of their distinctive heritage. The resourcefulness of these pioneers in the face of harsh physical conditions and racism challenges the early Western perception that Native Hawaiians were indolent and easily exploited. Scholars and others interested in a number of fields—Hawaiian history, Pacific Islander studies, Western U.S. and Western Canadian history, diaspora studies—will find Leaving Paradise an indispensable work.

Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787-1898

Leaving Paradise

Cheryl Suzack

Shari M. Huhndorf

Jeanne Perreault

Can the specific concerns of Indigenous women be addressed by mainstream feminism? Indigenous Women and Feminism proposes that a dynamic new line of inquiry – Indigenous feminism – is necessary to truly engage with the crucial issues of cultural identity, nationalism, and decolonization particular to Indigenous contexts. Through the lenses of politics, activism, and culture, this wide-ranging collection crosses disciplinary, national, academic, and activist boundaries to explore deeply the unique political and social positions of Indigenous women. A vital and sophisticated discussion, these timely essays will change the way we think about modern feminism and Indigenous women.

Politics, Activism, Culture

Indigenous Women and Feminism

Mona Gleason

This new edition explores the myriad ways that education, broadly defined, molds each of us in profound and enduring ways. Laid against the supporting scaffolding of modern critical theory, the chapters offer cutting edge perspectives of going to school in British Columbia. How has education been tailored by race, class, gender? How do representations of schools and schooling change over time and whose interests are served? What echoes of current tensions can we hear in the past? The book offers a glimpse of the deep contradictions inherent in an experience that we all share.

Jean Barman

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