Uqalurait

Uqalurait, pointed snowdrifts formed by Arctic blizzards, 'would tell us which direction to go in, ' says elder Mariano Aupilarjuk. This oral history, guided by the traditional knowledge of Inuit elders from across Nunavut, also follows the uqalurait, with thousands of quotes from elders on a wide range of subjects

An exploration of the arctic sky--its constellations, legends and mythology, the sun, moon, planets, and 'shooting stars, ' as well as atmospheric phenomena such as aurora borealis. Combining interviews with the Inuit elders and the historical records of arctic explorers and other keen observers, The Arctic Sky is a guided tour of the arctic universe.

At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression and PTSD. Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place. "O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book—devouring it makes for a good start." —Kirkus Reviews

Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to “civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. Legal action by the schools’ former students led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission’s final report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a pathway towards reconciliation. Canada’s Residential Schools: Reconciliation documents the complexities, challenges, and possibilities of reconciliation by presenting the findings of public testimonies from residential school Survivors and others who participated in the TRC’s national events and community hearings. For many Aboriginal people, reconciliation is foremost about healing families and communities, and revitalizing Indigenous cultures, languages, spirituality, laws, and governance systems. For governments, building a respectful relationship involves dismantling a centuries-old political and bureaucratic culture in which, all too often, policies and programs are still based on failed notions of assimilation. For churches, demonstrating long-term commitment to reconciliation requires atoning for harmful actions in the residential schools, respecting Indigenous spirituality, and supporting Indigenous peoples’ struggles for justice and equity. Schools must teach Canadian history in ways that foster mutual respect, empathy, and engagement. All Canadian children and youth deserve to know what happened in the residential schools and to appreciate the rich history and collective knowledge of Indigenous peoples. This volume also emphasizes the important role of public memory in the reconciliation process, as well as the role of Canadian society, including the corporate and non-profit sectors, the media, and the sports community in reconciliation. The Commission urges Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for reconciliation. While Aboriginal peoples are victims of violence and discrimination, they are also holders of Treaty, Aboriginal, and human rights and have a critical role to play in reconciliation. All Canadians must understand how traditional First Nations, Inuit, and Métis approaches to resolving conflict, repairing harm, and restoring relationships can inform the reconciliation process. The TRC’s calls to action identify the concrete steps that must be taken to ensure that our children and grandchildren can live together in dignity, peace, and prosperity on these lands we now share.

In the 1880s, a new medical term flashed briefly into public awareness in the United States. Children who had trouble distinguishing between similar speech sounds were said to suffer from "sound-blindness." The term is now best remembered through anthropologist Franz Boas, whose work deeply influenced the way we talk about cultural difference. In this fascinating work of literary and cultural history, Alex Benson takes the concept as an opening onto other stories of listening, writing, and power—stories that expand our sense of how a syllable, a word, a gesture, or a song can be put into print, and why it matters. Benson interweaves ethnographies, memoirs, local-color stories, modernist novels, silent film scripts, and more. Taken together, these seemingly disparate texts—by writers including John M. Oskison, Helen Keller, W. E. B. Du Bois, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Elsie Clews Parsons—show that the act of transcription, never neutral, is conditioned by the histories of race, land, and ability. By carefully tracing these conditions, Benson argues, we can tease out much that has been left off the record in narratives of American nationhood and American literature.

This book examines geographical names, place-names, and toponymy from philosophical and cultural evolutionary perspectives. Geographical name-tracking-networks (Geo-NTNs) are posited as tools for tracking names through time and across space, and for making sense of how names evolve both temporally and spatially. Examples from North and South American indigenous groups, the Canadian arctic, Wales, England, and the Middle East are brought into a theoretical framework for making sense of aspects of place-naming practices, beliefs, and systems. New geographical tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) are demonstrated to be important in the production and maintenance of robust networks for keeping names and their associated meanings viable in a rapidly changing world where place-naming is being taken up increasingly in social media and other new mapping platforms. The Geography of Names makes the case that geographical names are transmitted memetically (i.e. as cultural units, or memes) through what Saul Kripke called communication chains. Combining insights from Kripke with views of later Wittgenstein on language and names as being inherently spatial, the present work advances theories of both these thinkers into an explicitly geographical inquiry that advances philosophical and practical aspects of naming, language, and mapping.

In this book, Lynne Kelly explores the role of formal knowledge systems in small-scale oral cultures in both historic and archaeological contexts. In the first part, she examines knowledge systems within historically recorded oral cultures, showing how the link between power and the control of knowledge is established. Analyzing the material mnemonic devices used by documented oral cultures, she demonstrates how early societies maintained a vast corpus of pragmatic information concerning animal behavior, plant properties, navigation, astronomy, genealogies, laws and trade agreements, among other matters. In the second part Kelly turns to the archaeological record of three sites, Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point and Stonehenge, offering new insights into the purpose of the monuments and associated decorated objects. This book demonstrates how an understanding of rational intellect, pragmatic knowledge and mnemonic technologies in prehistoric societies offers a new tool for analysis of monumental structures built by non-literate cultures.

The profession of peacemaking has been practiced by indigenous communities around the world for many centuries; however, the ethnocentric world view of the West, which dominated the world of ideas for the last five centuries, dismissed indigenous forms of peacemaking as irrelevant and backward tribal rituals. Neither did indigenous forms of peacemaking fit the conception of modernization and development of the new ruling elites who inherited the postcolonial state. The new profession of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which emerged in the West as a new profession during the 1970s, neglected the tradition and practice of indigenous forms of peacemaking. The scant literature which has appeared on this critical subject tends to focus on the ritual aspect of the indigenous practices of peacemaking. The goal of this book is to fill this lacuna in scholarship. More specifically, this work focuses on the process of peacemaking, exploring the major steps of process of peacemaking which the peacemakers follow in dislodging antagonists from the stage of hostile confrontation to peaceful resolution of disputes and eventual reconciliation. The book commences with a critique of ADR for neglecting indigenous processes of peacemaking and then utilizes case studies from different communities around the world to focus on the following major themes: the basic structure of peacemaking process; change and continuity in the traditions of peacemaking; the role of indigenous women in peacemaking; the nature of the tools peacemakers deploy; common features found in indigenous processes of peacemaking; and the overarching goals of peacemaking activities in indigenous communities.

ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year finalist - Nature Books, 2003 Alberta Book Cover Design of the Year Nominee In this spirited mix of humor, science and adventure, naturalist Jamie Bastedo takes you on an uncommon romp through snow. Share in the quest of early snow scientists to unravel snow's many riddles: Meet a madcap balloonist who risked it all to inspect snowstorms five miles up. Join snow ecologists as they gauge the importance of snow in shaping the lives of plants and animals. Pull your hair out with urban leaders, road crews, and train engineers as they do battle with paralyzing piles of snow. Discover the imprint of snow on native languages and some of our best art and literature. Explore the outer limits of snow-based recreation. And follow in Bastedo's foot, ski and snowshoe tracks as he guides you across creaking glaciers, through hushed evergreen forests and over frozen arctic seas in a playful exploration of the many facets and meanings of snow. As inspirational as it is informative, this light-hearted book will appeal to anyone with even the slightest curiosity about that white stuff you will never again call "plain old snow."

"For several weeks a year, over three decades, Dr John Burgess worked as a consulting cardiologist in Canada's North, a primary witness to rapidly changing disease patterns among the Inuit as a Western lifestyle became more prevalent. His services to the Inuit, as well as his teaching and research at McGill University, earned him the honour of the Order of Canada." "Burgess's remarkable career is chronicled in Doctor to the North, from the early influence of his physician father, to his medical training at McGill, in the US, and abroad, to his eventual position as professor of medicine and director of cardiology at Montreal General Hospital. Through first-hand accounts of his experience with Inuit patients, he describes a broad spectrum of heart diseases and discusses how they can be prevented." "Doctor to the North provides unique insight into the making of a heart specialist, researcher, and teacher. It also serves as a history of health care and heart disease in the Canadian Inuit and a cardiology treatise for present and future health care workers." --Résumé de l'éditeur.