The Kids Book of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

Diane Silvey’s descriptions and explanations of Native Canadian
history in the period just prior to contact are based on sound
scholarship and conveyed in a lucid prose style. She is a member of the
Sechelt Band of the Coast Salish people, a graduate of the University of
British Columbia’s Native Indian Education Program, and a teacher
enriched by 25 years of experience. The text benefits from the superb
colour illustrations prepared by John Mantha.

Seven of the nine chapters survey the geographical locations, material
cultures, environmental contexts, social mores, and spiritual
assumptions of peoples inhabiting the Northwest Coast, Interior Plateau,
Interior Plains, and the Arctic and Subarctic, and the Eastern Woodlands
Iroquoians and Algonquians. The author has paid special attention to
those parts of the natural bounty that were of particular significance
in shaping the lives of particular peoples: cedar and salmon, for
example, on the Northwest Coast and the adjacent interior plateau; birch
bark for the lives of the Algonquians of the Eastern Woodlands.

While the material in these chapters is evidence-based, that in the
introduction and the final chapter, “Aboriginal Peoples After
Contact,” is sometimes the product of faith and opinion, rather than
processes informed by scientific method. It is more than just dismissive
to say that “some people” believe those who peopled the Americas
migrated out of Asia by way of the Bering land bridge. Most scholarship
supports that.

This volume has some fine merits, and one hopes that it will be but one
of a number of well-researched, well-written books for children on this
important subject. Recommended.