Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations

Kerry Abel is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History, co-editor of Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, and co-editor of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

In this extensive collection of essays, readers are provided with
glimpses into the history of Ontario First Nations from ancient times to
the present. The authors are all prominent scholars in the field and the
volume is well illustrated with maps, photographs, and charts. There is
also a good bibliography arranged thematically for easy reference. While
much of the material has already been published elsewhere, readers will
find a single-volume collection very useful. The previously unpublished
material helps to fill a number of important gaps in our knowledge of
both Native and Ontario history.

As editor Donald Smith notes, much remains to be done and this
collection is by no means a synthesis. Some readers will find that
although there is some overlap in the essays, the overall effect is
confusing because it remains disjointed. Of course the lack of coherence
is compounded by the fact that considering Ontario as a region is
problematic. The cultural, economic, and environmental diversity of the
province necessitates a variety of approaches. The concluding essay
could actually best be read as an introduction to help set the context
for newcomers to the field.

The book’s subtitle suggests that the book is a work of history, but
the majority of the contributors are anthropologists; several of them
seem to see history as a chronology or compilation of factual details
rather than as an interpretive analysis of that information. In other
cases (notably essays by Charles Bishop and Edward Rogers), a curiously
dated interpretation of the impact of the fur trade is presented with no
indication that such an interpretation has become the focus of an
intense debate in the past decade.

One of the most interesting sections of the book is by the late Sally
Weaver. In two essays on the Iroquois at Grand River from 1847 to 1945,
she provides an effective depiction of the impact of government policies
on one particular community, a topic that certainly demands greater
scrutiny with other historical case studies across Canada.

Several of the contributors to this volume have recently died, and in
some ways the collection is a testimony of their life’s work. One
hopes that a new generation of scholars, both Native and non-Native,
will take up the challenge of continuing it.