In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women's History in Canada.

Jonathan Anuik is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and
president of the HGSC at the University of Saskatchewan.

This anthology gives readers a segmented Aboriginal women’s history based on tribal affiliation, region, spirituality, occupation, language, and time. The editors have heeded the repeated calls from enlightened scholars who, in the recent past, criticized the slim body of research on Aboriginal women, especially the work by feminist scholars, for its tendency to frame Aboriginal women in a deficit paradigm and to homogenize their experiences. Kelm and Townsend escape these two potentially large black holes.

The anthology comprises 15 essays by senior scholars who share a substantial history of research and work, both personal and professional, with Canadian Aboriginal women’s communities. The work is interdisciplinary, drawing from archaeology, women’s studies, Native studies, and law. The comprehensive bibliography makes the work a valuable asset to undergraduate classes on Aboriginals, women, fur trade, religion, and spirituality.

The essays, which are categorized according to a Western framework, are about agency—how Aboriginal women and men tamed, controlled, and manipulated the colonizers and their interests in order to satisfy the needs of Aboriginal families and communities. Each contribution explores responses to coercive colonial forces. Emma Larocque’s piece reminds readers that Aboriginal women academics still negotiate with the colonizer, that Aboriginal women’s history is not “history,” and that research on Aboriginal women may not necessarily “fit” into established historical categories.

Overall, In the Days of Our Grandmothers is a first-rate addition to scholarship on Canadian Aboriginal women.