Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times. 2nd ed.

Martin L. Nicolai teaches history at York College.

This second edition of Dickason’s acclaimed survey history of Native
Canadians includes the occasional alteration and a new chapter on
developments since 1992, but otherwise retains its original form.

Unlike many writers of Native history, Dickason, who is of Métis
background, does not manipulate history in the service of modern
politics; rather, she recounts with refreshing frankness and humanity
the long prehistory of aboriginals and their complex, changing
relationship with European Canadians. She provides a fascinating account
of Amerindian history prior to contact, stressing the normality of this
process rather than its exceptional nature. (This section would have
benefited from Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s genetic studies of Native
peoples, whose data strongly reinforce Joseph Greenberg’s linguistic
theory that Amerindians arrived in three distinct waves.)

Dickason then reveals how the French, despite their reputation for good
relations with the Amerindians, never came close to genuinely
recognizing Native sovereignty. With the exception of the more strident
Iroquois, who saw themselves as independent allies of the Crown, most
Amerindians came to see themselves as privileged British subjects who
retained permanent communal control of ancestral land guaranteed to them
by treaty. However, British and Canadian governments tended to view
treaties as temporary arrangements no more sacred than the granting of a
charter to a municipality—agreements that could be, and were, altered
at will. Dickason does not need to use inflamed words to garner sympathy
for Native peoples; it is sufficient for her to simply recount the
actions of governments and their officials—for example, the casual
shuttling of bands from one spot to another as their dwindling reserves
were repeatedly confiscated.

Dickason’s scholarly, readable book deserves to remain a standard
university survey text on Native history and should be the first choice
of any thinking person who wishes to get past the superficial,
stereotypical treatment usually accorded aboriginal peoples by the
media.