From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Introduction/J.r. Miller
General works on aboriginal peoples fall into two major categories: ethnographic studies, and historical accounts of the indigenous peoples and their relationships with European newcomers. In the former group, the most useful survey is Alan D. McMillan, Native Peoples and Cultures of Canada: An Anthropological Overview (Vancouver, 1988), which superseded Diamond Jenness’s The Indians of Canada (Ottawa, 1932). The more historically focused studies that are cited most often are Olive P. Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (Toronto, 1992), and J.R Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto, 1989; rev. ed., 1991). Dickason is most helpful for the period before the War of 1812, Miller for subsequent eras.
The earliest and most enduring post-contact phase was the commercial partnership in the fur trade. The seminal work here was H.A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (Toronto, 1930; rev. ed., 1956), although Innis neglected the native side of the trade partnership. Innis’s work has been updated and supplanted for western and northern Canada by A.J. Ray’s Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Hunters, Trappers, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660–1870 (Toronto, 1974) and The Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age (Toronto, 1990). Important regional studies of the commercial partnership are: D. Francis and T. Morantz, Partners in Fur: A History of the Fur Trade in Eastern James Bay, 1600–1870 (Montreal, 1985); R.A. Fisher, Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774–1890 (Vancouver, 1977); and James R. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 (Montreal, 1992).
For the successive phases following the commercial period, the best approach is via regional studies. These include G.A. Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Toronto, 1984); Jean Barman, The West beyond the West: A History of British Columbia (Toronto, 1991); Fisher’s Contact and Conflict, cited above; Ken S. Coates, Best Left as Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840–1973 (Montreal, 1991); and Kerry Abel, Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History (Montreal, 1993).
Studies of particular themes in the period of settlement, treaties, and the Indian Act are far too numerous to list here. A useful place to begin is with analyses of policy such as Noel Dyck, What Is the Indian “Problem”?: Tutelage and Resistance in Canadian Indian Administration (St John’s, 1991), and E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver, 1986). Citations for specific studies can be found in the bibliographies of the general works by Dickason and Miller, cited above, or in J.R. Miller’s historiographical essay “Native History,” in Doug Owram, ed. Canadian History: A Reader’s Guide, 2: Confederation to the Present (Toronto, 1994).
