Description
Book SynopsisChallenging the well-worn images of rodeo as a white man’s sport, A Wilder West shows how rodeo brought together Aboriginal and settler men and women into relationships of competition and camaraderie, forging new identities and communities in the process.
Trade ReviewBy using rodeo as the central contact zone, Kelm provides a very interesting and nuanced way of examining settler and Aboriginal relations in Western Canada...Kelm's book makes an important contribution to Canadian history. She successfully demonstrates that Western Canadian settlers and Aboriginal peoples did not operate in a static fashion or interact solely along the rigid lines of the colonization narrative. -- Michael Commito, McMaster University * Essays in History *
Mary-Ellen Kelm’s book is a welcome addition to a somewhat sparse scholarly literature on the history of rodeo in Canada…overall, this study is well conceived and filled with personalized stories to keep readers interested and to deepen knowledge about localities. Kelm fulfills her intent to demonstrate the palpable “linkages between cultural display and political action” in terms of colonial history and has also created a good resource for studies about masculinities linked to sport and identity... -- Lynda M. Annik, Newfoundland Memorial University * American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 An Old-Timers’ Town: Western Communities, Performance, and Contact Zones
2 Truly Western in Its Character: Identities, Affinities, and Intimacies at Western Canadian Rodeo
3 A Sport, Not a Carnival Act: Transforming Rodeo from Performance to Sport
4 Heavens No! Let’s Keep It Rodeo! Pro Rodeo and the Making of the Modern Cowboy
5 Going Pro: Community Rodeo in the Era of Professionalization
6 Where the Cowboys Are Indians: Indian and Reserve Rodeo in the Canadian West
Conclusion
Glossary; Notes; Index
