Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores how wartime symbolism and imagery propelled the “Indian problem” onto the national agenda, and why assimilation remained the goal of post-war Canadian Indian policy – even though the war required that it be rationalized in new ways.
Trade ReviewSheffield’s analysis of the unfolding of these successive images on the whole is persuasive. While his interpretation, as he forthrightly acknowledges, is “in several respects similar (10)” to Ronald Haycock’s
The Image of the Indian, Sheffield’s research is more systematic and his argument more fine-grained ...
The Red Man’s on the Warpath is an important contribution to our understanding of both domestic attitudes towards First Nations and the impact of external events upon those views. -- JR Miller, University of Saskatchewan * International Journal, Autumn 2005 *
Subtle, interesting book ... It is a mark of the quality of this book that it stimulates such broad questions, while satisfying our curiousity about a particular phase of Canadian history. -- James M. Pitsula, University of Regina * Labour/Le Travail, Issue 58, Fall 2005 *
Sheffield’s exploration of this time period, an often-overlooked era in Canadian Aboriginal history, his “holistic” use of newspapers to access images of First Nations people held by the dominant society, combined with his detailed, yet readable argument, makes an important contribution to the twentieth-century historiography of Canadian Aborgininal people. -- Robert Alexander Innes, American Indian Studies Program, Michigan State University * Great Plains Quarterly, Spring 2006 *
Sheffield’s task is monumental and, accordingly, the scope of his documentary analysis is impressive ... Sheffield has clearly made a valuable contribution of an underdeveloped area of scholarship. He has laid the pioneering framework for future work that will, I hope, fill in the remaining gaps ... -- Madelaine Jacobs * Canadian Literature, Spring 2006 *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 The Image of the “Indian” in English Canada, 1930-39
2 The “Administrative Indian” as Soldier and Conscript, 1939-45
3 The “Public Indian” Goes to War, September 1939-December 1941
4 Winning the War Only to Lose the Peace? Reconstructing the “Public Indian,” 1943-45
5 The “Administrative Indian” at the Threshold of Peace, January-March 1946
6 Into the Arena: Marshalling the Competing Indian Images in Postwar Canada, 1945-48
7 Whither the “Indian”? The Special Joint Senate and House of Commons Committee to Reconsider the Indian Act, 1946-48
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
