Best Left As Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840-1973 (McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History)

History

Coates, Kenneth

Americas

McGill Queens Univ

Essays consider both the nineteenth century, when the international border had limited power to restrict the movement of Native peoples, financial capital, or settlers' racist attitudes, and the strengthened boundary of the twentieth century, with its disputes over salmon runs, free trade, and World War II defence. Essays also explore the ways in which Canada and the United States have defined and preserved wilderness, the 1840s dispute over the Oregon Country, and U.S. attitudes that have provoked anti-Americanism in Canada. The U.S.-Canadian border has meant different things to different people, and those meanings have changed over time. The situation today is the result of the evolution in cross-border integration that took place in the past; each side of this borderlands region remains, in part, the creation of the other. Contributors are Carl Abbott, Ken Coates, Michael Fellman, John Findlay, John Lutz, Daniel P. Marshall, Jeremy Mouat, Galen Roger Perras, Chad Reimer, Joseph E. Taylor III, Patricia K. Wood, and Donald Worster.

Parallel Destinies: Managing Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century

Findlay, John M.

While the Klondike Gold Rush is one of the most widely known events in Canadian history, particularly outside Canada, the rest of the Yukon's long and diverse history attracts little attention. Important developments such as Herschel Island whaling, pre-1900 fur trading, the post-World War II resource boom, a lengthy struggle for responsible government, and the emergence of Aboriginal political protest remain poorly understood. 
Placing well-known historical episodes within the broader sweep of the past, Land of the Midnight Sun gives particular emphasis to the role of First Nations people and the lengthy struggle of Yukoners to find their place within Confederation. This broader story incorporates the introduction of mammoth dredges that scoured the Klondike creeks, the impressive Elsa-Keno Hill silver mines, the impact of residential schools on Aboriginal children, the devastation caused by the sinking of the Princess Sophia, the Yukon's remarkable contributions to the national World War I effort, and the sweeping transformations associated with the American occupation during World War II. 
Completely revised with a new epilogue, the bestselling Land of the Midnight Sun was first published in 1988 and became the standard source for understanding the history of the Yukon. Ken Coates and William Morrison have published ten books together, including Strange Things Done: A History of Murder in the Yukon and the forthcoming Trailmarkers: A History of Landmark Aboriginal Rights Cases in Canada. Land of the Midnight Sun was their first collaboration.

Land Of The Midnight Sun: A History Of The Yukon

Morrison, William R.

North to Alaska: Fifty Years on the World's Most Remarkable Highway

Diane Pub Co.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a general fear of invasion swept North America, and particularly the West Coast; it seemed essential that immediate steps he taken to defend the Far Northwest. With the approval of the Canadian government, Washington drew up plans for the future Alaska Highway to connect Edmonton, Alberta, with Fairbanks, Alaska, and for a pipeline to connect the oil fields at Norman Wells, Northwest Territories, with the Pacific Coast. As a result, between 1942 and 1946, forty thousand American military and civilian personnel invaded the Canadian Northwest. Where there had been few roads or none, a pioneer road more than 1,500 miles long was built in less than a year. A rough road was built from Norman Wells to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory (a distance of nearly 600 miles), and the Canol Pipeline was built along its length. Navigation facilities along the Mackenzie River were improved. Pipelines were laid from Whitehorse northwest 600 miles to Fairbanks; southeast 300 miles to Watson Lake, near the British Columbia line; and southwest 100 miles to the Pacific Ocean, at Skagway, Alaska. The Haines Lateral, almost 150 miles long, connected the Alaska Highway to salt water at Haines, Alaska. Existing airfields were upgraded and new ones built on the Northwest Staging Route. Ancillary facilities, such as a telephone network, were constructed. The Northwest was totally unprepared for this friendly invasion. The Alaska Highway ran through a semiwilderness where many inhabitants pursued a nomadic, harvesting way of life. More than 5,000 trucks arrived where there had been hardly that many people. Edmonton, with 95,000 people, became "the young Chicago of the North." Whitehorse, an obscure village of fewer than 800 people, was to become northern Canada's largest community and the territorial capital. Many other small towns and settlements were overwhelmed by the tens of thousands in the American "army of occupation." This lively history of a great episode in American civil and military engineering is based largely on interviews with veterans and local residents, as well as research in Canadian archives and those of the U.S. Corps of Engineers. K. S. Coates and W. R. Morrison address such related topics as how and why the projects were planned and built; the impact of the newcomers on the environment, the wildlife, and the Native people; social and sexual relations between the Americans and local people; law enforcement; and racism. The anecdotes of the participants provide humor and insights on the events of fifty years ago.

The Alaska Highway in World War II: The U.S. Army of Occupation in Canada's Northwest

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

This book works through the conflicting and contradictory positions, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, on indigenous rights in Canada.

Reconciliation?: The Future of Indigenous People in Canada. Kenneth Coates and Greg Poelzer

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

North to Alaska

In December 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and seemed to be poised for their most audacious attack yet - the invasion of North America via its least populated region, the Far Northwest. No one doubted that this threat was real, certainly not the U.S. military command. In an act of speedy co-operation, unmatched before or since, the governments of Canada and the U.S.A. agreed to the military's request to build a road, post-haste, across the vast wilderness of the North, so that troops and armaments could be moved rapidly from the continent's heartland to its vulnerable edge in Alaska.Ten thousand soldiers under the command of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rushed north to push a pioneer road 1,500 miles long through the forests and mountains and over the muskeg, the permafrost, and the many icy rivers of the Far Northwest. Fast on their heels came an equally large "army" of civilians - eager to do their bit for the war effort and to earn the colossal wages offered - to build a permanent highway in the pioneer road's muddy tracks. Seven and a half months later the highway was ready for war duty, just as the threat that initiated it collapsed.But their effort was not wasted. The Alaska Highway gave the towns of Fairbanks, Big Delta, Whitehorse, and Fort St. John road access to the South for the first time, and many smaller communities sprang up along its path to service the truckers and tourists who plied the highway. For immediately after the war, driving the highway became a popular vacation for intrepid tourists. Despite the great improvements to the road that have been made over the years, the highway has lost none of its appeal nor any of the romance that surrounded its beginnings.In 1992 the Alaska Highway turns fifty, and Ken Coates has written North to Alaska to commemorate the work of those men and women, soldiers and civilians, who endured the bitter cold, the blackflies, the mud, and the murderous mosquitoes to build the road and defend their homeland.The Alaska Highway remains the world's most remarkable highway - remarkable for the speed in which it was built, its military origins, the binational co-operation it symbolizes, and for the spectacular natural beauty and rich history of the land through which it passes. Today it still offers the unique adventure of a 1,500-mile drive through the mysterious North into the land where men once moiled for gold.

Univ of Alaska Pr

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