William C. Wicken

Toronto (Ontario)

Written by William C. Wicken, a history professor at York University, The Colonization of Mi’kmaw Memory and History, 1794–1928: The King v. Gabriel Sylliboy is a “finely crafted and tightly argued study of memory and meaning,” judges said, “written in a style that is spare and clean, makes imaginative use of a wide range of existing sources to answer innovative epistemological questions fundamental to the historical project.”

Working backward in time from the Gabriel Sylliboy court case of 1928, the book uncovers how successive generations of Mi’kmaq remembered a treaty signed in the eighteenth century. Such questions about the relationship between memory and aboriginal rights makes The Colonization of Mi’kmaw Memory and History a book that advances a challenging argument about an important subject in Canadian history.