This bestseling guide helps readers interpret and enjoy the form and meaning of totem poles -- as ancestral emblems and ceremonial objects, as expressions of wealth and power, as mythological symbols and magnificent artistic works of the people of the Pacific Northwest.

Combining archeology and ethnohistory, this book presents an integrated framework for understanding the physical structure of a Haida village, through remarkable photographs, site plans and detailed descriptions of fifteen major villages

Here is Marjorie Halpin's insightful exploration of Aboriginal motifs in Jack Shadbolt's painting, which reveal his emotional sympathy with Coastal peoples and anticipates the cultural quickening of Aboriginal Canadian society in recent years.

Not only the first major publication to focus on button blankets, but also the first oral history about them and their place in the culture of the Northwest Coast.

In this straightforward but colourful narrative, the only critical study of its kind, Malcolm McGregor explains how democracy was nurtured in Athens and how effective government was achieved.

Presents an overview of extensive research carried out by archeologist George MacDonald in the 1960s and 1970s to document the history of the Haida villages of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

This collection includes 150 letters Emily Carr wrote to her friends Nan Cheney and Humphrey Toms, and 100 other letters relating mainly to Emily Carr written between 1930 to 1945, the most prolific period in Carr's career as both painter and writer.

Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes poses a number of probing questions about the role and responsibility of museums and anthropology in the contemporary world.

Kwakiutl String Figures will interest students of comparative cultures and will delight all who have time (and string) on their hands.

This collection of essays deals with the development of Native American art history as a discipline.

In this beautifully designed and richly illustrated book, Diane Eaton and Sheila Urbanek re-create Paul Kane's heroic journey across Canada and bring to life the people, places, and events he experienced.

This book explores intellectual issues raised by postmodern theory, supported by detailed studies of projects that will interest a boad audience of students, historians, museum-goers, and those intrigued by Native American art and cultural history.

Covering topics from pop music in Korea to TV commercials in Malaysia, this collection shows how imported cultural forms have been invested with fresh meaning and transformed by local artists to result in new forms of assertion and resistance.

An insightful examination of the complex functions of Northwest Coast art objects produced between 1922 and 1961, and a vital addition to First Nations and Canadian history.

The Cult of Happiness is among the first studies in any field to treat folk art and folk print as historical text. As such, this richly illustrated volume will appeal to a wide range of scholars in Asian studies, history, art history, folklore and print, as well as anyone having a passion for the creativity and culture of rural society.

Illustrated throughout with archival photographs, this book examines the photographic and film practice of the Canadian government, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Hudson’s Bay Company, the three major colonial institutions involved in the arctic and sub-arctic.

A comprehensive and balanced look at the role of images in Asian religions, which examines aspects of the reception of image worship that have only begun to be studied.

Featuring almost 300 illustrations, including 90 colour plates, Unsettling Encounters reconstructs a neglected aspect of Carr’s art and is a fresh assessment of her significance as a leading figure in early 20th-century modernism.

The essays in this volume reassess Gandharan Buddhism in light of these findings, utilizing a multidisciplinary approach that illuminates the complex historical and cultural dynamics of the region.

An insightful analysis of how art was used to create an independent Canadian national identity, often at the expense of First Nations representation.

Switchbacks explores how the Nuxalk of Bella Coola, British Columbia, negotiate such complex questions as: Who owns culture? How should culture be transmitted to future generations? Where does selling and buying Nuxalk art fit into attempts to regain control of heritage?

Drawing on a wealth of artistic expression, this book explores how the arts and artists have shaped Canadian national identity.

This book decodes the rhetoric of China’s turbulent decade, a time of both brutal iconoclasm and radical experimentation in the arts, to offer new insights into works that have transcended their times.

Architecture and the Canadian Fabric traces how culture and politics have influenced, and been influenced by, Canadian architecture from first contact to the postmodern era.

This book explores how whiteness and Indigeneity are articulated through commonplace symbols of Canadian identity and how the work of contemporary artists is subverting these nostalgic accounts of the past.

An investigation into the intersection of Japanese imperialist politics and left-wing, avant-garde arts and culture in 1930s and ’40s Manchukuo.

Milestones on a Golden Road examines works of fiction written in China between 1945 and 1980, when the arts were required to reflect a Maoist vision of history and society.

A remarkable volume that makes accessible for the first time and in one place a broad selection of more than 250 years of writing on Northwest Coast Native art.

Mobilizing Metaphor illustrates how radical and unconventional forms of activism, including art, are reshaping the vibrant tradition of disability activism in Canada, challenging perceptions of disability and the politics that surround it.

Aspiring artist Alan Caswell Collier’s letters, sketches, and paintings recall in vivid detail life in Canada’s relief camps and the crisis of youth unemployment during the Great Depression.

Incorporating Culture examines what happens when Indigenous people assert control over the commercialization of their art by instilling the market with their communities’ values.

This fascinating account of Ontario’s 1980s’ censor wars shows that when art intersects with law, artists have the power to transform the law, and the law, in turn, can influence the concept of art.

Exploring the making and experience of a lesbian feminist haunted house, this book reframes and reclaims queer feminist histories with humour, provocation, and theoretical sophistication.

Crafted from memories, legends, and art, this powerful memoir tells the uplifting story of an Indigenous man’s struggle to reconnect with his culture and walk in the footsteps of his father and the generations of Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artists that came before him.

The Bomb in the Wilderness is an acutely perceptive analysis of Canada’s nuclear footprint through the medium of photography, revealing how we have represented, interpreted, and remembered nuclear activities since 1945.

The first major historical study of the Banff School of Fine Arts, Uplift reveals the foundational role of the school in shaping what is today the globally renowned Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

So Much More Than Art reveals the fascinating practice of miniaturization in Indigenous Northwest Coast art as a subtle form of communication in the face of oppressive colonization.

In a gorgeously illustrated exploration of the art of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Mischief Making demonstrates how playful and punning gestures can shed light on serious subjects.

Adjusting the Lens explores and celebrates decolonizing strategies and practices that confront the ways the photographic record of Indigenous peoples has been shaped by the colonial imagination.

Rare Merit illuminates the impact of women as portraitists, travel documentarians, photojournalists, fine artists, hobbyists, and printers in the early years of photography in Canada.

Making History is an unprecedented reflection on the positioning of Black history and art within the Canadian cultural landscape.

This fascinating exploration into the history a nineteenth-century model of a Haida village, carved by Haida artists, offers insights not only into Pacific Northwest history but also into how the Haida represented their culture during a time when that culture threatened by colonial activity.

Drawing on a unique blend of Indigenous and Western sources, Signs of the Time explores Nlaka’pamux rock art making to reveal the historical and cultural meaning beneath its beguiling imagery.