Finding Directions West: Readings That Locate and Dislocate Western Canada’s Past

Finding Directions West explores the ways that Western Canada has served as a space of constant movement between places of spiritual, subsistence, and aesthetic importance. Showcasing new research, this volume brings together studies that approach community building, placemaking, and the self-creation of meaning from many different perspectives.

From the representation of Indigenous people in museum displays to the efforts of LGBTQ+ people to discover themselves within the historical record, from the way Métis communities have turned to grassroots narratives as a means of cultural preservation to the efforts of early Alberta suffrage activists to define themselves within the public eye, this anthology is a fascinating overview of new directions in Canadian historiography.

Too often, history is understood as fixed, precisely mapped and authoritatively documented. Finding Directions West challenges readers to think differently about the history of Western Canada, a region where people, places, and ideas are in constant, energetic flux, and where those who have come before leave a significant legacy for the present day.

George Colpitts is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Calgary. He is the winner of both the American Society for Ethnohistory’s Robert F. Heizer Prize and the Frederick C. Luebke Award for outstanding regional scholarship.

Heather Devine is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Calgary. She is author of The People Who Own Themselves: Aboriginal Ethnogenesis in a Canadian Family, 1660-1900, winner of the Harold Adams Innis Prize.

With Contributions By: Kimberly Mair, Cheryl Avery, Shelley Sweeney, Will Pratt, Mallory Allyson Richard, Sarah Carter, Sterling Evans, Max Foran, PearlAnn Reichwein, and Karen Wall