This exhibition catalogue introduces historic photographs of Indigenous peoples of Western Canada from a collection housed at the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Special Collections. The publication focuses on the ancestors represented in the collection and how their images continue to generate stories and meanings in the present. The selected photographs contribute to a richer, deeper understanding of the past. There is strength, character, persistence, determination, humour, artwork, dance, celebration, and so much more in the photographs. Some serve as records of cherished landscapes that may have been altered. Others provide links to ancestors: revered leaders, soldiers, healers, thinkers, and orators. The curators hope that the process of identifying the people in these photographs, only begun here, will continue.

Sarah Carter, F.R.S.C., is H.M. Tory Chair and Professor in the Department of History and Classics, and Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She is a specialist in the history of Western Canada and is the author of Aboriginal People and Colonizers of Western Canada to 1900, Capturing Women, and Lost Harvests. Sarah Carter was awarded the Jensen-Miller Prize by the Coalition for Women's History for the best article published in 2006 in the field of women and gender in the trans-Mississippi West.

Sarah Carter's profile page

Osaw Piyesis Iskwew niya Anishinaabekwe. Wapamaskwa nicewakan. Paskwamostoosis awasis ekta ohcit. Maskwacis winowak nicaysinowak. Inez Lightning, Yellow Bird Woman, is Anishinaabe. White Bear is her husband. She is from the Buffalo Child family and of the Bearhills people.

Inez Lightning's profile page

• Winner, Margaret McWilliams Competition - Margaret McWilliams Award, Popular History Book
• Commended, UCDA Design Awards / Category 8: Exhibition Catalogue

"The exhibit and book are inspirational university museum endeavors and will stimulate ongoing work with Indigenous topics and persons." C. Adrian Heidenreich, Billings Gazette, September 26, 2022

"Who is the intended audience for Ancestors? Anyone with an interest in history and human rights, and photography." Felix Berry, Prairie History, Summer 2022