Indigenous Peoples within Canada is a seminal text in the field of Indigenous history in Canada. It spans the full history of Indigenous Peoples, beginning with origin stories and the pre-contact era and then tracing the development of Indigenous-European relations from contact to the present day. The final chapters include updated content on contemporary events such as Wet'suwet'en activism at Wa Dzun Kwuh and Pope Francis' recent apology for residential school abuses. Indigenous perspectives are centred throughout, with Indigenous interpretations of historical events and Indigenous contributions to the history of what is now Canada foregrounded. Indigenous voices are further amplified through the use of autonyms, profiles of Indigenous leaders, art by Indigenous artists, and an expanded transborder perspective that reflects Indigenous views of the land that is now North America. The clear, accessible writing style and many pedagogical features, including an autonym chart and timelines and maps in every chapter, aid student comprehension throughout the text.

When I first met Canadian history, as a student in a convent school in the outskirts of Winnipeg, it was generally accepted that Canada was a large new country with little history. In the words of William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1936, when he was Liberal Prime Minister, "if some countries have too much history, we have too much geography." History was perceived as a written discipine, which in the case of Canada meant that it began with the arrival of writing---i.e, Europeans. It wasn't until I discovered that I had Metis ancestry that I began to wonder about Canada before Europeans. As I learned more about that distant and too-often ignored past, my country took on a whole new aspect. Exploring its history became a personal quest, all the more focussed because the heritage of my mixed ancestry had been reinforced during my adolescent years by living on the land in Manitoba's north, hunting and trapping. It was through a series of lucky breaks that I was able to go to university, at Father Athol Murray's Notre Dame College in Wilcox, SK, from there to become a journalist and finally, after being blessed with more good fortune, a professor of history at the University of Alberta. Although now retired, I am still passionate about researching and writing the Aboriginal aspect of Canadian history.

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