Whether in Canada, the United States, Australia, India, Peru, or Russia, the approximately 500 million Indigenous Peoples in the world have faced a similar fate at the hands of colonizing powers. Assaults on language and culture, commercialization of art, and use of plant knowledge in the development of medicine have taken place all without consent, acknowledgement, or benefit to these Indigenous groups worldwide. Battiste and Henderson passionately detail the devastation these assaults have wrought on Indigenous peoples, why current legal regimes are inadequate to protect Indigenous knowledge, and put forward ideas for reform. Looking at the issues from an international perspective, this book explores developments in various countries including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and also the work of the United Nations and relevant international agreements.

Dr. Marie Battiste is a Mi’kmaw educator and professor in the Indian and Northern Education Program at the University of Saskatchewan. Her historical research of Mi’kmaw literacy and education as a graduate student at Harvard University and later at Stanford University, where she received her doctorate degree in curriculum and teacher education, provided the foundation for her later writings in cognitive imperialism, linguistic and cultural integrity, and the decolonization of Aboriginal education. A recipient of two honorary degrees—from St. Mary’s University, Halifax, and from the University of Maine at Farmington—she has worked actively with First Nations schools as an administrator, teacher, consultant, and curriculum developer, advancing Aboriginal epistemology, languages, pedagogy, and research. Her research interests are in initiating institutional changes to decolonize education, language, and social justice policy and power, and in devising educational approaches that recognize and affirm the political and cultural diversity of Canada. She is senior editor of First Nations Education in Canada: The Circle Unfolds, a 1995 publication from the University of British Columbia Press, and editor of Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, published by the University of British Columbia Press in 2000. She is a board member of the International Research Institute (IRI) for Maori and Indigenous Education in New Zealand and a member of the Board of Governors for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada. (Update 2010: In 2008, Dr. Battiste received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation. She is currently Academic Director, Aboriginal Education Research Centre (AERC), College of Education, University of Saskatchewan.)

Marie Battiste's profile page

James Youngblood (Sa'ke'j) Henderson's profile page

• Winner, First Peoples' Publishing Award, Saskatchewan Book Awards