Book Notes, Ray, Russell & Heaman

Political histories past, present, and future, and worth a look:

Missed by me in early April, the Canada Prize of the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences was awarded to Arthur J. Ray, for last year's Aboriginal Rights Claims and the Making and Unmaking of History, a global study of how colonial societies and indigenous societies have negotiated and litigated issues of territory, published by McGill-Queen's.From the blog of the Federation:

As a historian specializing in Aboriginal rights and history, Arthur J. Ray has often been called as an expert witness in court proceedings involving Aboriginal land claims.

After decades of research, and many appearances in court, Ray found himself wondering whether the adversarial legal arena was the best forum for settling Aboriginal rights issues. Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate these things instead?

In a new book that examines how native peoples’ rights are handled in five countries, Ray concludes that there’s no single, direct path to Aboriginal rights. What seems to work best, he says, is a mix of litigation and negotiation – tempered by an awareness on the part of everyone concerned that different groups can have very different perspectives on the same event.

Recently out from U of T Press, Peter Russell's Canadian Odyssey: A Country Built on Incomplete Conquests, (currently available with a substantial online discount).

Promised for June from McGill-Queen's:Tax, Order and Good Government, Elsbeth Heaman's big history of the politics of Canadian taxation