I did not know him well, but many years ago, I talked to him for an article about Canadianists teaching Canadian history far away from Canada. (In those days, maybe there was more funding for Canadianists abroad. I wonder what a new story on those lines would tell.)
Anyway Jim Miller described how teaching outside Canada helped shift his career around. I knew of him for articles on 19th century politics, D'Alton McCarthy, French-English relations. Miller told me how a year teaching as visiting scholar at a Japanese university led to a big change
Jim Miller found a year away gave him a chance to assess his career. “While I was in Tokyo, I was thinking of shifting away from my original field of French-English relations. I was reading some Japanese sociology -- in English -- just to get a handle on this society I was living in. And something about schooling and its role in socialization sank in, and that connected to my existing interest in native issues in Canada.” Miller has been writing notable books about native schooling in Canada ever since. “So academically it changed the shape of my career dramatically.”
And that was the beginning of Shingwauk's Vision, Skyscrapers Hide the Sky, Compact Contract Covenant, Sweet Promises, and other groundbreaking studies that went well beyond indigenous schooling alone, long before the Truth and Reconciliation Report began to transform Canadian historical thinking about Canada's dealings with indigenous relations.
