Finding a Way to the Heart

When Sylvia Van Kirk published her groundbreaking book, Many Tender Ties, in 1980, she revolutionized the historical understanding of the North American fur trade and introduced entirely new areas of inquiry in women's, social, and Aboriginal history. Finding a Way to the Heart examines race, gender, identity, and colonization from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century, and illustrates Van Kirk's extensive influence on a generation of feminist scholarship.

When Sylvia Van Kirk published her groundbreaking book, Many Tender Ties, in 1980, she revolutionized the historical understanding of the North American fur trade and introduced entirely new areas of inquiry in women’s, social, and Aboriginal history. Finding a Way to the Heart examines race, gender, identity, and colonization from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century, and illustrates Van Kirk’s extensive influence on a generation of feminist scholarship.

Ch 1: "All These Stories About Women:” Many Tender Ties and a New Fur Trade History by Jennifer S.H. Brown / Ch 2: Sylvia Van Kirk: A Feminist Appreciation of Front-line Work in the Academy by Franca Iacovetta / Ch 3: Daring to Write a History of Western Canadian Women’s Experiences: Assessing Sylvia Van Kirk Feminist Scholarship by Valerie J. Korinek / Ch 4: Ties Across the Border by Elizabeth Jameson / Ch 5: Historiography that Breaks Your Heart: Van Kirk and the Writing of Feminist History by Adele Perry / Ch 6: Beyond the Borders: The "Founding Families” of Southern New Zealand by Angela Wanhalla / Ch 7: Multicultural Bands on the Northern Plains and the Notion of "Tribal” Histories by Robert Alexander Innes / Ch 8: "A World We Have Lost:” The Plural Society of Fort Chipewyan by Patricia A. McCormack / Ch 9: Others or Brothers? Competing Settler and Anishinabe Discourses about Race in Upper Canada by Robin Jarvis Brownlie / Ch 10: Attitudes Toward "Miscegenation” in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia, 1860-1914 by Victoria Freeman / Ch 11: Home Tales: Gender, Domesticity and Colonialism in the Prairie West, 1870-1900 by Kathryn McPherson / Ch 12: "I am a proud Anishinaabe Kwe:” Issues of Identity and Status in Northern Ontario after Bill C-31 by Katrina Srigley