Bøger af Ruth Holmes Whitehead

The Mi'kmaq of Atlantic Canada were here for thousands of years before the arrival of European peoples. Niniskamijinaqik / Ancestral Images: The Mi'kmaq in Art and Photography presents their unique culture and way of life through the remarkable and sometime complex lives of individuals, as depicted in artwork or photography. The opening images in this collection were created by the Mi'kmaq themselves: portrayals of human beings carved into the rock formations of Nova Scotia. Then there are the earliest surviving European depictions of Mi'kmaq, decorations on the maps of Samuel de Champlain. Finally we see portraits of Mi'kmaw individuals, ancestors in whom we see their "humanity frozen in the stillness of a photograph," as the writers of the book's foreword describe. Niniskamijinaqik / Ancestral Images includes 94 compelling pieces of art and photography, chosen from more than a thousand extant portraits in different media, that show the Mi'kmaw people. Each image is an entry point to deeply personal history, a small moment or single person transformed into vivid immediacy for the reader.

Germain Laski, trained in herbal medicine by his Mi'kmaw family, found adventure in the American medicine shows of the 1880s. He performed as Doctor Lonecloud in Healey and Bigelow's Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and his own Kiowa Medicine Show, for which he made the medicines. After he returned to Nova Scotia, Lonecloud worked as a guide and sold his herbal remedies. During his twenty-year friendship with Harry Piers, curator of the Nova Scotia Provincial Museum, he collected artefacts and specimens for the museum and shared his knowledge of Mi'kmaw culture. Between 1923 and 1929, he gave interviews to journalist Clara Dennis. In the 1990s, these interviews, recorded in Dennis's notebooks, came to the attention of Ruth Holmes Whitehead. Tracking Doctor Lonecloud includes Lonecloud's life story in his own words -- the earliest known Mi'kmaw autobiography. This memoir, painstakingly transcribed by Whitehead and augmented by her research, reveals both the showman and the carrier of Mi'kmaw legends.