Classic Images of Canada's First Nations

This collection of photographs compiled by former museum curator Edward Cavell is a pictorial record of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples from the 1850s through the 1920s. It presents Haida shamans of the West Coast, the interior of an igloo in a village on Hudson Bay, a prairie horse race and a Cree camp. Crowfoot, Cree, and Mi’kmaq men and women posed and in repose are captured by early photographers. We view the construction of a birch bark canoe by the Montagnais in Quebec and see the pride on the faces of a lacrosse team in 1876 Kahnawake. Each image is accompanied by a brief description of time and place, and often includes names and information that make the photographs more personal. The powerful collection of images in this slim volume is of both aesthetic and historical interest.