Description
Canada is a country of bounded spaces – a nation situated between rock and cold to the north and a political border to the south. In A Bounded Land, Cole Harris seeks answers to a sweeping question: How was society reorganized – for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike – when Europeans resettled this distinctive land?
Through a series of vignettes that focus on people’s experiences on the ground, Harris exposes the underlying architecture of settler colonialism as it grew and evolved, from the first glimpses of new lands and peoples, to the immigrant experience in early Canada, to the dispossession and resettlement of First Nations in British Columbia.
By considering the whole territory that became Canada over 500 years and focusing on sites of colonial domination rather than settler texts, Harris unearths fresh insights on the continuing and growing influence of Indigenous peoples and argues that Canada’s boundedness is ultimately drawing the country toward its Indigenous roots.
Reviews
There is a lot packed into this book ... [It] highlights the theoretical and practical policies that underwrote colonialism. In doing so, it helps to explain how the history of dispossession became inseparable from the rise of nation-states such as Canada.
- Benjamin Hoy
This is the most informative, penetrating and best-written account that I have read on the topic.
- Jim Reynolds
Overall, this book is not only a fitting capstone to an extroardinary career, but also an excellent primer for understanding Canada's settler colonial past.
- Ryan Hall, Colgate University
Cole Harris has produced an eloquent compilation of work on settler colonialism in Canada.
- Ken Favrholdt, Kamloops, BC
It is to Harris’s credit that the innovative assembly of spatial and social vignettes in A Bounded Land prompts our reflection on Indigenous and settler relations in colonial Canada.
- Grace Keng, Pennsylvania State University
A Bounded Land brings new dimensions and reflections to the work of Cole Harris as a scholar. The themes turn on settlement, colonization, dispossession, re-settlement, and the concluding theme throws light on Indigenous displacement and theories of empire and decolonization.
- Barry Gough
A Bounded Land is a guided tour through the work of a brilliant, insightful, and compassionate mind and body of work.
- James Murton