2024/10/01 by David Natcher, Rose Olfert, Shawn Ingram · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Critical Race Theory in Education #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00187259.2024.2406024
openalex publication_date 2024/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
In 1975, anthropologist Niels Braroe published Indian and White: Self Image and Interaction in a Canadian Plains Community. Braroe concluded that members of the Nekaneet First Nations (NFN), who resided in or made periodic trips to the neighboring Settler community of Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, operated on the fringe of economic and social activities, where they embattled the imposed social stigma of being ‘Indian’. Nearly 50 years after, we returned to Maple Creek to learn if conditions had changed since Braroe’s original research. We found that distinct categories of Indian and White were still very much intact, with identities generalized and fixed by pejorative beliefs. The intention in this research was not to uncover tensions that may exist between the NFN and Settlers. Rather, as applied anthropologists we sought to understand the conditions that foster the obstinacy of values and cultural behaviors that could impede meaningful reconciliation. As noted by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a necessary starting point for national healing involves coming to terms with the events of the past and gaining a shared recognition of the inequalities that continue to exist today.