Carter, Sarah
Department of History and Classics and Faculty of Native Studies
Henry Marshall Tory Chair
Professor
2-28 Tory Building
University of Alberta
Edmonton AB T6G 2H4
Tel. (780) 492-4686
sarah.carter@ualberta.ca
Sarah Carter F.R.S.C. is Professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Department of History and Classics, and the Faculty of Native Studies of the University of Alberta since 2006. From 1992-2006 she taught at the University of Calgary. She is Adjunct Professor with Athabasca University. Her research focuses on the history of Western Canada and on the critical era of the late nineteenth century when Aboriginal people and newcomers began sustained contact. Her work has touched on many aspects of this history, including the place of Aboriginal people in the new agricultural economy (Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy) and the creation of race and gender categories and hierarchies in the key decade of the 1880s (Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West). Her work stresses the interconnected lives of Aboriginal people and the early non-Aboriginal settlers.
Her most recent monograph examines the efforts of government, legal and religious authorities to impose a monogamous, Christian model of marriage on the diverse population of Western Canada including Mormons and Aboriginal people and is entitled The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada. This book has won several awards including the Canadian Historical Association Clio Award (Prairie Region), the Margaret McWilliams Award for Scholarly History and the Alberta Scholarly and Academic Book Award. Her co-edited book, (with Pat Roome, Lesley Erickson and Char Smith), Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West Through Women’s History, includes a chapter from this study.
In 2005-2006 Dr. Carter was awarded a Killam Research Fellowship. Her most recent project is a history of land grants, gender and Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canadian Wests, and settler dominions. An essay drawn from this study “Britishness, Foreignness, Women and Land in Western Canada” won the Jensen-Miller Prize in women’s and gender history in 2007. Her new introduction to Georgina Binnie-Clark’s 1914 Wheat and Woman (University of Toronto Press, 2006) also emerged from this project, as did her new edited collection Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own (2009).
Her most recent co-edited book (with Alvin Finkel and Peter Fortna) is The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region (2010) and in December 2010 her collection co-edited with Patricia McCormack, Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands will appear with Athabasca University Press.
Dr. Carter was co-editor (with Cecilia Morgan) of the Canadian Historical Review, from 2007 - 2010, and she is presently co-editor (with Arthur J. Ray) of McGill-Queen’s Native and Northern Series, and co-editor (with Alvin Finkel) of the Athabasca University Press series The West Unbound: Social and Cultural Studies.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant 2009 - 2012, for "Growing Pains: The Dynamics of First Nations Agriculture in Manitoba."
Joan Jensen – Darlis Miller Essay Prize 2007
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada 2007
Killam Research Fellowship, Jan. 2005 – Dec. 2006
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant 2004 - 2007
Book Awards
2010: Willa Literary Award. Finalist. Women Writing the West. For Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own; Harold Adams Innis Prize. Finalist and Honourable Mention for The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada
2009: Clio Award (Prairie Region) Canadian Historical Association; Margaret McWilliams Award (Manitoba History); Alberta Scholarly and Academic Book Award; Alberta Book Publishing Book Design Award; Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize Finalist; Cundhill International Prize in History long list (15 books) for The Importance of Being Monogamous.
1999: City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Writers Guild of Alberta. Finalist. Aboriginal People and Colonizers of Western Canada
1997: Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America. For The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7.
1992: Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award. Winner. For Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy. Choice Magazine
1991: Clio Award (Prairie Region) Canadian Historical Association for Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy.
The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press and University of Alberta Press, 2008. 383 pages.
Aboriginal People and Colonizers of Western Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 195 pages. Second printing 2004.
Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1997. 247 pages. Second printing, 2004.
Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, 1990. Paperback edition 1993. Third printing 1999.323 pages
Co-authored Book
The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7. By Treaty 7 Tribal Council, Walter Hildebrandt, Sarah Carter and Dorothy First Rider. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, 1996. Third printing 2005. 408 pages
Edited Books
Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own. Ed. Sarah Carter. Helena: Farcountry Press, 2009. Introd. 38 pages.
Wheat and Woman. By Georgina Binnie-Clark. Introd. Sarah Carter. 1909 rpt.: Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Introd. 32 pages.
People of the Plains. By Amelia McLean Paget. Introd. Sarah Carter. 1909 rpt.: Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2004. Introd. 28 pages.
Two Months in The Camp of Big Bear. By Theresa Delaney and Theresa Gowanlock. Introd. Sarah Carter. 1885 rpt.: Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1999. Introd. 30 pages. Second printing 2004.
Co-edited Books
Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands. Sarah Carter and Patricia A. McCormack, eds. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2010 (forthcoming).
The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region. Alvin Finkel, Sarah Carter and Peter Fortna, eds. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2010.
Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West Through Women’s History. Sarah Carter, Lesley Erickson, Pat Roome and Char Smith, eds. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005.
Cowboys, Ranchers and the Cattle Business: Cross-Border Perspectives on Ranching History. Simon Evans, Sarah Carter, and Bill Yeo, eds. Calgary, University of Calgary Press and University Press of Colorado, 2000. 232 pages
Refereed Articles and Chapters
“The Montana Memories of Emma Minesinger: Windows on the Family, Work and Boundary Culture of a Borderlands Woman.” Submitted to Athabasca University Press in the collection Sarah Carter and Patricia McCormack, eds., Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2010 forthcoming).
“‘Hordes of Men of Alien Race’ or ‘Daughters of British Blood?’ The Homesteads-for-Women Campaign in Western Canada.” Great Plains Quarterly vol. 29, no. 4, (Fall 2009): 267 – 286.
“Aboriginal People of Canada and the Empire.” Oxford History of the British Empire ed. Phillip Buckner. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008): 200 – 219.
“’A Better Life With Honour:’: Treaties 6 and 7.” Co-author Walter Hildebrandt. Alberta Formed and Transformed, (Edmonton and Calgary: University of Alberta and University of Calgary Presses, 2006): 236 - 268
“Prairie Dusters in the Field of History in 1980s Winnipeg.”The Prairies: Lost and Found, ed., Len Kuffert, (Winnipeg: St. John’s College, 2007).
“Britishness, ‘Foreignness,’ Women and Land in Western Canada, 1890s – 1920s.” Humanities Research: The Journal of the Humanities Research Centre and The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University vol. 13, no. 1 (2006): 43 – 60. Special issue from the 2004 conference “Britishness and Otherness: Locating Marginal White Identities in the Empire,” Australian National University, Canberra.
“’The Cordial Advocate’: Amelia McLean Paget and The People of the Plains.” In David C. Nock and Celia Haig-Brown, eds. With Good Intentions: EuroCanadian and Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006): 199 – 228.
“’Complicated and Clouded:’ The Federal Administration of Marriage and Divorce Among the First Nations of Western Canada, 1887 – 1906.” In S. Carter, L. Erickson, Pat Roome and C. Smith, eds., Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West Through Women’s History (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005): 151 – 178.
“Creating ‘Semi-Widows’ and ‘Supernumerary Wives’: Prohibiting Polygamy in Prairie Canada’s Aboriginal Communities to 1900.” In M. Rutherdale and K. Pickles, eds. Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada’s Colonial Past (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005): 131 – 159.
“Amelia McLean.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 25 1921 –30, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005): 675 – 677.
“’Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea’: Prairie First Nations, the British Monarchy, and the Vice-Regal Connection to 1900.” Manitoba History, no. 48, (Autumn, Winter 2004-5): 34 – 48.
“Aboriginal Reserve Agriculture to 1900. The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan: A Living Legacy . (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2005): 22.
“Aboriginal Reserve Agriculture in Canada.” The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, ed., Gerald Hallowell, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2004): 10 – 11.
“Transnational Perspectives on the History of Great Plains Women: Gender, Race, Nations and the Forty-ninth Parallel.” The American Review of Canadian Studies, (Winter, 2003): 565-596.
“First Nations Women and Colonization on the Canadian Prairies, 1870s-1920s.” In Veronica Strong-Boag et. al., Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History, 4th edition, Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2002: 135 – 48.
“’He Country in Pants No Longer:’ Diversifying Ranching History.” In Cowboys, Ranchers and the Cattle Business: Cross-Border Perspectives on Ranching History. Eds. Simon Evans, Sarah Carter, Bill Yeo. Calgary: University of Calgary Press and University Press of Colorado, 2000: 155 – 166.
“An Infamous Proposal’: Prairie Indian Reserve Land and Soldier Settlement After World War I,” Manitoba History (Spring/Summer 1999): 9 – 21.
“Louis O’Soup,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography 14 (1911-1920). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998: 804 – 807.
"First Nations Women of Prairie Canada in the Early Reserve Years, the 1870s to the 1920s: A Preliminary Inquiry,” in Christine Miller, et. al., Women of the First Nations: Power, Wisdom and Strength, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1996: 51 – 75.
"The Exploitation and Narration of the Captivity of Theresa Delaney and Theresa Gowanlock, 1885," in J. Mouat and Catherine Cavanaugh, eds., Making Western Canada, Toronto: Garamond Press, 1996: 31 – 61.
“’We Must Farm to Enable Us To Live:’ The Plains Cree and Agriculture to 1900.” In R. B. Morrison and C. Roderick Wilson, eds., Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995: 444 – 470.
"Kakiwistahaw", Dictionary of Canadian Biography 13, (1901-1910), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994: 536 – 7.
"Mosomin", Dictionary of Canadian Biography 13, (1901-1910), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994: 721 – 2.
"Allan Macdonald", Dictionary of Canadian Biography 13, (1901-1910), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994: 622-3.
"Categories and Terrains of Exclusion: Constructing the 'Indian Woman' in the Early Settlement Era in Western Canada," Great Plains Quarterly, 13, no. 3, 1993: 147 – 161.
"Demonstrating Success: The File Hills Farm Colony," Prairie Forum, 16, no. 2, 1991: 157 - 83.
"Angus McKay," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 12, 1891-1900, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.
"Two Acres and a Cow: 'Peasant' Farming for the Indians of the Northwest, 1889-97," Canadian Historical Review, 70, no. 1, 1989: 27 – 51.
"The Missionaries' Indian: The Publications of John McDougall, John Maclean and Egerton Ryerson Young," Prairie Forum, 9, no. 1, 1985: 27 – 44.
"Material Culture and the W.R. Motherwell Home," Prairie Forum, 8, no. 1, 1983: 99-111.
"Agriculture and Agitation on the Oak River Dakota Reserve, 1875-1895,” Manitoba History, no. 6, 1983: 2 – 9.
“When First Nations are Farmers/Settlers: Vexing Problems in the Fabrication of a White Settler West.” With Winona Wheeler, Native Studies, University of Saskatchewan. Place and Replace: A Joint Meeting of Western Canadian Studies and St. John’s College Prairies Conference. Winnipeg, 16 Sept., 2010
"Tante Tin’s Gift: Family, War, Exile, Trauma and Memory in Katharina (Hildebrand) Kruger’s Memoir.” With Mary Hildebrandt. Germans of Siberia: History and Culture. Omsk, 3 June, 2010.
“Finding Montana’s Solo Women Homesteaders.” The 36th Annual Montana History Conference. Great Falls, Montana, 16 Oct., 2010
“Making Western Canada Monogamous: Polygamy and Other Cracks in the Foundation for the Nation.” University of Victoria, Wellington, New Zealand, 24 June, 2009.
“Tense and Tender Ties Torn: Interracial Intimacies in Late Nineteenth-Century Western Canada.” Interracial Intimacies: New Zealand Histories Symposium. Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand. 19 June, 2009
“Reflections on Borderlands and Comparative Approaches to the History of the North American West.” 34th Annual Qualicum-Parksville History Conference, 30 Jan., 2009.
“’Daughters of British Blood’ or ‘Hordes of Men of Alien Race’: The Homesteads-for-Women Campaign in Western Canada.” University of Victoria, (British Columbia) 29 Jan., 2009. Seminar.
Lansdowne Lecture: “Making Western Canada Monogamous: Polygamy and Other Cracks in the Foundation for the Nation.” University of Victoria, (British Columbia,) 28 Jan., 2009