When Sylvia Van Kirk published her groundbreaking book Many Tender Ties in 1980, she revolutionized the historical understanding of the North American fur trade and introduced entirely new areas of inquiry in women’s, social, and Aboriginal history. Finding a Way to the Heart examines Van Kirk’s work, her academic career, and her influence on a generation of feminist scholarship in fur trade and gender history, the history of Aboriginal women, the North American west, Native-newcomer relations, and multicultural history.
Using Van Kirk’s themes and methodologies as a jumping-off point, the book also offers ten new essays examining race, gender, identity, and colonization over a time period extending from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century and a geographic area reaching from the western plains to southern Ontario to New Zealand.