Howard Adams (September 8, 1921 – September 8, 2001) was a twentieth century Metis academic and activist.

Howard Adams
Born(1921-09-08)September 8, 1921
St. Louis, Saskatchewan
DiedSeptember 8, 2001(2001-09-08) (aged 80)
Vancouver, British Columbia
CitizenshipCanada
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Notable awardsNational Aboriginal Achievement Award

Life

edit

He was born in St. Louis, Saskatchewan, Canada, on September 8, 1921, the son of Olive Elizabeth McDougall, a French Métis mother and William Robert Adams, an English Métis (Anglo-Metis) father. In his youth he briefly joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Adams became the first Métis in Canada to gain his PhD after studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1966.[1]

He returned to Canada and became a prominent Métis activist, contributing regularly to newspapers and magazines and appearing on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio shows.[2] In 1969, he was elected president of the Metis Association of Saskatchewan.[3]

Adams' intellectual influences include Malcolm X whom he saw lecture at Berkeley, and the general radical environment of that institution during the 1960s. He was the maternal great grandson of Louis Riel's lieutenant Maxime Lepine who fought in the North-West Rebellion of 1885.

Adams died in Vancouver, British Columbia on September 8, 2001, on his 80th birthday.

Works

edit
  • The Education of Canadians 1800-1867: The Roots of Separatism, Harvest House, 1968
  • Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View New Press, 1975, ISBN 9780887702112; Fifth House, 1989, ISBN 9780920079515
  • Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization Theytus Books Ltd., 1999, ISBN 9780919441378

Honours

edit

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ "Howard Adams]". Encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan. Archived from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  2. ^ Voth, Daniel (Fall 2018). "Order Up!The Decolonizing Politics of Howard Adams and Maria Campbell with a Side of Imagining Otherwise". Native American and Indigenous Studies. 5 (2): 16. doi:10.5749/natiindistudj.5.2.0016. S2CID 159082620.
  3. ^ Weinstein, John (2007). Quiet Revolution West: The Rebirth of Metis Nationalism. Fifth House Publishers. p. 30. ISBN 9781897252215.
edit

Further reading

edit
  • Hartmut Lutz, Murray Hamilton and Donna Heimberker. "Howard Adams: OTAPAWY! The Life of a Metis Leader in his Own Words and in Those of his Contemporaries." Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2005. ISBN 0-920915-74-4
  • Hartmut Lutz: Identity as Interface: Fact and Fiction in the Autobiographical Writings of Howard Adams, in idem, Contemporary achievements. Contextualizing Canadian Aboriginal literatures. Studies in anglophone literatures and cultures, 6. Wißner, Augsburg 2015, pp 222 – 240
  • Hartmut Lutz: Not "Neither-Nor" but "Both, and More?" A Transnational Reading of Chicana and Metis Autobiografictions by Sandra Cisneros and Howard Adams, in idem, Contemporary achievements. Contextualizing Canadian Aboriginal literatures. Studies in anglophone literatures and cultures, 6. Wißner, Augsburg 2015, pp 241 – 260