University of Manitoba - Faculty of Arts - Native Studies - Peter Kulchyski
Peter Kulchyski


Dr. Peter Kulchyski in scene from the documentary film Green Green Water 

Bio:
Dr. Kulchyski is a Full Professor. He is originally from Bissett, Manitoba, and went to the government-run residential school Frontier Collegiate in Cranberry Portage, MB. He has taught in Native Studies departments at the University of Saskatchewan and Trent University   He joined the Department of Native Studies at the U of M in 2000. His research interests include Aboriginal cultural politics, political development in the Canadian Arctic, land claims and self-government, Indigenous rights, contemporary critical theory, and political performance art. He is on the Steering Committee of Wa Nis Ka Tan, an alliance of hydro affected Indigenous communities, and co-director of the Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas. Dr Kulchyski is the recipient of the 2017 Dr John M Bowman Memorial Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation Award.

Academic History:

BA (Hons) University of Winnipeg 1980
MA York University 1981
PhD York University 1988

Contact Information:
Office: 205A Isbister Building
P - 204-474-7026
F - 204-474-7657
Email: peter.kulchyski@umanitoba.ca

At the University of Manitoba's "Revolutions" conference in 2017, Dr. Kulchyski gave a keynote talk regarding the significant challenges to global capitalism that are offered by indigenous peoples.  To hear that talk, please click here.

Click here to access his e-book of Six Gestures or his Bush Manifesto

For a short autobiography, see Bush Life. Canadian Dimension Magazine, May/June 2005.

 Research Interests:
Aboriginal cultural politics; political development in the NWT and Nunavut; contemporary critical theory; land claims and self-government; Inuit history and performance studies.

Teaching Interests and Courses:
NATV 2220 -Native Societies and the Political Process
NATV 3310 -Canadian Law and Aboriginal Peoples
NATV 3390 -Cultural Continuity and Change in Cumberland Sound
NATV 7220 - Critical Theory and Native Studies

Books:

Report of an Inquiry into an Injustice: Begade Shuhtagotine and the Sahtu Treaty. Winnipeg; University of Manitoba Press, 2018.

aboriginal rights are not human rights and other essays on law, politics and culture. Winnipeg; Arbeiter Ring Press. Winter 2013.

Subversive Itinerary: Essays on the Thought of Gad Horowitz. Edited with Shannon Bell. Toronto, U Toronto Press. Winter 2013.

Kiumajuk [Talking Back]: Game Management and Inuit Rights in Nunavut 1900 to 1970, with Frank Tester (Vancouver: UBC Press 2007).

the red indians: an episodic, informal collection of tales from the history of aboriginal people's struggles in canada (winnipeg: arbeiter ring press, 2007).

Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut. Winnipeg; U Manitoba P, 2006.

In the Words of the Elders: Aboriginal Cultures in Transition. Toronto; U Toronto P, 1999. Co-edited and co-wrote the introduction, with Don McCaskill et.al.

Tammarniit [Mistakes]: Inuit and Relocation Eastern Arctic 1939 to 1963, with Frank Tester. Vancouver; U British Columbia, 1994.

Unjust Relations: Aboriginal Rights in Canadian Courts, edited by Peter Kulchyski. Toronto; Oxford U P, 1994.

Academic Articles:

“bush/animals”.  Animals and Animality, and Literature, Eds. Molly Hand, Brian Massumi, and Bruce Boehrer. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2018.

“Hunting Theories: Totalization and Indigenous Resistences in Canada”, Historical Materialism. Fall 2016.

“Fifty Years in Indian Country”, Canadian Dimension at Fifty, Peterborough, Broadview Press, 2016.

“Rethinking Inequality in a Northern Indigenous Context: Affluence, Poverty, and the Racial Reconfiguration and Redistribution of Wealth”, The Northern Review. No 42. 2016.

"Bush Sites / Bush Stories: Politics of Place and Memory in Indigenous Northern Canada," Publication of the Modern Languages Association, Summer, 2016.

“and”. Postcolonial Studies. Vol 18. No. 3. 2015.

“Trail to Tears: Concerning Modern Treaties in Northern Canada”, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies. XXXI, 1, 2015.

“The Incalculable Weight of Small Numbers: Hunters, Land Use, and the Poplar River First Nation Proposal for a World Heritage Site” with Agnes Pawlowska. International Journal of Canadian Studies. 52, 2015.

“Modern Treaties, Extraction, and Imperialism in Canada’s Indigenous North: Two Case Studies” with Warren Bernauer for Studies in Political Economy. 93. Spring, 2014.

“Speaking the Strong Words’: Notes on Performing Indigenous Community Politics in Denendeh” for edited volume on Indigenous Performance Studies in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies edited by Helen Gilbert. Volume 15. Issue 2. June 2013.

“Idle No More and the History of Aboriginal Dissent” Translated into French by Thomas Chaisson-LeBel for Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, Spring 2013.

“bush/writing: embodied deconstruction, traces of community and writing against the state in indigenous acts of inscription” in Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies, Edited by Smaro Kambuoreli and Robert Zacharias, Waterloo; Wilfred Laurier UP, November, 2012.

“Echo of an Impossible Return: An Essay Concerning Fredric Jameson’s Utopian Thought and Gathering and Hunting Social Relations” in The Politics of the Impossible: Utopia and Distopia Reconsidered. Edited by Barnita Bagchi New Delhi; Sage Books, 2012.

“aboriginal rights are not human rights” Prairie Forum: Fall 2011, edited by Joyce Green.

"subversive identities: indigenous cultural politics and canadian legal frameworks, or, indigenous orphans of the state.”e-misferica. 6.2. Jan., 2010. Online Refereed Journal. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-62/kulchyski

“A Step Back: the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation and the Wuskwatim Project” in Power Struggles edited by Thibault Martin and Steven M Hoffman. Winnipeg; U Manitoba P, 2008.

"Aboriginal Rights", "Cree", "Dene","Treaties", "The Northern Flood Agreement", in The Encyclopedia of Manitoba. Winnipeg; Great Plains Publishing, 2007.

"Violence, Gender and Community in Attanarjuat" in Film, History and Cultural Citizenship, edited by Tina Chen and David Churchill. New York; Routledge, 2007.

“hunting stories” in The Culture of Hunting, edited by Jean Manore. Vancouver; U British Columbia P, 2007.

"The Town That Lost Its Name: The Impact of Hydroelectric Development on Grand Rapids, Manitoba" with Ramona Neckoway, Gerald McKay and Robert Buck in Doing Community Economic Development, edited by John Loxley, Jim Silver and Kathleen Sexsmith.Winnipeg; Fernwood, 2006.

“six gestures” in Critical Inuit Studies edited by Pam Stern and Lisa Stevenson. Lincoln; U Nebraska P, 2006.

"The Long Road From Fort Simpson to Liidli Ko". Pushing the Margins, edited by Jill Oakes, Rick Riewe, Marilyn Bennet and Brenda Chisholm. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 2000).

"What is Native Studies". Expressions in Native Studies, edited by Ron F. Laliberte et al. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Press, 2000.

"Arctic Abstersion: The Book of Wisdom for Eskimo, modernism and Inuit assimilation" with Paule McNicoll and Frank Tester. Inuit Studies. Volume 23, Numbers 1-2, 1999.

"Bush/Lands: Some Problems with Defining the Sacred". Sacred Lands, edited by Jill Oakes, Rick Riewe, Kathi Kinew and Elaine Maloney. Alberta: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1998.

"From Appropriation to Subversion: Aboriginal Culture in the Age of Postmodernism". American Indian Quarterly, Volume 21, Number 4, Summer 1997.

"Bush Culture for a Bush Country: An Unfinished Manifesto". Journal of Canadian Studies. Vol 31, No 3, Fall 1996.

"Anthropology at the Service of the State: Diamond Jenness and Indian Policy in the Early Twentieth Century". Journal of Canadian Studies. Fall, 1993.

"Primitive Subversions: Totalization and Resistance in Native Canadian Politics". Cultural Critique. Number 21. Spring 1992.

"The Postmodern and the Palaeolithic: Notes on Technology and Native Community in the Far North". The Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory. Vol. 13, No. 3 (1989).

"'A Considerable Unrest': F.O. Loft and the League of Indians". Native Studies Review. Vol. 4, Nos. 1 & 2 (1989)

 Academic and Community Service:

  • Board Member, Canadian Dimension
  • Board Member, Topia
  • Board Member, Dialectical Anthropology
  • Board Member, Canadian Journal of Native Studies
  • Board Member, Manitoba Research Alliance
  • Board Member, Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics
  • Board Member, New Directions, Winnipeg
  • Board Member, Aboriginal History Series, University of Manitoba Press

 

 

 Peter Kulchyski during an information
picket concerning the Six Nations Caledonia land dispute at the midtown bridge, Winnipeg, spring 2006

   

Current Projects:

  • Principle Investigator, Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas, SSHRC Partnership Grant
  • Co-Investigator, Climate Change and Inuit Knowledge (with Chris Trott and Ian Mauro) SSHRC Northern Communities Strategic Grant
  • Political Development in Denendeh, SSHRC Standard Research Grant
  • SSHRC funded study of four northern communities with innovative self government models who are facing resource conflicts.  Study has just been completed, results to be written up over the next year.
  • SSHRC Aboriginal Strategies funded study, in co-operation with Keewatin Tribal Council, of ‘An Oral History of the Northern Manitoba Treaties’.
  • Draft articles on Marx's anthropology, on Aboriginal history and trauma theory, on representations of Inuit women, and on women's bodies and representations of emancipation.
  • Completed research and have first draft of manuscript on Begade Shuhtagot'ine land conflicts.
  • Research towards a re-reading of the Royal Proclamation of 1763.

Academic Achievements:

  • Like the Sound of a Drum was winner of the Isbister Prize for best non-fiction book in Manitoba in March 2006.
  • "Tammarniit" was Winner of Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize of the American Society for Ethnohistory in November 1995 for best book in ethnohistory. Acknowledged by Gustavus Meyer Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1998 as an 'outstanding book'.
  • Junior Fellow, A.D. White Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, 1994-95.

Other Achievements:

  • Non Aboriginal Educator's Award, Winnipeg Aboriginal Education Circle, February 2009
  • Lifetime Achievement Award, Frontier School Division, 2003