Aboriginal Canada Revisited

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS hiscollection of essays contains the proceedings from the third Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Symposium entitled "Aboriginal Peoplesin Canada in the 21st Century" and held in April 2005 at the University of Greifswald in Germany. The conference was dedicated to Professor Dr. Hartmut Lutz as a "present" to commemorate his sixtieth birthday. Since the early 1970s Hartmut Lutz has taught, researched, and lived Native American and Native Canadian Studies and has been instrumental in establishing these fields within German academia. For most of his academic career he has written on various topics within Native Studies, in particular on the "imaginary and ideological Indian" with his study of the genesis and dissemination of Indian stereotypes in American and German public and literary discourses ("Indianer" und "Native Americans": Zur sozial- und literaturhistorischen Vermittlung eines Stereotyps); articles on the representations of Native people in German children's and juvenile literature and in Hollywood movies; and with groundbreaking research on the phenomenon that he calls German "Indianthusiasm"—the Germans' enthusiastic infatuation with Native people. In addition, he has edited various books on Native x T Distinguished Visiting Professorship in 2001 and in 2003, the John G. Diefenbaker Award—a prestigious endowment awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts. In addition to his scholarly work, Hartmut Lutz has ambitiously tirelessly and enthusiastically "spread the word" through his teaching of Native Studies in Germany Poland, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Spain, and atNorth American colleges and universities including Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University in Davis, California; the First Nations University of Canada in Regina, Saskatchewan; Dartmouth College in Hanover, NewHampshire; andWidener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. Through his teaching, he has "hooked" numerous students and colleagues in the field. Many a German high school teacher ofEnglish graduatingfrom the universities ofKoln. In, Osnabruck, and Greifswald has developed asensibilityto Native issues, culture, and literaturein their teachingcurricula.Similarly, many former students continue their research in this field and contribute to the academic discourse, including seven finished dissertations in Native studies so far (Briese, Eigenbrod, Episkenew, Erf, Haible, Knopf, and von Berg). Hartmut, in the name of allthe people who learned and benefitted from your work, I wish to most gratefully thank you and dedicate this book to you! I would alsoliketo thank each ofthe contributors to this edition, who, with their research, have enhanced the conference and the book so well. Nearly half of the participants were from Canada and came up with the travel costs themselves; sothanks to allofyou for taking the effort to raise this money and to travel to Germany. This book would not have become what it is without the very energetic and supportive work of Lee Blanding, who, asparticipant of the International Council for Canadian Studies Internship Program, spent six months at the department of North American Studies at the University of Greifswald and helped with qualitative advice, research, and formal editing ; thanks Lee. I also wish to take this opportunity to thank Foreign Affairs Canada, the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, and the German Association for Canadian Studies (GKS) for generously supporting the conference and the publication of this edition. Kerstin Knopf Greifswald, December 2006 xii. This page intentionally left blank ...