Religious ceremonies were an inseparable part of Aboriginal traditional life, reinforcing social, economic, and political values. However, missionaries and government officials with ethnocentric attitudes of cultural superiority decreed that Native dances and ceremonies were immoral or un-Christian and an impediment to the integration of the Native population into Canadian society. Beginning in 1885, the Department of Indian Affairs implemented a series of amendments to the Canadian Indian Act, designed to eliminate traditional forms of religious expression and customs, such as the Sun Dance, the Midewiwin, the Sweat Lodge, and giveaway ceremonies.However, the amendments were only partially effective. Aboriginal resistance to the laws took many forms; community leaders challenged the legitimacy of the terms and the manner in which the regulations were implemented, and they altered their ceremonies, the times and locations, the practices, in an attempt both to avoid detection and to placate the agents who enforced the law.Katherine Pettipas views the amendments as part of official support for the destruction of indigenous cultural systems. She presents a critical analysis of the administrative policies and considers the effects of government suppression of traditional religious activities on the whole spectrum of Aboriginal life, focussing on the experiences of the Plains Cree from the mid-1880s to 1951, when the regulations pertaining to religious practices were removed from the Act. She shows how the destructive effects of the legislation are still felt in Aboriginal communities today, and offers insight into current issues of Aboriginal spirituality, including access to and use of religious objects held in museum repositories, protection of sacred lands and sites, and the right to indigenous religious practices in prison.

In this book, Phyllis Krystal describes techniques, rituals and symbols which are capable of impressing positive messages on the subconscious mind in order to offset some of the negative conditioning that may have been received earlier in life. In this way, changes in life become possible much better than just working on a con¬scious, cognitive level. This method enables a person to liberate from the various sources of false security to become an independent and whole human being, relying only on the inner source of security ans wisdom which is available to everyone who seeks its aids. First revised edition.

Maddie Dra was my dream man. He was everything I read about in my romance novels. Kind, quiet spoken, sexy as sin and he rode a Harley. He would be the man that would break me out of my comfort zone. The only drawback is he was once married to my older sister. I dreamed of forever. He just wanted one night and then he was filled with regret. Neither one of us got what we wanted...then fate steeped in and I received the gift of a lifetime. Dra Maddie was my ex-wife's younger sister. She was innocent and didn't belong in a biker's world. We had one night together. One night that will haunt me the rest of my life. Maddie is light and goodness. I am dark and my life is anything but good. I am forever chasing the ghost of things I have lost. I severed ties with Maddie before I pulled her down into my hell. Then came the day I met my daughter that Maddie kept from me. Now I know there are Severed Ties That Bind.

An examination of adults who have been manipulated by divorcing parents. Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) occurs when divorcing parents use children as pawns, trying to turn the child against the other parent. This book examines the impact of PAS on adults and offers strategies and hope for dealing with the long-term effects.

The Ties That Bind is an emotionally riveting debut novel about the power of a mother’s love and the bonds among family that, though severed, can never be fully broken. On opposite sides of the world, two lives are changed forever. One by the smallest bruise. The other by a devastating bushfire. And both by a shocking secret . . . Miami art curator Courtney Hamilton and her husband David live the perfect life until their ten-year-old son Matthew is diagnosed with leukaemia. He needs a bone-marrow transplant but, with Courtney being adopted, the chances of finding a match within his family are slim. Desperate to find a donor, Courtney tracks the scattered details of her birth 15,000 kilometres away, to the remote town of Somerset in the Victorian bush. Meanwhile Jade Taylor wakes up in hospital in Somerset having survived the deadly bushfire that destroyed the family home and their beloved olive groves. Gone too are the landmarks that remind her of her mother, Asha, a woman whose repeated absences scarred her childhood. As Jade rallies her fractured family to rebuild their lives, Courtney arrives in the burnt countryside to search for her lost parents - but discovers far more . . .

"Everything's bigger in Texas. Even the Secrets." Rufus McKay was not always the bright shining star of the art world. He owes his reputation to the strange happenings in his childhood community, and to the generations past. The images in his paintings are memories--of his loyal friends and his quirky family, and of the harrowing murders that darkened his sunny South Texas youth. Young love, old grudges, and new beginnings abound in Nicholas Bridwell's globetrotting debut novel. Equal parts saga and mystery, The Ties That Bind is bursting with a cast of worldly characters and Texas-size drama.

Melancholy. It is defined as a deep, long-lasting sadness. Everyone has felt what they perceived to be a deep, long-lasting sadness, but few ever go far enough into this sadness to live with it. Or, perhaps, they ignore this negative side of themselves. Whatever the case may be, this book is written with the intention to show that there is sadness that lingers inside the hearts and souls of many. It is not written so that this sadness may be celebrated but written to show that one is not alone in feeling them. Written in a way that is straightforward, yet analytical, somber, yet understandable, this book is one that will give you the feeling that someone does understand what youre going through. Someone does know what its like to hurt, and it is expressed in many forms. Whether it be through sadness inside of you, or sadness around you, you will find that this book contains the pain that you feel and want to end. Though this book offers no solution, it serves the purpose of being a comfort, because in reading can you understand and in understanding can you be there for someone who has yet to find someone who understands their pain.

THE ART OF ROZZ WILLIAMS - FROM CHRISTIAN DEATH TO DEATH New revised book with 8 extra pages includes updated discography, new art images and foreword by Rikk Agnew. The book features the work of the multi talented artist ROZZ WILLIAMS including his musical career, outsider-art, and poetry. Lyrics, discographies, performance history and photos of his bands CHRISTIAN DEATH, SHADOW PROJECT, PREMATURE EJACULATION, ROZZ WILLIAMS solo work (featuring GITANE DEMONE among others), and the film PIG.

Rajan Talwar's book is not simply an individual's journey through the trials of living with Multiple Sclerosis. It is a discourse between a thinking, reflective being with his world. It is a discourse on life, not in any abstract fashion, but in the very real essence of living each day to its fullest. His sense of humour prevails even in his darkest moments of anger and despair, as he punctuates some of the most painful moments of his life with this humour. Every chapter contains a positive lesson from a negative circumstance. The question of self growth for the author is linked to the inexorable condition of the disease that holds him captive. Boustan Hirji - Dawson College Unique, self-told story of pain, courage and triumph. A candid account of the real turbulences of life. Informative of treatments that the medical profession considers 'Witchcraft' Passionately written. Refreshingly honest, open and sensitive. The author invites us to his world of MS and takes us on an intimate tour of his fears, hopes, despair, strengths. On this tour, we encounter our own innermost being; we find reflected in his world our own world. We find the echoes of our own questions, and we question our responses to the world we all live in. He provides us with the lens through which to view his world and we find that this lens is indeed a reflection of our own world. In this sense his world of MS is indeed our world and MS is then our metaphor for the calamities of our lives. This is one man's journey of coming to terms with his reality and it can only inspire us and help us to come to terms with our own reality. A must read for every thinking, feeling, and struggling person! Zeenat Shariff Aga Khan University

Honorable Mention, Latin American Studies Association Haiti-Dominican Republic Section Isis Duarte Book Prize Gathering oral stories and visual art from Haiti and two of its "motherlands" in Africa, Istwa across the Water recovers the submerged histories of the island through methods drawn from its deep spiritual and cultural traditions. Toni Pressley-Sanon employs three theoretical anchors to bring together parts of the African diaspora that are profoundly fractured because of the slave trade. The first is the Vodou concept of marasa, or twinned entities, which she uses to identify parts of Dahomey (the present-day Benin Republic) and the Kongo region as Haiti's twinned sites of cultural production. Second, she draws on poet Kamau Brathwaite's idea of tidalectics—the back-and-forth movement of ocean waves—as a way to look at the cultural exchange set in motion by the transatlantic movement of captives. Finally, Pressley-Sanon searches out the places where history and memory intersect in story, expressed by the Kreyòl term istwa. Challenging the tendency to read history linearly, this volume offers a bold new approach for understanding Haitian histories and imagining Haitian futures.