Jarvis Brownlie

• HIST 2010/INDG 2012 - Indigenous History of Canada
• HIST 3780 - Energy and Power in Canada
• HIST 4120/7760 - History of Aboriginal Rights

I earned a PhD in Canadian Aboriginal History from the University of Toronto and then received a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship to study the history of lesbians and lesbianism in prisons. I moved to Winnipeg in 2000 to join the History Department at the University of Manitoba, where I have taught courses on Indigenous history; historical methods; the history of western Canada; the history of Aboriginal rights; and the environment, especially the history of energy and power. Having been interested in oral history from the outset as an irreplaceable source of Indigenous perspectives, I have pursued oral history projects at Lac Brochet (Denesuline Elders' Gathering, 2003); Ndinawe Youth Resource Centre, Winnipeg (2007-8); and in northern Manitoba communities on the topics of treaties and the impacts of hydro dams and operations. I have served as an expert witness in two major court cases relating to treat ies, and have also testified in other fora on issues relating primarily to the impacts of hydropower (see outreach section). 

• PhD (History), University of Toronto, 1996
• MA (History), University of Toronto, 1990
• BA (History and English), University of Toronto, 1985

Research interests

• Settler colonialism in Canada
• History of colonization
• Crown-Indigenous relations
• Treaties and Aboriginal rights
• Oral history 

Research summary

My research has focused on Canadian settler colonialism, Crown-First Nation relations, treaties and Aboriginal rights, and hydropower extractivism. Having begun with research into the role of Indian agents as officials of the state, assimilation, and the administrative subjugation of Indigenous communities, I have moved increasingly to oral history and community-driven co-research in longstanding partnerships with Indigenous community members. My work has dealt with government policy and practice, racial discourses, gender, sexuality, labour, enfranchisement, and hydro-colonialism.

Research affiliations/groups

• Wa Ni Ska Tan Alliance of Hydro-Impacted Communities
• Canadian Historical Association

Books

• Robin Jarvis Brownlie and Valerie J. Korinek, eds., Finding a Way to the Heart: Feminist Writings on Aboriginal and Women’s History in Canada (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2012) 
• A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2003). Received Joseph Brant Award from Ontario Historical Society, 2005.

Articles and book chapters (selected)

• “‘Our Fathers Fought for the British:’ Racial Discourses and Indigenous Allies in Upper Canada,” Social History/Histoire sociale vol. L, no. 102 (Nov. 2017), 259-284. 
• “Disciplining Orality: Alexander von Gernet and the Crown’s Invalidation of Aboriginal Oral History in Canadian Litigation,” Native Studies Review, vol. 23, nos. 1 & 2 (2016), 1-33.
• With Roewan Crowe, “So you want to hear our ghetto stories?”: Oral History at Ndinawe Youth Resource Centre,” in Steven High, Edward Little, and Thi Ry Duong, eds., Remembering Mass Violence: Oral History, New Media, and Performance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 203-218.
• “The Co-optation of Tecumseh: the War of 1812 and Racial Discourses in Upper Canada,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 23:1 (2012), 39-63.
• “First Nations Perspectives and Historical Thinking in Canada,” in Annis May Timpson, ed., First Nations, First Thoughts - New Challenges (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 21-50.
• “‘Living the same as the white people’: Mohawk and Anishinabe Women’s Labour in Southern Ontario in the 1920s and 30s,” Labour/Le Travail 61 (Spring 2008), 41-68.
• “Intimate Surveillance: Indian Affairs, Colonization, and the Regulation of Aboriginal Women’s Sexuality,” in Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada's Colonial Past, eds. Katie Pickles and Myra Rutherdale (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005), 160-78.
• (with Mary-Ellen Kelm) “Desperately Seeking Absolution: Native Agency as Colonialist Alibi?” Canadian Historical Review, vol. LXXV, No.4 (December 1994), 543-56.

• 2005 - Joseph Brant Award from Ontario Historical Society for best book in previous three years on multicultural history in Ontario, received for A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2003).

• Attended United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues with Indigenous delegates from hydro-affected communities in 2019 and 2023
• Work with Senator Mary Jane McCallum to provide information on impacts of hydro/hydrocolonialism, extractivism, and colonization on Indigenous communities
• Have produced briefs and given testimony on hydro impacts at hearings and inquiries before the Canadian House of Commons, the Canadian Senate, and the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission