""The ways in which we can redress the past are many and varied," writes Jean Barman, "and it is up to each of us to act as best we can." The seventeen essays collected here, originally published between 1996 and 2013, make a valuable contribution toward this laudable goal. With a wide range of source material, from archival and documentary sources to oral histories, Barman pieces together stories of individuals and groups disadvantaged in white settler society because of their gender, race and/or social class. Working to recognize past actors that have been underrepresented in mainstream histories, Barman's focus is BC on "the cusp of contact." The essays in this collection include fascinating, though largely forgotten, life stories of the frontier--that space between contact and settlement, where, for a brief moment, anything seemed possible. This volume, featuring over thirty archival photographs and illustrations, makes these important and very readable essays accessible to a broader audience for the first time."-- Provided by publisher.

Race, Greed, and Something More: The Erasure of Urban Indigenous Space in Early Twentieth-Century British Columbia -- Erasing Indigenous Indigeneity in Vancouver -- Indigenous Women and Feminism on the Cusp of Contact -- Indigenous Women on the Streets of Victoria: Rethinking Transgressive Sexuality during the Colonial Encounter -- Taming Indigenous Sexuality: Gender, Power, and Race in British Columbia, 1850-1900 -- Invisible Women: Indigenous Mothers and Mixed-Race Daughters in Rural Pioneer British Columbia -- Sophie Morigeau: Free Trader, Free Woman -- Family Life at Fort Langley -- Beyond Chinatown: Chinese Men and Indigenous Women in Early British Columbia -- Lost Okanagan: In Search of the First Settler Families -- Island Sanctuaries: Early Mixed-Race Settlement on Gabriola and Nearby Coastal Islands -- New Land, New Lives: Hawaiian Settlement in British Columbia -- Lost Nanaimo: Taking Back Our Past -- Families vs. Schools: Children of Indigenous Descent in British Columbia Classrooms of the Late Nineteenth Century -- Separate and Unequal: Indigenous and White Girls at All Hallows School, 1884-1920 -- Schooled for Inequality: The Education of British Columbia Indigenous Children.