Howard Adams

Howard Adams (September 8, 1921 – September 8, 2001) was an influential twentieth century Metis academic and activist. He was born in St. Louis, Saskatchewan, Canada, on September 8, 1921, the son of a French Metis mother and an English Metis (Anglo-Metis) father. In his youth he briefly joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Adams became the first Metis in Canada to gain his PhD after studies at the University of California, Berkley in 1966.

He returned to Canada and became a prominent Metis activist in Saskatchewan, often creating controversy by propagating his Marxist and Metis Nationalist views in reference to contemporary and historical events. Adams was often critical not only of Canadian society but of Aboriginal leadership for what he saw as its co-option, and cultivation of dependency by receiving government funding.

Adams' intellectual influences include Malcolm X whom he saw lecture at Berkley, and the general radical environment of that institution during the 1960s. He was the maternal great grandson of Louis Riel's lieutenant Maxime Lepine who fought in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885.

Adams died in Vancouver, British Columbia on September 8, 2001.

Major works include Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View (1975), The Education of Canadians 1800-1867: The Roots of Separatism (1968), and Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization (1995).

Honors

* National Aboriginal Achievement Award for education, 1999.

ee also

*History of Saskatchewan
*Politics of Saskatchewan

External links

* [http://www.metismuseum.ca/browse/index.php/700 Metis Museum Page on Howard Adams]
* [http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/adams_howard_1921-2001.html Encyclopaedia of Saskatchewan Entry on Howard Adams]
* [http://www.sicc.sk.ca/faces/madamho.htm Aboriginal Faces of Saskatchewan: Howard Adams]