Ruby Wiebe is the celebrated author of 12 books, including A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, which won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non–Fiction and The Temptations of Big Bear. He lives in Edmonton. |
EXTRAORDINARY CANADIANS BIG BEAR
Big Bear (1825–1888) was a Plains Cree chief in Saskatchewan at a time when aboriginals were confronted with the disappearance of the buffalo and waves of European settlers that seemed destined to destroy the Indian way of life. In 1876 he refused to sign Treaty No. 6, until 1882, when his people were starving. Big Bear advocated negotiation over violence, but when the federal government refused to negotiate with aboriginal leaders, some of his followers killed 9 people at Frog Lake in 1885. Big Bear himself was arrested and imprisoned. Rudy Wiebe, author of a Governor General’s Award–winning novel about Big Bear, revisits the life of the eloquent statesman, one of Canada’s most important aboriginal leaders.
“A powerful portrait . . . . Big Bear compels the reader to question the very notion of cross-cultural justice and to rethink present-day aboriginal issues in a whole new light.”
—Canada’s History magazine
Ruby Wiebe is the celebrated author of 12 books, including A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, which won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non–Fiction and The Temptations of Big Bear. He lives in Edmonton.
