Antonia Mills | |
---|---|
Nationality | Canadian |
Occupation | professor |
Awards | Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Fellowship |
Academic background | |
Education | PhD (Harvard) |
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Influences | Ian Stevenson |
Academic work | |
Era | 21st Century |
Discipline | Anthropology |
Sub-discipline | First Nations studies |
Institutions | University of Northern British Columbia |
Main interests | Reincarnation research |
Notable works | Amerindian Rebirth:Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit (1994) Eagle Down is Our Law:Witsutit'en Feasts,Laws and Land Claims (1994) Hang On To These Words:Johnny David's Delgamuukw Testimony (2005) |
Antonia (Tonia) Mills is a professor emeritus in First Nations studies at the University of Northern British Columbia,Canada. Her current research interests include First Nations land claims,religion and law,and reincarnation research. Mills met Ian Stevenson (professor and psychiatrist) in Vancouver in 1984 and was impressed with his reincarnation case studies. Since 1964,she has done field work with the Beaver Indians. [1] [2]
Mills co-edited Amerindian Rebirth:Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit (1994),and wrote Eagle Down is Our Law:Witsutit'en Feasts,Laws and Land Claims (1994). Preparation for Eagle Down involved three years living with the Witsuwit'en and serving as an expert witness and expert opinion writer for the Delgamuukw case. Her book,Hang On To These Words:Johnny David's Delgamuukw Testimony,was published in 2005. She has been awarded a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Fellowship for "A Longitudian Study of Young Adults who were said to Remember a Previous Life". [2]
Mills teaches courses at undergraduate and graduate levels,including the subject "Indigenous Perspectives on Reincarnation and Rebirth". She has also published in many different journals and published book chapters. [2]
Mills received a BA and a Doctorate from Harvard University. [2]
Reincarnation,also known as rebirth,transmigration,or metempsychosis (Greek) is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. Resurrection is a similar process hypothesized by some religions in which a soul comes back to life in the same body. In most beliefs involving reincarnation,the soul is seen as immortal and the only thing that becomes perishable is the body. Upon death,the soul becomes transmigrated into a new infant or animal to live again. The term transmigration means passing of soul from one body to another after death.
In Canada,Indigenous groups comprise the First Nations,Inuit,and Métis. Although Indian is a term still commonly used in legal documents,the descriptors Indian and Eskimo have fallen into disuse in Canada,and most consider them to be pejorative. Aboriginal peoples as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in some legal documents,including the Constitution Act,1982,though in most Indigenous circles Aboriginal has also fallen into disfavour.
The Slavey are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group,indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region,in Canada's Northwest Territories,and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern Alberta.
Athabaskan is a large family of indigenous languages of North America,located in western North America in three areal language groups:Northern,Pacific Coast and Southern. Kari and Potter (2010:10) place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at 4,022,000 square kilometres (1,553,000 sq mi).
Ian Pretyman Stevenson was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist,the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
Rebirth in Buddhism refers to the teaching that the actions of a sentient being lead to a new existence after death,in an endless cycle called saṃsāra. This cycle is considered to be dukkha,unsatisfactory and painful. The cycle stops only if moksha (liberation) is achieved by insight and the extinguishing of craving. Rebirth is one of the foundational doctrines of Buddhism,along with karma,Nirvana and liberation. Rebirth was however less relevant among early Buddhist teachings,which also mentioned the beliefs in an afterlife,ancestor worship,and related rites. The concept varies among different Buddhist traditions.
Delgamuukw v British Columbia,[1997] 3 SCR 1010,also known as Delgamuukw v The Queen,Delgamuukw-Gisday’wa,or simply Delgamuukw,is a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that contains its first comprehensive account of Aboriginal title in Canada. The Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en peoples claimed Aboriginal title and jurisdiction over 58,000 square kilometers in northwest British Columbia. The plaintiffs lost the case at trial,but the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal in part and ordered a new trial because of deficiencies relating to the pleadings and treatment of evidence. In this decision,the Court went on to describe the "nature and scope" of the protection given to Aboriginal title under section 35 of the Constitution Act,1982,defined how a claimant can prove Aboriginal title,and clarified how the justification test from R v Sparrow applies when Aboriginal title is infringed. The decision is also important for its treatment of oral testimony as evidence of historic occupation.
The Wetʼsuwetʼen are a First Nation who live on the Bulkley River and around Burns Lake,Broman Lake,and François Lake in the northwestern Central Interior of British Columbia. The endonym Wetʼsuwetʼen means "People of the Wa Dzun Kwuh River ".
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R v Marshall;R v Bernard 2005 SCC 43 is a leading Aboriginal rights decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where the Court narrowed the test from R. v. Marshall for determining the extent of constitutional protection upon Aboriginal practices. The Court held that there was no right to commercial logging granted in the "Peace and Friendship treaties of 1760",the same set of treaties where the right to commercial fishing was granted in the R. v. Marshall decision. This decision also applied and developed the test for aboriginal title from Delgamuukw v British Columbia.
The Gitxsan language,or Gitxsanimaax,is an endangered Tsimshianic language of northwestern British Columbia,closely related to the neighboring Nisga’a language. The two groups are,however,politically separate and prefer to refer to Gitxsan and Nisga'a as distinct languages. According to the Report on the status of B.C First Nations Languages there are 523 fluent speakers,639 that understand or somewhat speak and 344 learning speakers.
Gitxsan are an Indigenous people in Canada whose home territory comprises most of the area known as the Skeena Country in English. Gitksan territory encompasses approximately 35,000 km2 (14,000 sq mi) of land,from the basin of the upper Skeena River from about Legate Creek to the Skeena's headwaters and its surrounding tributaries. Part of the Tsimshianic language group,their culture is considered to be part of the civilization of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast,although their territory lies in the Interior rather than on the Coast. They were at one time also known as the Interior Tsimshian,a term which also included the Nisga'a,the Gitxsan's neighbours to the north. Their neighbours to the west are the Tsimshian while to the east the Wetʼsuwetʼen,an Athapaskan people,with whom they have a long and deep relationship and shared political and cultural community.
Jim B. Tucker is a child psychiatrist and Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. His main research interests are documenting stories of children whom he claims remember previous lives,and natal and prenatal memories. He is the author of Life Before Life:A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives,which presents an overview of over four decades of reincarnation research at the Division of Perceptual Studies. Tucker worked for several years on this research with Ian Stevenson before taking over upon Stevenson's retirement in 2002.
John James Cove was a Canadian anthropologist known for his work with the Gitksan First Nation of northern British Columbia. He was a Professor of anthropology and sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa,Ontario,Canada.
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to Indigenous peoples in Canada,comprising the First Nations,Inuit and Métis peoples.
Hugh Brody is a British anthropologist,writer,director and lecturer.
Gene Anne Joseph is a Wet'suwet'en Nadleh'dena First Nations librarian from Hagwilget,British Columbia. She was the founding librarian of the Xwi7xwa Library at the University of British Columbia and the first librarian of First Nations descent in British Columbia. In 2018,she received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Vancouver Island University. The British Columbia Library Association,the First Nations Interest Group,and the University of British Columbia First Nations House of Learning created an endowed scholarship in her name.
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo is a Peruvian anthropologist. She is a full professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and has previously taught throughout the USA and in Chile. Her research primarily focuses on the shamans or machis of the Mapuche community of Chile,and the ways shamanic practices and beliefs are affected by and influence communal experiences of state power,mythical history,ethics,gender,justice,and identity.
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Barbara Helen Tedlock is an American cultural anthropologist and oneirologist. She is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York,Buffalo. Her work explores cross-cultural understanding and communication of dreams,ethnomedicine,and aesthetics and focuses on the indigenous Zuni of the Southwestern United States and the KʼicheʼMaya of Mesoamerica. Through her study and practice of the healing traditions of the KʼicheʼMaya of Guatemala,Tedlock became initiated into shamanism. She is the collaborator and wife of the late anthropologist and poet Dennis Tedlock.