Quebec Social Science and Canadian Indigenous Peoples :
An Overview of Research Trends, 1960-1990

Foreword

In the 1960s, our national vision of the North as a storehouse of resource wealth meant that the work of social scientists frequently took a back‑seat to the so-called “hard sciences” - those seen as supporting major development initiatives. However, recent years have engendered a new perspective, one in which the true wealth of the region is embodied in the Aboriginal peoples themselves - those who have inhabited this vast and challenging land for many centuries. Ibis reaffirmation has accorded the social sciences a new significance, giving long‑overdue prominence to the contributions of traditional societies and helping identify new strategies for addressing the very human problems that afflict northern communities.

The following report, by anthropologists Marc Adélard Tremblay and Carole Levesque, represents an important contribution to the work of the Polar Commission and its mandate to "monitor, promote, and disseminate" knowledge of the polar regions. First published in a French edition in 1992, Quebec Social Science and Canadian Indigemous Peoples documents three decades of work on northern Quebec by researchers from a broad range of disciplines. The report is essential reading for anyone interested in the region, and will doubtless find an eager audience among scholars and students throughout Canada.

The Polar Commission is also pleased to announce that a second volume, reviewing social science research in northern Quebec from 1991 to the present, is now in writing.

Whit Fraser
Chairman, May 1997