Wilder West

Mary-Ellen Kelm is a Canada Research Chair in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. Her previous books include Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia. She is an avid animal trainer, competing in agility and obedience with her dog, Rusty. She lives in North Vancouver with her husband, Don, and spends her summers outdoors, hiking and paddling in British Columbia.

By using rodeo as the central contact zone, Kelm provides a very interesting and nuanced way of examining settler and Aboriginal relations in Western Canada...Kelm's book makes an important contribution to Canadian history. She successfully demonstrates that Western Canadian settlers and Aboriginal peoples did not operate in a static fashion or interact solely along the rigid lines of the colonization narrative. - Michael Commito, McMaster University (Essays in History) Mary-Ellen Kelm's book is a welcome addition to a somewhat sparse scholarly literature on the history of rodeo in Canada…overall, this study is well conceived and filled with personalized stories to keep readers interested and to deepen knowledge about localities. Kelm fulfills her intent to demonstrate the palpable "linkages between cultural display and political action" in terms of colonial history and has also created a good resource for studies about masculinities linked to sport and identity... - Lynda M. Annik, Newfoundland Memorial University (American Historical Review)

• Introduction1 An Old-Timers' Town: Western Communities, Performance, and Contact Zones2 Truly Western in Its Character: Identities, Affinities, and Intimacies at Western Canadian Rodeo3 A Sport, Not a Carnival Act: Transforming Rodeo from Performance to Sport4 Heavens No! Let's Keep It Rodeo! Pro Rodeo and the Making of the Modern Cowboy5 Going Pro: Community Rodeo in the Era of Professionalization6 Where the Cowboys Are Indians: Indian and Reserve Rodeo in the Canadian WestConclusionGlossary; Notes; Index