Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens

J.R. Miller is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of numerous works on issues related to Indigenous peoples including Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens and Shingwauk’s Vision, both published by University of Toronto Press.

"If we learn anything from history it will be because of histories like Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, which help put into perspective what Buffy Ste. Marie sings about as the ‘bitter past’ and give to Indian-white relations a sense of hope."- M.T. Kelly (Globe and Mail) "Drawing on recent scholarship, [Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens] is both broad and even-handed, covering developments in the Indigenous-settler relationship as it headed into the twenty-first century…."- Susan Neylan, Wilfred Laurier University (The Canadian Historical Review, Vol 100 1, March ‘19)

• Preface to the Fourth EditionNote on TerminologyPreface to the Third EditionPreface to the First EditionINTRODUCTION 1 Indigenous Peoples and Europeans at the Time of ContactPART ONE: COOPERATION2 Early Contacts in the Eastern Woodlands 3 Commercial Partnership and Mutual Benefit4 Military Allies through a Century of WarfarePART TWO: COERCION5 From Alliance to "Irrelevance"6 Reserves, Residential Schools, and the Threat of Assimilation7 The Commercial Frontier on the Western Plains8 Contact, Commerce, and Christianity on the Pacific9 Resistance in Red River and the Numbered Treaties: "Bounty and Benevolence"10 The North-West Rebellion11 The Policy of the Bible and the Plough12 Residents and Transients in the North: Relations to the 1960sPART THREE: CONFRONTATION13 The Beginnings of Political Organization14 Land Claims and Self-Government from the White Paper to Guerin15 Meech, Oka, Charlottetown, Nass, and Ottawa: Relations 1986-2000PART FOUR: RECONCILIATION?16 Relations in the Twenty-First Century17 Do We Learn Anything from History?NotesSelect BibliographyIllustration CreditsIndexMapsFirst Nations of CanadaFirst Nations of northeastern North America at contactIroquoia (showing height of land)The Ohio and Illinois Country, 1754French possessions in North America, 1750Effect of the Royal Proclamation of 1763Location of western nations, 1821First Nations of British ColumbiaThe numbered treaties, 1871–1921North-West Rebellion, 1885