Overview

The rodeo cowboy is one of the most evocative images of the Wild West. The master of the frontier, he is renowned for his masculinity, toughness, and skill. A Wilder West returns to rodeo's small-town roots to explore how rodeo simultaneously embodies and subverts our traditional understandings of power relations between man and nature, women and men, settlers and Aboriginal peoples. An important contact zone – a chaotic and unpredictable place of encounter – rodeo has challenged expected social hierarchies, bringing people together across racial and gender divides to create friendships, rivalries, and unexpected intimacies. At the rodeo, Aboriginal riders became local heroes, and rodeo queens spoke their minds. A Wilder West complicates the idea of western Canada as a ""white man's country"" and shows how rural rodeos have been communities in which different rules applied. Lavishly illustrated, this creative history will change the way we see the West's most controversial sport.

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9780774820301

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Reviews

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 *

I love this book. It is wonderfully written and, while clearly an academic look at the sport, always accessible and engaging. It documents an important part of our western tradition in a way that will captivate academics, rodeo devotees, and casual observers alike. From Nora Gladstone's poem to the in-depth look at the Williams Lakes and Lethbridges of the rodeo world, I finally lost track of the 'aha' moments in the book. - David A. Poulsen, rodeo announcer and award-winning author

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)

I love this book. It is wonderfully written and, while clearly an academic look at the sport, always accessible and engaging. It documents an important part of our western tradition in a way that will captivate academics, rodeo devotees, and casual observers alike. From Nora Gladstone's poem to the in-depth look at the Williams Lakes and Lethbridges of the rodeo world, I finally lost track of the 'aha' moments in the book. <br> - David A. Poulsen, rodeo announcer and award-winning author

Author Information

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.

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