Sims, Dr. Daniel
PhD, MA, BA
Biography
Born and raised in Prince George, Dr. Daniel Sims is a proud member of the Tsay Keh Dene First Nation. His research focuses on northern British Columbia and he has worked extensively with not only his own community, but also the related communities of Kwadacha and McLeod Lake.
Currently he is working on two books through the University of Alberta Press on the impacts of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam and Williston Lake reservoir on all three communities. As if that was not enough, he is also working on a research project, titled "A Forgotten Land: Development in the Finlay-Parsnip Watershed of Northern British Columbia, 1860-1956," that examines numerous proposed developments in the Finlay-Parsnip watershed through the lens of concepts of wilderness, development, and colonialism.
His areas of research involve many aspects of Indigenous studies, including identity, knowledge systems, treaty and land claims, history, reconciliation and Indigenization.
He is also the author of numerous publications. His most recent book is a scholarly English edition of the memoirs of Einar Mortensen, titled The Fur Trader: From Oslo to Oxford House that he produced with a colleague in Scandinavian studies.
Dr. Sims also works as a consultant and/or researcher for hire and has given numerous public talks and workshops on topics ranging from reconciliation, Indigenization, and the history of colonialism in British Columbia and Canada.
Research and Expertise
Dr. Daniel Sims is available for directed readings. In the past he has supervised students studying:
- Land-Based Learning
- Reconciliation Through Music Therapy
- Traditional Healing and Ethnobotany
- Gwich'in Ethnobotany
- Homesteading in the Peace River Country
- Northwest Coast Art
- First Nations
- History
- English
Selected Publications
Concerning Cruelty and Clemency and Commonwealths, The Conrad Grebel Review 38, no. 3 (2020): 224-253.
Balloon Bombs, the Alaskan Highway and Influenza: Tsekehne Perspectives of the 1943 Flu Epidemic, BC Studies, no. 203 (2019): 111-130.
Accrued Many Rights: The Ingenika Tsay Keh Nay, Mennonite Missionaries, and Land Claims in the Late Twentieth Century, Journal of Mennonite Studies 37 (2019): 87-104.
Wares Waldo: Hydroelectric Development and the Creation of the Other in British Columbia, in Sustaining the West: Cultural Responses to Western Environments, Past and Present, ed. Liza Piper and Lisa Szabo-Jones (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2015).