Yngve Georg Lithman is a Swedish scholar (currently professor emeritus in Sociology at the University of Bergen, Finland) whose research interests include Canadian First Nations communities and who has been a visiting scholar at several Canadian universities. Lithman’s first book, “The Community Apart,” analyses three years of fieldwork amongst residents of a prairie reserve community to investigate the social, economic, and class factors that keep residents on reserves despite poor living conditions. He examines relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals in education, medical, and employment settings, then traces the acquisition and dispersal of resources amidst on-reserve groups and family units. Sketching inter-ethnic interaction strategies and linking reserve politics to resource acquisition tactics, Lithman suggests that social prejudice and flawed government responses to First Nations issues influence Indigenous decisions to remain on Canadian reserves. Includes endnotes and bibliography.
