The success of the first Laurier Conference on Ethnohistory and Ethnology in 1981 and the well attended Aboriginal history sessions at the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association in 1982 in Ottawa prompted a meeting to discuss the creation of a support group. The result was the founding of the Aboriginal History Studies Group (AHSG), which has been actively involved in the life of the CHA ever since.

 

Response to the establishment of the AHSG was immediate, with 70 names quickly being added to its first mailing list, a number that ballooned to 300 in the mid-1990s. AHSG business meetings are attended by old and new members, with discussion typically focussing on possible sessions and special events for the following year. In its initial decade, the AHSG organized academic sessions in alternating years and then as energy and inspiration allowed. In 1998 at the meeting in Ottawa, the AHSG co-hosted a session with DIAND on the research needs of government in the area of specific claims.

 

 A spontaneously planned field trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1990 spawned a series of trips and events, such as the two-day tour in 1991, co-organized with the Canadian Indian / Native Studies Association (CINSA), to Tyendinaga, Akwesasne, and Kanesatake, a sweat lodge and feast hosted by the Mi’kmaq of Lennox Island, PEI, at the Charlottetown meeting in 1992, field trips to two interpretive centres and the Tsuu T’ina First Nation in Alberta in 1994, and a dinner with guest speaker Olive Dickason at the Halifax meeting in 1997.

 

 In addition to CINSA, the AHSG kept in close communication with the CHA’s Northern History Group and the Canadian Association of Geographer’s Native Canadian Specialty Group. In 1991, these three groups combined their newsletters into SSHARE – Social Sciences and Humanities Aboriginal Research Exchange. As well as covering the activities of the three groups, SSHARE featured other information of interest, including articles, book reviews and an extensive bibliography. SSHARE ceased publication in 1999 and the AHSG has continued primarily through the CHA business meetings.

The AHSG has always been an informal group, operating with neither constitution nor budget nor executive, depending instead on the energy of individuals who come forward from time to time and take leadership roles. Membership is open to all interested in Native history, broadly conceived, and includes scholars from many disciplines in addition to history, federal and provincial government employees, representatives of Aboriginal organizations and public historians / independent researchers.