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1960-2004 (Creation)
- Creator
- Mills, Antonia
Physical description area
Physical description
- 3 maps
- 1 CD-R (72 jpegs. and 5 TIFFS images)
- 1 3 ½” floppy disk
- 29 5-1/4" floppies
- 9 audio cassettes
- 29 VHS tapes
- 748 photographs
- 30 computer disks
- 4 video disks
- 18 DVDs
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Biographical history
Antonia Mills was born in 1942, in Iowa City, Iowa. She received her undergraduate degree from Radcliffe/Harvard in 1964 and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard in 1982. She is currently Professor Emeritus of First Nations Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) whose research interests include First Nations land claims, religion and law, and reincarnation beliefs.
Mills wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on The Beaver Indian Prophet Dance and Related Movements among North American Indians. She had been working with the Beaver (Dunne-zaa) Nation in their Peace River BC territory since finishing college in 1964. It was from the Beaver that she first learned about aboriginal reincarnation beliefs and cases, but she took little interest in them until 1984, when she met Ian Stevenson. Stevenson had been researching reincarnation cases in Alaska and was looking for someone to carry on his work in British Columbia. That summer Mills began an intensive study of beliefs and cases among the Beaver and the Gitksan and in 1985 received a two-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue her work among the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en nations. Between September, 1987, and January, 1989, she made three trips to India to investigate cases there as part of an effort to “replicate” Stevenson’s findings through the study of cases similar to those he had reported.
In 1988 Mills relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia, where she held a dual appointment as Research Assistant Professor in Stevenson’s Division of Personality Studies (now Division of Perceptual Studies, DOPS) of the University of Virginia Medical Center and as Lecturer in the UVA Department of Anthropology. She remained with Stevenson until accepting the post at UNBC in 1994. During this period she returned to India to study cases of Hindu children who recalled lives as Moslems and Moslem children who recalled lives as Hindus. She did a comparative study of American children with imaginary playmates and Indian children who remembered previous lives and began a longitudinal study of persons with past-life memories. She also studied American and Canadian children with nightmares apparently related to things that had happened in previous lives Mills co-edited (with anthropologist Richard Slobodin) the book Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit in 1994.
In 1985 Mills was asked by the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en to support them as an expert witness in their land claims suit against the Canadian government. The report she submitted to the court was published as Eagle Down Is Our Law: Wet’suwet’en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims . A third book, Hang on to These Words: Johnny David's Delgamuukw Testimony , also sprang from that trial and a series of papers detailing Gitksan, Wet’suwet’en and Beaver nation reincarnation beliefs and cases followed.
Mills collaborated with James Matlock on a trait index to North American Indian and Inuit reincarnation beliefs and with Indian philosopher Kuldip Dhiman on a follow-up investigation of an unusual reincarnation case originally reported by Stevenson. She co-authored with psychologist Stephen J. Lynn a review of the past-life memory phenomenon for the book Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence , published by the American Psychological Association in 2000, and with psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker, M.D. a similar chapter for a second edition under the title of Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (Dissociation, Trauma, Memory, and Hypnosis) in 2013. She also contributed a Foreword and an article to Warren Jefferson's 2008 Reincarnation Beliefs of North American Indians: Soul Journeys, Metamorphoses, and Near-Death Experiences .
Custodial history
Scope and content
Fonds covers a wide array of Dr. Antonia Mills’ research and writing, from her Ph.D. thesis work to her continued research into the early 2000s. Collection consists of textual and photographic materials pertaining to Dr. Mills’ Ph.D. research of First Nations groups in Canada, particularly the Beaver Indians. The majority of the textual documents surround Dr. Mills’ role in the plaintiff claim for Delgamuukw vs. British Columbia (The Queen) and provides insight into the historic case. Feast notes, genealogy charts, memorandum, and report drafts of expert witness reports are included in her Delgamuukw work. Photographic material is related to Dr. Mills’ research of the Beaver Indians, her reincarnation research, and her research in India. There are also chapters of her publications, chapters of work she edited and material related to the classes she taught at UNBC on a number of digital formats. There are 15 cassette tapes of interviews and lectures related to her research interests and graduate level First Nations Studies classes. There are interviews with Mary John Sr., Art Wilson, and a number of interviews with children for her Imaginary Playmate Study. Finally, there are six VHS tapes with miscellaneous content: recordings of guest lecturers in her classes, recordings of PSA’s, a documentary on the building of Delgamuukw and a TV movie based on Thomas King’s book Medicine River.
Series Descriptions:
1) Delgamuukw vs. British Columbia [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010 Series
Accession No. 2015.05.01
Date Range: 1982-1989
Physical Extent: 3 maps ; 1 poster ; 27 VHS video recordings ; 18 DVDs ; 90.5cm textual material.
Scope & Content: This series consists of materials either created by, or researched and collected, by Antonia Mills as part of her preparatory work as an expert witness in the Delgamuukw vs. British Columbia [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010 case. In 1985 Mills was asked by the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en Tribal Councils to support them as an expert witness in their land claims suit against the Canadian Government. Types of materials comprising this series include various reports, publications, legal research, correspondence, meeting notes, and maps pertaining to the research done into Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en land title.
2) Beaver / Dunne-za First Nation Research Series
Accession No. 2015.05.02
Date Range: c.1960-1997
Physical Extent: 379 photographs ; 1 computer disk ; 4 video disks ; 1 CD-R.
Scope & Content: This series consists of textual and photographic materials produced or collected by Antonia Mills while conducting her Ph.D research in the Dunne-za/Beaver First Nation. Types of materials comprising this series include slides, photographs, negatives, still video floppy disks, and 5-1/4” floppy disks each depicting various aspects of the life and culture of the Dunne-za Nation. Also present are some oral histories, creation stories and general notes collected or created by A. Mills.
3) Reincarnation & Imaginary Playmate Research Series
Accession No. 2015.05.03
Date Range: 1987-1996
Physical Extent: 364 photographs ; 29 computer disks ; 9 audio cassettes ; 1.5cm textual material.
Scope & Content: This series consists of primary research materials created by A. Mills in her research into reincarnation and imaginary playmates amongst children in both India and various northern British Columbia First Nations communities. Types of materials in this series include interviews on audio cassette; photographs of children, their families and communities and birthmarks; floppy disks containing various topical papers presumably written by Mills; and chapters from the publication Amerindian Rebirth [Mills, A., & Sobodin, R. (Eds.) (1994). Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit . Toronto: University of Toronto Press].
4) General Research Series
Accession No. 2015.05.04
Date Range: [198-?] - 2004
Physical Extent: 2 video cassettes ; 5 photographs ; 38.5cm textual material.
Scope & Content: This series consists of copies of research documents, articles and reports created by scholars, other than Mills, on various aspects of Carrier, Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Wet’suwet’en culture and language. Also included are handwritten notes on the Burns Lake Overlap Feast (1986) and various Funeral Feasts (1985-1986). Miscellaneous materials in this series include photographic slide of the University of Virginia campus and a copy of “University of Northern British Columbia Viewbook, 2003-2004.” Types of materials include handwritten notes, and copies of publications, papers and research notes.
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English
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Some restrictions apply. Contact archives@unbc.ca