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J.R. (Jim) Miller was a foundational figure among Canadian historians. His major works, a series of deeply researched books about the complicated relationships between Canada’s settlers and Indigenous people, set a standard for his profession and educated Canadians about overlooked aspects of their history.
“He made an excellent contribution to Indigenous-settler relations before anyone called it that,” said Onondaga scholar David Newhouse, a professor emeritus and inaugural director of the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies at Trent University, in Peterborough, Ont.
Prof. Miller died at the age of 82 in his home in Saskatoon on Sept. 11, after experiencing a combination of illnesses in recent years.
“He created a space for Indigenous history. He opened a door to a different approach to scholarship,” said Thomas Peace, a historian with Huron University College in London, Ont.
James Rodger Miller was born in Cornwall, Ont., on April 28, 1943. His parents, Isabella (née Rodger) and James Miller were first-generation Canadians of working-class origins whose parents had immigrated from Scotland.
The budding historian’s first area of interest concerned French-English relations in the post-Confederation era. He had been exposed to the sometimes troubled social dynamic of relations between the two groups when he was growing up near the Quebec border.
As an emerging scholar, he was a student of eminent historians Donald Creighton and Ramsay Cook and earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1972. His dissertation, supervised by Prof. Creighton, was titled: The Impact of The Jesuit Estates Controversy on Canadian Politics, 1888-1891.
Prof. Miller began teaching Canadian history at the University of Saskatchewan in 1970.
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According to Donald Smith, professor emeritus of history at the University of Calgary, the turning point in Prof. Miller’s intellectual development came in 1982-83 when he spent a year in Japan as a visiting professor of Canadian studies.
“After looking at the French and English question, he enlarged himself by thinking about Indigenous-newcomer relations. His imagination got stirred up” while in Japan, Prof. Smith said.
Prof. Miller left Saskatoon perplexed by the difficulties between First Nations peoples and the rest of Saskatchewan society.
“Jim got away from Saskatchewan for the first time since 1970. He decided to take a good, hard look at relations between newcomers and [Indigenous] peoples,” said his former colleague and long-time friend Bill Waiser. “He asked himself, ‘Why can’t we get along?’ He challenged himself to explain, not to apologize, and he immersed himself in the literature.”
The result was an outpouring of influential books. The first was Skyscrapers Hide The Heavens (1989), an almost unprecedented survey history of relations between settlers and Indigenous people.
Prof. Newhouse calls the work, “a seminal contribution to our understanding of the relationship. It was accessible and the metaphor apt.”
His next book, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (1996), was released as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples began to galvanize concern about the schools’ history. Many still consider the book a benchmark on the subject alongside John S. Milloy’s A National Crime.
He produced Lethal Legacy: Current Native Controversies in Canada in 2004, and then turned his gaze to treaty history with Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty Making in Canada (2009).
Prof. Miller ultimately bookended his investigation of education with Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts its History (2017).
“He pushed the envelope again. He was fearless. He wasn’t afraid of the present which is uncommon for a historian,” Prof. Smith observed.
Even with his highly ambitious writing pursuits, Prof. Miller was a dedicated teacher. Prof. Waiser chuckled as he recalled Prof. Miller’s advice to students: “Apply glue to your butt, sit in your chair and stay there,” was his encouraging enjoinder to those seeking academic success.
During the years that produced Skyscrapers, Prof. Waiser recalls his friend at a small, portable typewriter in his university office, working on the manuscript whenever he wasn’t teaching or at a meeting.
“When he worked, he worked and when he played, he played,” Prof. Waiser said of his friend. “Play” consisted of steady attention to the Saskatchewan Roughriders football team and games of bridge.
“He would have made a great poker player. At bridge you could never tell from his face what cards he had,” Prof. Waiser recalled.
He also loved travel. His widow, sociologist and professor of women’s studies Lesley Biggs, who had also taught at the University of Saskatchewan, recalled trips to Alaska, France, Ireland, Italy and a trip down memory lane to Clare College, Cambridge University, where Prof. Miller had spent a sabbatical. That expedition included visits to favoured pubs.
Prof. Miller was committed to the university community, serving on several committees and the board of governors, and he dedicated considerable time to his profession nationally serving the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) in many capacities including a term as president.
He believed historians had a duty of engagement with society and lamented that the historical profession was losing its proper place. He also took a keen interest in mentoring younger scholars.
Historian Kathryn Magee Labelle cited J.R. Miller in every undergraduate history paper she wrote. She would eventually take on the position vacated by Prof. Miller after his retirement. When she first applied to teach at the University of Saskatchewan, he sent her an encouraging e-mail.
“I thought, ‘Wow, I just got an e-mail from J.R. Miller!’ To me he was that figure of a historian who doesn’t seem real. He seemed iconic, not real, a robot or something, he published so much!”
As she started an interim appointment, she was assigned an office across the hall from his, and eventually, “J.R. Miller became Jim” to Prof. Labelle.
After his retirement, the two met for coffee monthly for a decade. “He was so supportive of me professionally. He carved out a lot of time. It wasn’t a CV item. He had no reason other than to help me.”
She received Prof. Miller’s collection of books by Donald Creighton, mostly first editions, including Prof. Miller’s notes slipped in on pieces of paper.
Similarly, Prof. Peace was gobsmacked when Prof. Miller called out of the blue to offer him his collection of the Canadian Historical Review journal, which Prof. Peace gratefully accepted.
The friendship between Prof. Miller and Prof. Labelle was strained when the two ended up on opposite sides of a debate within the profession about a CHA book prize named after John A. Macdonald.
Prof. Miller was on the losing side of a vote in favour of changing the name. Prof. Labelle describes a difficult discussion the friends had after the fact. She recalls that Prof. Miller stood his ground respectfully, arguing to her that some were misinterpreting the archival record and that that difficult period of Canadian history wasn’t as simple as “damning or blaming John A. Macdonald.”
Although she did not share his position, she believes his stand was consistent with his approach as a “truth seeker,” and recalls that he was very concerned about how the incident was interpreted by some colleagues.
The controversy “caused him a great deal of pain,” Prof. Biggs said. “He believed that history was complex, messy and contradictory. He didn’t go for black versus white, pure versus impure interpretations.”
Prof. Miller was “flabbergasted” to learn that the suggestion had been made that he was a residential school denier, Prof. Biggs said. He stood by his work. Prof. Smith says Prof. Miller provided “the big picture” on a national scale regarding aspects of Indigenous-settler history, which remains relevant.
Prof. Miller was “kind and supportive,” in his dealings with Indigenous communities and researchers, Prof. Newhouse said, adding that it was particularly valuable that ”he did not see Indigenous people as victims."
“He despaired over the decline in civil discourse. … It was a cause of angst and very difficult for him,” Prof. Biggs recalled.
As a younger historian, Prof. Peace regrets that the vital earlier contribution by Prof. Miller may now perhaps be eclipsed by more recent developments in Indigenous scholarship.
Prof. Labelle stated, “He set the building blocks in place for historians like myself even though we had very different approaches. Without his work, we would be in a very different place.”
In opening his book Skyscrapers, Prof. Miller wrote, “Even after Indians became numerically inferior to, and economically dependent upon, Euro-Canadans, they continued to assert themselves in their relations with governments, churches, and the ordinary population. Readers will not find in this account a portrait of the Indians of Canada as a people to whom others did things. If these pages succeed in persuading some people that the Native peoples have always been active, assertive contributors to the unfolding of Canadian history, they will have achieved their primary objective.”
“Jim firmly believed he was writing about a relationship between peoples,” Prof. Waiser said. “He took to heart the words of Saskatchewan’s Office of the Treaty Commissioner, ‘We are all treaty people.’ ”
Prof. Miller was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 2014, and received the Killam Prize for the Humanities from the Canada Council (2014), the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Gold Medal (2010). He was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1998) and garnered the University of Saskatchewan’s Distinguished Researcher Award (1997).
Prof. Miller was predeceased by his first wife, Mary Miller (née McDougall), in 2004. He leaves his wife, Ms. Biggs; sons, Christian and Andrew Miller; daughter-in-law, Jennifer Miller (née Hunchak); and grandson, Braegen Miller.
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