Howard Adams

Howard Adams (September 8, 1921 – September 8, 2001) was a twentieth century Métis academic and activist.

Life He was born in St. Louis, Saskatchewan, Canada, on September 8, 1921, the son of Olive Elizabeth McDougall, a French Métis mother and William Robert Adams, an English Métis (Anglo-Metis) father. In his youth he briefly joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Adams became the first Métis in Canada to gain his PhD after studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1966.

He returned to Canada and became a prominent Métis activist, contributing regularly to newspapers and magazines and appearing on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio shows. In 1969, he was elected president of the Metis Association of Saskatchewan.

Adams' intellectual influences include Malcolm X whom he saw lecture at Berkeley, and the general radical environment of that institution during the 1960s. He was the maternal great grandson of Louis Riel's lieutenant Maxime Lepine who fought in the North-West Rebellion of 1885.

Death Adams died in Vancouver, British Columbia, on September 8, 2001, on his 80th birthday.

Works The Education of Canadians 1800-1867: The Roots of Separatism, Harvest House, 1968 Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View New Press, 1975, ; Fifth House, 1989, Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization Theytus Books Ltd., 1999,

Honours National Aboriginal Achievement Award, now the Indspire Awards, for education, 1999.