Howard Adams

Howard Adams (September 8, 1921 – September 8, 2001) was an influential twentieth century Metis academic and activist.

He was born in St. Louis, Saskatchewan, Canada, on September 8, 1921, the son of a French Métis mother and 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 in Saskatchewan, often creating controversy by propagating his Marxist and Métis Nationalist views in reference to contemporary and historical events. Adams was often critical not only of Canadian society but of Aboriginal leadership for what he saw as its co-option, and cultivation of dependency by receiving government funding.

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 Northwest Rebellion of 1885.

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

• 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, ISBN 9780887702112; Fifth House, 1989, ISBN 9780920079515
• Tortured People: The Politics of Colonization Theytus Books Ltd., 1999, ISBN 9780919441378

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