Customer Reviews

Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Widdowson and Howard are extremely racist and rely on dirty tricks to convince readers of their opinions. For example, the authors have a sarcastic tone throughout the whole book. Also, the authors use misinformation or details that only when isolated from the greater context, support Widdowsn and Howards' views.

What also bugs me is that they quote Lennon's Imagine at the end ... Yoko should have sued Widdowson and Howard like she threatened to when Harper posted his rendition.

Overall, it is very apparent that the authors have a bone to pick with native people. In fact, Widdowson and Howard used to work as policy analysts in the North West Territories but were fired. You only need to google "Francis Widdowson" to find her blog which confirms her prejudice.

This book makes me embarrassed to be white. It is full of racist rants based on the belief that Western thinking is superior to Indigenous thinking. This book is written by white people who still believe in their right to colonize the "other". It is easy to criticize others for their percieved failure because, unfortunately, oppression can not really be understood by people who have never experienced it.

When the authors said they were going to abandon old politically charged understandings of aboriginal policy in Canada for an honest look at the facts, I was excited. When the authors announced in the introduction that they were going to be using the lens of a marxist theory of development, my heart sank.

In short, the authors do a good job of knocking down a few sacred cows of contemporary aboriginal policy in Canada. "Traditional knowledge" and "oral histories" are given far too much credit in policy making and the courts. Policies that identify self government as a panacea without taking a good look at the often corrupt inner workings of aboriginal communities, are doomed to failure. Some misstatements and exaggerations included, this book provides a good overview of everything that has gone wrong.

The problem comes when the authors try to explain why things are in a dismal state. They have essentially knocked down one false intellectual idol, only to put another in its place. The theory of "development" the authors espouse has been relegated to the dustbin of academia for decades. The very title of the book is a slap in the face to critical thinkers everywhere as the existence of an "aboriginal industry" is assumed with no evidence being presented. No where to be found is a moderate discussion over the place of traditional knowledge and oral histories. While not up to the standards of the scientific method and written history, they are not devoid of value.

I don't think I am alone in having exited my formal education with a feeling that too many academics waste much of their (supposed) talents and intellect on tearing down. "The Aboriginal Industry", has done nothing to improve the situation.

The tragedy with this poorly written AM radio rant of a book is that it fails to bring either the level of analysis or the quality of research and insight that would shed light on what is a legitimate problem - namely that consultants (like the authors), governments, and certain aboriginal elites are recreating the conditions that require their services to the detriment of the poor.

The author's argument that aboriginals need to get white to get rich has no grounding in any successful theory of development and is a throwback to the worst aspects of 19th century thinking.

The author's unadulterated denigration of traditional knowledge is unfortunate given the history of arrogance and destruction on the part of outsiders who show up with their ears closed and their mouths open. The authors would have us believe that traditional knowledge is the result of so many vision quests while scientific knowledge is an arrow to the heart of truth. More often the scientific method spits back our own ignorance of the North, and leaves us to go and talk to the people who have been living here for hundreds of years.

At the end of the day, and after all of the philosophical debates, the scientific method is a biologist flying in a plane looking out the window, and traditional knowledge is a hunter following habitat trails and visiting traditional hunting grounds frequented by his forebears. Both perspectives are valid and important and everyone other than the authors of this book know it.

This book is yet another unfortunate symptom of the North's problems not a cure.

This book illustrates why the left is no ally for Indigenous aspirations of sovereignty and self government. It is merely the flip side of the coin to the right. This book is simply an anti-Indiginist rant. The authors describe symptoms of the ongoing degradation of tribal institutions, which like all cultures are formed from cultural values and templates. The re-Indiginising of tribal sovereignty and self government would address many of the internal social ills depicted by the authors. It is important to note as well that only the horror stories are depicted, not the successes. One need not be a PhD to deduce that if tribal values that uphold a lifestyle free of alcohol and other drugs, as well as respect for children and woman, are embraced as community norms, than tribes would be much better off. The real problem are people like the authors that seek to impose there ideals on Indigenous communities. The industry referred to in the book is a reflection of a colonial government that has no desire to see contemporary self government as a pathway toward healthy tribal communities. The preference is to be seen to be committed to justice, while fostering dependency to make tribal communities amenable to development that is government prescribed. The industry thrives because it is in the Crown;s interest that it does so. The exploitation of the land is about profits, not communities, and most certainly not First Nations who have these pesky legal rights in the non-Indigenous framework of law. What the authors are totally ignorant of is the move by many Indigenous Peoples, not just in Canada, to use the traditional knowledge denigrated by the authors to reclaim our own respective strategies of what self government should look like. The idiotic "snapshot in time" perspective where traditionalism means that modern amenities have no place is indeed racist. The reality is that it is not the modern amenity that is at issue but the values inherent in their use. The only neoliths that can accurately be ascertained as existing are the authors themselves. This book is important, if one does not have to pay for it, of what the dangers are of idealistic non-Indigenous with messianic complexes.

It is not surprising that this book has engendered such polarized reviews. Those who dismiss the authors, however, have probably never seen the roots causes of aboriginal cultural dysfunction as up-close as Widdowson and Howard. Before calling these earnest left-wingers "racists" or "colonialists", critics should spend time working with natives to see first-hand how these communities have been betrayed by their leaders and bureaucrats. The continuing shipwreck of the aboriginal rights industry could be solved by paying attention to this book which I recommend to all Canadians who are baffled as to why the billions spent on the problem have been wasted.

Excellent book and analysis. The statement at the beginning about the marxist lens is proforma; the authors are disrobing a myth created by many in the "industry" and supported, unfortunately, by a new form of anthropology that chooses political correctness over scientific study; that is, a spade should be called a spade. The last page contains a weak and disconnected avowal of marxist viewpoint.

A perusal of the Table of Contents is enough to give you an good idea of what the authors intend to prove. Their premises is well established and, ironically, reinforced by the negative reviews, especially the reactionary charges of racism and colonialism, the usual from politically correct supporters of the myth and the "industry".

Three topics cannot be discussed openly in Canada without reactionary opposition: Aboriginals, Muslims and Health Care. Only in Canada, pity.

The authors are bold enough to scrape away the buffalo paddies and brilliant enough to discern the texture of reality beneath them. It is long past time someone looked through all the nonsense that has been foisted upon the First Nations People themselves as their "culture", but which in reality never existed as a unified entity the way it is today portrayed. First Nations people are being encouraged to create a culture of the past right here and now in the present ' a unified Native culture that crosses tribal boundaries without much attention to the very real differences that existed (and may still continue to exist amongst the oldest people). Any First Nations person should feel a new pre-fabricated cultural tradition is being foisted upon them, in the very same way the Jesuits and Catholics attempted to foist an artificial, pre-fabricated culture upon them in the 19th century.

Howard and Widdowson do raise issues that are important to anyone concerned with social justice. However, the tone of their book and specific "evidentials" is one of incredible cultural hubris. Obviously, these authors have never thought to ask and question the same "cultural preservation" industry inherent in deceptive "pioneer" museums, etc. I was indeed disappointed that as "historical materialists," these authors did not see fit to 'disrobe' settler liberalism...

This is an excellent analysis of what is wrong with Indian policy and why after decades of throwing away billions of dollars to try and improve the lamentable state of our native peoples, there are still horrendous social and economic problems among them. The book is well written and the arguments convincing. The only question is: Are the policy makers listening and do they have the political courage to act? Or are our native peoples condemned to live forever in the deplorable state we find them in today?