Ending denial : understanding Aboriginal issues /

The author's approach, based on the supposition that an adequate understanding of aboriginality is essential to a reformulation of Canadian identity, is unique because it eschews cultural perspectives on Aboriginal peoples and reframes Aboriginal social issues as a Canadian problem--one for and about Canadian citizens. Warry (anthropology, McMaster Univ.) is anticolonial and critical of the racism that allows Canadians to be ignorant or complacent regarding the marginalization of Aboriginal people. Rather than elaborating excruciating detail about the seemingly intractable and endemic social ills facing Canada's Aboriginal peoples, he examines why Canadians allow those ills to continue. Chapters delving into key issues such as rapid ongoing urbanization, rights to natural resources, and approaches to economic development and health respond to neoconservative perspectives that explain away the failures of past or present efforts to ameliorate these problems, and challenge perspectives that justify doing no more for the future. Written expressly for undergraduates, this book is accessible and counteracts the myths that construct "the Aboriginal problem," refocusing attention on understanding what Aboriginal people have to offer in conjunction with other citizens to resolve the Canadian problem. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All general, public, and undergraduate libraries. G. Bruyere Nicola Valley Institute of Technology