DO YOU EAT THE RED ONES LAST?

This nonfiction work delves into the perennial land disputes between Indigenous and settler institutions in Canada.

Canada’s war on its own Indigenous population has never ended, at least according to anthropologist and activist Stevenson. “The war is unfolding on multiple fronts—social, economic, political, cultural, spiritual, and psychological—and is being fought in arenas where the rights and interests of the two cultures clash,” writes the author in his introduction. “But first and foremost, the war is being waged in the minds of Canadians.” Whatever the intentions of the Canadian governmental and corporate authorities, many of the battles come down to a paternalistic sense that non-Indigenous institutions know better than Indigenous groups when it comes to what’s best for the land—and even what’s best for the Indigenous groups themselves. The book, which blends reportage, memoir, and analysis, explores transgressions such as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ attempts to shut down the Baffin Inuit beluga hunt and the relocation of the Sayisi Dene in a misguided attempt to protect the caribou population. Other topics include issues of land management, Indigenous contributions to ecological knowledge, continued marginalization of Indigenous governing bodies, and the fight for Indigenous rights across many facets of Canadian society. Stevenson’s prose is always technical, often fiery, and usually rooted in that most intricate and foundational of topics, the land: “On numerous occasions when discussing Aboriginal title and land ownership with First Nations elders, they have corrected me employing the epithet: ‘We do not own the land, the land owns us.’ Perhaps more than any other, this characterization captures the true nature of Aboriginal title and the right to sovereignty over their lands.” The author is a passionate advocate, and his enthusiasm for addressing the injustices still perpetrated against Indigenous people is contagious. Most intriguing are the sections in which Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge challenges the claims of environmental scientists—a dispute many readers may not know much about. The volume is a bit too legalistic for general readers, but for those with questions about the current fault lines in the struggle for greater Indigenous autonomy in Canada, this is a wide-ranging and well-researched work.

A dense but captivating window into Canada’s modern land wars.