MONEY BOSS

A new employee attempts to cure the internal rot of Canada’s government in Sanderson’s historical novel set in the 1970s.

This novel about the White employees of the Nakina Indian Affairs district office and the Indigenous villagers who suffer under them illustrates how “Most Canadians don’t know anything about Indian history,” as its protagonist notes. In 1976, John Rager joins Indian Affairs as the commerce officer for an impoverished district after his wife, Helen, leaves him and takes their son, Sam. His new position reveals a government system layered in bureaucracy, where racist supervisors, such as his boss, Mr. Reed, “drink, chase women, and take bribes” while leaving Indigenous communities destitute. Rager, however, takes his work seriously, engaging with village residents, their chiefs, and representatives in the hopes of revitalizing their communities. He soon learns that the corruption goes far deeper than he thought, and his work feels increasingly “like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill only to see it roll down again.” As the story goes on, Sanderson presents a supporting cast of deplorable characters whose repugnance is only sharpened by the harrowing realization that similar people exist in the real world. Most of the Indigenous characters stay on the story’s fringes and are subject to the worst circumstances, including rapes, beatings, abject poverty, and alcoholism. Overall, Sanderson’s work feels more like a parable than a novel, using dialogue and third-person narration mainly to illustrate aspects Canadian history and corruption, with pages-long monologues about societal issues. The book is short, and this results in a relative lack of character development, but the government workers’ lack of dimensionality only emphasizes Sanderson’s point about their dangerous apathy: “Make promises, do as little as possible, just talk and talk and talk until everyone gives up and walks away.”

A bleak and damning story of government neglect of Indigenous communities.