Essential Books on Indigenous Issues and Indian Residential Schools

The Truth and Nothing But

Image from Literary Hub

By

James Pew

Earlier this month, in my introduction to the great article on the English novelist Anthony Trollope by regular Woke Watch Canada contributor, Peter Best, I mentioned that readers can expect more writing on the topic of books. Peter’s Trollope essay will not be the only such writing on great authors from him to be featured in these pages. Coming next week, another great examination by Peter, this time, of the English author, George Eliot. 

In the introductory comments on Peter’s Trollope piece, I mentioned that I was planning on asking the email list members of the Indian Residential School Research Group, what their most recommended books are concerning Canadian indigenous issues and the history of Indian Residential Schools. I asked, and they delivered.

Before we get into the indigenous book recommendations, I would like to take a brief moment to welcome new Woke Watch Canada subscribers and thank all of those who have upgraded to a paid subscription or donated to our donor box. My piece on May 28, Breaking The Fourth Wall appealed to readers to help us reach our goal of 10% of all subscribers in the paid tier. Readers have really come through. We have increased a full percentage point. However, though more have opted for the paid tier than usual, even more have come on as unpaid subscribers (which is not a bad thing at all), this has prevented our initial gain of 1% from increasing any further. I ask all who see value in Woke Watch Canada to consider upgrading to the paid tier or make a donation to our donor box in any amount. Both methods are simply a click away.

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And now, to the books..

I am saving one of the most recent, and definitely the most sensational, for my final book recommendation (can you guess what it is?). For now, I’ll begin with one of the newest of my essential books on indigenous issues and Indian Residential Schools, Robert McBain’s The Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy, which tells the tragic tale of former Indian Residential School student, Charlie Wenjack, who died of exposure in 1966 after running away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in northwestern Ontario. An adapted excerpt in essay form is available on the Indian Residential School Research Group website. I recommend this book because the meticulous research by Robert McBain demonstrates that the commonly accepted narrative around the death of Charlie Wenjack has little congruence with the truth. To learn what really happened to Charlie, read The Lonely Death of an Ojibway Boy.

McBain’s excellent work brings to mind another sensationally false story involving a former Indian Residential School student, Phillys Webstad and her infamous orange shirt. Webstad’s story, like Wenjack’s, has been repurposed in the service of a social justice narrative. It has been debunked by the great Nina Green in the pages of the Dorchester Review in her essay Behind the Orange Shirt.

The following paragraphs will cover books recommended by members of the IRS Research Group, as well as more of my own recommendations (some of which were written by people in that group). I’ll begin with my two top choices: Tom Flanagan’s First Nations, Second Thoughts?, and Frances Widdowson’s Separate But Unequal. I like to think of these two volumes in contrast as they both deal with much of the same material: the animating ideas concerning indigenous policy since the rejection of Pierre Ellito Trudeau’s 1960s era white paper (which called for integration, not separate nations), what Tom Flanagan call’s the post-assimilation era, where the influence of critical social justice and postmodernism entered through the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), and was subsequently resurrected and expanded through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s enthusiastic embrace).

Another of my recommendations is Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry written by Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard. This volume was published previous to Frances’ Separate But Unequal. It is an easier read that is more of a general overview of what Frances and Albert call “the Aboriginal Industry.” This is the consortium of activist organizations and interest groups that have arisen over the years around indigenous issues. The aboriginal industry is made up of neotribal elites (some privileged indigenous leaders) and a bureaucracy of lawyers, consultants, and academics, all engaged in indigenous activism. 

Several of Frances’ essays are also worth reading, as they expand on her theoretical framework, the political economy of neotribal rentierism, which sees the aboriginal industry as a conglomerate of activist organizations engaged in perpetual rent-seeking in the form of government transfers (a parasitic non-productive industry). 

There are more Tom Flanagn book recommendations below, but before we move on to more of my top choices, it is worth pointing out that Tom’s many essays and articles on indigenous issues are also essential reading. Tom has published many academic writings in the pages of the Fraser Institute. It would be difficult to single out just one (I recommend you read anything and everything with Tom’s name on it). Tom’s essay The Costs of the Canadian Government’s Reconciliation Framework for First Nations is perhaps the best starting point most relevant to other recommendations in today's post.

Another essential volume, this time edited by IRS Research Group members Rodney A. Clifton and Mark DeWolf, is From Truth comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. A new edition which includes some new material is  set to be published this summer. This is one of the first books I was aware of that was critical of the conclusions of the TRC Final Volume summary report, which, as Rodney and Mark demonstrate, is not reflective of the substance of the full report.

Perhaps the most unique book of all the books on this list, is Peter Best’s There Is No Difference. Peter is a retired lawyer, but also a great writer with a love and deep knowledge of literature. He is blessed with a well-read worldly literary sense, a deep understanding of indigenous issues, and a sharp analytic legal mind. He is one of the only writers who writes compellingly on legal issues (Bruce Pardy is another who comes to mind). I find Peter’s book, and his many essays and articles to be gripping, creative, and highly informative. Just read Peter’s essay, published in these pages, with the long title, The Federal Government’s Heedless and Unprincipled Giveaway of Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Legally Undeserving Aboriginal Litigation Claimants, to understand why I would use a word like “gripping” to describe Peter’s writing on Canadian legal/indigenous issues.

I highly recommend Ronald Niezen’s Truth & Indignation: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools. This is one of the most unique and interesting books (one of the best too) on the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Niezen and a handful of students attended TRC events as academic researchers, and conducted research outside of TRC events, like interviewing members of oblate societies that were involved with the running of Indian Residential Schools. I found it shocking that during these interviews, oblate brothers showed Niezen a series of leather bound volumes, dictionaries, or syllabics of indigenous languages that former oblate brothers had carefully preserved in written form. This is contrary to the story we are told that members of the clergy, through their acts of cultural genocide, did not permit indigenous children to speak their native languages.

My next pick is Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (And Yours) by Harold R. Johnson. Johnson is an author, lawyer and a member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation. Alcohol and substance abuse is an enormous problem in far too many indigenous communities. However, many Canadians have accepted the narrative that Indian Residential Schools - the last of which closed in the 1990s - are somehow responsible for the social deprivation found in today’s Indian reserves. But this explanation does not make sense. Johnson points out that RCAP made no mention of alcohol abuse in indigenous communities, in their final report. There are few works by indigenous authors that so honestly, and straightforwardly confront the actual source of social deprivation in modern indigenous communities: alcohol and substance abuse.

This topic presents the opportunity to mention another author, retired Manitoba judge, Brian Giesbrecht. Brian’s work is essential. It would be a shame for him to not be included on this list simply because he has not yet published a book. Like Tom Flanagan, read anything and everything with Brian’s name on it. I published in these pages, an essential essay on alcohol abuse on Indian reserves by Brian called The Untold Story of Indigenous Child Neglect and Alcohol Abuse – The Firewater Complex. 

Alcohol and drug abuse are much greater factors preventing the social flourishing of far too many indigenous Canadians. Read Harold R. Johnson’s book, and Brian Giesbrecht’s essay to get the perspective of those with first hand experience of the destruction being wrought by drugs and alcohol in today’s indigenous communities.

Another important book, and one I quoted in my recent essay, When The Abused Becomes The Abuser, is Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools by J.R. Miller. 

Turning to education. Frances Widdowson edited a volume entitled Indigenizing The University: Diverse Perspectives. This is an essential volume for understanding how the inclusion of indigenous rights activism is remaking the university, including attempts to incorporate what is called traditional knowledge (which mostly seems like spiritualism) into enlightenment forms of knowledge production. Indigenization of a university is expensive, when one considers Frances’ theories of neotribal rentierism, which connects activism to the government in a parasitic payment transfer process, it becomes clear that much of what is transferred from funds raised by Canadian taxpayers, goes to privileged university students, not isolated substance abusing indigenous people relegated to reserves.

Another of my recommendations is a fairly new edited volume by Mark Milke, called The 1867 Project: Why Canada Should Be Cherished - Not Cancelled. This volume, while not solely focused on indigenous issues, contains a thought-provoking chapter by Joseph Quesnel called Indigenous People Have A Chance - If They Grasp It. The book also has relevant chapters on Edgar Ryerson, John A. MacDonald, Edward Cornwallis, and Sir Matthew Begbie.

I also recommend three great books on the colonization of the new world. The first is Not Stolen: The Truth About Colonialism In The New World, by Jeff Fynn-Paul. And the second is Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. And the third is, The Case For Colonialism by Bruce Gilley.

Here are some recommendations from the IRS researchers:

From Frances Widdowson - “Alan Cairns' Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State is good as well as the volume that I edited Indigenizing the University: Diverse Perspectives.”

From Michelle Stirling - “All of Hugh Dempsey's books.” After some prodding, she offered the following two titles as an introduction to Dempsey:

1. The Great Blackfoot Treaties

2. Firewater: The Impact of the Whiskey Trade on the Blackfoot Nation

From Brian Giesbrecht - “Gordon Gibson’s A New Look at Canadian Indian Policy” from 2008 is still relevant. It is a Fraser Institute free download”

From Rodney Clifton - “There are, of course, more, but these are the ones on my bookshelf that I have read.” Here are Rodney’s picks (several duplicates of books mentioned above were removed): 

Our Home or Native Land? - Melvin H. Smith

Indigenous Nationals Canadian Citizens - Thomas J. Courchene.

Ruffled Feathers - William Wuttunee.

The Wealth of First Nations - Tom Flanagan.

The Economic Dependency Trap - Calvin Helin.

Dances with Dependency - Calvin Helin.

Beyond the Indian Act - Tom Flanagan, Christopher Alcantara, and Andre Le Dressay.

Let the People Speak- Sheilla Jones.

Fight or Submit: Standing in Two Worlds - Ronald Derrickson.

The Canadian Manifesto - Conrad Black.

The Best For Last

The most outrageously excellent recommendation, which I promised to save until the end, if you haven’t already guessed, is the edited volume with multiple contributors (including me), that has broken all the Amazon bestseller records for books published and sold in Canada, the one, the only…drum roll please….Grave Error: How The Media Misled Us (And The Truth About Residential Schools)

We have reached the end. And I already know some readers will be mad at me for not mentioning their favorite books on Canadian indigenous issues. There are far too many. So please let me know what I missed, and I will soon put together another post called “More Essential Books on Indigenous Issues and Indian Residential Schools.” 

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Woke Watch Canada Essentials:

1. James Pew contributed a chapter to the best-selling book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

2. A long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

3.  For evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!