3 Stars
As I write this review, the residents
of Kashechewan First Nation are being evacuated in what has become an annual ritual. Promises to relocate the community have again
come to naught. This situation emphasizes
how we do not treat our Indigenous people as equals; were it a white community
of 2,500 people which was evacuated every spring, something would have been done
to spare people the trauma of evacuations and disrupted schooling for children.
It is the education of Indigenous
children that is a central issue in this book.
Between 2000 and 2011, seven Indigenous children died in Thunder
Bay. They had to leave their isolated
home communities to pursue education.
The author tells the stories of each of the seven; their movements
before their deaths are detailed. What
is not detailed is the police work because, in all cases, police searches for
the missing and investigations after a body was discovered were cursory. (In fact, in December of 2018, after the publication
of this book, Ontario's police watchdog reported finding systemic racism in the
Thunder Bay Police Service and revealed deficiencies in how the local force
investigated the deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people.)
The author focuses on the failure
of government to properly address the education needs of Indigenous
children. Besides describing the current
situation, she gives a brief history of residential schools which she shows to
be an act of cultural genocide.
Teenagers are still required to leave their home communities for an
education; in an alien environment, they become vulnerable. The author argues that there must have been
foul play in the deaths in Thunder Bay, that systemic racism led to whites preying
on vulnerable Indigenous youth.
The treatment of our Indigenous
people is an important subject; the stories of these seven children need to be
told. Canadians need to educate
themselves and become activists to ensure that Indigenous people are treated as
equal citizens. Unfortunately, I don’t
think the writing in this book does justice to the vital importance of its
subject matter. The author is a
journalist so I expected stronger writing and I found myself increasingly
frustrated as I read.
The author has a definite
bias. Having an opinion is unavoidable
but I hoped that, as befits a professional journalist, there would have been
some attempt to present a balanced view.
Even if readers were given a less one-sided perspective, they would still
have seen “the racism, police indifference, bureaucratic ineptitude, lateral
violence.” The author’s bias against
non-Indigenous people, presumably the book’s target audience, will alienate
some readers. To suggest, even
indirectly, that all Indigenous people are good and all non-Indigenous are bad is
to be unjust to all.
For instance, it is emphasized
that the staff at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School (“Indigenous run and
directed, and staffed with Indigenous teachers”) is exceptional: “Everyone on staff – from the teachers to the
office workers to the Elders and the custodial staff – pitched in to look after
the kids” (101). This evaluation is even repeated: “They knew they weren’t just teachers or
receptionists or janitors; they were also caring for the nearly 150 kids
enrolled at the school . . . DFC staff did everything they could to be parents
to their students” (255). However when an
inquest directed 25 recommendations to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, these are
never outlined; the reader is only told that all recommendations have been addressed
“as far as their capacity allows” (312). An Indigenous support worker/ boarding parent
leaves an inebriated young girl lying on a hallway floor without keeping close
watch and that girl dies, yet the boarding parent is not considered negligent
(189)?
There are contradictions
concerning boarding parents. At the
beginning, the author explains that “Boarding parents were given $500 a
student, every month, to cover living expenses such as the roof over their head,
snacks, and dinner. The ‘parents’ were
under no obligation to supervise the kids at night, eat meals with them, help
them with their homework, or take them to any after-school activities”
(27). Fifty pages later, there’s a different
explanation: Boarding parents “need to ‘be
responsible for the welfare and conduct of students while he or she is in your
care.’ They need to discuss and set up ‘reasonable patterns of conduct and
discipline with the students regarding meal times, curfews, access to the
kitchen, telephone,’ and they are instructed to ‘treat the students as your own
children and include them in as many family and social activities as possible’”
(97). And the Northern Nishnawbe
Education Council thoroughly investigates prospective boarding parents?
The book needs revision and
editing. For example, why is the same
information repeated again and again, often within a few pages? For example, “Rhoda King, Reggie Bushie’s
mother, was told that her son was missing three days after he had disappeared”
(208) is followed by “In fact, Rhoda King, Reggie and Ricki’s mother, did not
know that Reggie was missing until October 29 – three days after he was last
seen” (212) which is followed by “She had not been informed by authorities or
the school that her son had disappeared until three days after he was last seen
down by the McIntyre River” (226).
There are unnecessary
details. Why describe the area around
the Air Canada Centre (49)? Do we need
to know that searchers “went to Walmart to unwind and then grabbed something to
eat at McDonald’s” (38)? At times, it
seems that the author feels she has to include and explain everything, yet at
other times, information is missing. For
example, the painting on the cover is explained but not completely (301). I had never heard about
the starvation experiments at residential schools (73), but they are mentioned only
in passing.
Poor organization sometimes has
the reader shaking his/her head: the
author explains how Norval Morrisseau met his wife and names his children and then
launches into a description of his childhood (244-245). Who can follow this: “Coroners believe Kyle died of drowning. They also noted Kyle consumed alcohol before
he died and that while it was a contributing factor to his death, it wasn’t the
cause. [Kyle’s father] was full of
rage. ‘I was fucking mad.’” (263)?
Some statements make little
sense. “It is an old [Pikangikum First Nation] tradition to bury your dead in your
front yard” (135)? “[Elder Sam
Achneepineskum’s] wisdom comes from the ten thousand lives he has lived”
(275)? “The rest [of the rivers] flow
south to the Great Lakes and the urban centres that malignantly pock the turtle’s
shell” (54)? Yes, I understand that
Turtle Island refers to North America, but every city is a malignancy? So why would the author bemoan that “There
was no McDonald’s or local shopping mall [in Pikangikum] and there still isn’t”
(138)?
Sentences are choppy and
clunky: “Norma spent the next several
minutes pacing the halls. Rhoda and
Berenson King arrived and they went directly to the Elders’ room. Norma paced in front of the room until she
saw Alvin walking down the hallway with the chief. She stopped him and asked if they had found
Reggie. He said they had. She warned Alvin that the parents had arrived
and were in the Elders’ room. She told
him she was going to find a more private room . . . They found an empty office
. . . Norma was turning to leave when she ran into Josias. She asked him to sit with the others in the
Elders’ room” (224-225).
What’s with the diction and clichés? For example, “People often threw eggs at him
from moving cars or would holler Hollywood-style Indian war cries” (166) and “But
it all came crashing down again in the 1980s, when he hit the bottle hard and
burned through his money” (246).
I feel as if it is wrong to
criticize a book that discusses such an important subject, one which Canadians
must face. However, I have to be honest
and state that I wish the writing were of much better quality so the reader can
focus on the information and is not frustratingly distracted by the poor
style.
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