This book by the Carlton University white writer without Indigenous roots holds special meaning for me since I spent one long summer at the Camp Ipperwash Army Camp in my teens, very homesick, and completely oblivious to the history of it.
A sketch or several sketches of the area with the Kettle Point and Stony Point reserves shown, the Army base and the Provincial Park outlines would have been very helpful. Even having spent two months there, I had difficulty visualizing some of the roads and the limits of the Army Camp. I was told this morning as I was nearing the end that there are maps included with the book Our Long Struggle for Home, that I should probably have read first, but I probably won’t.
In this book, the author ruminates endlessly about her right to even speak to or for the Aboriginal tribes that were displaced when the colonialist white men displaced the Natives and took over the area for an army cadet camp during WWII, suppposedly on a temporary basis. Even words like Aboriginal, Native and First Nations are fraught with the potential to offend. The walking-on-eggshells narrative becomes a bit excessive as the author lives in fear of offending someone and questions her right to write a book about the ongoing tragedy and the duplicity of her colonial ancestors. She never mentions that the Natives probably do not always agree amongst themselves about what should be done to fully rectify this past and continuing unconscionable injustice.
The tragic treatment of the culture of the Nishenaabe people is clear, but the solution will involve much more than is offered in this book. The relatives of Dudley George, shot and killed by police in 1992, are growing old and time is running out.
I found the writing to be exessively tentative and self deprecating, but I cannot fault her good intentions to try to make amends for past crimes, as that is what it was.
3.5/5
Thanks, Mike.
The Passionate Reader 