A review by jasmineehare
Peace Pipe Dreams: The Truth about Lies about Indians by Darrell Dennis

3.0

I would say this is a book that all settler Canadians should read, but I feel that it borrowed too heavily from The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King for me to give it that distinction. The excerpt on the back cover of Peace Pipe Dreams, the joke about about Tolkien and "One word to rule them all and in political correctness bind them"? Yeah, pretty much that exact same joke is on page 83 of The Inconvenient Indian. The books are similar in other regards, although Dennis does cover different territory; he delves more deeply into treaties and current day conditions on reserves, which I appreciated. The writing wasn't particularly strong; the humour wasn't very funny, so this ended up being much more of a straight-up nonfiction look at Indigenous-settler relations, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I definitely learned quite a bit, and would probably still recommend it (although I would recommend Thomas King first!).