A review by jassmine
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel

5.0

It is extremely important readers of this book remind themselves we probably do not know one another in real life – what I am saying, dismissing, or getting a little snarky about is not something personal to you, the reader. Instead, I am reacting to wider social beliefs. Basically, this is not about you as a person. It can’t be, because, as I pointed out, we are strangers. If you start to get the eerie feeling that I am peering out from these pages and fixing you with an accusatory stare, go back and see if I’ve actually named you. From time to time, I will name names, so if yours is not there, you can relax.

Can we just stop here and appreciate the kindness of this woman for a second? It might be just because I'm reading a lot of feminist non-fiction lately, but... I was expecting anger. Especially in the feminist books of women of colour, anger is one of the central themes (see [b:White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color|53260224|White Tears/Brown Scars How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color|Ruby Hamad|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657388210l/53260224._SX50_.jpg|71770367], [b:Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty|229445|Killing the Black Body Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty|Dorothy Roberts|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388801372l/229445._SY75_.jpg|222199], [b:Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot|36687229|Hood Feminism Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot|Mikki Kendall|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1577489813l/36687229._SY75_.jpg|58481445]). It's understandable... and just overall anger can be a very transformative emotion and I believe we need to see it more positively. But this book is so f*cking kind it made me cry while she explained her terminology which kind of makes me question my sanity. There were places where I wanted to scream at her that she has every right to be angry and that the patience she exercised while explaining things was way too much. Don't get me wrong, she gets angry toward the end of the book, but it's not dominant emotion - that would be grief and sadness and that makes this book that much harder...

I want to be very clear that the term settler does not, and can never, refer to the descendants of Africans who were kidnapped and sold into chattel slavery. Black people, removed and cut off from their own indigenous lands – literally stripped of their humanity and redefined legally as property – could not be agents of settlement. The fact that slavery has been abolished does not change this history. Although Black people are not all indigenous to the Americas, the Americas are home to the descendants of enslaved African peoples.

The most valuable part of this books is without a doubt the vast number of other cited sources and recommendations. I already knew quite a lot, but even in the areas that were more familiar to me, she points the reader in direction of next possible paths and I loved that. Appart from academic/traditional non-fiction sources, she also recommends: movies, documentaries, critical reading sites, musical bands, videogame etc. She is great lively narrator and natural talent in explaining things. I would highly recommend her chapter on cultural appropriation to your attention, that was a theme to me that I wasn't completely certain about, but she explains it in a way that... just makes sense? I also discovered that my idea about what sixties scoops entailed was completely wrong (I thought it was more connected to the boarding school system, not realising it was the "next step in the system"). The Canadian context was also mostly new to me, so that was interesting as was the parts concerning Métis and Inuit, because those doesn't really seem to be the focus of "mainstream" discussions.

The killing of qimmiit has become a flash point in Inuit memories of the changes imposed on their lives by outsiders. In community after community that we visited, Inuit told me, often through tears, “I remember the day my dogs were shot,” or “I remember when my father’s dogs were killed.” The pain still felt from these memories is a testament to the symbiotic relationship between Inuit and qimmiit, and to the fact that the loss of qimmiit was a stark challenge to their independence, self-reliance, and identity as hunters and providers for their family.

One of the other themes that were shocking to me was the slaughters of qimmiit (sled dogs) and the extreme allocations Inuits were experiencing. In some aspects this seems to be comparable to forced cutting of hair of plain nations in boarding schools (you cut your hair when a member of your family dies). The allocations were always awful, but in this case they just seem really extreme...
Also, on a different note, I would have been interested how this goes together with the "import" of Sámi people and their reindeer. I don't actually know much about it, only that Sámi people (indigenous people of Skandinavia) were offered a way to "New World" for teaching Inuit their way of life, because it was thought that reindeer heards could solve some of the famine issues (which were caused by excessive industrialized fishing if I'm not mistaken). I'm just not sure how this would go together with the "dog-centric" culture... or the killings of the dogs... especially if the dog slaughters were to keep Inuit put, why give them reindeer who need nomadic life? (I think that the introduction of reindeer was before this, but...) As I said, I know nothing about this (Vowel doesn't mention reindeer at all), but it's definitely something I would be interested in.

I thought that in honor of this book, I'll finish this review with a list of resources I already went through and would recommend, but there actually isn't that many of them. And they aren't that much of resources...
First, I have to mention Tanya Tagaq, because I'm strangely fascinated by her music which has real inner strenght.
The second would be Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, it's the first fully Inuit movie that won some movie awards (I'm shit at movie snobbism, so I don't know which it were). It's a movie that requests dedication from non-Inuit/non-Indigenous people, because it's not easy to follow, but... it's important cultural piece and just overall really interesting.
But there are several other things she mentioned that really caught my attention, so I'll add them when I watch/read/etc. them.

The final point is, I would definitely recommend this book!