Demolishing Disrobing

In an excellent review, Gerald Taiaiake Alfred demolishes Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry, the policy book Jonathan Kay claims is the best he's read in a decade. I'm tempted to post Alfred's entire review so you'll see it all. Instead I'll limit myself to a few choice excerpts and encourage you to read the rest.

Review of “Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry”

Redressing Racist Academics, Or, Put Your Clothes Back On, Please! A Review of Widdowson and Howard’s, Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry (McGill Queen’s University Press, 2008).From the excited, glowing reviews of Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry I had seen in The National Post, and as a critic of parasitic white lawyers and consultants, sell-out aboriginals, and collaborationist Aboriginal politicians, I was prepared for a hard-hitting critique and useful deconstruction of the complex of injustice that has been built up around Indigenous-state relations in Canada. Instead, I found a collection of distortions, omissions, and exaggerations, that provides a reading experience like that of slogging through an undergraduate essay by, say, a kid from Alberta ruminating on Québecois nationalism, or an Alabama schoolgirl writing on the root causes of black-on-black violence. What a disappointment.

Widdowson and Howard attempt an awkward and ineffective mental sleight-of-hand trick to deflect anticipated criticism of their attacks on Indigenous people as being racist--as if Widdowson’s simply mentioning a potential charge is a Teflon dress protecting her against it sticking. Rather than speaking about Indigenous people, they speak about Indigenous “culture.” Instead of attacking Indigenous people, they attack the “Aboriginal industry.” But their cover is blown the instant you realize, and it’s pretty obvious from the first page of the book, that their notion of culture is equated to ethnicity and that their “Aboriginal industry” includes and embodies just about every Indigenous writer and representative in the country.

If Widdowson and Howard were serious Marxists concerned with the oppression of Indigenous peoples, even as a class of society, they would no doubt have focused on the economic and political relations that are at the root of the problems besetting Indigenous peoples and Canadian society as a whole. So, where is the analysis of Canada as a colonial regime and the broad consideration of Indigenous-state relations and the history of imperialism that forms the backdrop to any serious discussion of Canadian history and of Indigenous issues?

Widdowson and Howard see the dissolution of Indigenous culture and the assimilation of Indigenous people into the whitestream as the best thing that could possibly happen in Canada. They hold up the Métis, in contrast to First Nation and Inuit, as having “principled leadership” and because of their being assimilated, “it is with them that hope for real change lies” (256). So it becomes clear that the extermination of any meaningful sense of Indigeneity is Widdowson and Howard’s end objective.

I would not want to level the charge of Widdowson and Howard being haters without providing some evidence to that effect. Listed below are some of Widdowson and Howard’s views on Indigenous people, taken directly from the book:

--We have “not developed the skills, knowledge, or values to survive in the modern world” (9) and have “undisciplined work habits, tribal forms of political identification, animistic beliefs, and difficulties in developing abstract reasoning.” (13)

--We are “lazy” and unwilling to work (97) and “are unable to participate in wider society.” (105)

--Our societies are characterized by “savagery” and “barbarism” (12), and residential schools were “positive” and “necessary.” (25)

--Traditional land-based lifestyles do not require “forethought, discipline, and cooperative labour.” (22)

--Encountering our ancestors, who were ignorant (190) British explorers had never seen people “at such an early stage of economic and social development.” (23)Comment:  No wonder Kay thinks Indians should assimilate. He's swallowed every one of Widdowson and Howard's stupid, illogical, and racist arguments uncritically. Kay's praise of Disrobing says a lot more about Kay than it does about the book.

For more on the subject, see Outside the So-Called Ethnic Box.

Below:  "Indians don't have forethought, discipline, or cooperative labor, but we're not racists."