Stolen From Our Embrace - My Thoughts

Main Thesis or Argument:              

                                                                  

         In this book, authors Fournier and Crey offer us the privilege to reassess attitudes towards “Native Dependency” on the state’s resources; they offer another lens through which we can view issues of Native relationships with the federal government and Canadian society at large. Above all, this book challenges us, I think, to try and understand the horrors that were committed against Aboriginal societies, to try and understand the immeasurable impact of such horrors on Aboriginal identity, and the innumerable challenges that Aboriginal societies face trying to get their civilizations and culture back on their feet. The book is a series of personal accounts, and at times, gets very hard to read. If the reader wants to earn a sense of what Aboriginal communities have been through in this country, this book offers a good start. It is by bringing a more human face to the struggles we always hear so much about yet never take the time to understand that subsequently offers a richer understanding of the contemporary relationship between Aboriginals and the Canadian government (i.e. the resources owed to Aboriginals).

         A very large and important theme in the book is Aboriginal culture – namely, the book (successfully) recasts the question of Aboriginal culture. Rather than examining the value of Aboriginal culture, or what Aboriginal culture has to offer the rest of the world, Fournier and Crey show that forcibly removing Aboriginal culture from young Native Americans has real impacts separate from everything else. Telling Aboriginal children their culture is not only barbaric but also inferior, and further, that punishing these children physically, mentally and sexually for practicing their culture all leave these children confused, defeated and scared in ways unimaginable. Whether you agree with Frances and Widdowson that Aboriginal culture is less developed than culture found in the west is not the issue here. Rather, a close reading of what Fournier and Crey are trying to say tells you that there have been and continue to be serious abuses suffered by Aboriginals along cultural lines. Questions about the value of a culture are not as important as determining the significance of that culture to the life and community of many Aboriginals, and subsequently, the impact of annihilating that culture.   

Comments:   

                                

         This book was extremely brave, and allows the reader to get a sense of what life was like growing up Aboriginal in Canada. I like to think of this book as a reminder that the government of this country, and not just “whitestream” Canada directly affronted Aboriginal culture. I found this consideration to be lacking in Widdowson and Howard’s book, which located the “Aboriginal question” in the contention between two distinct cultures. While this may be the case, Stolen From Our Embrace reminds us that it is only half the story, as the Canadian government contributed to Aboriginal disconnect through abhorrent living conditions in residential schools, and anti-Native adoption policies that were more focused on systematically “killing off the Indian in the child” than finding loving homes for Aboriginal children.