Indigenous Peoples and Settler Angst in Canada: A Review Essay Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry. The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. 330 pages John Ralston Saul. A Fair Country. Telling Truths About Canada. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008. 340 pages

The figure of the “Indian” is a recurring theme in social, literary and historical studies. Friend or foe? Noble or ignoble? Spiritualist or charlatan? Wise or misguided? What is indeed the true nature of this perennial Other who has consistently and in so many different ways challenged and disturbed the Euro-Canadian social imaginary? Considering the long list of writers and scholars who have tried to account for his enduring presence one would think that there is hardly anything left to say about the topic. We should have by now a pretty good idea of what it entails. Yet more books and articles, scholarly and otherwise, continue to be written. In a way, this bears witness to the fact that the very existence of Indigenous peoples disrupts the liberal image mainstream Canadians have of themselves and their country. It forces them into a rather uncomfortable reassessment of the foundational notions of state and nation they hold dear, of the core values by which they define themselves. No doubt many are thrown off balance by the increasing centrality in the public arena of Aboriginal socio-political claims that call into question their hegemonic position. Similarly, the sub-standard socio-economic circumstances in which too many Indigenous people are still constrained to live unsettle their self-perception as a just and fair group. Some readily submit to this reassessment in the name of democratic enhancement and social justice; many more will simply recoil at the very thought of it (interestingly, also in the name of democracy and equity). In other words, the figure of the Indian mystifies. Mainstream Canadians’ handling of it rests on a deep-seated collective anxiety—usually unacknowledged, like some shameful condition—that cries out to be exorcised somehow. Writing about “what to make of the Indian” has certainly been one consistent way of dealing with this anxiety. As any psychologist will confirm, the common ways of handling the anxiety created by any given unpleasant situation include simply ignoring it, refusing to believe it exists at all or rearranging it mentally so as to make it more emotionally manageable. When it comes to Indigenous peoples, Euro-Canadians are no strangers to such self-protective psychological stratagems. By the turn of the nineteenth century, as European settlers felt confident they had finally gotten a handle on the challenges of living in the New World, the use-value of the various Indigenous peoples they had hitherto considered as military and political allies, trading partners or advisors diminished significantly. From then on, no effort was spared to dismiss their socio-political relevance, infantilize them, and even obliterate them, both symbolically and physically. As they were perceived as obstacles to the economic, social and territorial development of the country settlers envisioned, the Euro-Canadian social imaginary was steered into conveniently believing Indians were a “vanishing race” and had for all intents and purposes ceased to exist (Miller). Widdowson and Howard develop their argument through a detailed examination of key policy issues concerning Indigenous peoples. Using an approach reminiscent of Reform and Conservative Party political advisor and University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan’s First Nations? Second Thoughts (2000), they undertake to debunk what they see as the falsehoods upon which the Aboriginal industry has gained prominence. They fire a number of salvoes at the current Aboriginal policy framework and at the postmodernist cultural relativism of some segments of the Canadian public, all too willing in their view to accept Aboriginal claims unquestioningly. They contend that Aboriginal communities cannot be viable economic entities because of their isolation from global markets and their serious deficits in human and intellectual capital; injecting more money into those communities through the …