Lawrence (academic nonfiction)
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50books_poc"Real" Indians and Others : Mixed-blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood by Bonita Lawrence
This book is a study of 29 individuals in the Toronto Native community identifying as mixed race. It's a good history of the (nutty) history of Canada's Indian Act and who legally qualifies to have Indian status (and therefore rights to land/money) and how that status has been systematically taken away from women band members and their children.
The participants had a broad range of Native phenotypes, so some looked very Native and others looked very white. Lawrence talks at length about privilege, resentment, self-image, the experience of people denying Indianness (as a cultural inheritance and as a beneficial legal status) to Natives who look "too" white, and the complicated problems of identity and racism faced by Natives with darker skin and hair.
The study is also a good ethnography of the experience of the children of Natives who were taken away and either placed into residential schools, where they faced various types of abuse and neglect, or who were adopted out into white families in the 1960s when social services removed 90% of Native kids from their parents' homes. Obviously, it's a hell of an eyeopener with regard to the systematic destruction of native culture in Canada.
Lawrence also addresses briefly the representation issues, wherein the organized First Nations do not include all the Indian bands, nor large numbers of mixed race peoples, despite some of these living as traditional an Indian cultural lifestyle as would be found on any reserve. All this, she says, is a result of Canadian law defining the limits of Indian identity, thus creating a mess of identity politics and competition for ever-shrinking federal resources.
I found it a fascinating contrast with Mexican history, where the pro-Mestizo movement worked to empower people and give them a positive identity. Being mixed race in Canada seems to separate a person from both the Native and the white communities, although the mixed race Native communities in urban areas are apparently making an effort to take up the cultural, if not financial/land benefit, slack.
Note: This book is out of print. My local library subscribes to NetLibrary, where I read it online.
eta: Just for the record, the author is part Mi'kmaq and undertook the study as part of her own attempts to understand and validate the range of urban mixed-race Aboriginal experience.
This book is a study of 29 individuals in the Toronto Native community identifying as mixed race. It's a good history of the (nutty) history of Canada's Indian Act and who legally qualifies to have Indian status (and therefore rights to land/money) and how that status has been systematically taken away from women band members and their children.
The participants had a broad range of Native phenotypes, so some looked very Native and others looked very white. Lawrence talks at length about privilege, resentment, self-image, the experience of people denying Indianness (as a cultural inheritance and as a beneficial legal status) to Natives who look "too" white, and the complicated problems of identity and racism faced by Natives with darker skin and hair.
The study is also a good ethnography of the experience of the children of Natives who were taken away and either placed into residential schools, where they faced various types of abuse and neglect, or who were adopted out into white families in the 1960s when social services removed 90% of Native kids from their parents' homes. Obviously, it's a hell of an eyeopener with regard to the systematic destruction of native culture in Canada.
Lawrence also addresses briefly the representation issues, wherein the organized First Nations do not include all the Indian bands, nor large numbers of mixed race peoples, despite some of these living as traditional an Indian cultural lifestyle as would be found on any reserve. All this, she says, is a result of Canadian law defining the limits of Indian identity, thus creating a mess of identity politics and competition for ever-shrinking federal resources.
I found it a fascinating contrast with Mexican history, where the pro-Mestizo movement worked to empower people and give them a positive identity. Being mixed race in Canada seems to separate a person from both the Native and the white communities, although the mixed race Native communities in urban areas are apparently making an effort to take up the cultural, if not financial/land benefit, slack.
Note: This book is out of print. My local library subscribes to NetLibrary, where I read it online.
eta: Just for the record, the author is part Mi'kmaq and undertook the study as part of her own attempts to understand and validate the range of urban mixed-race Aboriginal experience.
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Date: 2009-03-09 10:15 am (UTC)Getting educated is hard work.