Indian Country: Inside Another Canada

Randall White, a political scientist, is also a Toronto-based economic
consultant and author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to Senate
Reform in Canada.

Winnipeg writer Krotz’s 1980 book, Urban Indians, took a sensitive
look at the fate of Canadian first peoples in the cities. Now, in Indian
Country, he offers an engaging meditation on the increasingly urgent
wider aboriginal issue, as it confronts Canada today. Krotz blends
accounts of personal visits to five reserve communities (or, as some
residents would insist, first-nation “territories”), interviews with
four experts in the “Indian business,” and three chapters of broader
reflections. The communities are in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario,
Manitoba, and British Columbia. The experts include one aboriginal
leader (George Erasmus), and three sympathetic non-Indians (Thomas
Berger, Lloyd Barber, and Keith Penner). The broader reflections stress
the importance of recognizing aboriginal rights to self-government in
the still wider Canadian constitutional debate.

One attraction that Krotz could not have fully appreciated at the time
of writing is the account of his visit to the Mohawk territory in
Kahnawake, Quebec. His book went to press before the dramatic
confrontations in the area following the failure of the Meech Lake
Accord, in the summer of 1990. But it helps make clear why the
confrontations took place.

The book’s greatest strength lies in how its different parts come
together to illuminate the aboriginal issue in Canada at large, during a
decisive period in the country’s history. Krotz himself is more than a
politically correct propagandist. In various ways he shows how
connecting with the issue effectively will have its full share of
difficulties. “Politics,” he remarks at one point, “is the real
industry on all Indian reserves.” His book is an especially good
introduction to the subject for ordinary non-Indian readers who want to
learn something about the human realities behind the political
headlines.