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DISROBING THE ABORIGINAL INDUSTRY: THE DECEPTION BEHIND INDIGENOUS CULTURAL PRESERVATION.

Article Excerpt
DISROBING THE ABORIGINAL INDUSTRY: THE DECEPTION BEHIND INDIGENOUS CULTURAL PRESERVATION. By FRANCES WIDDOWSON and ALBERT HOWARD. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008. ISBN 780773534216 (paper). 330 p., notes, index. Softbound. Cdn$29.95.

Much like Cairns's Citizens Plus (2000) and Flanagan's First Nations? Second Thoughts (2000), Widdowson and Howard's Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry is sure to stimulate discussion in aboriginal research in Canada. The book is a comprehensive and critical examination of what the authors suggest is a deceptive network known as aboriginal cultural preservation in Canada. By examining education, social work, health, environmental and wildlife resource management, and governance structures, the authors conclude that many of the problems in aboriginal communities are due both to internal factors, such as oral societies, tribalism, spiritualism (i.e., shamanism), and animism, and to external factors like postmodernism, revisionism, and opportunism (whereby researchers, consultants, and lawyers benefit most from the process of land claims and self-governance). All of these factors have contributed to a "neolithic gap" in aboriginal communities--an abrupt change from a primitive society to a modern welfare state,...

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