First Peoples: Indigenous Cultures and Their Futures (Reaktion Books - Focus on Contemporary Issues)
Sissons, professor of social anthropology in New Zealand, calls his book an "argument about the future of indigeneity," and in it he analyzes first peoples from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil. He addresses the painful nineteenth- and early twentieth-century process of assimilation, which was, from the indigenous perspective, a violent separation of people from their culture and children from their families. He moves on to a discussion of urban indigeneity and the ongoing challenge of maintaining and strengthening ties with the older, rural community, stressing the need for new economic and political links between rural and urban indigenous peoples, including more employment opportunities for students taught in indigenous schools. Sissons maintains that indigenous cultures worldwide are in the process of recovering what was lost in the process of colonization, that is, their children, land, and sovereignty. He feels that this is possible through participatory democracy. Although not geared to the layperson, Sissons' study is a valuable contribution to the field.Deborah DonovanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved