Alice Detroit

a review of

Facing West, The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building, Richard Drinnon, New York, New American Library, 1980.

Richard Drinnon offers documentation of the attitudes and history of people with whom we are sickeningly familiar. He eloquently debunks the heroic myths of frontier life in the U.S. and also exposes the arrogance with which Europeans devastated this continent and beyond, once they reached the Pacific Ocean. Enlightenment ideology furnished the prop for the racism, greed and self-repression which have been part of U.S. history over the centuries, In the twentieth century, imperialist rhetoric has been polished by public relations experts who often obfuscate the real motives of the contemporary politician. This book makes clear the unbroken link with their predecessors who moreover shock us by their open expression of frenzied hatred and moral self-righteousness.

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a review of

Sea of Slaughter by Farley Mowat, 1985, Atlantic Monthly, 438 pp. $24.95

In a world where the victor writes the history books, we are grateful for Farley Mowat’s eloquent and dissenting account of the rape of the North American continent.

The ravagers came in search of oil, furs and food. The life they led was adventurous; it was also dangerous and violent. Mowat quotes the eyewitness report of a Professor J.B. Jukes, who in 1840 went as an observer to the main sealing patch in the brigantine Topaz:

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