Disrobing Widdowson and Howard

Or as Gerald Taiaiake Alfred would put it…

Redressing Racist Academics, Or, Put Your Clothes Back On, Please! A Review of Widdowson and Howard’s, Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry

Finally a review that is actually a review ,unlike the fawning and or promotional  nonsense published  in the National Post the Globe & Mail ,and the Ottawa Citizen to name a few.

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred writes….

Evidently, Widdowson and Howard get up in the morning and eat a dog’s breakfast of outmoded communist ideology and rotten anthropological theories washed down with strong racial prejudices inherited from their own unexamined colonial upbringings, all of which would turn anyone else’s stomach. Their ideas are, amazingly and unapologetically, the sort of “socialism from above” characteristic of 1930s vintage Stalinism listing upon a ragtag collection of theoretical frames which taken together form a methodological approach remarkable mostly for its inability, like the authors who employ it, to comprehend indigeneity outside of being the object of colonization and empire. To wit: elements of Darwinian evolutionary stages theory, bits of Hegelian historical determinism, and a reliably unsophisticated view of capitalism is a necessary destructive-progressive force leading to the realization of a communist utopia wherein exists a scientifically planned and state organized global society made up of human beings who are worthwhile only to the extent they are “productive”. Thus it is understandable how the authors can, or must, advocate for the destruction of the natural environment by industrial development, and why they must hate and seek to destroy the people most closely connected to and committed to the preservation of nature in the face of capitalist exploitation of the land: Indigenous people.

Widdowson and Howard attempt an awkward and ineffective mental sleight-of-hand trick to deflect anticipated criticism of their attacks on Indigenous people as being racist – as if Widdowson’s simply mentioning a potential charge is a Teflon dress protecting her against it sticking. Rather than speaking about Indigenous people, they speak about Indigenous “culture”. Instead of attacking Indigenous people, they attack the “Aboriginal industry”.

Read the full review of ,”Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry” here

Yet more; Savage backlash – another response to Wente @ Think Salmon

Watch 7 part: Aboriginal Identities,first broadcasted on TV Ontario’s The Agenda

Update Jan 25/09 ; Kathy Buddle reviews “Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry”,in the Winnipeg Free Press,Treacherous political path Look at ‘aboriginal industry’ an inept rant