Raffan, James

English

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REVIEWS • 269region. I would recommend this book to anyone with aninterest in the archaeology or the peoples of the North.Robert W. ParkDepartment of Anthropology & Classical StudiesUniversity of WaterlooWaterloo, Ontario, CanadaN2L 3G1At another level, Wild Rivers, Wild Lands is a portrait ofintense dedication to wilderness preservation derived fromexperience on the land, and a heartfelt request to join theYukon Wildlands Project, an initiative to preserve thesewilderness areas. Here, the passion of experience is not soattractive. In the introduction (p. 1), Madsen spits: “TheYukon government is killing wolves near here. Gunningthem down from planes, trapping them, snaring them. LikeEuropean gentry, the politicians don’t want to feed “their”caribou and moose to wild carnivores. Loggers are itching toclear-cut the forest we are walking through. On slopes aboveKluane Lake, the scars from mineral exploration slash acrossalpine meadows. ...Wildness in the natural world is whole-ness. Wildness doesn’t need to be improved by development.It doesn’t require our moral approval or legislative authority.Wildness is.”There are certainly other views on these matters, notrepresented in this book, which acknowledge the contradic-tions that colour the nexus of wilderness and development.Pretty picture books like this can tend to commodify andcompartmentalize wilderness, and it’s more than a littlecurious that this call for “an entirely new vision” is dressed upon apparently unrecycled paper with pages of gloss-coatedphotos. And, for a freelance writer/photographer who makeshis living from wilderness reporting, Madsen runs the risk inwriting this book of appearing to preserve a narrow self-interest in his drive to preserve these wild lands. This call toaction would have been more credible had Madsen, howevertangentially, been a little less condemnatory of people in-volved in development and acknowledged the industrialeffects of his own consumption—for example, the inevitabledamage to land, water, and air incurred through the construc-tion of his kayaks and high-tech camping equipment.But these are minor quibbles. Ken Madsen’s passion anddemonstrated environmental action—he was a central playerin the establishment of the Tatshenshini-Alsek WildernessPark—offset the contradictions. And, while the imagery inthis book does have its share of sunsets and wild animals,bordering occasionally on cliché, the text, however naive oridealistic, is grounded in experience and is quite refreshing inits candour. Madsen calls, eventually, for balance as heenjoins others to act. He shows how the Yukon WildlandsProject is linked to the World Wildlife Fund’s EndangeredSpaces Campaign and, in pointing out that large carnivoresneed huge ranges and that wild creatures must be free to moveto keep populations healthy, he calls for wild lands to belinked to “restore the ecological richness and nativebiodiversity throughout North America” (p. 109).In the end, it is the emotion of firsthand experiences on theland that empowers this book. Madsen understands that thebest way to learn to care about these rivers is to actuallypaddle them, but—failing that—he has made a credible stabat packaging the river experience in a way that just mightmove people to act, either by mounting their own expeditionsor by writing a cheque to one of the conservation organiza-tions listed at the back. This book is full of the sights andsounds of the great northwest, and what it lacks in inclusiveWILD RIVERS, WILD LANDS. By KEN MADSEN.Whitehorse, Yukon: Lost Moose, the Yukon Publishers,1996. Henderson Book Series No. 24, published in asso-ciation with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society,Toronto, Ontario. 112 p., 5 maps, colour illustrations.Softbound. Cdn$29.95.From the publishers of The ORIGINAL Lost Whole MooseCatalogue and other titles including Skookum’s North: The“PAWS” Collection, and Law of the Yukon: A PictorialHistory of the Mounted Police in the Yukon, comes a newbook that in similarly quirky and engaging northern stylecelebrates four watersheds in the great northwest. Wild Riv-ers, Wild Lands, a personal reflection by Whitehorse writer,photographer, and environmentalist Ken Madsen, sweepsreaders into one paddler’s perspective on the white water ofwilderness preservation in the Alsek-Tatshenshini, Stikine,Peel, and Skagway watersheds.At one level, this handsome, softcover book is a high-action kayak adventure tale. Madsen is a modern-day ex-plorer and a great storyteller. And when his accessible proseis illustrated by his artfully wrought photographs, the arm-chair adventurer will be whisked about as close to wild waterescapades as one can get without actually getting wet.Madsen’s description of leading the first Canadian descent ofTurnback Canyon on the Alsek River is particularly fetching(in a glad-I-wasn’t-there sort of way). The author and hiscrew are trying to shoot this canyon, in which people havedied, while a photographer from National Geographic hoversdirectly overhead. Madsen writes: “As I skirt a pair of holes,a blast of spray blinds me. My kayak stalls as it crests abreaking wave, then the helicopter hurricane lifts my bow andblows me upstream, back into the trough of the wave. I closemy eyes and lean forward. I dig my paddle into the current andhaul the kayak over the wave. When I pass under the chopper,I’m blown through the slot as explosively as a cork from abottle of cheap champagne” (p. 23).Skill aside, the machismo of these exploits is countered,happily, by accounts of paddling on less turbulent waters withfamily and friends. These human aspects of the book showquite clearly how one person’s passion for adventure and loveof the wild can be passed on to family and young companionsby sheer force of example. Other Canadian children would belucky to have a pair like Madsen and his partner WendyBoothroyd to take them adventuring, to learn from experi-ence the importance of family and the lasting lessons of livingin nature. They are a potent example.270 •  REVIEWSreasoning, it makes up for in the affirmation that “experientialscholarship”—time and travel on the land—is an essentialdriver of effective environmental action. The challenge, asMadsen acknowledges, is to find balance and ways to coop-erate for the good of humanity and the good of Nature—before all wild rivers and all wild lands are gone forever.James RaffanFaculty of EducationQueen’s UniversityKingston, Ontario, CanadaK7L 3N6SHINGWAUK’S VISION: A HISTORY OF NATIVERESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS. By JAMES R. MILLER.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. 582 p., b&willus., maps, bib., index. Hardbound, Cdn$70.00;Softbound, Cdn$29.95.Among the numerous justice-seeking recommendationsemerging from its exhaustive report on the history of relationsbetween the First Nations and the rest of Canada, the RoyalCommission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) placed Nativeresidential schools near the top of a lengthy list of society’sculprits. The Globe and Mail noted that “the Queen andParliament should issue a royal proclamation acknowledg-ing mistakes of the past and committing governments to anew relationship...[by conducting] a wide-ranging publicinquiry... into the origins and effects of residential schools”(22 November 1996, p. A8).Why, of all the arenas of five centuries of engagementbetween Native and non-Native Canadians, should resi-dential schools be attributed such consequence, even noto-riety? Where might those seeking to understand thesignificance of the Commission’s reproach start their per-sonal investigation of this pivotal subject? The answer toboth questions can best be found by reading J.R. Miller’srecent and extensive study, Shingwauk’s Vision: A Historyof Native Residential Schools.In the opinion of this reviewer, there has not been—nor isthere likely to be—as complete an inquiry and as trustworthya standard for evaluating the Native residential school phe-nomenon as this exhaustive and engaging treatise. Millerresearched the voluminous primary residential school docu-mentation in both church and government archives. In addi-tion, he interviewed dozens of living Native attendees of theschools throughout the land. He participated in celebrations,conferences, and healing sessions, as well as other formal andinformal events. The author largely succeeds in presenting abalanced, three-part assessment of why the schools were setup, how they functioned, and their current consequences.Miller describes the purpose of his book as “an attempt toprovide an overview of the history of residential schools asone facet (italics mine) of the more general history of rela-tions between indigenous and immigrant peoples in theterritory that became Canada” (p. ix). Yet, by probing thestory of the schools, readers gain a keener understanding ofthe dubious dynamics that have characterized half a millen-nium of cross-cultural engagement.This study juxtaposes the philosophy and motivation ofeducational  administrators and teachers (both secular andreligious) and the views and experience of the students forwhom the schools were purportedly intended. It should not besurprising that frequently intentions were at variance withresults and what was provided was resisted, rejected, or, atvery least, unappreciated.The author accents and distinguishes an important motiffrom the outset: Native peoples consented to involvement inthe residential schools essentially to obtain an education.Many (though by no means all) Natives, realized they had toadapt in order to function successfully in a world that waschanged by the inevitable encroachment of Euro-Canadiansociety. They saw education as the primary means of prepar-ing themselves for this adaptation. However, their intentionswere not generally understood or appreciated; the broaderCanadian society considered assimilation of Natives into thelarger culture, not their vocational training or schooling, to bethe primary reason for government involvement in the schools.For the churches, on the other hand, the religious conversionof the “pagan Indian” to an awareness of a “higher” civiliza-tion and eternal life, not primarily learning for this life, wasthe main reason to participate.Traditional Native pedagogy focused on the “Three L’s”—looking, listening, and learning—while the vast majority ofthe non-Native schoolteachers relied on the standard “ThreeR’s.” Euro-Canadian educational philosophers were almostuniversal in their disrespect for time-honoured Native learn-ing environments and ways of teaching: non-Natives simplyassumed their own methods and systems to be the best. Theresulting psychological trauma experienced by the students,their families, and their descendants led many Natives to theirdeaths, or to chronic personal and social dysfunction—aninability to live effectively in either society.The author claims repeatedly that the motives of the FirstNations peoples were more authentic than those of govern-ment and church. With some obvious and notable exceptions,many of his examples broadly reinforce this perception. Thatis one of the more significant contributions of the book.One positive and ironic side effect was that the residentialschools were responsible for the early training of manyNatives who subsequently became political and culturalleaders. This fact supports the author’s strange but nonethe-less legitimate conclusion that, in spite of the generallywrong-headed and failed nature of the residential schoolsystem, a certain number of “success stories” emerged, witha variety of educational benefits accruing to Native peoplewho were able to make the cross-cultural transition. Thesewere exceptions, however, not the rule.Who was responsible for the damage done, and whoshould compensate? The author concludes that the Nativepeople were essentially victims and not to blame for whathappened. While a number of the major denominationsinvolved in the schools have attempted apologies and healing

Wild Rivers, Wild Lands, by Ken Madsen

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Wild Rivers, Wild Lands, by Ken Madsen

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