In his book First Nations in the Twenty-First Century, James S. Frideres discusses the particular features of the First Nations’ life in Canada, while focusing on the aspects of these people’s worldview and their relations with the Canadian majority.
Having read such chapters as “Indigenous Ways of Knowing” and “Aboriginal Residential Schools: Compensation, Apologies, and Truth and Reconciliation,” the reader receives the opportunity to think about differences in the Western people and First Nations’ vision of knowledge and about the concept of abuse related to the Aboriginals.
The reader can focus on several points found in the chapter “Indigenous Ways of Knowing,” which can be discussed as thought-provoking. It is possible to talk about differences between the Western people and First Nations while focusing on differences in their knowledge and visions of the world.
If the Western people try to focus on science as the key to controlling nature, the First Nations choose to live in balance with nature because it determines all the aspects of these people’s life. The reader can state that the First Nations are more powerful in their relations with nature because they focus on each detail related to their social and natural environments.
It is interesting that all the experience matters for these people and this situation provides them with more practical knowledge in comparison with the information available for the Western people concerning experiments and observation.
One more important detail to discuss the Indigenous ways of knowing is the fact that the Indigenous language has no words to speak about the knowledge as a noun. As a result, it is possible to conclude that actions, experiences, and skills are more essential for these people to construct their vision of the world. The author effectively discusses the specific Indigenous way of knowing while explaining it with references to the chaos theory.
Thus, the reader can conclude that the First Nations’ knowledge is based on links between the people, their relations, nature, land, other people’s experiences, spiritual life, and objective reality. That is why their vision of the world is complex and not limited to the principles of science.
The chapter “Aboriginal Residential Schools: Compensation, Apologies, and Truth and Reconciliation” makes the reader raise a lot of questions about such controversial historic events as the development of the assimilation policy in the 19th century and the establishment of residential schools in the early part of the 20th century.
Why were the Indian children forced to attend the residential schools and learn English? Why was the government focused on assimilating the Indians? Why are there many difficulties to receive compensation for the school buses in the 21st century?
The chapter content can provide the reader with the hints to answer these questions, and it is important to focus on such aspects as the authority’s ignorance of the fact that many Indians were physically and emotionally abused in the residential schools; modern courts focus on accepting complaints only about the physical abuse, while not discussing the issues of the moral harm; and many Indians have a lot of concerns associated with the court system because of the experienced discrimination.
As a result, different compensation policies and apologies cannot provide all the abused Indians with a kind of reparation because the fact of abuses was ignored and denied in the society during a long period.
Thus, the chapter is interesting because of focusing on the complicated moral and legal issue, and the reader can observe the pitfalls of the relations between the Canadian government and Aboriginals. Moreover, the discussed chapters are interesting to provide the readers with more information on the aspects of First Nations’ life in Canada.