Description
Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations is a recent addition to the literature about the history Aboriginal and white relations along the Pacific Coast. Department of History at the University of Victoria professor John Sutton Lutz utilizes oral histories, manuscripts, newspaper accounts, biographies, and statistical analysis to describe the nature of First Nations involvement in the new economy following the arrival of Europeans until the 1970s. The author details the early history of First Nations economic endeavours and covers the problems encountered by First Nations when the policy of the government changed toward First Nations and they were no longer welcome within the wage, capitalist, and subsistence economies. One chapter explores the so-called Making of the Lazy Indian concept while others document the downward spiral when policy makers forced First Nations workers out of commercial fishing and the wage economy. Through numerous archival photographs and quotes the reader is engaged and made aware of the reasons behind policies that ensured a welfare-dependent generation of First Nations people in British Columbia. Recommended.