Description
Dean Neu and Richard Therrien's Accounting for Genocide: Canada's Bureaucratic Assault on Aboriginal People is a work dedicated to exposing the Canadian government's use of bureaucratic tools to perpetuate the genocide of Aboriginal peoples. This work outlines the Canadian government's employment of various bureaucratic tools, and accounting mechanisms more specifically, to deprive First Nations (Indians and Inuit) of their land, resources and control of their daily lives. The authors argue that cultural survival for Indigenous Canadians, contrary to popular opinion, is in fact an economic battle fought within their own communities against government bureaucracy and transnational resource extraction companies. The battle is primarily against the accounting procedures used by such bodies to justify the continued exploitation of Indigenous people and their resources in the interest of economic profit. This book outlines the historical development of Canadian governmental policy toward Aboriginals covering the Joint Committee of 1946, the government's infamous White Paper, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People's (RCAP) and the Department of Indian Affairs under Duncan Scott. The role of bureaucrat, accountant, and poet is explored in the chapter about Duncan Campbell Scott who served the Canadian government from 1906 to 1932 in a position of power in the Indian Department. During his years in the department, Scott served as Superintendent of Indian Education then as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. During these years, Scott had direct influence over residential schools, and Indian lands and trusts. A number of relevant case studies are also examined, including a look at the Akwesasne Mohawks, the James Bay Project, the Oka standoff and the Delgamuukw decision of 1997. This book also outlines the development of Indigenous resistance movements throughout the 1990's and contains a number of interesting comparisons between Aboriginal Canadians and the struggles of other indigenous groups worldwide such as the Jewish during the Holocaust and the Chiapas uprising in Mexico. Dean Neu is the Future Fund Professor of Accounting at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. His work as an accounting academic and activist attempts to reveal accounting as a key element in shaping public policy and mediating between citizens and government. Richard Therrien is a poet, researcher, ghost-writer and landscape labourer. His articles and reviews have been published in a number of magazines and journals. This work contains helpful and explanatory flow charts, tables and diagrams and will appeal to academics interested in Native Studies, government policy, business practices and development studies.