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HUMANITIES 155 for claims-making. These types of struggle play themselves out most visibly as engagement with the state. What is at stake is not simply political recognition; rather, these struggles concern redistribution of resources. By thus transcending the liberalism of >equal opportunity= discourse, feminist struggles with the state have fostered accusations that feminism has >gone too far.= Fostered by these accusations is a popular movement for the deconstruction of gender. Perhaps ironically for many of us, contemporary opponents of feminism are able to invoke academic critiques of gender essentialism. Rather than dismissing these attacks, however, Marshall illustrates how they crystallize a number of analytical issues for feminism. To demonstrate the continued relevance of gender, Marshall gives an overview of the kinds of issues and debates that have emerged in the current context of global restructuring. It is not surprising that Marshall sees merit in retaining >gender= as both an analytical and political resource; none of the problems discussed in Confronting Gender are organically linked to gender as a concept. Rather, they are problems stemming from the tactical uses of gender in its variable role as a theoretical construct and as a political category. However unstable and provisional, categories are politically necessary. Marshall concludes by challenging us to displace binary oppositions with the notion of >seriality.= Such a notion resists gender as a categorical concept, encouraging instead the use of gender as a verb rather than noun. Because this approach acknowledges the unstable nature of gender as an identity, it directs us, analytically and politically, to processes through which gender inequalities can be challenged; herein lies a concept the brings together feminist theory and feminist politics. (DAWN H. CURRIE) Curtis Cook and Juan D. Lindau. Aboriginal Rights and Self-Government: The Canadian and Mexican Experience in North American Perspective McGill-Queen=s University Press. vi, 314. $22.95 The book is a collection of essays originally written for a colloquium at Colorado College discussing the historical treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada and Mexico, with a short comparison with American federal Indian policy. The essays are well written and very informative, reflecting considerable effort on the part of their authors and significant understanding of the development in these two countries. Mixing a historical approach heavily influenced by theoretical political principles, the essays properly ground the roots of today=s problems in the colonial past while examining the various movements and proposals that seek to overcome past mistakes while bringing forward long-standing and useful concepts. Too often in essays discussing present activities, insufficient background 156 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 is provided, so that movements appear to be either rooted in the past or without anything except a modern context. Not so with these essays. Solid discussion of the development of Indian policy provides a big picture in which current events are seen as logical and perhaps inevitable results of processes set in motion long ago. The transmission and transformation of cultural beliefs and practices does suffer with this approach so that an unasked question of what is being preserved never emerges. Assimilation must surely be of a different quality and quantity in Canada and Mexico. Lindau and Cook=s overview essay stresses the need to examine population and location of the indigenous peoples to provide a new way of looking at more complicated political issues. This emphasis enables us to understand from the very beginning that lessons we learn in one contact cannot possibly be adapted to other conditions or even in the other country. What then of the hemispheric view of indigenous peoples? Here access to lands of their own and to the benefits of the larger more industrially complex society become major issues for the future. The involvement of Canadian Indians in Canada=s constitutional reforms and the important victory in popularizing the idea of the >aboriginal= are thoroughly discussed by F.E.S. Franks. This topic has never been understood in the United States because of a paucity of good sources and the sensationalism of the press. Surely the inclusion of the policy statements and rights in the new Canadian constitution was a major victory that neither American nor Mexican Indians have yet achieved. But the same...

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