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  • "Enough to Keep Them Alive": Indian Welfare in Canada, 1873-1965
  • Ken Coates
"Enough to Keep Them Alive": Indian Welfare in Canada, 1873-1965. By Hugh Shewell (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2004) 441 pp. $60.00 cloth $35.00 paper

Canadians found comfort for decades in the assumption that their government's treatment of Indians was more compassionate and humane than the stereotypically aggressive, militaristic actions of the United [End Page 656] States. Enough to Keep Them Alive provides a critical and insightful perspective on this important policy field, arguing that, "welfare—relief, social assistance—has been used by the state as a weapon to undermine First Nations cultures and to induce their assimilation and hence disappearance into the dominant Canadian economic and social order" (ix).

Although the majority of the text is devoted to a careful and well-researched reconstruction of Canadian policy, Shewell's book situates administrative developments within broader political, social, and cultural contexts. He draws comfortably on the work of Said, Wolf, Noël, and Wallerstein, among others.1 He takes a Marxist approach to the issues at hand, arguing that "Euro-Canadian civilization—liberal democratic capitalism—has laid waste to aboriginal peoples and their cultures" (4).

Shewell looks first at the context of relief and the broader role of government in society at the time of Confederation. He then relates the provision of relief to administrative efforts to subjugate the Indians. The book then examines how government efforts shifted to tie the provision of support to citizenship. In what are the two most important chapters in the book, Shewell describes the role of social sciences during the postwar period in defining Indians and then discusses the evolution of the bureaucracy of Indian welfare. The latter chapter is particularly useful in understanding how welfare evolved from the provision of emergency supplies in times of hardship to a complex economic and political relationship between Indians and the government of Canada. The final chapters include a study of the transition to increased provincial involvement in Indian welfare and an (overly long) conclusion that considers the theoretical and conceptual issues raised by the history of government relief and welfare payments to Indians.

Enough to Keep Them Alive examines policy and public administration without becoming overwhelmed by political details and personalities. Shewell pays particular attention to the political culture of public administration and to the manner in which bureaucratic processes reflect dominant ideologies. Most significantly, the author does not treat Indian policy in isolation but instead relates developments in the field to broader national and international trends in concepts of citizenship, minority rights, and the ideology of industrial capitalism. Shewell's study has much to recommend it, including its comprehensive assessment of national policy and administrative assessments and strong theoretical elements. Unfortunate, but understandable given the nature of the archival record, is the fact that comparatively few aboriginal voices appear in the study. In the tradition of much Canadian scholarship on aboriginal issues, Enough to Keep them Alive is strongly, even stridently, political.

The advocacy that runs through the book adds to the intensity of the argument but raises concerns about its partisanship. In his provocative chapter on the political influence of the social sciences after World [End Page 657] War II, Shewell argues that "the social science introduced a new culture into Indian Affairs that allowed the government to reinvent paternalism based on the 'benevolence' of secular understanding, knowledge, and the tools of social engineering. The social sciences simply furthered the state's aims and provided the knowledge and rationalizing to legitimate state activities in First Nations communities" (227). Shewell and others appear to be as confident in their analysis about the best means of addressing aboriginal needs and aspirations as the post–World War II social scientists were in their assessment of the options facing First Nations in Canada.

Ken Coates
University of Waterloo

Footnotes

1. Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 2003); Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, 1982); Lise Noël, Intolerance: A General Survey (Montreal, 1994); Immanuel Wallerstein, World-System Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, 2004).

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