Race and Racism: Canada's Challenge ed. by Leo Driedger, Shiva S. Halli (review)

160 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 emergent awareness of their similar life experiences, despite seeming great geographical distance and diasporic life conditions, and the similar importance they place on family, community relationships, and connections to their land. This book gives colonialism an intimate voice. Colonial schooling, prejudice, discrimination, racism, and an eroding cultural base are everpresent themes in all three generations in both Australia and Canada. Though child-rearing practices change over time among the Indigenous women owing to their growing participation in domestic and modern economic activity, similar colonial schooling in attitudes and practices yields to predictable diminished school outcomes for youth. The families= traditional practices involving the land and the changes needed within a colonial regime emerge with the necessary maintenance of cultural values and traditions to sustain the people over their difficult times. Most interesting is their evolving awareness of the changes in leadership needed to deflect the colonial experience in education, economy, and politics, and their evolving perceptions of religion and identity. Weiss documents their persistent interaction with racism, stressing the consequences of racial and cultural superiority that inspire change not sympathy. Their stories are rich, their pain and challenges with colonization relevant and familiar, their choices and perspectives important to understanding the multiplicity of struggles of Indigenous peoples today as they inch towards a postcolonial reality. While the women=s stories accentuate the anguishing similarity of intrusion of outside religious missionaries and colonial educational attitudes and practices, it is clear from their stories that Indigenous women have been and are significant to the continuity of Indigenous renaissance. The three generations of women in this comparative study unfold their survival, healing, hope, and heart that will sustain them and many generations to come. The fact that it reads like a dissertation project with lengthy interview transcripts of texts is the book=s major weakness, although Weiss aids the reader in understanding the key concepts through her brief summaries of the transcripts. Weiss offers a genuine platform for Indigenous women to share their stories and enables scholars of the Indigenous experience everywhere to benefit from Indigenous people=s experiences and contribute to the Indigenous humanities. This book makes an important contribution to scholars and educators involved with Indigenous people, Native Studies scholars, historians, and anthropologists. (MARIE BATTISTE) Leo Driedger and Shiva S. Halli, editors. Race and Racism: Canada=s Challenge McGillBQueen=s University Press. xii, 328. $65.00 HUMANITIES 161 Since the 1980s, race, class, and gender have enjoyed special status in the North American academia. However, investment in this >unholy trinity= remains uneven. In the United States, the study of >race= has received considerable scholarly attention, as Critical Race Studies, mass media (New York Times) profiles, and countless publications demonstrate. By contrast, race and racism remain taboo subjects in the Canadian academy, where, submerged under a protocol of genteel liberal ignorance, it periodically explodes into the public imagination as a sordid and scandalous >science= (J.P. Rushton). Leo Driedger and Shiva S. Halli=s Race and Racism: Canada=s Challenge, the purpose of which is >to explore the extent to which racial groups thrive in Canada, to document whether economic, political and social racism exists; and to identify the difficulties of coping with racism in urban settings,= is, therefore, a timely study and crucial intervention. To carry out these tasks, Driedger and Halli group the essays in this volume under four broad themes: Concepts and Theories; Economic and Social Factors; Racism and Discrimination; and Minorities Coping in Cities. Concepts and Theories contains four essays. Of these, Sylvia Wargon (>Historical and Political Reflections on Race=) and Monica Boyd, Gustave Goldmann, and Pamela White (>Race in the Canadian Census=) explore official racial categorizations by the Canadian state, while Leo Driedger and Shiva S. Halli (>Racial Integration: Theoretical Options=) and Joseph O=Shea (>Individual Versus Collective Rights in Quebec=) examine desegregation theories and Charles Taylor=s >communitarian vision= of Quebec=s collective rights within Canada. Economic and Social Factors consists of three essays which examine the specific issues of refugee integration, Asian economic adaptation, and employment equity. Of these, perhaps the most compelling is Nancy Higgitt=s >A Model of Refugee Settlement,= an essay which seeks to understand >the process...