Response

able to take television, a powerful carrier of commodity culture, and partially remake it to reflect Inuitexperience and inuit ways of seeing. The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation uses the television to strengthen aspects of Inuit culture." (64) To the average reader this counts as a significant form of resistance to hegemony tum the tools against the masters. Kulchyski could have argued that the me represents a further assimilation of Inuit peoples into the dominant society because the funding for programming (in recent years and reaction to the political gains of the Inuit Tapirisat) has always been controlled from Ottawa. More to the point, four or five hours of television per week in the dominant Inuit dialect can hardly match the thousand of "dominant society" hours, as it were, that come on before and after the me broadcasts. Perhaps the hegemony and the totalization have been expressed best by ChiefGordon Peters ofthe Pikangikum Reserve when, in reaction to the mounting suicide crisis in Nishnawbe communities, he advised everyone to justtum offthe televisionitself . Itis the addictive quality ofthe television that is hegemonic and totalizing. Another problem I found in the section on resistance was where Kulchyski makes the misleading generalist assumption that aboriginal organizations "represent" the interests of their constituents, a very Eurocentric assumption to say the least. That these organizations are suffering from "identity crises" is an understatement, but Kulchyski's "top ten" list of these organizations and their abbreviated mandates leads the average leader down the theoretical path that states that resistance to hegemonic power comes in the form of some enlightened mimicry. Could it be that the "representation" of Aboriginal peoples, whether through Indian Act elections or Robert's Rules of Order, is disintegrating and losing its elitist pretensions because it is based on a bad (Eurocentric) theoretical map? At times, Kulchyski's discourse sounds more like a well-travelled history lesson than a discussion of theoretical options. Where are the aboriginal voices in all this? In his brief discussion of land claims and self-government, Kulchyski is clear 138 and concise about the impact that the process of negotiation has had on Aboriginal peoples. The assimilation of aboriginal leadership into the complex world of land claims negotiations is itself one of the most horrendous acts of successive Crown governments in Canada. The framing of the negotiations is a very good example of an imposed theoretical map, complete with extinguishment, and the creation of what Kulchyski correctly identifies - each "successful" First Nation a new "Indigenous capital accumulation centre." (66) In conclusion, Professor Kulchyski's article familiarizes the reader with a partial list of the substantive issues on the negotiating table which stands between EuroCanadian and Aboriginal peoples. However, if he wants to begin a new dialogue in earnest he should heed Jacques Derrida's advice and avoid the well-travelled theoretical map of the hegemony of specific analytical paradigms. We do not need "new theoretical language" and a "new conceptual approach." What we need is to listen very carefully to whataboriginal peoples are saying to us about land and spirit and about what we look and sound like to them. We must challenge all of our foundations, everything from technological advances and theoretical maps to the ideas ofanalytical problem-solving and history . D. A.WEST Department ofPolitical Science l.Akehead University Response D.A. West raises a variety of interesting and importantissues with regard to my article on "Aboriginal Peoples and Hegemony in Canada." His critique stems from a substantially different perspective than my own, and I cannot resist the opportunity of delivering a short response in the interest of exploring our differences. What follows focuses on what I see as the more "deepstructural " points at issue between myself Revue d'etudes canadiennes and West, in particular his comments about my brief section on the issue of resistance. In spite of our differences, I very much appreciate West's engagement with my work and certainly recognize the validity of the position he articulates. West disagrees with my assertion that the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation takes "television, a powerful carrier of commodity culture, and partially remake[s] it to reflect Inuit experience and Inuit ways of seeing," an example I first developed...