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Title: First Nations? Second Thoughts by Tom Flanagan, Thomas Flanagan ISBN: 0-7735-2064-3 Publisher: McGill-Queens University Press Pub. Date: June, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $75.00

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Average Customer Rating: 3.4 (5 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Problem
Comment: Flanagan's book is a magisterial, comprehensive analysis of the problems besetting Canada's archipelago of aboriginal communities, its "First Nations."

Each chapter begins with a brief etymology of key words that we, in Canada, have heard many times in this on-going, highly-emotional debate. Flanagan answers comprehensively: Is the word "civilization" really a meaningless, relative term? The word "nation" did not mean even 25 years ago to natives what it does now. Are they really "nations" or is it just a more compelling, useful word than "band"? Why does the word "sovereignty" mean something different -- and more dangerous -- in Canada than in the U.S.? There is much more.

I was raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, a city with a large aboriginal population. The despair and difficulty faced by these people is troubling to everyone living there; an almost daily problem. Are the solutions offered by Canada's massive bureaucracy really going to help? Or will the good intentions of Indian Affairs only make the problem worse?

Flanagan puts his finger -- compassionately -- on how the failed solutions of well-meaning leftist elites, and the aggressive campaigning of many who claim to represent natives, have missed the point. He commits the unpardonable sin of making irrefutable, thoroughly rational arguments against the present "solutions," earning him ad hominem attacks by those who cherish liberalism...even as it is consigning itself to the ash-heap of history, and exacerbating the sufferings of those it means to help.

Rating: 4
Summary: Different but Interesting
Comment: "First Nations Second Thoughts" provides a different but interesting critique of the contemporary aboriginal rights movement in Canada. Taking issue with the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples author Tom Flanagan maintains that what he calls the "aboriginal orthodoxy" (aboriginal leaders, non-aboriginal politicians, among others) have misled ordinary aboriginal people. By patronizing their traditional cultures and trying to find constitutional means to perhaps fossilize them aboriginal peoples, at the same time, are given sweet words but no improvements to their daily lives. Flanagan challenges assumptions that aboriginal peoples ,collectively prefer their traditional ways and consequent isolation to integration into modern Western society. His discussion is interesting except that he tends to set his own premises concerning the "aboriginal orthodoxy" rather than commenting on statements made by real people involved. He also neglects aboriginal values such as co-operation and consensus which have much to offer modern Western society. Nevertheless I reccommend "First Nations Second Thoughts as a perspective to those who have doubts about the aboriginal rights movement and as a challenge to those who defend it.

Rating: 1
Summary: Tanya Wasacase
Comment: When"dissecting the prevailing orthodoxy" on Aboriginal Peoples of North America, now called Canada, "First Nations? Second Thoughts" seems to be coming from a position that inevitably presents the pre-established "rational" determination of: a) how much (or how little) should be allowed to be considered contestable at all; b) from what point of view, and c) to which end in mind. Nowhere in the book did I come across the issues of "exploitation", "imperialism", "indoctrination" and most importantly "genocide". This is because Flanagan states that "moral issues are irrelavent". How convenient! Once such moral issues such as the concepts of "imperialism", "indoctrination" and "genocide" are expelled from any serious discussion of the relationship between Canada (Western capitalist society)and Aborigianl Peoples, Flanagan of self-complacement ideological consensus can go around in circles and successfully deduce from his assumed categorial matrix whatever suits the convenience of the ruling order and its hidden ideology. Understandably, the book has a great positional advantage in stipulating what may or may not be considered legitimate criteria (such as what constitutes a "civil society") since the ruling ideology that the book supports effectively controls the cultural and political institutions of society. Thus, the book can misuse and abuse language quite openly (as it certainly does throughout the book), in that the danger of being publicly exposed is negligible.

"First Nations? Second Thoughts" openly and defiantly assumes a highly partisan ideological position towards everything. Despite the author's confident anticipations of a happy solution to the problems and difficulties facing Aboriginal Peoples, his overall conception can lead us absolutely nowhere. For Flanagan offers the most rigid and dogmatic separation of material/productive advancement (the solution of "assimilation" in his terminology, and the betterment of the conditions of Aboriginal People's existence in all respects, in accordance with the potentialities of consciously adopted objectives. He describes how Aboriginal people will remain poor and dependent, and marginalized on reserves if they do not escape from their social pathologies. However, he forgot to give credit where it is due; indigenous and colonial exploitation, and the conditions that are caused by Canada's genocidal actions toward Aboriginal Peoples. Flanagan mystifies his readers by deliberately conflating (and confusing) Aboriginal issues with profit (the real operative term beneath his diversionary phraseology). He is convinced (or rather, he wants to convince us) that the problems of aboriginal orthodoxy are aboriginal self-government problems such as Aboriginal self-government are not accountable to the people over whom they preside. Solution: the federal government divide up the cash grants to all status Indians, and then each man, woman, and child receive a little over $10,000 a year. Flanagan insists that the "humble but competent" federal government recommended by him are destined to lead us out of "the tunnel of economic necessity" to our own "destination of economic bliss", provided that we unconditionally entrust ourselves to them. Unfortunately, this economic solution is not viable. The reason why this is so is that the "economic problem" of which Flanagan speaks is in reality not at all that of self-government accountability - which in his view is bound to be automatically eliminated in due course by the blissful "accumulation of wealth" - but a profoundly social (or socioeconomic) problem; systematic domination. For no amount of accumulated wealth, assimilation, or integration or whatever you want to call it can do as much as even to BEGIN to remove the paralyzing contraints of the now imposed socioeconomic determination that is recylced back into the government's pockets, as well as of other varieties of wasteful wealth-dissipation, instead of satisfying human need (including Canadians). Flanagan does not provide the TRUTHFUL reflection of the social world, rather he supplies a PLAUSIBLE account on the basis of which one should be able to project the STABILITY of the given order.

The overall claims that are put forth by Flanagan has an additional advantage in that he can quite arbitrarily choose the terms of his definitional assumptions in such a way that he should be able to be "economical with the truth", more or less as he pleases. He tries to justify his choices in the name of "convenience". However, on closer inspection it turns out that the definitional, theoretical, and rationality of concepts are not grounded on objectivite criteria but merely on his own ideological convenience. Ideologically determined selectivity and arbitrariness can thus rule supreme in the Flanagan "ideal typical" conceptual framework, misrepresenting itself as the paradigm of rationality. Since the definitional assumptions throughout his book (i.e "civil society") are simply enunciated, people are expected to take them for granted and treat them as the absolute standard of "rational" analysis. That something might be substantively wrong with the proclaimed criteria of such "typologically scientific analysis" and its assumed terms of evaluation.