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Daniel N. Paul

- Author/Journalist

Recommends:

Stolen Continents by Ronald Wright

Penguin Books-1992

Stolen Continents describes in intimate detail some of the most horrific incidences of genocide committed by Europeans in the Americas against Native Americans during the various stages of their invasion of the two continents, and their consequent theft of them. In fact, it reveals man's inhumanity to man as does no other book about genocide that I've ever read. And, I might add, I've read a lot of them, including the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The reason I recommend it, especially for the Native American reader, is that it dares to tell the facts as they unraveled. Wright points the finger of blame for the barbarities committed in the Americas by their officials at all of the major European powers of the day-Spain, England, Portugal, etc.-sparing none. While reading many of the histories of American First Nations, I've often run across the peculiarity of the oppressed defending their oppressors. This has instilled in me a deep belief that there is an urgent need for us to learn the true facts about the European invasion of our lands. I believe that by the time such individuals finish reading Stolen Continents their urge to defend the indefensible will have vanished.

Bonita Lawrence

-Professor,

Queen's University

Recommends:

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

Penguin-1991

While this book has been around for a little while, it is so powerful that it remains my all-time favorite. The dozens of interrelated characters skip back and forth within 500 years of history in the United States and Mexico.

It is dazzling, bewildering and shocking in different degrees. Its power lies not only in the starkness of its vision and skillful observation of gender and race, but in its fundamental premise that nothing European in the Americas can survive; that the land will inevitably- no matter how long it takes-revert to Indigenous control.

Silko draws on traditional Laguna prophecies and combines them with a devastatingly realistic look at the corruption at the heart of modern America and the violent suppression of Indigenous peoples throughout Latin America. What results is a book that is unsparing in its clarity about the present world while generating a powerful sense of hope for the future.

Silko's characters are riveting. They include a clan of displaced Mexican Indians in Tucson who utilize their knowledge of the desert to survive drug-dealing and arms smuggling; a group of young Mayan children who flee north 50 years after Cortez and carry the Almanac that contains the sum of all of the wisdom of their destroyed people; a group of contemporary Native people who organize a people's army in Chiapas; the Mestizos who seek power and position in the "Eurotrash Oligarchies" of various Latin American regimes; white elites who use sexuality to dominate and torture; and traditional people whose powers are great enough to destroy modern technology.

This novel, which rushes towards a powerful conclusion, cannot be read without it changing the reader in a profound way.