Cockburn to Indians: get over it!

[Rakesh Bhandari]

While we debate about whether  to see "Indians" as holocaust victims or
savvy casino survivors, may I mention a book reviewed in the latest
issue of International Labor and Working Class History--Native Americans
and Wage Labor (ed. and publisher escape me). The review noted that the
contributors examined both how Indians have historically used wage labor
strategically as a source of income to maintain cultural integrity and how
they have been done in by wage labor as, once dependent on it, the mining
industry in which many were heavily involved was automated. The question
of how indian conceptions of work were turned upside down by entry into
wage  labor--mining and agriculture in particular--also seems to be a very
important and profound one. As for this nexus of questions, I have not
found Churchill very illuminating at all, though with Winona LaDuke he did
write an important report on what they termed radioactive colonialism,
that is, the conditions of native american labor in uranium mining. This
report was in a South End Press book. The Question of Native North America
(I think).

best, rakesh 

ps. I did a very bad job of summarizing Godelier's analysis of kinship
systems and the incest taboo. For those interested, his latest book is out
from the Smithsonian Institute--Transformations of Kinship. It begins with
a very interesting summary of Morgan's research into "Indian" kinship
systems.