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No wannabe pretentions in new Brody work
Joan Taillon,
Windspeaker Staff WriterThe Other Side of Eden-
Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World
By Hugh Brody
Douglas & McIntyre
374 pages
$35.00 (hc)The Other Side of Eden-Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World may be unique among stories set in the High Arctic.
Hugh Brody, a writer, anthropologist, university teacher and filmmaker, has produced a book that the publishers describe as "part memoir, part adventure story, part intellectual voyage."
That is accurate-it is all of these things.
But it is something more. The author is as mainstream white guy as they come, right down to every last one of his establishment connections, yet he managed to spend time in an assortment of isolated Native communities, sop up their way of life like jackrabbit stew, and come out-as far as I can tell by this book-still knowing he is a white guy and that's OK.
A highly intellectual and adaptable man of Jewish heritage, Brody has lived among the northern peoples of British Columbia on one coast, Labrador on the other, Rankin Inlet in between, learned a substantial Inuktitut vocabulary and immersed himself enough in the Inuk culture that he seems to have gained a familial acceptance in at least one place. Some other visitors in those circumstances have either become Native wannabes or think they're already there, or come out full of insight into how to solve Native problems. Some lose sight of the difference between being a supporter of Native causes and a crusader who believes he can speak for Natives.
You wouldn't expect Brody either to glorify the ways of life he encountered or understate the problems, and he does neither in this book. He respectfully avoids making certain observations where he could have done that would have translated as value judgements-good or bad-and that would have undermined the trust he earned and his objectivity.
That's it: this book is a subjective account that remarkably avoids imposing Brody's opinions. At the same time the opinions are there and they are interesting reading.
It's Brody's life, his trip. While the purpose of his book is to contrast the lives of hunter-gatherers and agricultural peoples, the reader can share Brody's experiences, his reveries about the importance of language, his research, without feeling compelled towards dogmatic interpretation.
Allowing that this is a journal of sorts, the chapter on Creation, replete with Hebrew letters and phrases, was a bit of a jolt. What did this have to do with Aboriginal people, you might ask? Well, he is not telling an Aboriginal story, he is telling his own. That involves, for Brody, putting the biblical creation myth at the centre of his agriculturist slant on the tale.
"The truth of Genesis," according to Brody, is that it "lies in the profound and disturbing insights it offers in to the heart of the society and economy that come with-and descend from-agriculture. Farming has shaped much of the world-its heritage, nations and cultures."
Later he talks about how Indigenous agricultural practices, settler farming and hunter-gatherer adaptations to a rooted way of life met, struggled, and accommodated or defeated each other.
"The evidence of language," Brody decided, "argues that the farmers overwhelmed the hunters. But this does not mean that farmers were not also hunters or that the hunters, before being overwhelmed, did not attempt some farming."
He sets out a thoughtful analysis of the knowledge, intuition, languages, spirituality and other attributes of the two societies and their effect on shaping North America during the past 500 years. He says we not only still need both societies, but we all can experience the need for both societies.
"Without the hunter-gatherers, Brody warns us, humanity is diminished and cursed; with them, we can achieve a more complete version of ourselves."
Anyone who knows a hunter-gatherer or comes from a community that is maintaining the fragments of that way of life, will agree that hunter-gatherers have their own story and their words must be saved.
