Ovide Mercredi's book a portrait of Native peoples

Page 7

REVIEW

In The Rapids

Ovide Mercredi and Mary Ellen Turpel

Viking, 248 pages, hardcover, $25.99

An Elder from Morley, Alta. once had a vision.

Everyone in Canada, Native and non-Native alike, was entering a great rapids. The safest route downstream was unknown to any of the travellers, as were the danger zones. But the journey would have to be made nonetheless.

Ovide Mercredi's new book, In The Rapids, is one man's best guess at the safest route.

Co-authored by Native advocate Mary Ellen Turpel, it's the story of the First Nations peoples, their experiences of history, their spirituality and politics and their relationship with Canada and Canadians. It is about painful experiences of the past and hopes for the future. And it is, at times, an intensely personal look at the Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

In his exposition of the history and folklore of the people of Turtle Island, Mercredi reveals an image of himself and Natives in Canada stranded at a cross-roads.

Behind them, he writes, lie many of the traditional ways of Native life that no longer work in a post-colonial, post-industrial Canada. Ahead of them are varying and uncertain futures as a people with the inherent right to govern themselves but no economic base on which to build.

The book itself is not a complex literary work. Mercredi's writing style is straight-forward, even dry at times. And seasoned Native affairs veterans may see many sections of the book as redundant - more of the same rhetoric about Indians and Ottawa.

But In The Rapids paints a strong and engaging picture of the history of the citizens of the First Nations and their struggle to remain a people. It will undoubtedly reach its target audience - those not familiar with Native affairs and those who have forgotten.