Review of Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers by Mark Cronlund Anderson and Carmen L. Robertson

Authors

Timonthy P. Foran, University of Ottawa

Date of this Version

Fall 2012

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 32:4 (Fall 2012).

Comments

Copyright © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

In this intensely provocative book, University of Regina professors Anderson and Robertson contend that newspapers have played a central role in the Canadian colonial project through. their representation of Aboriginal peoples over the past 140 years. Despite having become less overtly racist in tone and terminology since the late nineteenth century, Canadian newspapers have nevertheless persisted in framing Aboriginal peoples within three essentialist tropes: depravity, innate inferiority, and a stubborn resistance to progress. These tropes have fed into the mainstream ideology underpinning colonial practices-the treaty system, residential schools, and ongoing assimilationist efforts-while simultaneously providing a foil against which mainstream Canada has produced positive assessments of itself.