A persistent spirit : towards understanding aboriginal health in British Columbia

Knight ' s oppos i t ion to Native claims will not be immediately apparent to readers, who will instead learn from his preface to the new edition that he is neutral on the subject: "None of the discussion presented in this book is intended to bear upon contemporary Native claims, one way or another. None of it was gathered with that enterprise in mind and none of it is intended for such use" (xii). He writes that his revisions are "trivial," laced with "a degree of irreverence," limited to modifications of "certain passages" and the occasional addition of "new information," "but basically that account remains as originally wr i t t en" (xi) . Never the less , the au thor ' s sharp op in ions and his discussions of bo th old and new research on Native studies are tucked into the text and endnotes of every chapter. He criticizes or trivializes the work of scholars such as Wayne Suttles, who have been influential in p r o m o t i n g Nat ive people in the courts, and boosts the expertise of researchers such as Duncan Stacey, who work on behalf of the Crown against Native interests. By the final pages of the new edition of Indians at Work, Knight's opposition to Native title and self-government becomes a rant against the "Native Agenda" of e thn ic -based claims, which he attributes to the recent emergence of a Native middle class and non-Indians who support that agenda (326-28). The histories of Aboriginal work considered in this review reinforce my impression that it is impossible to discuss meaningfully Native economic and labour history without raising the issue of Aboriginal title. The landmark ru l ing on Abor ig ina l t i t le handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia in December 1997 places the Aboriginal peoples of Canada in the strongest position ever to claim ownership and use of their ancestoral lands. Tradition holds that the significance of this Canadian ruling will also be felt in Australia.