Made my deadline. The Haida Gwaii Lesson, draft one, is now in the skilled hands of it's gifted editor Jennifer Sahn, who brought me and the book into Inkshares. Jennifer and I have produced many works together. I write them, she makes them sing. She is one of the few editors I have worked with in my fifty writing career who I ever care to set eyes on again.
It took me about a year to research and write about the five centuries that colonialism took to destroy a few thousand Indigenous cultures around the world. It should take much less time for those communities to recover what they’ve lost. Many of them are working hard on that. Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul calls it a “comeback.”
The success of the Haida and other Canadian First Nations’ land claims have inspired aboriginal peoples throughout the Americas and beyond. Hopefully this strategic playbook will soon be in print, in many languages, and will smooth the path to sovereignty and land title for millions of people around the world.
Thank you once again for your support.
