{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.019692307692307693, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0024615384615384616, 'mean_word_length': 5.022222222222222, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West by Sarah Carter (review)

This is a sophisticated telling. The authors Bussidor being one of the relocatees have not created victims or villains. The contributions of Dene and others, in both acts of destruction and creative resistance, are duly noted. Nor is the final solution the Dene-led relocation back to the land and Tadoule Lake presented as .a panacea. The ongoing problems of solvent abuse and alcoholism in a new location are acknowledged. The story is insightful and brilliantly told, using both oral and written testimony. The text raises important questions. Why were the Sayisi Dene relocated? Although the fur trade had never recovered from its precipitous decline in the late 1940s, the Sayisi Dene had managed to maintain a culture documented by the authors based on subsistence hunting. It appears that the concerns of the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) with preserving the Barren Ground caribou as well as racist assumptions about Dene hunting practices played a significant role. Whether these herds were in decline is highly debatable. An intimate history may reveal that CWS claims had more to do with generating federal funds for research than it did with realities facing the Sayisi or the caribou herds on which they depended. Night Spirits serves its readers well. It is essential reading for historians, social and community development workers, planners, anthropologists, and anyone in need of convincing that, for Aboriginal people, the personal is truly political. FRANK JAMES TESTER University of British Columbia