This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States. By Andrew Woolford

Abstract

This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States . Indigenous Education Series. By Andrew Woolford. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. xv + 432 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $90.00.) One of Andrew Woolford’s vital contributions in this work is his convincing argument that the distinction between cultural genocide and biological genocide is unsustainable. If genocide is the conscious destruction of a group, then, Woolford argues, taking culture seriously as a group marker means acknowledging that destruction of existing culture, as well as the ability to create new culture, means the death of a group just as readily as the physical death of all of its members. In short, forced assimilation is genocide. This assertion is particularly helpful in the context of … johnrgram{at}missouristate.edu