Growing Up Oblivious in Mississippi North

(Paperback)

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An investigative journalist reckons with the cost of settler privilege.

In the last thirty years, various parties have exposed government archives recording the facts of Canada's genocidal attempt to destroy its Indigenous populations, a gradual holocaust of segregation, poverty, coerced labour, avoidable infectious diseases, forced migrations, and even unethical and cruel scientific experiments, all while the descendants of Prairie settlers enticed by the same government to take over Indigenous territories prospered at their expense. While performative statements of gratitude for being allowed to stand on the territories of various First Nations have become standard features of Canadian public events, the statements of claim, academic literature, and multi-volume commission reports setting out exactly what we stole, who we hurt and how, have been read by few, and the policies and decisions which crushed generation after generation of Indigenous people are still not broadly known.

In Growing Up Oblivious in Mississippi North, investigative journalist Elaine Dewar exposes the governmental machinery behind the unacknowledged Jim-Crow era of the Canadian Prairies. The granddaughter of settlers saved during their first Prairie winter by the generosity of their Indigenous neighbors, Dewar explores how even well-meaning Canadians who glimpsed the truth of what was being done by the government of Canada in their names did nothing to stop it. Part memoir, part investigation, Growing Up Oblivious in Mississippi North tells the story of a Jewish girl from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who grew up in a society so segregated-its Indigenous people consigned to an alternate universe-that she failed to notice for decades.

Reviews

Praise for On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years: An Investigation

[Dewar] has spent the pandemic following the politics, the scientific research, the news coverageand the money . . . Her book casts a shadow over the wet market theory and points a finger at the Chinese governmentand at some scientists and leading science journals for their single-minded support and promotion of this theory . . . The book reads almost like a detective novel.
Globe and Mail

Dewar gets us to an acceptable truth about the origin and the travels of this coronavirus, and the significant tardiness and incompetence of governments and science to protect the public.
Winnipeg Free Press

I would highly recommend [On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years] to anyone interested in knowing more about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her very thorough research, based on publicly available documents, shows how China badly managed the initial phase of the pandemic and manipulated the WHO which resulted in an underestimation of the problem and delays in putting in place measures to limit the damages of the pandemic in other countries.
Guy Saint-Jacques, former Canadian Ambassador to the Peoples Republic of China

In this age when reliable news is hidden in a cacophony of mis-information, dis-information, social media idiocy and the caterwauling of celebrity influencers, long-form journalism is coming back into its own. Elaine Dewar uses her formidable reporting skills to produce the story of the moment. The pandemic forced her to follow I.F. Stones dictum to work exclusively from published, public sources, and her story is the stronger for it. This is, of course, a detective story, a whodunnit, and Dewar is unstinting in exposing the cover-ups, the political expediency, the deceits, and the sloppy work and judgements of usually diligent scientists along the route to her conclusions.
Jonathan Manthorpe, author of Restoring Democracy in an Age of Populists and Pestilence

Author Bio

Elaine Dewar-author, journalist, television story editor-has been propelled since childhood by insatiable curiosity and the joy of storytelling. Her journalism has been honored by nine National Magazine awards, including the prestigious President's Medal, and the White Award. Her first book, Cloak of Green, delved into the dark side of environmental politics and became an underground classic. Bones: Discovering the First Americans, an investigation of the science and politics regarding the peopling of the Americas, was a national bestseller and earned a special commendation from the Canadian Archaeological Association. The Second Tree: of Clones, Chimeras, and Quests for Immortality won Canada's premier literary nonfiction prize from the Writers' Trust. Dewar has been called "one of Canada's best muckrakers and "Canada's Rachel Carson." She aspires to be a happy warrior for the public good.