Tracing Ochre is a collection of essays delving into the history, culture and supposed disappearance of the Beothuk, a people indigenous to Newfoundland. Driven to relative cultural extinction thanks to colonialism, new perspectives are breathing life back into stagnant ways of thinking regarding this supposedly 'lost’ tribe. The interconnection between the Beothuk, neighboring tribes, and the environment and very landscape itself are finally being acknowledged. There are several sections, each with essays by both native and non-native contributors.

Part One, ‘Language, Land, and Memory'
Favourite essay- ‘Thinking About the Beothuk through Translation’: An essay all about linguistics, and how different languages, and thus cultures, have different ways of perceiving things. In this case, how the Innu, and Innu-aiman consider the Beothuk as still extant because they and related groups are all considered part of Innu. I think this is very important. An outside culture shouldn't have the audacity to say an indigenous people are extinct when indigenous people disagree.

Part Two, ‘Mercenaries, Myths, and DNA’
Favourite essay- 'Bioarchaeology, Bioethics, and the Beothuk’: An essay about pros and cons of repatriation of Beothuk remains, and artifacts. This is a moral and ethical dilemma that really speaks to my heart. I see the value in both sides. The anthropologist in me wants to delve into the science, trace the ancestry, but the empath in me strongly agrees with repatriation. C'mon… how would you feel if someone dug up your grandmum 'for science’, feeling they were entitled. No, buddy. Be a decent human being. Don't be an ass. I also don't think white people need to discount how indigenous peoples consider kinship to the Beothuk. If the Mik'maq and Innu say they are related, then don't argue otherwise.

Part Three, ‘Ways of Knowing’
Favourite essay- ‘Historical Narrative Perspective in Howley and Speck’: This essay compares two early works regarding the Beothuk. Howley's work, The Beothucks or Red Indians, is written by a person more invested in preserving settler prejudices, whereas Speck's Beothuk and Micmac is written by a person with an ethnographer background, more willing to listen to the Native accounts, especially of the Mik'maq account that the Beothuk didn't 'go extinct’, but assimilated into friendly neighboring groups. It is noted that, where Native accounts differed from colonial accounts regarding events, Howley would change or omit things to fit with colonial views. Yet, it is his fallacious account that has remained the more popular one among lay folk since inception, and up to present day. Pathetic, actually, yet unsurprising.

Part Four, 'Travelling Tales’
Favourite essay- 'Unrecognised Peoples and Concepts of Extinction’: This essay looks at European concepts of what it means to be indigenous, and notions of ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’, which European Interlopers and Invaders (let's call them what they were…) used to justify pushing aside indigenous peoples of the Americas, and Australia, or worse, using them as slaves, or waging genocidal campaigns to drive groups to extinction. Or just declaring them extinct based on them not wishing to live on reserves of inhospitable or incompatible land. Also looks at how things are slowly being redressed.

I appreciated the notion, threaded throughout, that perceptions of history vary depending upon the group doing the remembering. This book is a testament to the fact that history is not written by the victors alone, that it should properly be seen as a blend between multiple perspectives. That is the only way to get a more accurate picture of the actuality. The 'good’ must always be put in its proper context with the 'bad’. Before reading this anthology, I was completely unfamiliar with the Beothuk.

It was so sad to read (yet again) about the ravages of colonialism, and the relative extinction of a culture, if not a people. I cannot help but be disgusted by the degradations one group of humans can visit upon another in the name of supposed 'superiority’. (Nor can I help but wonder how much better off our world might be today if these decimated cultures had been the dominant ones instead, if the rapaciousness of colonialism had been held in check by those with a better concept of harmony with the land. Mayhaps the inevitable industrialisation would have been tempered with a greater respect for the natural resources being used and a greater understanding of the interconnection between all things, and we would not have the environmental problems we have today). This book spoke deeply to the culturalist in me. It also reiterated what I already knew, and utterly loathe. The bulk of my ancestors (those who came from Europe) were, in fact, a##holes.

If I still taught, Tracing Ochre would most certainly find a place in my upper level cultural studies classes, and will be a great asset for classes focused on North American archaeology & anthropology, and history classes with a focus on the eras of colonisation.

***Many thanks to Netgalley and the University of Toronto Press for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.