Insatiable Hunger Colonial Stories in Context Joseph W. Graham
Available Autumn 2021
To pre-order, send an email to blackrose@ballyhoo.ca |
Publisher's Abstract The European Wars of Religion of the 16th Century set the stage for a mass migration to a New World that was not so new to its Indigenous peoples. Insatiable Hunger compares and contrasts European historical accounts and Indigenous stories of Contact in order to illustrate the wide cultural chasm that separated the two civilizations. The scale of the mutual incomprehension--and its unbalanced consequences--experienced by both settlers and Indigenous people is the subject of Joseph Graham’s historical exposition. Insatiable Hunger is about the boiling over of ‘religious’ differences in Europe and the desperate need Europeans had to escape, carrying their wars along with them, to protect their models of religion and freedom. It is about religiously-obsessed Europeans pouring onto the continent, uncomprehendingly consuming everything in their path. It is about the attempts Indigenous peoples made to reason with the hungry newcomers. Tracing events from Jacques Cartier’s first visits in the 16th century to the war of 1812, Insatiable Hunger delves back to examine the root causes of the mutual incomprehension in the foundational stories of two very different civilizations. It describes stable Indigenous communities’ collapse in the face of disease and their incapacity to understand the Christian inability to share. Now that descendants of European Settlers are confronting the accepted historical narratives of Contact, Insatiable Hunger comes as an important primer for anyone seeking to expand their understanding of an event that continues to have repercussions today. Finally, Insatiable Hunger points us to pathways of understanding that remain elusive in our property-driven civilization. It presents an appeal to listen to how our society could be returned to a state of balance. Joseph Graham is a self-taught historian who homesteads an organic farm near Mont-Tremblant, Quebec. He is the author of Naming the Laurentians (Main Street), and founded two heritage- protection committees while working to bridge divides in the community. |