Eatenonha
Native Roots of Modern Democracy
An exploration of the historical and future significance of Canada's Native soul.
Eatenonha is the Wendat word for love and respect for the Earth and Mother Nature. For many Native peoples and newcomers to North America, Canada is a motherland, an Eatenonha - a land in which all can and should feel included, valued, and celebrated.
In Eatenonha Georges Sioui presents the history of a group of Wendat known as the Seawi Clan and reveals the deepest, most honoured secrets possessed by his people, by all people who are Indigenous, and by those who understand and respect Indigenous ways of thinking and living. Providing a glimpse into the lives, ideology, and work of his family and ancestors, Sioui weaves a tale of the Wendat's sparsely documented historical trajectory and his family's experiences on a reserve. Through an original retelling of the Indigenous commercial and social networks that existed in the northeast before European contact, the author explains that the Wendat Confederacy was at the geopolitical centre of a commonwealth based on peace, trade, and reciprocity. This network, he argues, was a true democracy, where all beings of all natures were equally valued and respected and where women kept their place at the centre of their families and communities.
Identifying Canada's first civilizations as the originators of modern democracy, Eatenonha represents a continuing quest to heal and educate all peoples through an Indigenous way of comprehending life and the world.
"Contributing to the field of autoethnography, Sioui takes his, and his family's, life stories to be revealing of the much broader struggles in modern politics to recapture the more authentic and democratic governance of Indigenous communities, in particular, the Wendat. The strength of the book lies in the relevance of these personal anecdotes. Insofar as they illuminate aspects of modern and traditional politics that are better presented by example than by argument, the book succeeds. [Sioui's] stories of unflinching dedication to duty and righteousness deserve to be told and to be listened to attentively. These accounts of extraordinary ordinariness keep autoethnography from the deadly sin of banality that can easily stem from an exaggerated sense of the worth of the "auto."" Canadian Historical Review
"Eatenonha is a unique interweaving of self, family, First Nation, and Indigenous peoples of the Americas and elsewhere." John Steckley, Humber College
- Winner, Choice Outstanding Academic Title, Association of College and Research Libraries 2020