Fragile Settlements: Aboriginal Peoples, Law, and Resistance in South-West Australia and Prairie Canada by Amanda Nettelbeck, Russell Smandych, Louis A. Knafla and Robert Foster (Book Review)

In the early twentieth century, Canada was viewed in national settler narratives as a place of ‘gentle occupation’; likewise, Australia was deemed the ‘quiet continent’, a country that had been ‘settled but not invaded’. Both were cast triumphantly as homogenous ‘whiteman’s lands’. Canada and Australia share deep genealogies and long legacies of settler colonialism and, thanks largely to persistent indigenous political activism, a present and urgent requirement to face historical injustices. Over the last two decades, both Canada and Australia have moved towards various programs for national reconciliation and redress and, more recently, national apologies to indigenous peoples.