In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics - the politics of ethnocide - played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of aboriginal people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald's 'National Dream.' It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between First Nations and non-Native populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day. 'Clearing the Plains' is a tour de force that dismantles and destroys the view that Canada has a special claim to humanity in its treatment of indigenous peoples.
