A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Throughout her collection of essays, Elliott oscillates between her personal experiences and the broader context they fit within, most often as part of the history of violence perpetrated against Indigenous people by the nation-state. Ranging from descriptions of the original colonists’ contempt and murder of Native peoples to present-day Canada’s duplicitous politics, Elliott unfurls a personal, historical, and societal narrative of how Indigenous peoples have been and continue to be profited off of by the nation at the expense of their lands, children, and overall wellbeing. In particular, she cites the greed of the Western capitalist mindset in fueling colonialism, and the “extraction mindset” this brings about, pursuing profit at all costs.

Elliott equates the justification Canadians use to continue ignoring and perpetuating the oppression of Indigenous peoples to a fairytale that non-Indigenous Canadians tell themselves to keep their internal feelings of being part of a “good” nation alive. When describing critiques of Indigenous authors’ writing, she expresses that they “aren’t really about Native authors or their work. They’re about keeping narratives consistent. [...] [T]hey want to see antiquated stereotypes staring back at them because that is the fairy tale upon which Canada’s existence depends” (276).