"The Curious History of "The Inconvenient Indian"" Topic

"WHEN LITERARY AGENT Jackie Kaiser began shopping Thomas King's 13th book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America to editors at American publishing houses, she received 31 rejections before she at last found a home for the book at the University of Minnesota Press, which is publishing the American edition of the book this month. No surprise there, right? These are tough times in publishing, and a book offering a sprawling journey through the centuries of injustices perpetrated by white people against North American Indians hardly screams can't-miss bestseller.

Except that north of the border the very same book has, in fact, dominated bestseller lists across Canada ever since its publication in November 2012. The book sold more than 20,000 copies in hardcover, and within weeks of going into paperback, its publisher Doubleday Canada had already printed 25,000 copies. "For Canada, that is amazing," says Lynn Henry, King's editor at Doubleday Canada. "Since we have one-tenth of the population of the US, we usually just add another zero to compare — i.e., a book that sells 25,000 here would be comparable to a book that sells 250,000 in the US."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

'… it simply makes it easier for those who wish to 'develop'* the land to divide and conquer.' This is the deliberate design behind the policy, no doubt.

The situation here in Australia is probably somewhere between the Canadian and US positions: indigenous rights and issues are often in the news and on TV, children are educated in school about historic abuses, politicians in the 'major' parties do their best to sideline Aboriginal interests in favour of those of corporations, but books on frontier race relations sell only to a niche, intellectual readership.

*My punctuation.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand