“The most we can hope for is that we are paraphrased correctly.” In this statement, Lenore Keeshig-Tobias underscores one of the main issues in the representation of Aboriginal peoples by non-Aboriginals. Non-Aboriginal people often fail to understand the sheer diversity, multiplicity, and shifting identities of Aboriginal people. As a result, Aboriginal people are often taken out of their own contexts.
Walking a Tightrope plays an important role in the dynamic historical process of ongoing change in the representation of Aboriginal peoples. It locates and examines the multiplicity and distinctiveness of Aboriginal voices and their representations, both as they portray themselves and as others have characterized them. In addition to exploring perspectives and approaches to the representation of Aboriginal peoples, it also looks at Native notions of time (history), land, cultures, identities, and literacies. Until these are understood by non-Aboriginals, Aboriginal people will continue to be misrepresented—both as individuals and as groups.
By acknowledging the complex and unique legal and historical status of Aboriginal peoples, we can begin to understand the culture of Native peoples in North America. Until then, given the strength of stereotypes, Native people have come to expect no better representation than a paraphrase.

Ute Lischke teaches German literature, film studies and cultural perspectives at Wilfrid Laurier University where she is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies. Lischke is the author of Lily Braun, 1865-1916 German Writer, Feminist, Socialist (2000). Her most recent books, edited with David T. McNab, include Blockades and Resistance: Studies in Actions of Peace and the Temagami Blockades of 1988-89 (2003), Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and their Representations (2005), and The Long Journey of a Forgotten People: M?tis Identities and Family Histories, (2007) all with WLU Press.

David T. McNab is a M?tis historian who has worked for three decades on Aboriginal land and treaty rights issues in Canada. McNab teaches in the School of Arts and Letters in the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University in Toronto where he is Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies. He has also been a claims advisor for Nin.Da.Waab.Jig., Walpole Island Heritage Center, Bkejwanong First Nations since 1992. In addition to more than seventy articles, McNab has published Earth, Water, Air and Fire: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory (editor) (1998) and Circles of Time: Aboriginal Land Rights and Resistance in Ontario (1999) as well as the co-edited (with Ute Lischke) Blockades and Resistance: Studies in Actions of Peace and the Temagami Blockades of 1988-89 (2003), Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and their Representations (2005), The Long Journey of a Forgotten People: M?tis Identities and Family Histories, (2007) all with WLU Press.

Ute Lischke's profile page

David T. McNab is a M?tis historian who has worked for three decades on Aboriginal land and treaty rights issues in Canada. McNab teaches in the School of Arts and Letters in the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University in Toronto where he is Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies. He has also been a claims advisor for Nin.Da.Waab.Jig., Walpole Island Heritage Center, Bkejwanong First Nations since 1992. In addition to more than seventy articles, McNab has published Earth, Water, Air and Fire: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory (editor) (1998) and Circles of Time: Aboriginal Land Rights and Resistance in Ontario (1999) as well as the co-edited (with Ute Lischke) Blockades and Resistance: Studies in Actions of Peace and the Temagami Blockades of 1988-89 (2003), Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and their Representations (2005), and The Long Journey of a Forgotten People: M?tis Identities and Family Histories, (2007) all with WLU Press.

David T. McNab's profile page

Much of the material cogently reinforces central themes, one of which is that stereotypes, either negative or positive, often say more about the propagators of the stereotype than about the Aboriginal peoples and societies that are respresented. Another central theme is the role that non-Aboriginal respresentation of Aboriginal peoples has had in shaping the identities of Aboriginal people. This is a work that can be recommended for a general readership as well as for students of history, anthropology, and Aboriginal studies. A variety of perspectives, topics, and cultures are discussed in a way that aids understanding of the centuries of mirepresentation, and lack of appreciation, of the complexity and diversity of the indigenous cultures of Canada.

Canadian Book Review Annual, 2006, 2007 February

Timely in its appearance, Walking a Tightrope brings together a diverse collection of material on representations of Aboriginal peoples; some produced by Aboriginal people and scholars, others by non-Aboriginal academics.... [T]he remarkable breadth of the collection is unmistakable.

H-Net Reviews, 2008 June

Walking a Tightrope constitutes a remarkably unified presentation for a book of readings.

Canadian Ethnic Studies, Vol. 39, number 5, 1 and 2, 2008 December