An Open Letter to Ted Chamberlin by Way of Review

Abstract

In open letter format, this review considers how the impassioned, poetic, storytellingl style of If This is Your Land, Where Are your Stories? serves to help persuade readers of the author's position about the centrality of stories to our lives and how they rest on the believe it and not basis of metaphor. It criticizes the book for the paucity of women's voices and registers the initial frustration at the lack of scholarly apparatus. That frustration is replaced by the subsequent recognition of the book being addressed first and foremost to the educated but not necessarily academic reader because of Chamberlin's project of trying to find common ground for groups at odds with one another, usually over land. In the case of First Nations people in Canada and other citizens of the country, Chamberlin looks for common ground by proposing a shift from underlying crown title to underlying Aboriginal title.