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We Are All Treaty People Prairie Essays Roger Epp In his collection of Prairie essays—some of them profoundly personal, some poetic, some political—Roger Epp considers what it means to dwell attentively and responsibly in the rural West. He makes the provocative claim that Aboriginal and settler alike are "Treaty people"; he retells inherited family stories in that light; he reclaims the rural as a site of radical politics; and he thinks alongside contemporary farm people whose livelihoods and communities are now under intense economic and cultural pressure. We Are All Treaty People invites those who feel the pull of a prairie heritage to rediscover the poetry surging through the landscapes of the rural West, among its people and their political economy. ISBN:  978-0-88864-506-7 Price:  CND$ 26.95, USD$ 26.95, £ 14.95 Discount:  Trade Subject:  Literary Non-fiction/Rural West/Political Economy Publication Date:  December 2008 Reviews "The book provides a new reflective approach to Western “identity,” arguing that in the end all Westerners, particularly those in rural Alberta, become “indigenous” and all that that implies. Roger Epp, the dean of Augustana College of the University of Alberta, sees the people of the West, regardless of origin, as one—all linked through the land. Each of the ten chapters is a unique essay, rooted in memories, driven by connections to the environment. To Epp, an environmentalist, it is a landscape we have all shared in the past and will continue to share in the future. The first two chapters deal with the Mennonite prairie experience of his extended family in Saskatchewan, Oklahoma, and Alberta, from their first immigration at the turn of the century through their often tentative involvement in prairie protest, and then to today. The whole book is, in fact, a very personal engagement with his landscape and being a rural Western Canadian by choice. Chapter 7, “We are All Treaty People,” deals with a scholarly reflection on the legal and philosophical perspectives and his very personal view of the treaties based on his sharing of the land with its indigenous peoples. He leads us through his own awareness of the very real occupation of lands that his grandparents considered theirs, but which he now realizes was always very much a part of the Aboriginal community—their landscape and life. And so it goes. Epp reduces the complex intellectual to a subtle reality. His chapter on his own institution, Augustana University College, now a college of the University of Alberta, is particularly insightful. He is aware that to be rural is to be considered “less sophisticated,” to be at the periphery of learning, and to be at the periphery of “real society.” He argues that universities are an urban “organized assault on parochialism” on rural students, which will ultimate destroy rather then encourage their “critical appreciation” of the world they know. Epp’s careful and reflective assessment of rural Alberta, its landscape, its society, and its heritage is a must-read for any urban Canadian wanting to understand this country.” Frits Pannekoek, University of Calgary "This collection of ten conversational essays by a Professor of Political Studies combines a Dreiser-like journalistic style with populist politics and autobiography.” Anne Burke, Prairie Journal, November 2009 "Roger Epp's exquisitely written We Are All Treaty People is about our region, the Prairie West, its landscape, its people, its rural and aboriginal past and present, and the future it might build for itself....We are all treaty people because we live in a state whose primarily distinguishing characteristic--constant negotiation between various peoples and levels of government--was determined by an Aboriginal approach to government, diplomacy and commercial relations. If jurisdictional disputes now seem like power grabs by provincial or (when the Liberals are in power) federal politicians, that's only because we've lost track of how treaty negotiations and renegotiations were and are understood by Indians--as attempts, necessarily contingent, to reach terms fair to everyone involved. Canadians, more than most people, are concerned about fairness.” Alex Rettie, Alberta Views, October 2009 "Epp writes of his boyhood [on land around Hanley], of the Saskatchewan town that was, and is now, put there by a national policy to populate the West and feed the world, now left to do the best it can while the dictates of a new world economy charge past it. In subsequent essays, Epp, with clear and gentle persuasion, discusses the agrarian movement in Alberta.... He writes of farmers he knows who are passionate about the their work and the land; of the two-sided coin that is 'agrarian radicalism;' of our need to get beyond our Lockean rationale for subduing the land and its inhabitants and enter a phase of reconciliation and renewal.... There were powerful things going on the rural West at one time, and Epp shows that power can be taken back and not left to our cities, or to faraway governments.” Bill Robertson, The Edmonton Journal, May 17, 2009 “Roger Epp lives on the margin of a margin in two different ways. First of all, he’s in Canada, which the US considers a margin, and second, he’s on the prairies, which Canada considers marginal. The other way is more personal. Epp is a Mennonite, a community of conscience as defined by Stanley Fish in Hobbs’ way as from conscire, to know in concert with another -- a consensus. His vocation is teaching and administering at a small university, Augustana, that was originally defined as a faith community, but is now attached to the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, the largest city in Alberta. Yet the students are mostly from small prairie towns. The sum of these marginalities has put Epp dead center in some of the most serious issues of our times about the safety and adequacy of our food…. Epp handles all this with friendly but dense prose…. If I were writing a prairie sermon, as I used to do, I would start on page 161 where Epp lists rural values: independence (not being bio-serfs to corporations and being able to cope on one’s own in a practical sense), neighbourliness (pitching in for the other guy), ‘good’ work (as opposed to opportunism), rootedness, nature, mystery and gratitude, and community.…. [Epp] commends to us the daily, small initiatives and coalitions between concerned parties that eventually mount up to cultural revolution without bloodshed.” Mary Strachan Scriver, The Goose, Spring 2009 "Dr. Epp has just published a book entitled We Are All Treaty People: Prairie Essays, a very readable collection of personal remembrances mixed with historical overviews of radical prairie politics and the relationship between First Nations people in western Canada and the settlers and their descendants. At core, it¹s a book that reminds us of the importance of place in defining who we are as a people, something frequently lost in the noise of urban centres. It's a call back to the land and to rural Alberta.” Ken Davis, CKUA Radio, May 17, 2009 (Hear the radio interview at: http://www.box.net/shared/rxbbp9vas5) "Roger Epp...offers a thoughtful collection of essays, in We Are All Treaty People, on what it means to live in the rural west....There were powerful things going on in the rural west at one time, and Epp, in these essays, shows that power can be taken back and not left to our cities, or to faraway governments.” Bill Robertson, The StarPhoenix, May 9, 2009