The book
Pretenders is directed at those who insist on spreading Canada's false Native "history" that they have developed over the years.Their attempts to avoid real history and replace it with their modern versions of the past are wrong. Canada's true history may not be something to be proud of, but it has been documented with the best knowledge and accepted standards of those times.Today Canada's general population and its Natives are being taught that the recorded history is wrong. Revisionists have even destroyed the records of the Canadian Parliament from the time of debates about the establishment of Native residential schools.
Pretenders deals with the fact that many Natives came away from the residential schools with a basic education and the will to take part in the available world. Their primitive Native existence is gone and cannot now be restored.Most Aboriginal tribes, nations, or clans of humanity have been faced with the unavoidable need to change. Those who could not or would not have become extinct. North American Natives were fortunate that the explorers and settlers who arrived here had not arrived one thousand years earlier. An earlier arrival could well have resulted in extermination of the Natives.
The author writes, "History cannot be changed by lying, ignoring it, or pretending that it is not a fact of our existence."
(About the Author)
Charles Edward Scheideman grew up on a farm/ranch operation near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He now lives near Victoria, British Columbia. His rural background helped him to understand the bitter resentment among Native Canadians. He also questions the motivation among them to finally now tell their stories after nearly 400 years. What motivated them to do this?
