Peace Shall Destroy Many Analysis

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Canada is often regarded as a country which prides itself in creating a safe environment for citizens representing various ethnicities, races, cultures, and religions. However, throughout the history of Canada the standards of life for the Aboriginal community is significantly less than those who come from non-Aboriginal cultures, and they often encounter significant obstacles in gaining equal to that which they deserve. In the novel Peace Shall Destroy Many by Rudy Wiebe the Wapiti Mennonite community hold a negative attitude towards the First Nations and Metis that inhabit the community with them. The rejection of the Aboriginals is an integral part of the mismatch Thom sees between the Mennonite convictions and the Mennonite life. Dissociation from the other is not as such …show more content…

There are stacks of European history books to read, yet the Indians - a people living in nearly half the world - lived here for thousands of years, and we don’t know a single thing that happened to them except some old legend muddled in the memory of an old crone. A whole world lost. Not on remembered word of how generations upon generations lived and died” (83) The inadequacy of the European history books and Thom’s own lack of knowledge do not, of course, provide sufficient evidence for the conclusion that the world of the First nations has been lost. Their ties to their past were compromised by a profound disruption of their cultural traditions, alongside the education of the First nations youth in residential schools outside their own communities, but those ties were never completely severed. Another interpretation of the language occurs after the narrative has established Thom’s dislike of one of the Unger family boys, who are Mennonites like himself. After he almost gets into a fight with Herb Unger during a baseball game, the presence of an Aboriginal other disrupts both the discourse of the Mennonite unity and reductive ideas of indigenous