Reading Joseph Quesnel's book review got me
interested until I read, and I quote:

"The book is big on critique, but short on
ways to improve..."

I now don't think I'll bother with it.
It smacks of a "publish or perish" academic
tendency - which the authors have indulged in.

Anyone can criticize anything - but how about
offering a solution to the problems? Now that
would indeed have been an achievement!

A very interesting essay. It’s a bleak premise that indigenous societies need to ditch their kinship ties as there is little place for kinship in modern society. (I know there was more to what he was saying, but that’s about it.)

So-called advanced societies gradually cast off their kinship ties, but unfortunately, they fail to tame their tribal instincts. So all we end up with is a lot of advanced societies trying to gain even more advantage over other advanced societies, while being pulled apart by tribal tensions from within.

Pre-modern societies largely kept their tribal instincts under control (although tribal skirmishes were common, advanced warfare was all but non-existent) by maintaining strong extended family ties and more flexible tribal boundaries. Also, as Whistler noted above, they maintained a strong framework of women’s and men’s business – another unfortunate casualty of advanced societies, whereby women’s business just got absorbed into men’s business.

Indigenous peoples of the world are now creating their own worldwide networks – e.g. the International Indigenous Forum – to address the common social, cultural, political and economic issues they all face – which no doubt, are pretty much the same.

If indigenous tribes manage to gain in strength and as the advanced world social order weakens further, there’s a chance we could all join up somewhere in the middle.

The Kinship issue in governance is not an Indigenous issue. George W Bush followed his fathers footsteps into America's presidency, the Kennedys also followed kinship rules.
In Australia, Downer is 3rd generation pollie, Beasly 2nd gen, ...
That is just to name a few off the top of my head.
This article and the book it reviews is made up on myths and legends associated with the rightness of the European based capitalist system that has delivered so much inequity in the world, not to mention the current economic crises.
Its about time the colonials 'hardened up' and took some responsibility for their meanspirited greed and nastiness.
Lets face it, corruption and bribery is used to describe what , in non european countries and their colonies, is known as standard business practices (like the AWB-Iraq scandal) in Western controlled countries.

I think I could make this statement a little clearer (tiredness has affected my thinking perhaps). "Lets face it, corruption and bribery is used to describe what , in non european countries and their colonies, is known as standard business practices (like the AWB-Iraq scandal) in Western controlled countries."
What I meant to say was that in non-Western controlled countries corruption and bribery is condemed by western countries. Whereas in Western controlled countries like Australia, these same practices are accepted as standard business practices like in the Australian Wheat Board scandal.

OK so "The book is big on critique, but short on ways to improve..."

Reality is almost all - even social groups, reluctant to accept any changes need to be made until they accept criticism.

Where criticism is rejected change is slower.

The first tactic in rejecting criticism is to reject critical comment because the speaker is different, not a member of the group being criticised.

Look for criticism of 'Dances with Dependency' by "Aboriginal" author Calvin Helin, may see betray your people/tribe/culture...

Conservatism could be rejection of need for change, if only radicalism was not so opposed to deviant thinking

'Dances with Dependency: Out of Poverty Through Self-Reliance' doesn't solve the problem that the prohibition of women's and men's business is the cause of social dysfunction for both the indigenous and introduced.

Absent a framework of women's and men's business, all indigenous self-reliance does is mirror the inequity of the introduced.

The solution is to eliminate social dysfunction altogether with provision for governance comprising agreement between women's and men's legislatures in both introduced and indigenous communities.