For an Amerindian Autohistory (An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic)

A Huron born and raised near Quebec City, Georges Sioui is the first to present guidelines for the study of Native history from an Amerindian point of view. He argues that these guidelines must be respected if the self-image and social ethics of Native people are to be understood and preserved and shows that they provide a way to greatly improve the way Native people and more recent immigrants to the Americas perceive each other.

Sioui has produced a work not only of metahistory but of moral reflections. He contrasts Euroamerican ethnocentrism and feelings of racial superiority with the Amerindian belief in the "Great Circle of Life" and shows that human beings must establish intellectual and emotional connections with the entire living world if they hope to achieve abundance, quality, and peace for all.

Sioui is proud to be a Huron and an Amerindian and is fully aware of the injustices that the aboriginal people of North America have suffered - and continue to suffer - at the hands of Euroamericans. He is convinced that the greatness of Amerindians does not lie only in the past but that Native peoples will play an even more important role in the future by providing ideas essential to creating aviable way of life for North America and the world.

While this is a polemical work, Sioui never descends to recrimination or vituperative condemnation, even when that might seem justified. Instead, he has given us a polemic that is written at the level of philosophy.