From gasoline to housing to groceries to concert tickets to fertilizer, the average Canadian can no longer afford a comfortable life, and everyone knows it. Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar expose the details of the current crisis in a new book, The Big Fix, and propose solutions to bring the country back to a more inclusive economy that allows for better competition and fairer pricing.

With the start of the New Year, it seemed like all of Europe breathed a deep sigh of relief. After being charged by the Greek government with a series of misdemeanors in 2018, the high-profile trial for 24 humanitarian aid workers on the Greek island of Lesbos came to an end. This is a frightening situation that could portend the normalization of prosecution of the work of saving lives.

The accelerated gentrification of two of Mexico City’s neighbourhoods, La Condesa and La Roma Norte, has caused tensions and a near-impossible living situation for local Mexicans. The already trendy neighbourhoods, accustomed to the presence of foreigners and their money, have undergone a process of “super gentrification” since the beginning of the pandemic.

The ways in which the Toronto power elite has exploited the cautionary tale of European urban crime and disease as a means of managing the threat of resistance are laid bare in Parastou Saberi’s book, Fearing the Immigrant: Racialization and Urban Policy in Toronto. Saberi is a visiting research fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick.

In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes commits to the idea that resistance to projects of settler colonialism like the Dakota Access Pipeline, “has always been a future-oriented and life-oriented project” by making connections between Indigenous resistance in the United States and that of other colonized peoples globally.

Despite memorable performances from Glenn Close and Amy Adams, Hillbilly Elegy is a shallow portrayal of the decline of the American white working class. While the film does have captivating and engaging moments, it falls flat with its clichés about rugged individualism and ultimately disappoints as a story focused on Appalachian poverty and the erosion of the welfare state.

Talaga, in her book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City, and Anishnaabe comedian Ryan McMahon, in a five-part podcast series, Thunder Bay, aim to reveal the scandalous and shameful nature of the city and to expose the consequences of that nature, primarily through a study of the auspicious deaths of several Indigenous teenagers.

Events from a chilling October day in 2008, on a gravel road entering Algonquin First Nation bush territory, epitomize the contentious history of jurisdiction in what is now known as Canada. Riot cops teargassed the community standing at a blockade and arrested nine people, including two minors, an elder, and a pregnant woman. The alarming story of Barriere Lake reveals much about the tactics and devices used by the state to continue its dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ land.

The book breaks from the constant examination of Indigenous peoples and instead rests its gaze on settler society and the system that upholds their material privileges. The focus on the justice system and its use of criminalization in the private property protection of the settlers reveals something important about the dominant economic systems operating in these two countries: there is, in fact, no “Indian Problem,” but rather a very real settler problem.