Dr Jack Davy has written this book out of his extensive study of trying to understand oppression – the processes by which one set of people dominate and control others for their own benefit. His expertise is in the European colonisation of the Americas, which as he describes, “took the form of a rolling genocide enacted by many tens of thousands of people, very few of whom thought of themselves as bad people, pursued over generations and stretching far beyond famous military encounters like the Battle of the Greasy Grass (known to its losers as the Little Big Horn).”

It is a book that can throw you into despair. Its descriptions and details of institutions and agencies and actions far beyond any one individual’s control or influence are more than enough to make you weep and wonder how on earth anything can be done to challenge or change things for the future. He writes and speaks of the damaging legacies given to whole continents, countries and peoples that we see around us today. He tells of ecological oppression, economic oppression and educational oppression. He challenges our assumptions that ‘we’ are not oppressors or engaged in oppressive actions and systems. He challenges us to be self-aware and to not look away so that we can learn how we might take steps to reduce the harmful impact that oppression has on others.

Although this book concentrates on northern hemisphere actions and encounters, it throws light on our Aotearoa New Zealand context. It counters the arguments that what was done by our forebears leaves us free of any responsibility for the consequences; the thinking that says others’ pain and hurt is not our responsibility; and our ‘head-in-the-sand’ unwillingness to understand and engage with the effects of the past and the systems with inherent oppression that arose from these.

The note of hope with which this book concludes is that we do have it within us to be aware and understand how our world has been shaped and learn to question the justice of the objective oppression of systems, cultures and societies imposed upon us by decree. It seems to me that Te Taha Maori could educate us mightily on this in our national context.

Dr Jack Davy’s closing sentence is: “Don’t look away. Don’t say it is none of your business or not your problem. It is, and it always has been. Don’t look away.”

I think this is a book of its time. It makes reference to pandemic management practices, it fills out fragmented stories of colonising practices through history and geography, and, while challenging, still manages to encourage a sense of hope if like Dr Suess’ concluding words in The Lorax “ ‘But now,’ says the Once-ler, ‘Now that you’re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.’” Let us care.