The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Divide and rule
GAVIN O'TOOLE applauds the argument that multicultural policies, aimed to empower indigenous peoples, are a smokescreen for their exploitation
Indigenous
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
The Indigenous Right to Self-Determination in Extractivist Economies
Marcela Torres-Wong, Cambridge University Press, £17
THE resounding vote by Ecuadorians to stop the development of all new oil wells in the Amazonian Yasuni national park is an emphatic signal that indigenous people have steered the global debate on extractivism to a historic juncture.
The binding referendum decision permanently prohibits oil drilling in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil project and is a major blow to the fossil fuel industry led by Ecuador’s own state oil company, Petroecuador.
The move has fuelled hysterical warnings by mainstream economists that it will further harm this cash-strapped South American country, with the praetorian guard of global capitalism, the credit ratings agencies, already penalising Quito.
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