Articles and Resources of Interest
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Books
The Survivors Speak by
In this volume, residential school Survivors speak of their pain, loneliness, and suffering, and of their accomplishments.While this is a difficult story, it is also a story of courage and endurance. The first step in any process of national reconciliation requires us all to attend to these voices, which have been silenced for far too long. We encourage all Canadians to do so.
ISBN: 9781522796145Publication Date: 2015-12-16
A Knock on the Door by
?It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer.? So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years, and so begins the history of residential schools prepared by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Between 2008 and 2015, the TRC provided opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to share their experiences of residential schools and released several reports based on 7000 survivor statements and five million documents from government, churches, and schools, as well as a solid grounding in secondary sources.A Knock on the Door, published in collaboration with the National Research Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, gathers material from the several reports the TRC has produced to present the essential history and legacy of residential schools in a concise and accessible package that includes new materials to help inform and contextualize the journey to reconciliation that Canadians are now embarked upon.Survivor and former National Chief of the Assembly First Nations, Phil Fontaine, provides a Foreword, and an Afterword introduces the holdings and opportunities of the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, home to the archive of recordings, and documents collected by the TRC. As Aimée Craft writes in the Afterword, knowing the historical backdrop of residential schooling and its legacy is essential to the work of reconciliation. In the past, agents of the Canadian state knocked on the doors of Indigenous families to take the children to school. Now, the Survivors have shared their truths and knocked back. It is time for Canadians to open the door to mutual understanding, respect, and reconciliation.
ISBN: 0887557856Publication Date: 2015-12-18
Canada and Colonial Genocide by
Settler colonialism in Canada has traditionally been portrayed as a gentler, if not benevolent, colonialism--especially in contrast to the Indian Wars in the United States. This national mythology has penetrated into comparative genocide studies, where Canadian case studies are rarely discussed in edited volumes, genocide journals, or multi-national studies. Indeed, much of the extant literature on genocide in Canada rests at the level of self-justification, whereby authors draw on the U.N Genocide Convention or some other rubric to demonstrate that Canadian genocides are a legitimate topic of scholarly concern. In recent years, however, discussion of genocide in Canada has become more pronounced, particularly in the wake of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. This volume contributes to this ongoing discourse, providing scholarly analyses of the multiple dimensions or processes of colonial destruction and their aftermaths in Canada. Various acts of genocidal violence are covered, including residential schools, repressive legal or governmental controls, ecological destruction, and disease spread. Additionally, contributors draw comparisons to patterns of colonial destruction in other contexts, examine the ways in which Canada has sought to redress and commemorate colonial harms, and present novel theoretical and conceptual insights on colonial/settler genocides in Canada. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.
ISBN: 9781138224766Publication Date: 2016-12-13
Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future by
"Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future" looks to both the past and the future as it examines the foundational work of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and the legacy of its 1996 report. It assesses the Commission's influence on subsequent milestones in Indigenous-Canada relations and considers our prospects for a constructive future.RCAP's five-year examination of the relationships of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples to Canada and to non-Indigenous Canadians resulted in a new vision for Canada and provided 440 specific recommendations, many of which informed the subsequent work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Considered too radical and difficult toimplement, RCAP's recommendations were largely ignored, but the TRC reiterates that longstanding inequalities and imbalances in Canada's relationship with Indigenous peoples remain and quite literally calls us to action.With reflections on RCAP's legacy by its co-chairs, leaders of national Indigenous organizations and the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, and leading academics and activists, this collection refocuses our attention on the groundbreaking work already performed by RCAP. Organized thematically, it explores avenues by which we may establish a new relationship, build healthy and powerful communities, engage citizens, and move to action.
ISBN: 9780887558702Publication Date: 2021-06-11
Reconciliation in Practice by
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report designed to facilitate reconciliation between the Canadian state and Indigenous Peoples. Its call to honour treaty relationships reminds us that we are all treaty people -- including immigrants and refugees living in Canada. The contributors to this volume, many of whom are themselves immigrants and refugees, take up the challenge of imagining what it means for immigrants and refugees to live as treaty people. Through essays, personal reflections and poetry, the authors explore what reconciliation is and what it means to live in relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Speaking from their personal experience -- whether from the education and health care systems, through research and a community garden, or from experiences of discrimination and marginalization -- contributors share their stories of what reconciliation means in practice. They write about building respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples, respecting Indigenous Treaties, decolonizing our ways of knowing and acting, learning the role of colonized education processes, protecting our land and environment, creating food security and creating an intercultural space for social interactions. Perhaps most importantly, Reconciliation in Practice reminds us that reconciliation is an ongoing process, not an event, and that decolonizing our relationships and building new ones based on understanding and respect is empowering for all of us -- Indigenous, settler, immigrant and refugee alike.
ISBN: 1773631705Publication Date: 2019-10-15
The Almighty Voice by
In May 1897, Almighty Voice, a member of the One Arrow Willow Cree, died violently when Canada's North-West Mounted Police shelled the fugitive's hiding place. Since then, his violent death has spawned a succession of conflicting stories -- from newspaper features, magazine articles and pulp fiction to plays and film. Almighty Voice has been maligned, misunderstood, romanticized, celebrated, and invented. Indeed, there have been many Almighty Voices over the years. What these stories have in common is that the Willow Cree man mattered. Understanding why he mattered has a direct bearing on reconciliation efforts today.
ISBN: 9781771770019Publication Date: 2020-12-17
The Theatre of Regret by
The Canadian public largely understands reconciliation as the harmonization of Indigenous-settler relations for the benefit of the nation. But is this really happening? The Theatre of Regret asks whether reconciliation politics will ultimately favour the state's goals over those of Indigenous peoples. Interweaving literature and art throughout his analysis, David Gaertner questions the state-centred frameworks of reconciliation by exploring the critical roles that Indigenous and allied authors, artists, and thinkers play in defining, challenging, and refusing settler regret. Through close examination of core concepts in reconciliation theory - acknowledgement, apology, redress, and forgiveness - this study exposes the deeply embedded colonial ideologies at the root of reconciliation in Canada.
ISBN: 9780774865371Publication Date: 2020-11-15
Pathways of Reconciliation by
Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Calls to Action in June 2015, governments, churches, non-profit, professional and community organizations, corporations, schools and universities, clubs and individuals have asked: ?How can I/we participate in reconciliation?? Recognizing that reconciliation is not only an ultimate goal, but a decolonizing process of journeying in ways that embody everyday acts of resistance, resurgence, and solidarity, coupled with renewed commitments to justice, dialogue, and relationship-building, Pathways of Reconciliation helps readers find their way forward.The essays in Pathways of Reconciliation address the themes of reframing, learning and healing, researching, and living. They engage with different approaches to reconciliation (within a variety of reconciliation frameworks, either explicit or implicit) and illustrate the complexities of the reconciliation process itself. They canvass multiple and varied pathways of reconciliation, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, reflecting a diversity of approaches to the mandate given to all Canadians by the TRC with its Calls to Action. Together the authors ? academics, practitioners, students and ordinary citizens ? demonstrate the importance of trying and learning from new and creative approaches to thinking about and practicing reconciliation and reflect on what they have learned from their attempts (both successful and less successful) in the process.
ISBN: 0887558542Publication Date: 2020-05-29
Environmental Racism in the United States and Canada by
From Flint, Michigan, to Standing Rock, North Dakota, minorities have found themselves losing the battle for clean resources and a healthy environment. This book provides a modern history of such environmental injustices in the United States and Canada. From the 19th-century extermination of the buffalo in the American West to Alaska's Project Chariot (a Cold War initiative that planned to use atomic bombs to blast out a harbor on Eskimo land) to the struggle for recovery and justice in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017, this book provides readers with an enhanced understanding of how poor and minority people are affected by natural and manmade environmental crises. Written for undergraduates as well as the general reader with an interest in social justice and environmental issues, this book traces the relationship between environmental discrimination, race, and class through a comprehensive case history of environmental injustices. Environmental Racism in the United States and Canada: Seeking Justice and Sustainability includes 50 such case studies that range from local to national to international crises. Provides comprehensive coverage and analysis of the far-reaching specter of environmental racism in the U.S. and Canada, using numerous case studies that extend across the U.S. and Canada from the 19th century into the present day Examines the confluence of climate change, natural resource conflicts, political and corporate corruption, and racism Reflects a regional arrangement to better highlight patterns and types of injustices as well as victims Is written by a prolific author and expert on environmental and Native American issues
ISBN: 9781440864025Publication Date: 2020-04-14
Arts of Engagement by
Arts of Engagement focuses on the role that music, film, visual art, and Indigenous cultural practices play in and beyond Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools. Contributors here examine the impact of aesthetic and sensory experience in residential school history, at TRC national and community events, and in artwork and exhibitions not affiliated with the TRC. Using the framework of "aesthetic action," the essays expand the frame of aesthetics to include visual, aural, and kinetic sensory experience, and question the ways in which key components of reconciliation such as apology and witnessing have social and political effects for residential school survivors, intergenerational survivors, and settler publics. This volume makes an important contribution to the discourse on reconciliation in Canada by examining how aesthetic and sensory interventions offer alternative forms of political action and healing. These forms of aesthetic action encompass both sensory appeals to empathize and invitations to join together in alliance and new relationships as well as refusals to follow the normative scripts of reconciliation. Such refusals are important in their assertion of new terms for conciliation, terms that resist the imperatives of reconciliation as a form of resolution. This collection charts new ground by detailing the aesthetic grammars of reconciliation and conciliation. The authors document the efficacies of the TRC for the various Indigenous and settler publics it has addressed, and consider the future aesthetic actions that must be taken in order to move beyond what many have identified as the TRC's political limitations.
ISBN: 9781771121699Publication Date: 2016-07-15
