Indigenous Topics

"Applying Indigenous Research Methods focuses on the question of "How" Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRMs) can be used and taught across Indigenous studies and education. In this collection, Indigenous scholars address the importance of IRMs in their own scholarship, while focusing conversations on the application with others. Each chapter is co-authored to model methods rooted in the sharing of stories to strengthen relationships, such as yarning, storywork, and others. The chapters offer a wealth of specific examples, as told by researchers about their research methods in conversation with other scholars, teachers, and community members.Applying Indigenous Research Methods is an interdisciplinary showcase of the ways IRMs can enhance scholarship in fields including education, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, social work, qualitative methodologies, and beyond."

To the colonized, the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge, and argues that the decolonization of research methods will help reclaim the control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

"From Oceania to North America, indigenous peoples have created storytelling traditions of incredible depth and diversity. The term 'indigenous storywork' has come to encompass the sheer breadth of ways in which indigenous storytelling serves as a historical record, as a form of teaching and learning, and as an expression of indigenous culture and identity. But such traditions have too often been relegated to the realm of myth and legend, recorded as fragmented distortions, or erased altogether. Decolonizing Research brings together indigenous researchers and activists from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to assert the unique value of indigenous storywork as a focus of research, and to develop methodologies that rectify the colonial attitudes inherent in much past and current scholarship. By bringing together their own indigenous perspectives, and by treating indigenous storywork on its own terms, the contributors illuminate valuable new avenues for research, and show how such reworked scholarship can contribute to the movement for indigenous rights and self-determination."-- Publisher description.

"Elements of Indigenous Style provides guidelines to help writers, editors, and publishers produce material that reflects Indigenous people in an appropriate and respectful manner. Gregory Younging, a member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, has been the managing editor of Theytus Books, the first Aboriginal-owned publishing house in Canada, for over 13 years. Elements of Indigenous Style evolved from the house style guide Gregory developed at Theytus in order to ensure content was consistent and respectful. This guide contains: A historical overview of the portrayal of Indigenous peoples in literature; Common errors and how to avoid them when writing about Indigenous peoples; Guidance on working in a culturally sensitive way; A discussion of problematic and preferred terminology; Suggestions for editorial guidelines."-- Provided by publisher.

What are Indigenous research methodologies, and how do they unfold? Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge, and while they are allied with several western qualitative approaches, they remain distinct. These are the focal considerations of Margaret Kovach's study,which offers guidance to those conducting research in the academy using Indigenous methodologies. Kovach includes topics such as Indigenous epistemologies, decolonizing theory, story as method, situating self and culture, Indigenous methods, protocol, meaning-making, and ethics. In exploring these elements, the book interweaves perspectives from six Indigenous researchers who share their stories, and also includes excerpts from the author's own journey into Indigenous methodologies. Indigenous Methodologies is an innovative and important contribution to the emergent discourse on Indigenous research approaches and will be of use to graduate students, professors, and community-based researchers of all backgrounds - both within the academy and beyond.

"Scholars understand what Indigenous research is, but how we practice Indigenous research ethically and respectfully in Canada is under exploration. This ground-breaking edited collection provides readers with concrete and in-depth examples of how to overcome the challenges of Indigenous research with respect to Indigenous worldviews, epistemologies, and ontology. In collaboration with their communities, and with guidance from Elders and other traditional knowledge keepers, each contributor links their personal narrative of Indigenous research to current discussions and debates. Accessible in nature, this interdisciplinary research tool is an essential read for all students and scholars in Indigenous Studies, as well as in the education, anthropology, sociology, and history research methodology classroom."-- Provided by publisher.

Intended as a senior undergraduate and graduate text, Research As Resistance brings together the theory and practice of critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches to social science research. The book pursues some of the ontological and epistemological considerations involved in such research, including theorizing the self of the researcher, and offers exemplars across a range of methodologies, including institutional ethnography, narrative autobiography, storytelling, and participatory action research. This is a unique text in that it describes both theoretical foundations and practical applications, and because all of the featured researchers occupy marginalized locations. It is also firmly anchored in the Canadian context."--BOOK JACKET

"Describing a research paradigm shared by indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, this study demonstrates how this standard can be put into practice. Portraying indigenous researchers as knowledge seekers who work to progress indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing in a constantly evolving context, this examination shows how relationships both shape indigenous reality and are vital to reality itself. These same knowledge seekers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony of maintaining accountability. Envisioning researchers as accountable to all relations, this overview proves that careful choices should be made regarding selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis, and the way in which information is presented."

Indigenous students remain one of the least represented populations in higher education. They continue to account for only one percent of the total post-secondary student population, and this lack of representation is felt in multiple ways beyond enrollment. Less research money is spent studying Indigenous students, and their interests are often left out of projects that otherwise purport to address diversity in higher education.Recently, Native scholars have started to reclaim research through the development of their own research methodologies and paradigms that are based in tribal knowledge systems and values, and that allow inherent Indigenous knowledge and lived experiences to strengthen the research.Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Educationhighlights the current scholarship emerging from these scholars of higher education. From understanding how Native American students make their way through school, to tracking tribal college and university transfer students, this book allows Native scholars to take center stage, and shines the light squarely on those least represented among us.

This exhibition seeks to radically expand and reposition the narrative of American art since 1950 by charting a history of the development of contemporary indigenous art from the United States and Canada, beginning when artists moved from more regionally-based conversations and practices to national and international contemporary art contexts. The accompanying book documents and expands on the exhibition's themes and includes essays by art historians and reflections by the artists in the collection. Also included are key contemporary writings from the 1950s onward by artists, scholars, and critics investigating the themes of transculturalism and pan-Indian identity, traditional practices conducted in radically new ways, displacement, forced migration, shadow histories, the role of personal mythologies as a means to reimagine the future, and more. As both a survey of the development of indigenous art from the 1950s to the present and a consideration of Native artists within contemporary art more broadly, the volume expands the definition of American art and sets the tone for future considerations of the subject. It is an importabnt resource for any institution or individual with an interest in contemporary Native American art and in ongoing scholarly considerations of the American contemporary art landscape at large.

"About 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. The essays question the ways in which components of the reconciliation, such as apology and witnessing, have social and political effects for residential-schools survivors, intergenerational survivors, and settler publics."-- Provided by publisher.

This collection of essays provides a historical and contemporary context for Indigenous new media arts practice in Canada.

Incorporating culture examines what happens when Indigenous people assert control over the commercialization of their art by instilling the market with their communities' values.

"The Land We Are is a stunning collection of writing and art that interrogates the current era of reconciliation in Canada. Using visual, poetic, and theoretical language, the contributors approach reconciliation as a problematic narrative about Indigenous-settler relations, but also as a site where conversations about a just future must occur. The result of a four-year collaboration between artists and scholars engaged in resurgence and decolonization, The Land We Are is a moving dialogue that blurs the boundaries between activism, research, and the arts."--Publisher's website.

Artists and cultural practitioners from Indigenous communities around the world are increasingly in the international spotlight. As museums and curators race to consider the planetary reach of their art collections and exhibitions, this publication draws upon the challenges faced today by cultural workers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to engage meaningfully and ethically with the histories, presents and futures of Indigenous cultural practices and world-views. Sixteen Indigenous voices convene to consider some of the most burning questions surrounding this field. How will novel methodologies of word/voice-crafting be constituted to empower the Indigenous discourses of the future? Is it sufficient to expand the Modernist art-historical canon through the politics of inclusion? Is this expansion a new form of colonisation, or does it foster the cosmopolitan thought that Indigenous communities have always inhabited? To whom does the much talked-of?Indigenous Turn? belong? Does it represent a hegemonic project of introspection and revision in the face of today?s ecocidal, genocidal and existential crises?

"It's about Indigenous literatures and underscores their significance to Indigenous peoples in the realm of the political, the creative, and the intellectual. It challenges readers to examine their assumptions about Indigenous literatures and at the same time asserts the emotional connections of our shared humanity and the transformative power of story."--from publisher's description

Catalog of the exhibition "Fiction/Non-fiction," curated by Wayne Baerwaldt and Naomi Potter with curatorial consultant Steven Loft, held September 28-December 22, 2013 at Esker Foundation, Calgary.

"Drawing on treaties, international law, the work of other Indigenous scholars, and especially personal experiences, Marie Battiste documents the nature of Eurocentric models of education, and their devastating impacts on Indigenous knowledge. Chronicling the negative consequences of forced assimilation and the failure of current educational policies to bolster the social and economic conditions of Aboriginal populations, Battiste proposes a new model of education. She argues that the preservation of Aboriginal knowledge is an Aboriginal right and a right preserved by the many treaties with First Nations. Current educational policies must undergo substantive reform. Central to this process is the rejection of the racism inherent to colonial systems of education, and the repositioning of Indigenous humanities, sciences, and languages as vital fields of knowledge. Battiste suggests the urgency for this reform lies in the social, technological, and economic challenges facing society today, and the need for a revitalized knowledge system which incorporates both Indigenous and Eurocentric thinking. The new model she advocates is based on her experiences growing up in a Mi’kmaw community, and the decades she has spent as a teacher, activist, and university scholar."

"For Indigenous students and teachers alike, formal teaching and learning occurs in contested places. In Indigenous Education, leading scholars in contemporary Indigenous education from North America and the Pacific Islands disentangle aspects of education from colonial relations to advance a new, Indigenously-informed philosophy of instruction. Broadly multidisciplinary, this volume explores Indigenous education from theoretical and applied perspectives and invites readers to embrace new ways of thinking about and doing schooling. Part of a growing body of research, this is an exciting, powerful volume for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, researchers, policy makers, and teachers, and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the contested spaces of contemporary education. Contributors: Jill Bevan Brown, Frank Deer, Wiremu Doherty, Dwayne Donald, Ngarewa Hawera, Margie Hohepa, Robert Jahnke, Trish Johnston, Spencer Lilley, Daniel Lipe, Margie Maaka, Angela Nardozi, Kapa Oliviera, Wally Penetito, Michelle Pidgeon, Leonie Pihama, Jean-Paul Restoule, Mari Ropata Te Hei, Sandra Styres, Huia Tomlins-Jahnke, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Sam L. No'eau Warner, Laiana Wong, Dawn Zinga."-- Provided by publisher.

Terese Mailhot's debut memoir chronicles her struggle to balance the beauty of her Native heritage with the often desperate and chaotic reality of life on the reservation. Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar II; Terese Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father--an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist--who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame. Mailhot "trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain and what we can bring ourselves to accept." Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people and to her place in the world."-- Provided by publisher.

"A profound meditation on queerness and indigeneity from the youngest ever winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize Billy-Ray Belcourt begins A History of My Brief Body with a letter to his nohkom, his grandmother. "In the world-to-come," he writes, "everyone is loved by an NDN woman like you whose soft voice reminds us that we can stop running now." What follows is a charting of the distance between the world he was born into and the world he wants--a book as beautiful as it is devastating. Reflecting on his personal history, Belcourt maps his "un-Canadian and otherworldly" desire to love at all costs. We're taken to his birthplace in Joussard, in northern Alberta, where he and his twin brother come to exemplify opposites: hard and soft, masculine and feminine. To his high school graduation, where a hug from his father teaches him how to hold and be held. To a hotel room in Edmonton, where destroying the photographic evidence of his adolescence is an act of self-abolition and of making himself anew. Blending memoir and essay, and with a poet's delight in language, A History of My Brief Body is both a grappling with a legacy of trauma and a record of the joy that flourishes in spite of it."-- Provided by publisher.

"In I Am a Damn Savage, Antane Kapesh wrote to preserve and share her culture, experience, and knowledge, all of which, she felt, were disappearing at an alarming rate because many Elders – like herself – were aged or dying. She wanted to publicly denounce the conditions in which she and the Innu were made to live, and to address the changes she was witnessing due to land dispossession and loss of hunting territory, police brutality, and the effects of the residential school system. What Have You Done to My Country? is a fictional account by a young boy of the arrival of les Polichinelles (referring to White settlers) and their subsequent assault on the land and on native language and culture. Through these stories Antane Kapesh asserts that settler society will eventually have to take responsibility and recognize its faults, and accept that the Innu – as well as all the other nations – are not going anywhere, that they are not a problem settlers can make disappear."--from publisher's description

"My name is Wa’xaid, given to me by my people. ‘Wa’ is ‘the river’, ‘Xaid’ is ‘good’ – good river. Sometimes the river is not good. I am a Xenaksiala, I am from the Killer Whale Clan. I would like to walk with you in Xenaksiala lands. Where I will take you is the place of my birth. They call it the Kitlope. It is called Xesdu’wäxw (Huschduwaschdu) for ‘blue, milky, glacial water’. Our destination is what I would like to talk about, and a boat – I call it my magic canoe. It is a magical canoe because there is room for everyone who wants to come into it to paddle together. The currents against it are very strong but I believe we can reach that destination and this is the reason for our survival. —Cecil Paul. Who better to tell the narrative of our times about the restoration of land and culture than Wa’xaid (the good river), or Cecil Paul, a Xenaksiala elder who pursued both in his ancestral home, the Kitlope — now the largest protected unlogged temperate rainforest left on the planet. Paul’s cultural teachings are more relevant today than ever in the face of environmental threats, climate change and social unrest, while his personal stories of loss from residential schools, industrialization and theft of cultural property (the world-renowned Gps’golox pole) put a human face to the survivors of this particular brand of genocide.Told in Cecil Paul’s singular, vernacular voice, Stories from the Magic Canoe spans a lifetime of experience, suffering and survival."-- Publisher.

"Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. Perhaps the most symbolically potent strategy used to alienate residential school children was addressing them by assigned numbers only—not by the names with which they knew and understood themselves.
In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family—from substance abuse to suicide attempts—and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. Number One comes at a time of recognition—by governments and society at large—that only through knowing the truth about these past injustices can we begin to redress them."--Publisher's description

"David Neel was an infant when his father, a Kwakwaka'wakw artist, died, triggering events that would separate him from the traditions of his homeland. When the aspiring photographer saw a mask carved by an ancestor in a Texas museum twenty-five years later, the encounter inspired him to return home and follow in his father's footsteps. Drawing on memory, legend, and his own art, Neel recounts his struggle to reconnect with his culture and become an accomplished Kwakwaka'wakw artist. His memoir is a testament to the strength of the human spirit to overcome great obstacles and to the power and endurance of Indigenous culture and art."-- Provided by publisher.

"Part manifesto, part memoir, This Wound is a World is an invitation to 'cut a hole in the sky to world inside.' Billy-Ray Belcourt issues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder sadness and pain like theirs without giving up on the future. His poems and essays upset genre and play with form, scavenging for a decolonial kind of heaven where 'everyone is at least a little gay.'"-- Provided by publisher.

Portrays historical incidents of Indigenous resistance to European colonization of the Americas in Canada, the United States, Mexico and South America. Topics include: the Spanish invasion under Christopher Columbus, the 1680 Pueblo revolt in New Mexico, the Inca insurgency in Peru (1500s-1780s), Pontiac and the 1763 rebellion & Royal proclamation, Geronimo and the Seminole Wars, Crazy Horse and the 1877 war on the plains, the rise of the American Indian movement in the 1960s, 1973's Wounded Knee, The Mohawk Oka Crisis in Quebec in 1990, and the 1995 Aazhoodena/Stoney Point resistance.

"Many promote Reconciliation as a "new" way for Canada to relate to Indigenous Peoples. In Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence activist, editor, and educator Leanne Simpson asserts reconciliation must be grounded in political resurgence and must support the regeneration of Indigenous languages, oral cultures, and traditions of governance. Simpson explores philosophies and pathways of regeneration, resurgence, and a new emergence through the Nishnaabeg language, Creation Stories, walks with Elders and children, celebrations and protests, and meditations on these experiences. She stresses the importance of illuminating Indigenous intellectual traditions to transform their relationship to the Canadian state."

"In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan "Mni Wiconi"--Water is Life--was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue."

"In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous people can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Coulthard examines an alternative politics - one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. Coulthard demonstrates how a "place-based" modification of Karl Marx's theory of "primitive accumulation" throws light on Indigenous-state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon's critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization."

We are all caught up in one another, Scott Lauria Morgensen asserts, we who live in settler societies, and our interrelationships inform all that these societies touch. Native people live in relation to all non-Natives amid the ongoing power relations of settler colonialism, despite never losing inherent claims to sovereignty as indigenous peoples. Explaining how relational distinctions of “Native” and “settler” define the status of being “queer,” Spaces between Us argues that modern queer subjects emerged among Natives and non-Natives by engaging the meaningful difference indigeneity makes within a settler society.Morgensen's analysis exposes white settler colonialism as a primary condition for the development of modern queer politics in the United States. Bringing together historical and ethnographic cases, he shows how U.S. queer projects became non-Native and normatively white by comparatively examining the historical activism and critical theory of Native queer and Two-Spirit people.Presenting a “biopolitics of settler colonialism”—in which the imagined disappearance of indigeneity and sustained subjugation of all racialized peoples ensures a progressive future for white settlers—Spaces between Us newly demonstrates the interdependence of nation, race, gender, and sexuality and offers opportunities for resistance in the United States.

"Amid the Standing Rock movement to protect the land and the water that millions depend on for life, the Oceti Sakowin (the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota people) reunited. Through poetry and prose, essays, photography, interviews, and polemical interventions, the contributors reflect on Indigenous history and politics and on the movement's significance. Their work challenges our understanding of colonial history not simply as "lessons learned" but as essential guideposts for activism"--from publisher's description

"Indigenous communities have been organizing against violence since newcomers first arrived, but the cases of missing and murdered women have only recently garnered broad public attention. Violence Against Indigenous Women joins the conversation by analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction-writers. Organized as a series of case studies that pair literary interventions with recent sites of activism and policy-critique, the book puts literature in dialogue with anti-violence debate to illuminate new pathways toward action."--publisher's description

The Winter We Danced is a vivid collection of writing, poetry, lyrics, art and images from the many diverse voices that make up the past, present, and future of the Idle No More movement. Calling for pathways into healthy, just, equitable and sustainable communities while drawing on a wide-ranging body of narratives, journalism, editorials, and creative pieces, this collection consolidates some of the most powerful, creative pieces, this collection consolidates some of the most powerful, creative, and insightful moments from the winter we danced and gestures towards next steps in an ongoing movement for justice and Indigenous self-determination.

"A paradigm-shifting book from Aboriginal scholar Tyson Yunkaporta, who brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to history, education, money, power, and sustainability-and offers a new template for living"-- Provided by publisher.

"Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. Perhaps the most symbolically potent strategy used to alienate residential school children was addressing them by assigned numbers only—not by the names with which they knew and understood themselves.
In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family—from substance abuse to suicide attempts—and eloquently articulates her own path to healing. Number One comes at a time of recognition—by governments and society at large—that only through knowing the truth about these past injustices can we begin to redress them."--Publisher's description

One of the first books published to deal with the phenomenon of residential schools in Canada, Resistance and Renewal is a disturbing collection of Native perspectives on the Kamloops Indian Residential School(KIRS) in the British Columbia interior. Interviews with thirteen Natives, all former residents of KIRS, form the nucleus of the book, a frank depiction of school life, and a telling account of the system's oppressive environment which sought to stifle Native culture.

"Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to "civilize and Christianize" Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities. For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. Legal action by the schools' former students led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2008. The product of over six years of research, the Commission's final report outlines the history and legacy of the schools, and charts a pathway towards reconciliation. Canada's Residential Schools: The History, Part 2, 1939 to 2000 carries the story of the residential school system from the end of the Great Depression to the closing of the last remaining schools in the late 1990s. It demonstrates that the underfunding and unsafe living conditions that characterized the early history of the schools continued into an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity for most Canadians. A miserly funding formula meant that into the late 1950s school meals fell short of the Canada Food Rules. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a failure to adhere to fire safety rules were common problems throughout this period. While government officials had come to view the schools as costly and inefficient, the churches were reluctant to countenance their closure. It was not until the late 1960s that the federal government finally wrested control of the system away from the churches. Government plans to turn First Nations education over to the provinces met with opposition from Aboriginal organizations that were seeking "Indian Control of Indian Education." Following parent-led occupation of a school in Alberta, many of the remaining schools came under Aboriginal administration. The closing of the schools coincided with a growing number of convictions of former staff members on charges of sexually abusing students. These trials revealed the degree to which sexual abuse at the schools had been covered up in the past. Former students, who came to refer to themselves as Survivors, established regional and national organizations and provided much of the leadership for the campaign that led to the federal government issuing in 2008 an apology to the former students and their families."

Speaking My Truth: Reflections on Reconciliation and Residential School is a collection of stories and essays drawn from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s three-volume series Truth and Reconciliation, which includes From Truth to Reconciliation; Response, Responsibility, and Renewal; and Cultivating Canada. Following the success of an earlier Book Club edition, this volume has been revised and re-edited for scholastic and academic purposes. These texts shed light on the lived and living experiences and legacies of Residential Schools and are published in the hope that they will become as part of an important dialogue on reconciliation in Canada.

Truth and Indignation offers the first close and critical assessment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as it is unfolding. Using interviews with survivors and oblate priests and nuns, as well as testimonies, texts, and visual materials produced by the Commission, Niezen raises some very important questions: What makes Canada's TRC different than others around the world? What kinds of narratives are emerging and what do they mean for reconciliation, justice, and conceptions of traumatic memory? And what happens to the ultimate goal of reconciliation when a large part of the testimony--that of nuns, priests, and government officials--is scarcely evident? Thoughtful, provocative, and uncompromising, Niezen offers an important contribution to our understanding of the TRC process in general, and the Canadian experience in particular

"In Unsettling the Settler Within, Paulette Regan, a former residential-schools-claims manager, argues that in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation, non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization. They must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge the destructive legacy of a society that has stubbornly ignored and devalued Indigenous experience. With former students offering their stories as part of the truth and reconciliation processes, Regan advocates for an ethos that learns from the past, making space for an Indigenous historical counter-narrative to avoid perpetuating a colonial relationship between Aboriginal and settler peoples."--from publisher's description