Unsettling the Settler Within

Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada

by Paulette Regan, foreword by Taiaiake Alfred

tagged: native american studies, indigenous peoples, native american

Description

In 2008 the Canadian government apologized to the victims of the notorious Indian residential school system, and established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose goal was to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that engineered the system.

Unsettling the Settler Within 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. Today’s truth and reconciliation processes must make space for an Indigenous historical counter-narrative in order to avoid perpetuating a colonial relationship between Aboriginal and settler peoples.

A compassionate call to action, this powerful book offers all Canadians – both Indigenous and not – a new way of approaching the critical task of healing the wounds left by the residential school system.

About the Authors

Paulette Regan

Taiaiake Alfred is a Kahnawà:ke Mohawk philosopher and political strategist with more than three decades of experience in First Nations governance, political activism, and cultural restoration. After twenty-five years as a university professor, he now works directly with Indigenous nations to help breathe life into their visions of self-determination. He has been awarded a Canada Research Chair, a National Aboriginal Achievement/Indspire Award, and the Native American Journalists Association award for best column writing. He is the author of three highly acclaimed books: Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism; Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto; and Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom.

Contributor Notes

Paulette Regan is the director of research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. She holds a PhD from the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria.

Awards

Short-listed, Canada Prize in Social Sciences, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Editorial Reviews

Regan weaves together her own profoundly personal experiences in Indigenous communities with wider historical study and narrative analysis … most compelling.

— Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 13 No. 3, Winter 2012

Seeking to navigate the complex terrain of reconciliation in Canada, Regan’s text is an important contribution to settler studies in Canada … Her ability to fuse literatures from the burgeoning field of settler studies and anticolonial scholarship is impressive.

— Great Plains Research, Vol. 22 No. 2, Fall 2012

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Librarian review

Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada

by [ABPBC]

This scholarly book from the director of Research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada calls on all Canadians to consider how their colonial legacy perpetuates itself on a daily basis. “Canadian citizens … are ultimately responsible for the past and present actions of our government.” The federal government’s 2008 apology to victims of residential schools was not an end, but an opportunity for Canadians to rethink the past and implications for future relationships with Canada's indigenous peopleThis book points to a transformation born out of reflection by all parties, rather than indigenous people being held responsible for coming to terms with what happened to them. Transformation is based on the critical hope of an authentic, ethical and just reconciliation.

Source: The Association of Book Publishers of BC. Canadian Aboriginal Books for Schools. 2011-2012.