Balancing Reconciliation at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet

2021 ◽  
pp. 298-317
Author(s):  
Bridget Cauthery ◽  
Shawn Newman
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
School System ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Indigenous Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Histories

As part of efforts across Canada to address and reconcile the nation-state’s violent colonial histories, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB) premiered Mark Godden’s newest work, Going Home Star: Truth and Reconciliation, in 2014. The work narrates one element of settler colonialism in Canada: the Indian Residential School System. With no Indigenous dancers in the company, and few Indigenous people involved in the production overall, the project has received criticism as yet another non-Indigenous endeavor speaking for Indigenous peoples. In this chapter, we approach Going Home Star in ways that question the appropriateness of contemporary ballet as a medium for negotiating contemporaneous reconciliation between Indigenous and settler peoples in Canada and its checkered history of Indigenous representation.

scholarly journals Pushing the Academy: The Need for Decolonizing Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Antoine
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Decolonizing Methodologies ◽  
Justice Sociale ◽  
Ample Opportunity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Speak Up ◽  
Peuples Autochtones

With renewed interest for research involving Indigenous peoples, nations, and communities following the height of the Idle No More movement and, more recently, the release of the Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, this research in brief argues that there is a need for researchers to recognize the history of the Western academy’s relationship with Indigenous peoples and its legacy of contributing to colonization. As a result, communication scholarship should seek to embrace and even privilege Indigenous knowledges in research, when appropriate, and accept research goals of Indigenous social justice based on decolonizing methodologies. The collaborative nature of research means that there is ample opportunity to speak up when research fails to include Indigenous ways of knowing.À la suite du mouvement Idle No More et, plus récemment, de la publication du rapport final de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada sur les écoles résidentielles autochtones, on remarque un intérêt renouvelé pour la recherche sur les peuples, nations et communautés autochtones. Dans ce contexte, ce Coup d’œil sur la recherche soutient que les chercheurs ont besoin de mieux reconnaître l’histoire de la relation entre les peuples autochtones et l’université occidentale et la participation de celle-ci à leur colonisation. Dans les circonstances, la recherche en communication devrait chercher à inclure et même privilégier les savoirs autochtones quand il est pertinent de le faire, et accepter les objectifs visés par la justice sociale autochtone fondée sur des méthodologies décolonisatrices. La nature collaborative de la recherche est telle qu’il y a maintes occasions où l’on pourrait intervenir aux moments où celle-ci oublie les modes d’apprentissage autochtones.

scholarly journals Walking on This Earth, Finding Belonging: Ruminations of an Unsettled Settler

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-237
Author(s):  
Stephanie Bartlett
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
School System ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Poetic Inquiry ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Life Journey ◽  
Indigenous Educators

In this paper, I contemplate my positionality as a non-Indigenous settler of Scottish, English and German descent. I (re)visit places that have shaped my life-journey and engages in a thoughtful participation between language, land and my positionality as an emerging researcher within an Indigenist paradigm. I consider Regan’s (2010) concept of the unsettled settler, defined as non-Indigenous people learning to embrace the struggle to face truths of colonialism and the consequences of the Indian Residential School system. Through photovoice and poetic inquiry, I reflect on my own encounters with the land and more-than-human relatives as a way to disrupt colonial assumptions. Ruminations, pictures and a collection of poems invite an exploration of the curricular implications of land-based teachings and reconciling ways of knowing with the land. By delving into and sharing my own personal experiences on the land, I hope to invite non-Indigenous educators to consider their own positionality and relationship with the land as part of their response to the Truth and Reconciliation (2015) calls to action.

Peering Beyond the Imperial Gaze: Using Digital Tools to Construct a Spatial History of Conquest

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy M. Mikecz
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Digital Maps ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
Colonial Texts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spatial Narrative

Ethnohistorians and other scholars have long noted how European colonial texts often concealed the presence and participation of indigenous peoples in New World conquests. This scholarship has examined how European sources (both texts and maps) have denied indigenous history, omitted indigenous presence, elided indigenous agency, and ignored indigenous spaces all while exaggerating their own power and importance. These works provide examples of colonial authors performing these erasures, often as a means to dispossess. What they lack, however, is a systematic means of identifying, locating, and measuring these silences in space and time. This article proposes a spatial history methodology which can make visible, as well as measurable and quantifiable the ways in which indigenous people and spaces have been erased by colonial narratives. It presents two methods for doing this. First, narrative analysis and geovisualization are used to deconstruct the imperial histories found in colonial European sources. Second it combines text with maps to tell a new (spatial) narrative of conquest. This new narrative reconstructs indigenous activity through a variety of digital maps, including ‘mood maps’, indigenous activity maps, and maps of indigenous aid. The resulting spatial narrative shows the Spanish conquest of Peru was never inevitable and was dependent on the constant aid of immense numbers of indigenous people.

scholarly journals Origins: Colonies and Statistics

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 735-754
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
English Language ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Mass Survey ◽  
Waste Land ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn this address, I examine the lexical, geographic, temporal and philosophical origins of two key concepts in modern political thought: colonies and statistics. Beginning with the Latin word colonia, I argue that the modern ideology of settler colonialism is anchored in the claim of “improvement” of both people and land via agrarian labour in John Locke's labour theory of property in seventeenth-century America, through which he sought to provide an ideological justification for both the assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. This same ideology of colonialism was turned inward a century later by Sir John Sinclair to justify domestic colonies on “waste” land in Scotland—specifically Caithness (the county within which my own grandparents were tenant farmers). Domestic colonialism understood as “improvement” of people (the “idle” poor and mentally ill and disabled) through engagement in agrarian labour on waste land inside explicitly named colonies within the borders of one's own country was first championed not only by Sinclair but also his famous correspondent, Jeremy Bentham, in England. Sinclair simultaneously coined the word statistics and was the first to use it in the English language. He defined it as the scientific gathering of mass survey data to shape state policies. Bentham embraced statistics as well. In both cases, statistics were developed and deployed to support their domestic colony schemes by creating a benchmark and roadmap for the improvement of people and land as well as a tool to measure the colony's capacity to achieve both over time. I conclude that settler colonialism along with the intertwined origins of domestic colonies and statistics have important implications for the study of political science in Canada, the history of colonialism as distinct from imperialism in modern political thought and the role played by intersecting colonialisms in the Canadian polity.

scholarly journals Truth and reconciliation cinema: an ethico-political study of residential school imagery in contemporary Indigenous film

2021 ◽  
pp. 117718012110124
Author(s):  
Tyson Stewart
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
School System ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Unanswered Question ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
The Way

This article explores an important facet of the New Wave of Indigenous filmmaking in Canada: residential school system history and imagery, its place in the historical archive, and the way it is being retold and reclaimed in films like Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), Savage (2009), Sisters & Brothers (2015), Indian Horse (2017), and The Grizzlies (2018). While researching this topic, one unanswered question has left me feeling sometimes frustrated and often troubled: Is there a risk of producing pan-Indigenous readings, or worse, repeating the original propagandistic intentions of the original residential school photographs when they are used in new media?

scholarly journals Book Review: An Indigenous Peoples' History Of The United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-130
Author(s):  
Judith B. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Genocide Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indian Perspective

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's, An Indigenous Peoples' History Of The United States, confronts the reality of settler-colonialism and genocide as foundational to the United States. It reconstructs and reframes the consensual narrative from the Native Indian perspective while exposing indoctrinated myths and stereotypes. This masterful and riveting journey provides truth and paths towards the future progress for all peoples. It is a must read and belongs in every classroom, home, library, and canon of genocide studies.

Counterweight: Helen Samuels, Archival Decolonization, and Social License

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 420-444
Author(s):  
Greg Bak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
School System ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Archival Appraisal ◽  
Social License ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT Helen Samuels sought to document institutions in society by adding to official archives counterweights of private records and archivist-created records such as oral histories. In this way, she recognized and sought to mitigate biases that arise from institution-centric application of archival functionalism. Samuels's thinking emerged from a late-twentieth-century consensus on the social license for archival appraisal, which formed around the work of West German archivist Hans Booms, who wrote, “If there is indeed anything or anyone qualified to lend legitimacy to archival appraisal, it is society itself.” Today, archivists require renewed social license in light of acknowledgment that North American governments and institutions sought to open lands for settlement and for exploitation of natural resources by removing or eliminating Indigenous peoples. Can a society be said to “lend legitimacy” to archival appraisal when it has grossly violated human, civil, and Indigenous rights? Starting from the question of how to create an adequate archives of Canada's Indigenous residential school system, the author locates Samuels's work amid other late-twentieth-century work on appraisal and asks how far her thinking can take us in pursuit of archival decolonization.

scholarly journals Exceeding the Limits of Reconciliation: ‘Decolonial Aesthetic Activism’ in the Artwork of Canadian Artist Meryl McMaster

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-22
Author(s):  
Allyson Green
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Critical Engagement

In this paper I consider whether, and if so how artistic creative uncertainty can facilitate processes of imagining new relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s model of reconciliation seems to promise improved Indigenous/settler relationships, yet many Indigenous scholars and allies question the efficacy of it as an approach to expedite relationship-building. For that reason, Indigenous critics like David Garneau suggest that alternate methods be deployed such as ‘decolonial aesthetic activism’ in order to build relationships that exceed the limits of reconciliation. Within this model, ambiguous, discordant, and indigestible artworks operate as one method by which we/settlers can become aware of how we are implicated in the structures of settler colonialism. I apply Garneau’s theory by conducting a close reading of the performative self-portraits by Meryl McMaster. My analysis reveals that art can put forward critiques of settler colonialism that unsettle assumptions, thereby creating new spaces for us to imagine worlds otherwise. Accordingly, I argue that McMaster’s art does have the potential to exceed the limits of reconciliation and conclude that critical engagement with her photographs is an important first step in the process that is decolonization, a process that exceeds the limits of reconciliation.

Canada–Indonesia relations, past and present

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-479
Author(s):  
David Webster
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
65Th Anniversary ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Interests

Canada–Indonesia relations recently passed their 65th anniversary, but they still have a tentative air about them. Despite regular talk about developing a strong Canadian relationship with a country that potentially has much in common with Canada, Canada–Indonesia relations have mostly been friendly but shallow. An overview of the history of bilateral relations, from the opening of a Canadian mission in 1953 to recent bilateral deals committing Ottawa and Jakarta to various forms of collaboration, reveals that rhetoric about common interests has some substance, but a new announcement amidst good intentions every few years is not likely to lead to any deep partnership. There are, however, foundations for closer ties in civil society, including in the fields of economic development, truth and reconciliation, religious deradicalization, and Indigenous peoples linkages.

scholarly journals The Inuit presence at the first Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission national event

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Pierre Gadoua
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
School System ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Residential School ◽  
Cultural Group ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Residential Schooling

This paper addresses various forms of healing and reconciliation among Canadian Inuit and First Nations, in regards to the Indian residential school system and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Stemming from fieldwork at the TRC’s first national event in Winnipeg (June 2010), I present observations that are supplemented by previous studies on Aboriginal healing methods in Canada. Although Inuit and First Nations healing and reconciliation strategies are based on common themes—tradition and community—in practice they diverge notably, both in their principles and in their applications. First Nations seek healing by activating a sense of community that often transcends their specific cultural group or nation, using pan-Indian spiritual traditions and ceremonies. In contrast, the Inuit most commonly seek to preserve and promote specific Inuit traditions and identity as tools in their healing practices. This divergence could be seen in Inuit and First Nations’ participation in the TRC. The creation of the Inuit sub-commission within the TRC in March 2010, resulting from intense lobbying by Inuit leaders, was a first sign of the group’s distinctive approach to healing. But the unfolding of the TRC’s first national event in Winnipeg showed again how these differences materialise in practice and contribute to a better understanding of Inuit responses to the repercussions of their colonial past and strategies for healing from the legacy of residential schooling.

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