Reconciliation

An indigenized, de-colonized world view for Indigenous leaders and academics seeking a path to reconciliation. Indigenization within the academy and the idea of truth and reconciliation within Canada have been seen as the remedy to correct the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Canadian society. While honourable, these actions are difficult to achieve given the Western nature of institutions in Canada and the collective memory of its citizens, and the burden of proof has always been the responsibility of Anishinabeg. Authors makwa ogimaa (Jerry Fontaine) and ka-pi-ta-aht (Don McCaskill) tell their di-bah-ji-mo-wi-nan (personal stories) to understand the cultural, political, social, and academic events in the past fifty years of Ojibway-Anishinabe resistance in Canada.

Analyzing archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, the author reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation: the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history.

The authors (many of whom are themselves immigrants and refugees) explore what reconciliation is and what it means to live in relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Writing in this volumes examines respecting Indigenous Treaties, learning the role of colonized education processes, protecting our land and environment, creating food security and creating an intercultural space for social interactions, among other topics.

In this book, MacDonald uses genocide as an analytical tool to better understand Canada’s past and present relationships between settlers and Indigenous Peoples. Starting with a discussion of how genocide is defined in domestic and international law, the book applies the concept to the forced transfer of Indigenous children to residential schools and the “Sixties Scoop,” in which Indigenous children were taken from their communities and placed in foster homes or adopted.

The word "Mississauga" is the name British Canadian settlers used for the Ojibwe on the north shore of Lake Ontario, now the most urbanized region in Canada. The Ojibwe of this area in the early and mid-nineteenth century lived through a time of considerable threat to the survival of the First Nations, as they lost much of their autonomy, and almost all of their traditional territory. Mississauga Portraits recreates the lives of eight Ojibwe who lived during this period all of whom are historically important, including Peter Jones, or Kahkewaquonaby (1802–1856); George Copway or Kahgegagahbowh (1818–1869); Henry Steinhauer, or Shahwahnegezhik (ca. 1817–1884); Catharine Sutton, or Nahnebahnwequay (1824–1865), and others.