At a recent conference in Saskatchewan, indigenous and non-indigenous delegates from North and South America, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe addressed cultural restoration and the issues and challenges confronting Aboriginal peoples as a result of decolonization. Their aim was to determine how Aboriginal cultural rights in postcolonial societies can be restored and how to find new approaches for protecting, healing, and restoring cultures and languages of long-oppressed peoples.
The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute held in 1996 on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples.
Due to widespread geographical and cultural displacement, Australian Aboriginal people have experienced the destruction of their identity. This identity is traditionally closely linked to the land and the people, so that Aborigines feel an intense longing to rediscover their roots and reclaim their identity. In order to do this, they need to individually reconstruct their past, for instance by writing down their life stories. Thus Aboriginal women like Ruby Langford Ginibi have embarked on a process of reconnecting with their roots through the medium of autobiography. In discussing three of these autobiographies, this book examines the role of autobiographical narrative in the process of Australian Aboriginal women reclaiming their identity.
Indigenous methodologies have been silenced and obscured by the Western scientific means of knowledge production. In a challenge to this colonialist rejection of Indigenous knowledge, Anishinaabe re-searcher Kathleen Absolon describes how Indigenous re-searchers re-theorize and re-create methodologies. Indigenous knowledge resurgence is being informed by taking a second look at how re-search is grounded. Absolon consciously adds an emphasis on re with a hyphen as a process of recovery of Kaandossiwin and Indigenous re-search. Understanding Indigenous methodologies as guided by Indigenous paradigms, worldviews, principles, processes and contexts, Absolon argues that they are wholistic, relational, inter-relational and interdependent with Indigenous philosophies, beliefs and ways of life. In exploring the ways Indigenous re-searchers use Indigenous methodologies within mainstream academia, Kaandossiwin renders these methods visible and helps to guard other ways of knowing from colonial repression. This second edition features the author’s reflections on her decade of re-search and teaching experience since the last edition, celebrating the most common student questions, concerns, and revelations.
Whether in Canada, the United States, Australia, India, Peru, or Russia, the approximately 500 million Indigenous Peoples in the world have faced a similar fate at the hands of colonizing powers. Assaults on language and culture, commercialization of art, and use of plant knowledge in the development of medicine have taken place all without consent, acknowledgement, or benefit to these Indigenous groups worldwide. Battiste and Henderson passionately detail the devastation these assaults have wrought on Indigenous peoples, why current legal regimes are inadequate to protect Indigenous knowledge, and put forward ideas for reform. Looking at the issues from an international perspective, this book explores developments in various countries including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and also the work of the United Nations and relevant international agreements.
Roots of Entanglement offers an historical exploration of the relationships between Indigenous peoples and European newcomers in the territory that would become Canada. Various engagements between Indigenous peoples and the state are emphasized and questions are raised about the ways in which the past has been perceived and how those perceptions have shaped identity and, in turn, interaction both past and present. Specific topics such as land, resources, treaties, laws, policies, and cultural politics are explored through a range of perspectives that reflect state-of-the-art research in the field of Indigenous history. Editors Myra Rutherdale, Whitney Lackenbauer, and Kerry Abel have assembled an array of top scholars including luminaries such as Keith Carlson, Bill Waiser, Skip Ray, and Ken Coates. Roots of Entanglement is a direct response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call for a better appreciation of the complexities of history in the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.
Unhomely States is the first collection of foundational essays of Canadian postcolonial theory. The essays span the period from 1965 to the present day and approach broad issues of Canadian culture and society. They represent the impassioned conflicts, dissonances, and intersections among postcolonial theorists in English Canada. Theories of Canadian postcolonialism are various and often contending. The questions proliferate: Is Canada postcolonial? Who in Canada is postcolonial? Are some Canadians more postcolonial than others? Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate both the historical development of this vigorous debate and its most prominent current perspectives. The anthology comprises work originally written in English, selected and arranged in order to demonstrate the dynamic nature of these discussions. Included here are essays by many well-known writers and theorists, such as George Grant, Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee, Robert Kroetsch, Linda Hutcheon, Diana Brydon, Thomas King, Terry Goldie, Arun Mukherjee, Smaro Kamboureli, Stephen Slemon, and Roy Miki. The collection covers such topics as anti-colonial nationalism, settler-invader theory, First Nations contexts, postcolonial pedagogy, and critiques of Canadian postcolonialism. A general introduction surveying the current field of postcolonial discourse in English Canada is also included.
In 1985 and 1986, ninety-year-old Witsuwit'en Chief, Maxlaxlex – or Johnny David as he is better known - was the first Witsuwit'en to give Commission Evidence in the Delgamuukw land claims case in which the Witsuwit'en and Gitxsan of Northern British Columbia were battling for title to their traditional territories. 'Hang Onto These Words' presents the actual transcripts of the questions and answers between lawyers working on both sides and this knowledgeable and outspoken Native elder who spoke in his own language and whose words were then translated by an interpreter into English. The evidence was given in a makeshift courtroom set up in David's own home. Anthropologist Antonia Mills was present during these proceedings, and in this book, she introduces and contextualizes the evidence within the Delgamuukw case. In his testimony, David provides a rich description of the Witsuwit'en way of life as well as the injustices suffered at the hands of Indian agents and settlers. He ends his testimony saying, "If you hang on to these words, everything will be all right." The challenge of hearing his voice, and using it to negotiate the meaning and substance of Aboriginal rights remains unresolved and resonant.
Design and Agency brings together leading international design scholars and practitioners to address the concept of agency in relation to objects, organisations and people. The authors set out to expand the scope of design history and practice, avoiding the heroic narratives of a typical modernist approach. They consider both how the agents of design construct and express their identities and subjectivities through practice, while also investigating the distinctive contribution of design in the construction of individual identity and subjectivity. Individual chapters explore notions of agency in a range of design disciplines and historical periods, including the agency of women in effecting changes to the design of offices and working practices; the role of Jeffrey Lindsay and Buckminster Fuller in developing the design of a geodesic dome; Le Corbusier's 'Casa Curutchet'; a re-consideration of the gendered historiography of the 'Jugendstil' movement, and Bruce Mau's design exhibitions. Taken together, the essays in Design and Agency provide a much-needed response to the traditional texts which dominate design history. With a broad chronological span from 1900 to the present, and an equally broad understanding of the term 'design', it expands how we view the discipline, and shows how design itself can be an agent for social, cultural and economic change.
The profession of peacemaking has been practiced by indigenous communities around the world for many centuries; however, the ethnocentric world view of the West, which dominated the world of ideas for the last five centuries, dismissed indigenous forms of peacemaking as irrelevant and backward tribal rituals. Neither did indigenous forms of peacemaking fit the conception of modernization and development of the new ruling elites who inherited the postcolonial state. The new profession of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which emerged in the West as a new profession during the 1970s, neglected the tradition and practice of indigenous forms of peacemaking. The scant literature which has appeared on this critical subject tends to focus on the ritual aspect of the indigenous practices of peacemaking. The goal of this book is to fill this lacuna in scholarship. More specifically, this work focuses on the process of peacemaking, exploring the major steps of process of peacemaking which the peacemakers follow in dislodging antagonists from the stage of hostile confrontation to peaceful resolution of disputes and eventual reconciliation. The book commences with a critique of ADR for neglecting indigenous processes of peacemaking and then utilizes case studies from different communities around the world to focus on the following major themes: the basic structure of peacemaking process; change and continuity in the traditions of peacemaking; the role of indigenous women in peacemaking; the nature of the tools peacemakers deploy; common features found in indigenous processes of peacemaking; and the overarching goals of peacemaking activities in indigenous communities.
