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ABSTRACT
In 2015, The Truth and Reconciliation Report (TRC) was released in Canada, outlining 94 Calls to Action which, include pushing Canadian post-secondary institutions to ethically engage Indigenous communities and knowledge systems. This paper seeks to respond to the TRC by offering a spatial analysis of the differences, broadly conceived, between Indigenous and western ontological structures. We consider these differences in terms of ‘circles and lines’ through a novice, settler understanding of how Mi’kmaw concepts of etuaptmumk (two-eyed seeing), netukulimk (conservation laws) and m’sɨt No’kmaq (all our relations) can be brought to support decolonial teaching and learning about such important and urgent matters as climate change. A related goal in this paper is pedagogic: we hope our own ambivalent learning here can be used as an example to reflect deeply on how settlers like us might/should/can’t work with the ethical, political, and practical challenges of responding to the TRC in our research, involving, and considering Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015. https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf.
2 Scott Kouri, ‘Settler Education: Acknowledgement, Self-location, and Settler Ethics in Teaching and Learning’, International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies 11, no. 3 (2020): 56–79, https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs113202019700.
3 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Honouring the Truth.
4 Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz, ‘Indigenization as Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Decolonization: Navigating the Different Visions for Indigenizing the Canadian Academy’, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 14, no. 3 (2018): 218–227, https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118785.
5 Marie Battiste, ‘Reconciling Indigenous Knowledge in Education: Promises, Possibilities, and Imperatives’, in Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education, ed. James McNitch and Marc Spooner (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2018), 123–148; Levi Gahman and Gabrielle Legault, ‘Disrupting the Settler Colonial University: Decolonial Praxis and Place-Based Education in the Okanagan Valley (British Columbia)’, Capitalism Nature Socialism 30, no. 1 (2019): 50–69.
6 Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.
7 Darrin Qualman, Civilisation Critical: Energy, Food, Nature, and the Future (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2019).
8 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Honouring the Truth.
9 Ibid.
10 Cash Ahenakew, ‘Grafting Indigenous Ways of Knowing onto Non-Indigenous Ways of Being: The (Underestimated) Challenges of a Decolonial Imagination’, International Review of Qualitative Research 9, no. 3 (2016): 323–340, https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2016.9.3.32.
11 North America.
12 Wherever possible we are attendant to the Indigenous names of places unless, for political purposes, we make visible the settler colonial geographies imposed by the state.
13 Anthony Morgan, ‘Black People in Canada are Not Settlers’, Ricochet Media, March 12, 2019, Reconciliation Section. https://ricochet.media/en/2538/black-people-in-canada-are-not-settlers.
14 Briget Anderson, Nandita Sharma and Cynthia Wright, ‘Editorial: Why No Borders?’, Refuge 26, no. 2 (2009): 5–18, https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.32074.
16 Gillian Austin and Ann Sylliboy, You Can’t Get An Elder In An App: Elder Engagement for Mi’kmaw and Wolastoqey Post-Secondary Education (Membertou: Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey, 2017), 5, https://www.cbu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/YOU_CANT_GET_AN_ELDER_IN_AN_APP_Elder_En.pdf
17 Paulette Steeves, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021).
18 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Honouring the Truth.
19 Ibid., vi.
20 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 36.
21 Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2008); Sharon Stein, Vanessa De Oliveira Andreotti, Cash Ahenakew, Rene Susa, Elwood Jimmy, Will Valley, Sarah Amsler, Camila Cardoso, Dino Siwek, Tereza Cajkova, Dani D'emilia, Ninawa Kui, Mateus Tremembe, Rosa Pitaguary, Benício Pitaguary, Nadia Pitaguary, Lynn Mario, Trindade Souza, Bill Calhoun and Ben Lickerman, ‘Methodologies for Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures’, in Weaving an Otherwise: Reframing Qualitative Research through Relational Lenses, ed. Amanda Tachine and Z Nicolazzo (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2022); Ahenakew, ‘Grafting Indigenous Ways’.
22 Albert Marshall, Karen Beazley, Jessica Hum, Anastasia Papadopoulos, Sherry Pictou, Janet Rabesca, Lisa Young and Melanie Zurba, ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Re-Indigenization Principles for Transforming Biodiversity Conservation in Canada and Beyond’, FACETS 6, no. 1 (2021): 839–869, https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2020-0083.
23 Although it does not figure in our analysis here, we recognise the powerful climate and environmental work being done in grassroots Indigenous communities and organisations such as Indigenous Climate Action (https://www.indigenousclimateaction.com) and Tiny House Warriors (http://www.tinyhousewarriors.com), among others.
24 Murdena Marshall, Albert Marshall and Cheryl Bartlett, ‘Two-eyed Seeing in Medicine’, in Determinants of Indigenous Peoples’ Health in Canada: Beyond the Social, ed. Margo Greenwood, Sarah de Leeuw, Nicole Lindsay and Charlotte Reading (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2015), 16–24.
25 Kerry Prosper, L. Jane McMillan, Anthony Davis and Morgan Moffitt, ‘Returning to Netukulimk: Mi’kmaq Cultural and Spiritual Connections with Resource Stewardship and Self-governance’, The International Indigenous Policy Journal 2, no. 4 (2011): 1–19, doi:10.18584/iipj.2011.2.4.7.
26 Kouri, ‘Settler Education’; Ahenakew, ‘Grafting Indigenous Ways of Knowing’.
27 Wilson, Research Is Ceremony; Stein et al., ‘Methodologies for Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures’, 46; Ahenakew, ‘Grafting Indigenous Ways of Knowing’.
28 Marie Battiste, Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogy in First Nations Education: A Literature Review with Recommendations (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2002).
29 Ahenakew, ‘Grafting Indigenous Ways of Knowing’; Kouri, ‘Settler Education’.
30 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth.
31 Cash Ahenakew, ‘Indigenous People’s Wellbeing: FAQ’, https://blogs.ubc.ca/ahenakewcrc/faq/.
32 Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’.
33 Ibid.
34 Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, ‘On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 16, no. 4 (2017): 761–780, https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1539; Audra Simpson, ‘The State is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty’, Theory and Event 19, no. 4 (2016), 1–30, http://muse.jhu.edu/article/633280.; Vanessa Watts, ‘Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non-Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2, no. 1 (2013): 20–34, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/19145.
35 Wilson, Research Is Ceremony.
36 Ahenakew, ‘Grafting Indigenous Ways of Knowing’.
37 Ibid., 329.
38 Lorenzo Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
39 Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present, 206.
40 Adam Barker and Emma Lowman, Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2015).
41 Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Settler Colonialism and Decolonisation’, Borderlands E-Journal 6, no. 2 (2007): 6. http://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/1337.
42 Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present, 6.
43 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, ‘Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation’, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1 (2015): 52–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649214560440.
44 Veracini, ‘Settler Colonialism and Decolonisation’, 5.
45 Cornel Pewewardy, ‘American Indian Magnet School’, in Native Heritage: Personal Accounts by American Indians, 1790 to the Present, ed. Arlene Hirschfelder (New York, NY: MacMillan,1995), 129–132; Peter Hanohano, ‘The Spiritual Imperative of Native Epistemology: Restoring Harmony and Balance to Education’, Canadian Journal of Native Education 23, no. 2 (1999): 206–219.
46 Qualman, Civilisation Critical.; Randy Woodley, Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: A Decolonised Approach to Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Academic, 2022).
47 Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present.
48 Ian Mosby, ‘Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952’, Histoire Sociale/Social History 46, no. 1 (2013): 145–172, doi:10.1353/his.2013.0015.
49 Veracini, ‘Settler Colonialism and Decolonisation’.
50 Marshall et al., ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant’.
51 Celia Haig-Brown, ‘Indigenous Thought, Appropriation, and Non-Aboriginal People’, Canadian Journal of Education/Revue Canadienne De l’éducation 33, no. 4 (2010): 940, https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/2189.
52 Marshall, Marshall and Bartlett, ‘Two-eyed Seeing in Medicine’; Marshall et al., ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant’.
53 Albert Marshall, ‘Drawdown & the Human Prospect: A Retreat for Empowering our Climate Future for Rural Communities, Thinkers Lodge’, Climate Change 1, http://www.integrativescience.ca/uploads/files/Two-Eyed%20Seeing-AMarshallThinkers%20Lodge2017(1).pdf.
54 Simpson, ‘The State is a Man’, 3.
55 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (London, UK: Macmillan, 1988), 66–111.
56 Sarah Hunt, ‘Ontologies of Indigeneity: The Politics of Embodying a Concept’, Cultural Geographies 21, no. 1 (2014): 27.
57 Glen Coulthard, ‘From Wards of the State to Subjects of Recognition?: Marx, Indigenous Peoples, and the Politics of Dispossession in Denendeh’, in Theorizing Native Studies, ed. Andrea Smith (New York, NY: Duke University Press, 2014), 56–98.
58 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.
59 Kouri, ‘Settler Education’, 71.
60 Ibid., 67.
61 Marshall, ‘Drawdown & the Human Prospect’, 1.
62 Ahenakew, ‘Indigenous People’s Wellbeing: FAQ’.
63 Marshall et al., ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant’.
64 Wilson, Research is Ceremony, 73.
65 Ibid., 70–71.
66 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth.
67 Kouri, ‘Settler Education’.
68 Marshall, et al., ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant’.
69 Hunt, ‘Ontologies of Indigeneity’, 29.
70 Marie Battiste and James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Purich Publishing, 2000), 36.
71 The Nuu-chah-nulth Elders describe this as hishuk ish tsawalk (everything is one), mitákuye oyás’iŋ is a similar phrase from the Lakota language, niw_hk_m_kanak is ‘all my relations’ in Cree and akwe nia'tetewá:neren is a similar concept of the Mohawk peoples.
72 Pewewardy, ‘American Indian Magnet School’.
73 Hanohano, ‘The Spiritual Imperative of Native Epistemology’.
74 Tuma Young, ‘L’nuwita’simk: a Foundational Worldview for a L’nuwey Justice System’, Indigenous Law Journal 13, no. 1 (2016): 99, http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/17034566/v13inone/nfp_lafwfaljs.xml.
75 John Sylliboy, Margot Latimer, Albert Marshall and Emily MacLeod, ‘Communities Take the Lead: Exploring Indigenous Health Research Practices through Two-Eyed Seeing and Kinship’, International Journal of Circumpolar Health 80, no. 1 (2021), doi:10.1080/22423982.2021.1929755.
76 Personal communication with Chattopadhyay November 16, 2014.
77 Woodley, Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview, 92.
78 Haig-Brown, ‘Indigenous Thought, Appropriation, and Non-Aboriginal People’; Woodley, Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview.
79 Mi’k’maw Conservation Group. 2021. Mission and Netukulimk. https://mikmawconservation.ca/mission-netukulimk/.
80 Prosper et al., ‘Returning to Netukulimk’, 5.
81 Russel Lawrence Barsh, ‘Netukulimk Past and Present: Miqmaw Ethics and the Atlantic Fishery’, Journal of Canadian Studies 37, no. 1 (2002): 16, https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs.37.1.15.
82 Prosper et al., ‘Returning to Netukulimk’, 6.
83 Qualman, Civilisation Critical.
84 Sonja Vermeulen, Bruce Campbell and John Ingram, ‘Climate Change and Food Systems’, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37 (2012): 195–222, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-020411-130608; Qualman, Civilisation Critical.
85 Qualman, Civilisation Critical, 29.
86 Ibid., 6.
87 Ibid., 249.
88 Ibid., 249.
89 Kathleen Skott-Myhre, Scott Kouri and Hans Skott-Myhre, ‘De-Settlering Ourselves: Conference Reflections’, International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies 11, no. 2 (2020): 105, https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs112202019521.
90 Steeves, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere.
91 Prosper et al., ‘Returning to Netukulimk’; Marshall et al., ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant’.
92 See for example, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, ‘Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg Intelligence and Rebellious Transformation’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 3, no. 3 (2014): 1–25, http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/19298692/v03i0003/nfp_lapniart.xml.; Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017); Marshall, et al., ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant’; Dian Million, ‘We are the Land, and the Land is Us: Indigenous Land, Lives, and Embodied Ecologies in the Twenty-First Century’, in Racial Ecologies, ed. Leilani Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2018), 19–33.
93 See for instance, Audra Simpson’s discussion of the state’s disappearance of Indigenous women because they embody the land and alternative political orders in, ‘The State is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty’.
94 Simpson, As We Have Always Done, 148.
95 Ibid., 118.
96 Watts, ‘Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency’.
97 Kyle Whyte, ‘Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene’, English Language Notes 55, no. 1–2 (2017): 153–162, doi:10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.153.
98 Davis and Todd, ‘On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene’.
99 Watts, ‘Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency’.
100 A colonial legal concept in which, Indigenous land is deemed to be unoccupied or uninhabited by Christians.
101 Whyte, ‘Indigenous Climate Change Studies’.
102 Davis and Todd, ‘On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene’, 763.
103 Ibid., 763.
104 Ibid., 763.
105 Ibid., 771.
106 Nicole Latulippe, ‘Bridging Parallel Rows: Epistemic Difference and Relational Accountability in Cross-Cultural Research’, The International Indigenous Policy Journal 6, no. 2 (2015): 7, doi:10.18584/iipj.2015.6.2.7.
107 Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’.
108 Watts, ‘Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency’, 21.
109 Ibid., 27.
110 Davis and Todd, ‘On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene’, 769–770.
111 Ibid., 770.
112 Marshall, Marshall and Bartlett, ‘Two-eyed Seeing in Medicine’.
113 Ibid.
114 Tuck and Yang, ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’, 2.
115 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Honouring the Truth.
116 See Richard Schuster, Ryan Germain, Joseph Bennett, Nicholas Reo and Peter Arcese, ‘Vertebrate Biodiversity on Indigenous-managed Lands in Australia, Brazil, and Canada Equals That in Protected Areas’, Environmental Science and Policy 101 (2019): 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2019.07.002; Marshall et al., ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant’.
117 Simpson, ‘The State is a Man’, 1.
118 Rematriation is distinguished from repatriation, which is the Euro-western and patriarchal concept about individual property rights and ownership. Rematriation on the other hand is grounded in Indigenous values particular to a place and people. It is Indigenous women-led work toward the restoring of sacred relationships between Indigenous peoples and their ancestral lands and in this way, is in opposition to patriarchal violence. Lee Maracle (1988) has described rematriation as an Indigenous feminist concept with decolonial objectives. For more on the concept of rematriation, see: Robin Gray, ‘Rematriation: Ts’msyen Law, Rights of Relationality, and Protocols of Return’, Native American Studies 9, no. 1 (2022): 1–17, doi:10.1353/nai.2022.0010; Lee Maracle, I am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism (Vancouver, BC: Press Gang Publishers, 1988).
119 Skott-Myhre, Kouri and Skott-Myhre, ‘De-Settlering Ourselves: Conference Reflections’, 98.