Reading for Reconciliation?Indigenous Literatures in a Post-TRC Canada

In december 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (trc) released its final report, and since then people in Indigenous and non-Indigenous contexts (literary and otherwise) have been working to understand that report's implications. As a Métis scholar whose work bridges the fields of Indigenous literatures and Indigenous education, I have been making connections between the report's recommendations and my ongoing scholarship on Indigenous literatures and learning. These connections raise generative questions about the educational aspects of reading literary texts and about the framing of social and political change between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. In this paper, I focus on connections between Indigenous literatures and learning in order to better understand the reimagining embodied by the trc's transformative Calls to Action. I draw on perspectives from my current research on Indigenous literatures and resurgence—including conversations with teachers and with Indigenous writers—to ask what it means to read for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. What might it mean, instead, to read for resurgence? By interrogating the framework of reconciliation, I argue that, while the literary arts may be inspiring and reflecting Indigenous communities' resurgence, a great deal of learning is required by the rest of Canada to develop responsive relationships with this work.

In order to make this argument, I bring together examinations that occur across the distinct sections of this article. The catalyst for my considerations here—my starting point—is an example of public discourse around reconciliation, education, and Indigenous literatures—namely a conversation that occurred in the winter of 2015–2016 on Canada's public broadcast radio, the cbc. Specifically, I develop my argument in relation to a suggestion for Canadian learning made by Canada's Minister for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in a cbc interview and then look at Indigenous writers' responses to that suggestion in a subsequent cbc interview—responses that challenge the discourse surrounding reconciliation. Second, I build upon those responses to analyze the relationship, implied in the minister's suggestion, between non-Indigenous readers' engagements with Indigenous literatures and the learning precipitated by those engagements. Third, I read the trc's Calls to Action in order to highlight the educational dimensions embedded in that document's vision for reconciliation and to consider their implications for literary scholars. Fourth, I examine perspectives from my own research with writers and teachers in light of these understandings of reconciliation. Finally, I explore the possibility of reading for resurgence through a reading of Cree author Tracey Lindberg's novel Birdie. In concluding these arguments about literatures and learning, I seek to contribute to stronger understandings of what it means for non-Indigenous people to read Indigenous literatures at this particular moment in Canadian public consciousness. Reconciliation, in my argument, is not only fraught: it has the potential, if not carefully theorized, to be mobilized by official discourses in order to reinscribe Indigenous expression within the norms of the settler state.

Reading for reconciliation and Indigenous book club month

Shortly after the trc's Calls to Action were released in 2015, the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister for Indigenous and Northern Affairs, was interviewed on the cbc radio program The Current. She was there to elaborate on the new Liberal government's commitment to renewing relationships with Indigenous peoples. The federal election, with its dramatic shift in leadership, took place shortly before the trc's conclusion. In addressing the Liberal Party's plans for renewing relationships, Bennett celebrates the feeling that things are changing for the better, while also pointing out the continuing prevalence of racism and hatred aimed at Indigenous people. She suggests in the interview that many Canadians are indeed ready to step up and contribute to change but reiterates the responsibility of non-Indigenous people to educate themselves about Indigenous issues and connect with Indigenous communities. This learning is necessary, she emphasizes, to the work of reconciliation, in order "to eliminate the ignorance that we all had because it wasn't taught to us in school."¹ As a scholar of...