#communications studies

[xiaq]

You have to take pleasure in the little things.

[thedigital-witnesses]

Rethinking Reconciliation and the Desire to Heal: Decolonizing Indigenous Healing, Conciliation, and Aesthetic Action in Canada

By: Alyssa Logie, M.A. 

In December 2015, the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its final report including 94 “Calls to Action” urging all levels of Canadian government to contribute to the project of reconciliation. In 2015 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to officially implement these calls. As such, the Canadian government agreed to embark on the journey of reconciliation. According to the TRC, “reconciliation” is about “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country” (A Knock on the Door 142). While this goal may seem advantageous and has had positive impacts as a response to the harms caused by Canada’s Indian Residential School System and the ongoing traumas of colonization, it is necessary to reflect upon the underlying sentiments that underpin the Canadian Government’s desire to participate in reconciliation. As this paper will highlight, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people assert that the Government of Canada is pushing the discourse and project of reconciliation as an extension of the colonial project itself. In order to unpack how this may be, this paper pays particular attention to the Western implications of “healing” that underpin the TRC’s tenets of reconciliation. The push for “healing” as it is defined by the TRC and the Government of Canada ultimately places the responsibility of achieving reconciliation via a Western framework on the shoulders of those who already suffer at the hands of colonization and, as a result, silences Indigenous folk in order to further the Canadian government’s exploitation of Indigenous bodies and land. 

This paper will first unpack how the TRC and the Government of Canada make particular use of the Western notion of healing as a necessity for reconciliation. Following this analysis of Western notions of healing within the TRC, I will unpack Indigenous notions of healing. This consideration of Indigenous notions of healing will further emphasize the colonial nature of the push for healing within the TRC’s hearings and final documents. After a consideration of Indigenous notions of healing, I will turn to Indigenous artists who are enacting “aesthetic action” in order to counter the Western notions of healing that permeate the reconciliation/colonization project in the hopes of rethinking what reconciliation really means in Canada. 

The TRC’s Focus on “Healing” Indigenous Wounds and the Need for Conciliation

As stated by Métis scholar and artist David Garneau, “the sanctioned performance of Reconciliation [on behalf of the TRC and the Government of Canada] is foundationally distorted” (Garneau 23). Garneau reminds us that testimony produced for the TRC is “constrained by non-Indigenous narratives of healing and closure” (Garneau 23). In this way, the TRC hearings were part of a “theatre of national Reconciliation” (29). Although Garneau does acknowledge that survivors who shared their stories during the TRC hearings did so for a number of productive reasons (to bear witness, to speak the truth), he insists that we must also consider the peculiar “display mechanisms” these survivors and their testimonies became “caught up in” (30). Although the act of sharing testimony can and has had positive outcomes for survivors and their communities, and can and has contributed to the general understanding of Canada’s colonial past and present, we must remain critical of the underlying motivations for these testimonial acts to take place. Garneau looks at the TRC’s “Our Mandate” page to get a sense of what this motivation may be. The first line of the mandate reads: “There is an emerging and compelling desire to put the events of the past behind us so that we can work towards a stronger and healthier future” (TRC.ca). Whose desire is this? If it is the Government’s colonial desire, then the process of sharing testimonies at TRC hearings is nothing more than a “continuation of the settlement narrative” (Garneau 31). According to Garneau, “the present ‘colonial’ desire is to ‘put the events of the past behind us’ and reconcile Indigenous people with this narrative” (31). In this way, Reconciliation as it is conceived of and understood by the government is nothing more than a mutation of the colonial project. Following this logic, we can see how the TRC and ultimately the Government of Canada make use of Western understandings of healing instead of turning to Indigenous notions of healing. This is problematic, as it proposes a colonial answer to a supposedly de-colonial project. 

Photo from: www.trc.ca 

Garneau asserts that the notion of “reconciliation” as used by the TRC and the Government of Canada has its roots in Western, particularly Catholic, traditions. Garneau explains how the process of reconciliation assumes that communities and individuals can only be healed “by telling a secret to those in charge,” much like the Catholic practice of confession (33). This is problematic; as Catholic institutions are highly responsible for the traumas experienced at residential schools across Canada. To enforce a Catholic-inspired notion of reconciliation and salvation upon survivors of such traumas is entirely cruel and counter-productive. Additionally, the emphasis on the “spectacle of individual accounts (confessions) and healing narratives (forgiveness and penance)” is inherently colonial, as the ultimate goal is for survivors to heal, forget, and move on. According to Nehiyaw writer and community helper Suzanne Methot, the push on behalf of the TRC and the Canadian Government for Indigenous peoples to move on after sharing their stories of trauma is inherently motivated by the desire to mold Indigenous peoples into passive subjects, ultimately silencing the so-called “indigenous problem” of today (Methot). By rejecting Indigenous ways of knowing, “colonial systems and structures control the nature of the debate and contain it within settler-colonial parameters. This creates yet another opportunity for the colonizer to effect control upon Indigenous peoples” (Methot 205). Essentially, if Indigenous peoples “heal” according to Western notions of “healing”, they will stop complaining about the past and they—as well as their land—become easier to exploit in the interest of settler-colonial capitalist gain. 

Suzanne Methot further explains how Western traditions of “talk therapy” have their limitations in serving Indigenous peoples. Methot describes these limitations: 

The European focus on talking as a form of therapy has its roots in the writing of Rene Descartes and reflects his belief that “I think, therefore I am.” The resulting Cartesian dualism—wherein the mind is separated from the natural world—does not reflect Indigenous ideas on healing or wellness (Methot 233).

If reconciliation is predicated upon Western notions of healing that are incompatible with Indigenous knowledge systems, what other means can be used to genuinely take up the trauma of the IRS that do not fall into the historical pattern of colonialism? For Garneau, and other scholars such as David McDonald, the notion of “conciliation” can help to decolonize the process of truly healing and making reparations for Canada’s genocidal past, as conciliation is an “ongoing process, a seeking rather than the restoration of an imagined agreement” (Garneau 31)1. For Garneau, the reconciliation narrative should be “recast as a continued struggle for conciliation rather than the restoration of something lost (that never quite was)” (32). For conciliation to be possible, Indigenous sovereignties pre-contact must be acknowledged and upheld; Indigenous worldviews must be held up to the same degree as Western worldviews—this especially applies to Indigenous notions of healing that assume a continuous, never ending reflection on traumas of the past. Cree artist, poet and oral historian explains how the nêhiyawak (Cree) word used in reference to the residential school experience is ê-kiskakwêyehk, which means ‘we wear it’” (34). In this way, a wound is not something that goes away after a healing process—it is a scar that is never fully healed or forgotten, that influences the life of a people forever.

Indigenous Notions of Healing: A Pathway Towards Conciliation

After unpacking the Western-colonial desires that underpin the TRC’s and Government of Canada’s push for the healing of Indigenous peoples, it becomes necessary to turn to Indigenous notions of healing that can and must be used in the process of conciliation. In 1998, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) was established in Ottawa, Ontario as an Indigenous managed, non-profit corporation with a mandate to “support the development of sustainable healing processes related to the legacy of Canada’s residential school system” (Archibald 1). During its operation, AHF received $515 million in funding from the Government of Canada that was used to create and support hundreds of Indigenous healing programs, and centers across the country (AHF.ca). As such, the AHF became the spearhead in organizing and ensuring funding for Indigenous healing initiatives across Canada. Before funding for the Foundation was cut by Stephen Harper’s conservative government in 2010 leading to its closure in 2014, the AHF provided hundreds of community-based Indigenous-centered healing initiatives for Indigenous folks in Canada, and published numerous reports and resources on this history and legacy of colonization in Canada (Archibald 2006). The AHF’s Final Report indicates that out of fourteen different forms of healing activities offered by initiatives funded by the AHF, Western therapies were the least effective in treating trauma and intergenerational trauma (2006, 37). Across the board, Indigenous-centered initiatives proved to be the more effective, with elder interactions, ceremony, one-to-one counselling and healing talking circles, and traditional medicine being the most popular and effective of all (37). 

In the third volume of the AHF’s Final Report the term “promising healing practices” is used to define “models, approaches, techniques and initiatives that are based on Aboriginal experiences; that feel right to Survivors and their families; and that result in positive changes in people’s lives” (Archibald 2006, 7). These Indigenous-centered practices address what the AHF refers to as the “three pillars of healing” Indigenous trauma: reclaiming history, cultural interventions, and therapeutic healing (18). As opposed to a Western-oriented notion of healing, this definition includes the necessity of not only individual therapeutic interventions, but also a more holistic process involving the re-establishment of “a spiritual connection with the land using traditional teachings, values and practices” enforcing the “regaining of cultural identity, personal enlightenment and wellness that prepares residents for better reintegration back into their communities” (25). Essentially, the individual can only be healed alongside the reclamation of collective history, land and culture—all essential components to Indigenous healing that Western individual-based approaches ignore. According to a report prepared by Linda Archibald for the AHF, “the central lesson learned about promising healing practices is the immense value and efficacy of incorporating history and culture into holistic programs based on Indigenous values and worldviews” (52). 

Image from: https://www.fnha.ca/what-we-do/traditional-healing

It is also crucial to remember that not all Indigenous notions of healing are uniform, and not all Indigenous peoples respond to the same healing practices in the same way. According to a report prepared by James B. Waldram for the AHF: 

What clearly emerges from our research is the importance of flexibility and eclecticism in the development of treatment models. There is no singular Aboriginal client, as there is no singular Aboriginal individual. Some clients are very firmly entrenched in Aboriginal cultural experiences; others, however, have had extensive experience with the broader, non-Aboriginal influences of mainstream Canada. One legacy of the residential school and substitute care systems for Aboriginal people has been the lack of Aboriginal cultural experiences for many. These individuals are not culture-less, as many popular accounts of Aboriginal experience might suggest; rather, they simply have had little or no experience in an Aboriginal cultural milieu, especially during initial developmental stages (Waldram 2008, 4). 

In this way, Waldram reminds us to refrain from utilizing Pan-Indigenous language when referring to processes of healing and conciliation. Additionally, according to Linda Archibald: 

While adaptations and sharing of Indigenous practices take place across cultures, an increased resistance to viewing Aboriginal people as having a homogeneous set of traditions and practices is evident. At a global level, efforts are required to maintain and support the cultural diversity that currently exists. At the community level, there is some evidence that culturally-appropriate healing interventions are most effective when rooted in local practices, languages and traditions (Archibald 2006, 50).

With Waldram and Archibald’s assertions in mind, what specific Indigenous healing practices have been successfully used in the past, and can be used moving forward, in the process of conciliation?

The process of reconnecting with community, culture and land are three fundamental tenets of Indigenous healing. According to Suzanne Methot, connecting to the natural world a “transformative force, one that is key to healing and change” across all Indigenous peoples (Methot 239). Additionally, Methot cites “recreating the structures of belonging” as another key aspect to Indigenous healing. By “structures of belonging,” Methot is referring to the return of Indigenous peoples to their own communities and cultures. To support Methot’s assertion, in 1997 the Assembly of First Nations “identified the following common strengths among the projects it reviewed in a paper on successful Indigenous health programs in Canada, the United States and Australia: projects tend to be tradition-based and values-based; interventions focus on the entire family; links are made between spirituality and therapy; there is an intimate knowledge of the tribal community and a drawing together of traditions; projects respond to the needs of the community; and the community supported healing and recovery” (Archibald 2006, 39). The number of healing practices formed upon the values and worldviews of Indigenous peoples is extensive and beyond the scope of this short paper. According to Archibald, some of these promising traditional healing practices include: healing circles, sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, dream interpretation, fasting, herbal medicine, returning to a traditional diet, cleansing and prayer, ceremonies including singing and drumming, counselling by a healer or Elder—all of which can be used in tandem with one another (Archibald 2006, 54). 

While Western traditions on their own cannot serve to provide healing for Indigenous peoples, Linda Archibald’s 2006 report for the AHF describes how many healing programs have successfully incorporated, adapted, and blended traditional and Western approaches (Archibald 2006, 50). According to Archibald’s report: 

Traditional ceremonies, medicines and healing practices are being incorporated into the therapeutic process while Indigenous values and worldviews are providing the program framework. Some core values, such as holism, balance and connection to family and the environment, are common to Aboriginal worldviews across cultures; others are clearly rooted in local customs and traditions. The variety of therapeutic combinations in use suggests a powerful commitment to the values of adaptability, flexibility and innovation in the service of healing. This is consistent with the holistic approach to healing common to Indigenous value systems (50). 

While Western approaches may be incorporated into Indigenous healing initiatives, it is essential that Indigenous values and world views remain the foundational framework for such efforts. 

The Future of Indigenous Healing in Canada 

The AHF’s Final Report suggests that “10 years is the average period required for initiating, establishing and evaluating therapeutic healing from residential school trauma in a community or community of interest” and that it “takes time for individuals and communities to reach the ‘readiness to heal’ stage” (Archibald 2006, 39). Because of this, continued stable government funding is required for communities to “engage in a continuum of healing” including processes of reaching out to survivors, dismantling denial, creating safety, and engaging participants in therapeutic healing (39). While the AHF had incredibly positive outcomes for Indigenous communities and individuals, according its Final Report, “20% of the communities are just beginning their healing activities, 65.9% of the communities accomplished a few goals, but much work remains and 14.1% of the communities accomplished many goals, but some work remains” (31). Unfortunately, the de-funding and dissolution of the AHF has left hundreds of community-based healing initiatives without necessary funding, and new initiatives struggle to acquire financial support. The Government of Canada’s cut to such funding is detrimental to the ongoing healing work that Indigenous communities require, and is antithetical to the promises of the TRC’s Calls to Action. How can the Government of Canada support the mandate of the TRC while actively denying funding for community-based, Indigenous-led healing initiatives? Without the actual funding, these Calls to Action are nothing more than empty promises and lip service. 

In 2012, Linda Archibald prepared a report entitled Dancing, Singing, Painting, and Speaking the Healing Story: Healing through Creative Arts for the AHF. In this report, Archibald asserts that along with traditional Indigenous healing practices, the creative arts can and have had profound healing effects for Indigenous peoples. Archibald’s study ultimately asked: “what happens when art, music, dance, storytelling, and other creative arts become a part of community-based Aboriginal healing programs?” (Archibald 2006, 1). According to the results of the study: 

The role of the arts is explained through three interconnected models of healing: the first focuses on the innate healing power of creativity (creative arts-as-healing); the second speaks to the use of the arts in the therapeutic process (creative arts-in-therapy); and the third encompasses a holistic approach to healing that includes creative arts, culture, and spirituality within its very definition (holistic healing includes creative arts). The first two models can be found in the existing art therapy literature. The third model, which grew out of the research, was necessary to complete the picture with respect to Aboriginal people because so many of the responses to the survey and interview questions transcended the two existing models. In these cases, creative arts were considered inseparable from culture, spirituality, and holistic healing. Traditional healing encompasses culture, language, history, spirituality, traditional knowledge, art, drumming, singing, dance, and storytelling as well as knowledge specific to the healer’s area of expertise and the type of healing being undertaken. It is a comprehensive, holistic approach aimed at restoring balance. (2-3). 

This study shows how creative arts are not only productive in Indigenous healing practices, but are actually inseparable from Indigenous cultures and spiritualities. As such, it is necessary to look at when and how the creative arts have been utilized by Indigenous peoples to facilitate healing through the return to traditional communities, cultures and lands. 

Indigenous Aesthetic Action: Combatting Colonial Notions of “Healing”

As previously described, the creative arts are an inseparable component of Indigenous cultures, spiritualties, and, consequently, healing. I will now turn to examples of Indigenous artists and/or projects that have made use of the creative arts to not only practice healing, but also to question and combat the Western colonial notions of healing that underpin the notion of reconciliation put forth by the TRC and the Government of Canada.

Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin utilize the term “aesthetic action” to describe creative endeavors that “unsettle us, provoke us, and make us reconsider our assumptions” (Robinson and Martin 3). Aesthetic action does not refer to aesthetics in the traditional sense of the word; it alternatively refers to the affective quality of the arts and how the arts can move us—most importantly to how they move us to action. In accordance with Garneau and McDonald’s assertions, Robinson and Martin assert that “the concept and practice of reconciliation must be continually interrogated and reimagined” (3). More specifically, Robinson and Martin believe that art—aesthetic action— “is the ideal mechanism through which this can occur” (3). In this way, we can view creative endeavours that function as healing practices and as critical interrogations of the colonial notion of reconciliation as works of aesthetic action. While there are numerous exceptional examples of Indigenous works of aesthetic action, due to the limited scope of this paper, I will focus on three such examples: Digital Natives, Walking with Our Sisters, and (official denial) trade value in progress.

Image from: https://twitter.com/livresCAbooks/status/822114905004253184

Digital Natives (2011) 

Digital Natives (2011) is a collaborative project produced by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a non-profit collective of Vancouver-based individuals, and was curated by Lorna Brown and Clint Burnham (Image 1). During April 2011 (coinciding with the 125th Anniversary of the City of Vancouver) the project displayed ten-second text messages in English and Indigenous languages, interrupting the usual rotation of advertisements on the electronic billboard at the Burrard Street Bridge. Curators Brown and Burnham invited artists and writers from across North America to contribute messages (digitalnatives.othersights.ca). The messages “responded to the site’s charged history,” and the billboard itself “became an artistic and literary space for exchange between native and non-native communities exploring how language is used in advertising, its tactical role in colonization, and as a complex vehicle of communication” (digitalnatives.othersights.ca). More specifically, the project aimed to expose the “lack of public acknowledgement that Vancouver is built upon unceded Coast Salish territory” (Robinson and Zaiontz 43-44). Some of the messages included: “In 1913, all traces of the original village were burned to the ground…,” and “Your grandparents’ unacknowledged debts return to you as rage against the car in front.” Some of the messages were censored by the owner of the billboard, Astral Media, leading Brown and Burnham to add printed lawn signs upon a city-owned piece of land in front of the Burrand Street Bridge. One of the censored messages written by Edgar Heap of Birds pointed directly to the traumas of the residential schools, and the hypocrisy of Vancouver’s relationship with this history (specifically during the 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver), stating: “IMPERIAL CANADA AWARDED SEX ABUSE TO NATIVE YOUTH BY THE BLACK ROBES NOW PROUDLY BESTOWS BRONZE SILVER GOLD MEDALS WITH INDIAN IMAGE” (uppercase in original).

Photo from: https://covapp.vancouver.ca/PublicArtRegistry/ArtworkDetail.aspx?ArtworkId=467

Digital Natives is an example of aesthetic action in that it provides a healing opportunity for Indigenous folks who are able to reflect upon and share their own personal traumas, while also challenging Vancouver’s hypocritical position on reconciliation. On June 17h 2014, the City of Vancouver tabled a motion to become “the world’s first city of reconciliation” (Robinson and Zaiontz 47). What does becoming a “city of reconciliation” really mean, when the city actively resides on unceded Coast Salish land? And, as asked by Robinson and Zaiontz, “what tangible benefits will First Nations secure from the subsequent development of protocols with the City of Vancouver?” (47). Robinson and Zaiontz claim that “to develop a civic infrastructure of redress means to develop a corresponding model for urban planning that acknowledges Vancouver’s location on unceded Coast Salish territory” (48). It is not enough for a city to simply proclaim that they are a “city of reconciliation”—this must be coupled with concrete action and redress. As a work of aesthetic action, Digital Natives commandeered the city’s infrastructure, reclaimed Indigenous space, and served as a direct intervention of the empty rhetorical promises of “reconciliation” espoused by the City of Vancouver.

Image from: https://othersights.ca/digital-natives/

Walking with Our Sisters 

Walking with Our Sisters is a commemorative art installation for the missing and murdered Indigenous women of Canada and the United States curated by Christi Belcourt (Image 2). Walking with Our Sisters is “comprised of 1,763+ pairs of moccasin vamps (tops) plus 108 pairs of children’s vamps created and donated by hundreds of caring and concerned individuals to draw attention to this injustice” (walkingwithoursisters.ca). According to the installation’s website:

The work exists as a floor installation made up of beaded vamps arranged in a winding path formation on fabric and includes cedar boughs. Viewers remove their shoes to walk on a path of cloth alongside the vamps” (walkingwithoursisters.ca). Each pair of vamps represents one missing or murdered Indigenous woman. The unfinished moccasins represent the unfinished lives of the women whose lives were cut short. The children’s vamps are dedicated to children who never returned home from residential schools. Together the installation represents all these women; paying respect to their lives and existence on this earth. They are not forgotten. They are sisters, mothers, aunties, daughters, cousins, grandmothers, wives and partners. They have been cared for, they have been loved, they are missing and they are not forgotten (walkingwithoursisters.ca). 

Image from: https://twitter.com/christibelcourt/status/1004250177379688448

According to curator Chirsti Belcourt, “what we are doing here is not an exhibit… it’s a memorial. It’s commemoration and it’s a ceremony” (walkingwithoursisters.ca). As such, the creation of the installation itself was a healing process for all of those involved. Additionally, those who come to view the installation become implicated in a healing practice as well. As the installation travels to various locations, more and more Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks can bear witness to the trauma of not only Canada’s colonial past, but the current epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The installation is never complete as people can add vamps to the installation at any time. Walking with Our Sisters is always actively growing and never complete, emulating the previously discussed nêhiyawak (Cree) notion of ê-kiskakwêyehk meaning “we wear it”—healing from trauma is a continual, active process that is ongoing, and, like Belcourt’s installation, never complete. Walking with Our Sisters resists the Western notion of healing as a destination to be reached, combatting the problematic rhetoric of reconciliation, and moving towards the necessary work of conciliation. 

Photo from: https://www.easterndoor.com/2017/07/07/walking-with-our-sisters-steps-into-kahnawake/

(official denial) trade value in progress (2014) 

(official denial) trade value in progress (2014) is another collaborative project curated by Leah Decter and Jaimie Isaac. The project “asks members of the public to contribute written and sewn responses to Harper’s G20 statement through a series of participatory events” (Decter and Isaac 97). Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors were asked to write down anything they desired in response to Harper’s statement inside a set of books. Next, other contributors were asked to select a statement from one of the books that resonated with them, and stitch it onto a set of reconfigured Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) blankets. The G20 statement is “machine sewn in formal font” at the centre of the blankets, around which an “ever-increasing corpus of responses” are hand-stitched (100). The project allows Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors to work together on a healing initiative that is never finished, and constantly being added to—much like how the Walking with Our Sisters installation encourages ongoing, active memory-work. In this way, (official denial) trade value in progress allows for a healing conciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous folk that does not place the sole responsibility of healing on the shoulders of the colonized. In this way, settlers “undertake the work of decolonizing themselves as a step in decolonizing the settler colonial regime that underpins the nation state of Canada” (Regan 2). Additionally, the project responds to official narratives of reconciliation in that it directly unpacks and criticizes Stephen Harper’s controversial “apology” that encouraged Indigenous people to “move on” from historical and ongoing trauma. To add another layer of aesthetic action, the fact that the contributor statements are sewn onto the iconic HBC blankets imbeds the project “into a larger context of colonial policies that intersect with economics, land, culture, and sovereignty (Decter and Isaac110). As a project of aesthetic action, (official denial) trade value in progress functions as a healing initiative implicating both Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in the process, and as a critical resistance to the Canadian government’s hypocritical promise of “reconciliation.” 

Photo from: https://www.communitynewscommons.org/our-city/politics/official-denial-trade-value-in-progress-a-response-to-stephen-harper/

By unpacking three creative projects, Digital Natives, Walking with Our Sisters, and (official denial) trade value in progress, the role of aesthetic action in allowing Indigenous healing initiatives to take place alongside the critical resistance to official narratives of reconciliation becomes emphasized. For conciliation to be achieved in Canada, the Government of Canada can no longer rely on empty promises of healing through Western-oriented approaches. Indigenous values and worldviews must be embraced in order to continually educate the public and to continually address Indigenous wounds inflicted by the colonial state. While art cannot hold all of the answers for achieving conciliation, as this paper has demonstrated, aesthetic action through the creative arts proves to be an invaluable tool for decolonizing healing for Indigenous peoples and combatting official projects of “reconciliation” that insidiously benefit the colonial project in Canada. In the words of David Garneau “art is not healing in itself, but it can be in relation” (Garneau 39). 

Photo from: https://www.communitynewscommons.org/our-city/politics/official-denial-trade-value-in-progress-a-response-to-stephen-harper/

End Notes

1 See MacDonald, David Bruce. The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian residential schools, and the challenge of conciliation. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2019.  

Works Cited

Aboriginal Healing Foundation. A Healing Journey: Final Report Summary Points. 2006.

Archibald, Linda. Dancing, Singing, Painting, and Speaking the Healing Story: Healing through Creative Arts. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2012.

Archibald, Linda. Decolonization and Healing: Indigenous Experiences in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Greenland. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006.

Archibald, Linda. Final Report of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation Volume III:

Promising Healing Practices in Aboriginal Communities. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006.

Decter, Leah and Jaimie Isaac. “Reflections on Unsettling Narratives of Denial.” Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, edited by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

“Digital Natives.” digitalnatives.othersides.ca. Accessed September 2020.

Episkenew, Jo-Ann. Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing. University of Manitoba Press, 2009.

Fontaine, Phil and Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools. University of Manitoba Press, 2016.

Garneau, David. “Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation.” Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, edited by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

Martin, Keavy, et al. Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin, Editors. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

McCall, Sophie, and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill. The Land We Are: Artists & Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation. ARP Books, 2015.

Methot, Suzanne. Legacy: Trauma, Story and Indigenous Healing. ECW Press, 2019.

Robinson, Dylan and Keavy Martin. “The Body is a Resonant Chamber.” Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, edited by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.

Regan, Paulette. Unsettling the Settler Within. UBC Press, 2010.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Canada's Residential Schools: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015.

Waldram, James B. Aboriginal Healing in Canada: Studies in Therapeutic Meaning and Practice. Prepared for the National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research in partnership with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008.

“Walking with Our Sisters.” http://walkingwithoursisters.ca. Accessed September 2020.

Wesley-Esquimaux, Cynthia C., and Magdelena Smolewski. Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing. Prepared for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2004.

[desnaa]

i’m very proud to share with this community that i’m going to be attending UCLA (my DREAM school) & majoring in communication studies!! it has been one of my biggest challenges to get here, especially on days where giving up on everything felt like the easiest thing to do, and so i’m really really happy that pushing myself and working so hard paid off. to persevering and being a bruin!! oh and to my best friend charlotte (@halfmoone) and all my other friends who inspired me to keep going when things really did seem impossible. 💙💛

[buffyboleyn]

this is actually good and has an actually fresh thesis? I never articulated how many of my fave Archer jokes center on (mis)communication and the limits of language

[misanthropemom]

Nonverbal communication

Immediacy, or what most people classify as “feedback”.  Being that it’s a topic close to me, I wanna talk in my class project about its connection (or absence) to autism and the oft-mentioned “flat affect.” Anyone got any suggestions for shows that demonstrate it?  Any pictures?

[umkcgoingplaces-blog]

Meet Jada Chavis! She’s working toward a Bachelor of Arts in Communications Studies.

[rushelldani]

Pixels: Season for Caterpillars, Blooming Flowers and 'FREEDOM' at UWI, St. Augustine

Pixels: Season for Caterpillars, Blooming Flowers and ‘FREEDOM’ at UWI, St. Augustine

Today as I stood by the Mexican food truck buyin’ my burrito❤ _❤ I noticed a really beautiful tree not too far over yonder. I had my camera with me today so I left my burrito behind (shocking, yes) and payed the tree a visit. The bright blue was a beautiful backdrop for the flowers.

It is so beautiful!

As I stood admiring the flowers I noticed something.

A CATERPILLAR!

 Then I noticed that…

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