The contributors to this book, many of whom are themselves immigrants and refugees, take up the challenge of imagining what it means for immigrants and refugees to live as treaty people. Through essays, personal reflections and poetry, the authors explore what reconciliation is and what it means to live in relationship with Indigenous Peoples.
Reconciliation in Practice reminds us that reconciliation is an ongoing process, not an event, and that decolonizing our relationships and building new ones based on understanding and respect, protecting our land and environment, and creating food security is empowering for all of us — Indigenous, settler, immigrant and refugee alike.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report designed to facilitate reconciliation between the Canadian state and Indigenous Peoples. Its call to honour treaty relationships reminds us that we are all treaty people — including immigrants and refugees living in Canada.
Author Ranjan Datta is an Indigenous researcher from Bangladesh at the University of Regina. His research interests include advocating for Indigenous environmental sustainability, environmental justice, land-based sustainability, community-based research and community empowerment.
- This review was edited by Paul Buffel from the Columbia University Press