Trying to bring one’s worlds together is the work of a lifetime, as fulfilling as it is challenging. I’m a biblical studies scholar interested in earliest Christianity and late Second-Temple Judaism. I research pilgrimage and journey, and try to walk paths and learn about the Land wherever I am. I’m also a Canadian trying to face some of the injustices against Indigenous peoples which created and help sustain my country. I’ve learned a lot, and I’m still learning, from First Nation and Métis friends, and from reading Cree, Métis, Maori, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinaabe authors and scholars.
Out of this mix comes this reflection on reading the Bible through an “Aware-Settler” lens. If you’d like to know more about my own work on this, you can find the full academic paper published by Journal of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies here: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:26771/
If you’d like to know more about my sources, a Cree scholar whose methods have been of great help to me is Margaret Kovach Sakewew p’sim iskwew and her book: Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Here is a film (a powerpoint with voice-over) about “Aware-Settler Biblical Scholarship.” My apologies that the sound for the first slide has somehow been cut off – it was simply me introducing myself as from Concordia University, Montreal, and a research associate at University of Nottingham, UK. If you listen hard enough, there’s also a cat and a train making an appearance in the background.
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