For more on this, first take a look at the books…
My book with Dr Ray Aldred: Our Home and Treaty Land
– what a pleasure it was to co-write this book with my friend Dr Ray Aldred, a nêhiyaw scholar and theologian !
My book The Good Walk (see reviews here)
There is a lot of aware-settler and decolonizing writing in this memoir, travelogue, and manifesto. “Unsettles all our precious notions of a peaceable history with wisdom, erudition, and such good grace.” —Trevor Herriot, author of Towards a Prairie Atonement
Spirituality as Land, Story, & Relation
In the fall of 2020, together with my friend and Concordia university colleague Professor Christine Jamieson (Boothroyd-Nlaka’pamux First Nation) we hosted four public online events with Indigenous speakers: Dr. Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Sonia Bonspille Boileau, Suzanne Methot, and Skydancer Louise Halfe. You can find links to their wonderful presentations, here.
Walking Territorial Acknowledgements
In 2020 together with Dr Ken Wilson I presented a paper on the perils and promise of living out the increasingly common practice of “territorial recognitions” by getting to know local Indigenous groups and learning with our bodies to respect the territories which are theirs. You can also read a short summary of some of the arguments here in The Conversation: Canada. The presentation eventually became a chapter in a collected volume and a stand-alone academic paper you can access for free here.
Aware-Settler Exegesis of Biblical Texts
In February 2019 I gave the talk below to a group at the University of Sheffield UK. It concerns the ways that those of us who are Settler or Settler-descended can do biblical exegesis differently when aware of that status, of land, and of the stories that have covered over oppression. The talk is below – the academic article that came out from this talk is available free from the Journal of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, here.
Concordia to Kahnawà:ke walks
From 2014 through to 2019 with the guidance of Kahnawà:ke activist and leader Dr Kenneth Deer, Professor Sara Terreault, Professor Christine Jamieson, and I have led groups of Concordia students on walks from Concordia to Kahnawà:ke Kanien’ke:ha (Mohawk) territory, or made the walk along the St-Lawrence Seaway from Kahnawà:ke to Concordia. You can learn more about these walks in many places: an article in the magazine The Concordian, and on Concordia’s webpages, several CBC Radio 1 interviews, a CBC Radio Documentary, and my own slides here.
Book chapters on Settler-Colonial or Aware-settler issues:
In 2018 and 2020, two books came out, to which I had contributed chapters about settler-Indigenous pilgrimage on Indigenous Land. Here’s the information:
2020 “Settler-Aware” Pilgrimage and Reconciliation: The Treaty Four Canadian Context,” in Peace Journeys: A New Direction in Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Research, eds. Ian S. McIntosh, Nour Farra Haddad and Dane Munro, 98-120. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
2018 “Pilgrimage and the Challenging of a Canadian Foundational Myth,” in Pilgrimage in Practice: Narration, Reclamation and Healing, eds. Ian S. McIntosh, E. Moore Quinn and Vivienne Keely. CABI Publishing.
Articles on Aware-Settler and Decolonizing Themes
My article “A Blanket Argument for Empathy” is a good example of what I’m thinking about decolonization and public policy.
Doctrine of Discovery Discussion (2016)
In February 2016, I helped organize an evening of discussion about the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery”. Two of our three panelists were First Nations: Dr. Ray Aldred, of the Vancouver School of Theology, a treaty eight Nêhiyaw (Cree,) and Dr. Kenneth Deer is Kanien’ke:ha, and secretary of the Traditional Longhouse of the Mohawk Nation, at Kahnawà:ke. The third panelist was Dr Allen Jorgenson of Martin Luther University College, Waterloo ON. The discussion was moderated by David Schulze, whose law firm in Montreal represents a number of First Nations in their land claims cases in Canadian courts. The link above is a more or less the full video of the evening.
Treaty Four and Treaty Six Pilgrimages
In 2015, with the help and guidance of Hugh Henry and the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society, I helped initiate the first of subsequent, nearly annual walks along traditional territories on Treaty Four and Treaty Six territory. The walks were along The Traders’ Road/North-West Mounted Police Patrol Trail trek (2015) video and podcast 1 and podcast 2; and the Battleford Trail (2017) video; as well as the Frenchman Trail (2018). Nêhiyaw, Métis, and Canadians like myself, of settler background, walked together. Check the links above for more details, or better yet, get a copy of The Good Walk (URP 2024)!
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