Reminder to please do your comments thoughtfully and with care. Please do not use AI-generated summaries. See you at the Dialogue Centre at 2pm. Bring comfortable shoes and hope for sun!
Reminder to please do your comments thoughtfully and with care. Please do not use AI-generated summaries. See you at the Dialogue Centre at 2pm. Bring comfortable shoes and hope for sun!
Every week I tell myself to say less in these reflections, but here we are! And actually, as I read this back, it may do with a warning, for content.
I do not really know where to start with this week. I know people will say this reading was heavy or hard to get through, and I am sure that it was. I did not feel that way. I did these readings early (it is SUNDAY, which has never happened) and eagerly. This is my area of work and research, and because in doing that work, I have come to hold these stories – and this scholarship – as a gift. The heaviness of these truths is less a burden and more an anchor. Coming up for air is important, but the weight is grounding, not suffocating.
One thing I have noticed these past few weeks is having little lightbulb moments in the reading about things that link back to specific things in earlier readings (speaks to a well-designed syllabus!), and this week was no exception. I thought about Hunt’s discussions about expressions of self-determination and how in Hunt’s work, they constitute the agency Krystalli urged us all to look for rather than wondering if it is there at all. In the Craft and Regan chapter, I thought about moral economies – not necessarily of victimhood – but of colonization, and how the rigidity of the imagined binary forces newcomers to imagine themselves only as colonizers or colonized. One of the participants’ assertions that “equating the immigrant to the colonizer would be taking away from the strength that we can find from each other as outsiders” struck this chord for me. Though it may be true, as another participant articulates, that newcomers and Indigenous people “are more close than different,” migrating under colonial laws through colonial borders does make newcomers settlers – even if those newcomers are Indigenous people. The two are not mutually exclusive. Alice Te Punga Somerville writes beautifully about this in her book of poetry, Always Italicise: how to write while colonised, which, if I had with me, I would quote here, but I do not. Maybe I will update this later. What I mean is this: I have written before, I think, about being reminded constantly that “we are all treaty people” in Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia meaning that across this planet, every person on Indigenous land is a partner in treaty with Indigenous Peoples and nations. We are all treaty people – more close than different.
Given that I have hopefully demonstrated that I did not just skip the book and watch the movie on Indigenous pedagogies, I will now be talking about the movie. I am a Fifth Estate junkie and have been since age 7. I did skip this one, and I’m not sure why. I think I’m glad I did, actually. I think if I had watched it at the time, it would have made me not want to watch Fifth Estate again, after hearing Gillian Findlay describe the Kamloops Indian Residential School as “home” to thousands of children. I noticed a few little violences in the language like that. One of them was: “In the absence of concrete physical evidence, speculation is all they’ve had for years – that and stories, passed down through generations.” Then the next clip is of Chief Lebourdais saying, “dig a hole, somebody’s missing, dig a hole, somebody’s missing,” which does not exactly strike me as speculation any moreso than denial. Willful ignorance may have been a closer assessment, if we are asking who knows what. Finding the 215 graves in 2021 was only a watershed moment for non-Indigenous people. If we had listened, if we had held their stories and truths as closely as we held our denial, we would have known.
A year ago today (!), I was sitting in Kamloops Residential School. I was there for an event on international advocacy put on by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. It is now an administrative building for the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Nation. I went in the wrong door because of course I did, and ended up wandering the halls. It was cold and dry and sunny and dusty because it is the actual desert. All those cut shots in the Fifth Estate episode are not remade sets or photos, that is what it actually looks like today. Everything is the same as it was. There is paint chipped around door frames where hands might have brushed against or held onto. There are worn wooden benches outside of people’s offices in the halls whose feet dig into the floor where they’ve sat and been sat on for decades. When you walk up the stairs, they are worn in the middle. Everything creaks. I finally found my way to where I was going – the conference room. I realized it was the church hall, except that unlike the rest of the building, it was newly-renovated. The walls were plastered with giant framed photos of the first meetings of the Assembly of First Nations – then the Union of the Indian Brotherhood – which had taken place in that very room, back when it was a church hall.
One of the montages in the Fifth Estate piece of news reporters talking about the “discovery” of the unmarked graves. One of them referred to “the remains of 215 children.” I thought about the word: remains. It’s a true word to use. But it is also not the whole truth. What was found were remains, but they were also bodies, hearts and bones and minds and hands and knees and eyelashes. Not all of those parts were still there but they also were there. It really struck me, because when you are walking in the halls across the knotted wood, looking out the warped windows at the river, the orchard, and the sun-faded wallpaper, they do not feel like remains, they feel like bodies. So I just wonder if this kind of distancing language – language that only tells part of one truth – is what helps us build deniabilities. I know there is a reason we choose these words. I know it is mean to be a kindness. But when we say “remains,” are we helping absolve our collective memory of “bodies”?
I have known Daniel Heath Justice since I was 14 years old. He was our neighbour and us over for dinner regularly. I did not know he was a Big Deal at the time, because teenagers don’t ask what people do for work, but he remains one of the narrators of the “stories [I] inherit.” Most of my memories of him are about him asking me lots of pointed questions about my perspective on badgers and then telling me facts about badgers. His excellent book, Badger, came out a few years later. Mostly I make little notes as I am reading to feed into these reflections, but with Daniel’s writing, I am always totally lost in it. I forget to make the little notes and I don’t do a lot of thinking while I am reading. So I wrote this at the end: everything Daniel has ever written including tweets and emails makes me stare off into the distance in wonder.
One thing that Daniel Heath Justice said a few years ago, I think about all the time (actually this happens a lot with Daniel. He is so cool.) He said the most important thing the academy can do for students is help them desire to find truths. He said that is our job: to help students want the truth more than they want something specific to be true.
At this time, I do not have a question! But I will think of one tomorrow and leave a reply.
I think my question is this. How do we find the right words? How do we know what words are right? In witnessing, what do we mean when we say ‘validate,’ and why do we distinguish that from ‘believe’?
Where to even begin?
There were so many great lessons about witnessing as a methodology, collective witnessing, meaning-making, humanness, and responsibility in this week’s readings, and I was particularly drawn to some of the concepts presented about ethnicity, identity, otherness, kinship, and relation to place. In discussing the need for settlers to make meaning over time by working through otherness and difference, Nagy admits that it’s taken her several years to feel comfortable and confident in calling and thinking of herself as a settler (Nagy, 235).
Daniel Health Justice expands on this idea in writing about how ethnicity is a problematic concept for Indigenous peoples in the way that identity is figured into one’s ethnic heritage rather than in one’s obligations to kin and place (58). Justice sees this as “a modern product of settler colonial nationalism” and that the “contemporary nation-state… depends upon people understanding themselves in this way to ensure that they privilege their obligations to country and commerce above kin and relation to territory” (58).
I’ve had a very complicated relationship with my own identity and ethnicity and so I really resonated with this. I am mixed race, white, and Thai, and have lived in many different countries that have never felt like home. Being Thai, but not looking Thai, I was constantly seen as “other” in what I considered to be my home “place”. The genocide of Indigenous people in Canada and the history of residential schools was not something I was taught about in school or was ever talked to about by my relatives living in Canada, and so, because of my ethnic ambiguity and whiteness, I fantasized about one day moving to Canada to find a greater sense of acceptance or belonging, in a place where I had inherited citizenship (I realize the insane privilege of this sentiment).
When I finally moved to Canada in my early 20s, this fantasy quickly shattered. Surprise, surprise: Canada was not the peaceful, perfect place it marketed itself to be and was actively covering up its own genocide and continued violence against Indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups.
As I’ve endeavored to learn more about the history and current realities of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and more about settler colonialism more broadly, I’ve begun to deconstruct my claims to Canadian identity. Now, when I introduce myself, I feel uncomfortable claiming my Canadian identity. Writing Canada, over and over, throughout this post even feels wrong. Should I be introducing myself as a settler? Should I be calling myself Swedish and Scottish, where my ancestors immigrated from, instead? How can I be less violent in my claims to self? Do I even need to claim myself?
I recognize that there are other, potentially more important avenues for challenging the ever-present colonial systems: in storytelling, in knowledge sharing, in witnessing as a methodology as Hunt presents – but identity/self-identification feels deeply embedded in the work too.
Question: In an increasingly globalized, capitalistic, and lonely world, with people immigrating (either by choice or for survival) to countries that they were not born in, do not have community/relatives in, and do not know the history of, how can kinship and responsibility to others (including the land) be strengthened?
Also, reminder to Erin: I’m not in class this week!
When thinking independently about the concepts of witnessing and responding, a person might think that being involved in witnessing history or remembering is already part of social justice, however, after I learned about the history of Aboriginal people in Canada, I realized that responding to history is indispensable. As Nagy (2020) mentions, in the context of Canadian history, the complex relationship between Indigenous people and settlers regarding reconciliation requires not only witnessing, but also action to push for policy, and decolonization. However, in the context of any kind of social issue, it is important to have both witness and responsiveness at the same time. For example, from my personal experience with international students and immigrants, we have been biased defined as a group that occupies Canada’s work and housing resources. However, we are forced to bear more of the costs of living, such as not only paying tuition fees that are eight times or more than those of local students, but also struggling to cover the high cost of living. Although the media and policies advocate for the international student community and allow more people to know about our lives, the lack of response does not change the facts. My experience was often reminiscent of that of Indigenous people, who have suffered much worse, such as being forced to erase their culture, leave their families, and lose their territories. However, today’s government is unable to play a truly reconciliation role with the indigenous people because there is a lack of response that fully integrates the indigenous people.
In addition, my status as an international student and immigrant has made me think about my shared responsibility for the history and future of Indigenous peoples living in Canada. First, I think it is fundamental to learn about First Nations history. Although some people may feel that they have not been a part of it, I believe that if we choose to stand on the sidelines, we will further exacerbate the conflict and will not be able to promote reconciliation. Furthermore, in the process of becoming a resident or citizen of Canada, it is crucial to increase direct dialogue with Indigenous people, as this is one way to address bias. In addition to learning about the history involved by visiting museums, one can also learn about the history involved by listening to the storytelling of Indigenous people. As a result, this will help the two marginalized groups become more united to a certain extent, contributing to the inclusiveness of society as well as to the process of reconciliation.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of promoting direct dialogue and cooperation between immigrants and First Nations in the process of reconciliation?
In Aimée Craft and Paulette Regan’s chapter “What Does Reconciliation Mean to Newcomers Post-TRC?” the authors examine how newcomers to Canada perceive reconciliation in the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They categorize newcomers into three groups: those who do not see reconciliation as relevant to them because they do not perceive themselves as responsible for Canada’s colonial past; those who identify as Canadians and thus feel a responsibility to be part of the solution; and those from formerly colonized countries who feel a sense of solidarity with Indigenous peoples due to their shared experiences of colonialism. Having grown up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, I found this reading particularly engaging, as it reflects dynamics I have observed firsthand.
From my own experience, many newcomer families I know fall into the first category, seeing reconciliation as separate from their own experiences. However, some also align with the third category, recognizing their shared histories of colonial oppression and developing a sense of allyship with Indigenous communities. Despite this, as Ghorayshi notes, there are “layers of separation” between Indigenous peoples and newcomers in Winnipeg, even though they often live in the same neighborhoods due to affordable housing being concentrated in the North End. While some newcomers share experiences of colonialism, racism, and socio-economic struggle with Indigenous peoples, competition for scarce resources often strains relationships between these communities.
On the day I read this chapter, my parents hosted family friends for Iftar, and I asked them about their knowledge of Indigenous history. Most admitted they knew little until the uncovering of the Kamloops residential school mass graves. Some from Winnipeg said their only impression of First Nations people was shaped by visible homelessness and substance abuse, mirroring the reading’s discussion of newcomers being shocked by the extent of Indigenous homelessness in downtown Winnipeg. This lack of knowledge about historical injustices reinforces harmful stereotypes. However, I was surprised and proud to see my mom advocate strongly for Indigenous rights and land back during our discussion. She had attended an Indigenous blanket ceremony a few years ago, which profoundly shaped her understanding. This aligns with the chapter’s conclusion that meaningful reconciliation requires direct interpersonal contact with Indigenous peoples and access to accurate historical education.
Sarah Hunt’s discussion of witnessing as a research methodology in “Researching within Relations of Violence: Witnessing as Methodology” offers another layer to this reflection. She describes witnessing as an ethical responsibility—not to speak for those who have experienced injustice but to validate their experiences and ensure their truths are acknowledged. Hunt states, “I felt a responsibility, as a witness to her life and her death, to recount what I had seen and heard in order to ensure that she would not be forgotten. This is what it means to be a witness—stepping up to validate what you have observed when an important act is denied or forgotten” ( p. 284). This resonates deeply with my role as an MPPGA student. My classmates and I are in positions of privilege, attending an elite institution and preparing for careers where we will have the power to shape policies. Hunt’s reflections remind me that we must carry this responsibility with humility—not imposing our voices over those we seek to support but creating space for marginalized voices to be heard. It is not about claiming others’ narratives as our own but ensuring that their truths are comprehended, honored, and validated.
Finally, Daniel Heath Justice’s work “Why Indigenous Literatures Matter” expands on the idea of storytelling as a vital tool for cultural survival and resistance. He argues that our identities are not just biologically determined but shaped through stories, relationships, and cultural teachings. Justice asserts that humanity itself is a process of becoming rather than an inherent state. Indigenous literatures challenge colonial narratives, affirm kinship-based understandings of identity, and play a crucial role in cultural regeneration. This perspective ties back to reconciliation, memory, and justice—emphasizing that Indigenous peoples have always held the power to define their own identities and histories, despite colonial efforts to erase them.
These readings reinforce the idea that reconciliation is not just about acknowledging historical wrongs but actively engaging in learning, witnessing, and creating space for Indigenous voices. My personal experiences reflect both the gaps and the possibilities in how newcomers engage with reconciliation. While many remain distanced from Indigenous struggles, meaningful personal encounters—such as my moms participation in a blanket ceremony—can foster deeper understanding and allyship. As future policymakers, we must approach reconciliation not with superiority but with the responsibility to witness, validate, and support Indigenous-led initiatives for justice and healing.
Nagy explores settler witnessing by highlighting the need for a more engaged, transformative approach to the justice for residential school survivors. I found the author’s critique of the TRC’s limitations interesting. While the TRC played a key role in truth-telling, it remains limited by colonial power structures. This raises the question of whether institutions shaped by settler colonialism can fully support decolonial goals. These institutions may facilitate important conversations, but they risk being used for settler absolution, where acknowledging harm is mistaken for justice. This suggests that while institutions can contribute to memory, justice, and reconciliation, they cannot be the endpoint. Community-led and Indigenous-driven initiatives are essential to keeping the process active and ongoing.
Craft and Paulette highlight how a lack of historical knowledge among newcomers can reinforce stereotypes and emphasize that reconciliation is a broader societal responsibility, not just a settler-Indigenous issue. They stress the need for fostering understanding and interpersonal contact between Indigenous peoples and newcomers, alongside educating newcomers on Indigenous history in Canada. This reminds me of my previous work on promoting peaceful coexistence among diverse ethnic groups, where interpersonal relations and intercultural dialogue were essential. People often develop negative perceptions of those different from them due to a lack of understanding, making engagement difficult. However, fostering dialogue and meaningful interactions can gradually break down misunderstandings, leading to greater mutual respect.
Justice draws on Adichie’s concept of ‘the danger of a single story’ to highlight how Euro-Western literature imposes narrow, misleading narratives about Indigenous peoples. These oversimplified stories reinforce stereotypes, shape perceptions, and limit opportunities for genuine understanding, creating barriers between people of diverse backgrounds. To me, this shows how important it is to promote dialogue, interpersonal relationships, and intercultural awareness to challenge these harmful narratives. By engaging with multiple perspectives and fostering meaningful interactions, we can break down biases, build empathy, and create spaces for mutual respect and coexistence.
Hunt’s piece on witnessing as a research methodology offers a powerful challenge to dominant Western frameworks of knowledge production. Her vision of witnessing resists the researcher’s authority to speak for others, instead positioning them as accountable participants in a network of relationships. This shift not only challenges entrenched power dynamics but also affirms the role of storytelling and presence in making marginalized experiences visible and actionable.
Question:
How can we promote a more complex, multi-faceted understanding of Indigenous experiences through storytelling and diverse perspectives?
I have recently been hanging out on the rocks at the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre. This was when the weather was nice a few weeks ago during the peak of the midterm season. My friend and I sat on the rocks between the grass and soaked in the sun during a break from our library sessions. I looked around, studied the architecture of the building, and tried to understand the intentions behind the landscaping with the stones and the grass. I even started drawing it the other day. But I had never actually been inside until the MemoLab when we were tasked with mapping the campus. Immediately, I was struck by the entrance view of the stairs with the weaving wood wall on the left. The way it was designed felt intentional, like it was guiding me toward the space quietly and reflectively, setting the tone for what was inside. The room was both a tribute and an educational center for the children lost and harmed at Indigenous residential schools. It felt like stepping into a sacred space where history and memory were presented intentionally, but that made you work to figure out what it was you were taking away.
Watching the video about the Kamloops residential school survivors confirmed the weight I felt from that space. Hearing survivors recall students going missing and the discovery of unmarked graves reminded me of the documentary Sugarcane (2021), co-directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, which explores residential schools and intergenerational trauma and resilience. Every time I watch or hear something new about residential schools, I archive new thoughts and perspectives, hearing a similar unjust story but from different voices and angles. Each time, it’s hard to process. But it makes you want to keep listening and keep advocating. Rosemary Nagy’s article on settler witnessing speaks directly to this process. Nagy argues that witnessing isn’t just about hearing stories; it’s about responding to them with respect and accountability, and it involves engaging with Indigenous narratives in a way that affirms Indigenous agency and self-determination. Nagy describes that to bear witness ethically means to sit with the discomfort and allow those stories to shape how we think and act. I think that the Dialogue Centre’s design reflects this: walking down into the space, the natural flow of the wood, and the calm atmosphere all seem to encourage reflection and emotional understanding.
Daniel Justice’s insights in the chapter How Do We Learn to Be Human help us understand the role of storytelling. Justice indicates that stories help shape our identity by saying, “We know ourselves only through stories.” Indigenous storytelling serves to preserve history and also embodies resistance and resilience. The narratives shared within the Dialogue Centre and by survivors and families from Kamloops strongly reflect themes of identity and survival. Justice highlights that witnessing these stories involves acknowledging their ability to influence our perspectives on the world and our roles within it. Witnessing is also about how we respond and what we choose to do with what we’ve heard.
How can we engage with the stories of residential school survivors in a way that resists extraction and honours Indigenous agency?
Growing up in Ecuador exposed me to a naturalized Eurocentric view of Indigenous Peoples stemming from a colonized past and a mostly white media presence despite the country’s large Indigenous population. Reflecting on this, one particularly widely mediatic event stands out in my memory—June 30th, 2022—marking the culmination of an 18-day Indigenous-led National Strike in Quito, Ecuador. The news coverage of the 2022 National Strike in Ecuador demonstrates the urgency to decolonize and democratize media in Ecuador. But it also serves as a stark reminder that detrimental narratives of Indigenous communities are not unique to the Global South but present in so-called progressive havens like Canada. I was aware of Canada’s history of residential schools before moving here but of course, I wasn’t always aware of this as it wasn’t something people would talk about.
Rocke and King’s piece makes an important point about newcomers and their relationship with Indigenous people. It was interesting to read how newcomers felt about reconciliation practices and how they made sense of the word. I do think many times in Canada reconciliation practices frame colonization as something of the past rather than an ongoing reality – that Is the narrative they try to sell to foreigners like me. As a ‘newcomer’, I do think we have a role in deconstructing ingrained perceptions of Indigenous peoples. Liberation and reparation practices can coexist, allowing us to redefine and better understand what true reconciliation means.
I was very moved by the Kamloops Residential School documentary. It was difficult to bear witness to the ways in which survivors recounted their suffering, sexual violence, and the ongoing trauma passed down through generations. The documentary also raised an important point about how Canada has chosen to remember what happened at residential schools. For Indigenous people, storytelling and oral histories have long been vital ways of making sense of the past. For years, these stories were all they had but they have often been dismissed as unreliable or illegitimate. This was painfully evident in the case of the children’s graves. It wasn’t until scientific evidence confirmed kids had been buried there that Canada and the World began talking about the country’s colonial violence.
This documentary, along with Hunt’s piece also made me think about witnessing as a methodology and how closely it relates to Western approaches to journalism – aka having distance with our subjects or being objective. Stories about Indigenous people in Canada are often framed in the media around apathy, death, homelessness, tragedy, and substance abuse. While it is true that many Indigenous communities face these realities, reporting on them without linking them to broader systemic failures raises an important question—what is the purpose of telling these stories?
Hunt’s reference to Spivak’s The Subaltern Speaks highlights the oppression that exists within marginalized groups. In the case of Indigenous peoples, bearing witness requires us to “call to attend to the ways in which subaltern voices are written out of the archive.” I agree. When trying to understand testimonies and the act of witnessing, Spivak’s argument—“the subaltern cannot speak”—feels particularly relevant. The silencing of Indigenous women is clear in the way research and journalism are conducted. I thus found Hunt’s point very compelling in this quote: “It has been more powerful to make visible my inability to resolve these power differences than to pretend I can ever fully address them.” The reading also made me think of how even if you belong to the community you’re reporting on, you must acknowledge your position and ensure that your writing and research process is embedded in collective, reciprocal, and horizontal approaches.
Reconciliation entails honoring Indigenous Peoples’ sovereign right to be autonomous and self-determining, but, is that attainable through reconciliation practices that continue to intrinsically deem native bodies as “the other”?
What beautiful readings this week! There was so much for me to take away.
Firstly, Sarah Hunt’s paper was really thought provoking for me as it felt very relevant to my career as a public health professional interested primarily in qualitative research and advocacy. I particularly resonated with Hunt’s explanation of how witnessing can be part of “undoing the harms of colonialism by humanizing, valuing and loving” (p. 290) others. In the context of qualitative research, this interpretation of the value of witnessing feels especially relevant as understanding stories and experiences is often the main goal. Hunt’s words reminded me of the importance of qualitative research, but also brought to my awareness a set of considerations for doing this kind of work the right way, especially in the case of witnessing violence and Indigenous peoples’ truths. One main takeaway came from Hunt’s acknowledgement that oftentimes, research can ultimately result in benefits for the researcher and little to none for those whom the research is intended to serve. I actually had a similar reflection about this in a discussion post a few weeks ago – it is a point of contention that has come up for me many times as a student of science. However, Hunt’s reflections on her work have helped me in thinking through this contention a bit. Her emphasis on how the researcher must decenter themselves in order to be a good witness made me reflect on what measures, if any, I have taken to decenter myself in my work, and what I could do better in this regard moving forward. Also, her emphasis on the importance of relationality for taking up the responsibility of witnessing reminded me of participatory and community-based methods and made me wonder how these could be pushed even further outside of academic norms and expectations about what ‘good quality’ methods are to better incorporate that relationality. Finally, Hunt’s thoughts on how witnessing may also entail enabling spaces and frameworks that “allow for the lives that we have witnessed to be made visible” (p. 284) was a really powerful call to action for me to use my privilege to disrupt institutional barriers for the validation of Indigenous (and others’) stories when possible moving forward.
Beyond these reflections on my professional career, the readings also reminded me of discussions I have encountered about decolonizing the mind. Rosemary Nagy calls us to open our minds to Indigenous ways of knowing in order to be good witnesses in the context of the Canadian TRC. In particular, the theme of temporality came up in several of the readings, which raised a way in which decolonized ways of thinking may be most well-equipped to meaningfully witness the stories of Indigenous people. Hunt’s explanation of how witnessing and recalling stories can make them “alive in the present” according to Kwagiulth methodology was compelling for me in rethinking my own understandings of stories and time. Daniel Heath Justice similarly discussed how Indigenous literature that tells the present-day stories and experiences of Indigenous people can resist erasure and the idea that Indigenous identities and lives are only something of the past. For me, these lessons reminded me of the importance of making efforts to decolonize my own mind by constantly reflecting and rethinking my assumptions about the world around me – now I am seeing how doing so is also necessary in order to be a good witness.
Q: What may be some tangible steps we can take towards embracing Indigenous ways of knowing (and decolonizing our minds) in order to be good witnesses?
After sitting with this week’s readings, I am reflecting on my role as a second-generation, racialized, immigrant settler in Canada. I am an unwelcome guest on Indigenous lands—a reality that is both uncomfortable and necessary to confront. I live, work, and study on stolen lands, benefiting from systems built on the dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples. As Sarah Hunt and Rosemary Nagy remind me, this is not just a historical fact but an ongoing reality. Recognizing this complicity is not about guilt or historical amnesia (Nagy 220) but response-ability (227, 229).
I am particularly drawn to Rosemary Nagy’s arguments. Nagy critiques settler witnessing, showing how settlers consume Indigenous suffering without confronting their complicity. Nagy argues that settler responses to the TRC often center on colonial empathy—performative grief that allows settlers to feel absolved without acting. This is where Nagy introduces the concept of affective reckoning, which requires settlers to go beyond emotion and engage in response-ability—the ethical obligation to act upon what they have learned, not just witness it. The transition from responsibility into response-ability represents a shift from emotional engagement into material actions. This is where the framework of affective reckoning becomes so powerful for me; it demands more than recognition or guilt; it insists on a confrontation.
While Rocke and King focus on newcomer perceptions of Canada, their study prompted me to think critically about the role of generational settlers in reconciliation. I struggle with the logic that birthright citizenship negates responsibility—the idea that being born in Canada absolves settlers from engaging with the realities of colonialism. This argument often extends to the belief that reconciliation is solely the government’s responsibility, as one participant in Rocke and King’s study claimed (178).
As Nagy and Hunt both remind me, settler colonialism is an ongoing structure, not an event. Whether someone arrived yesterday or was born in Canada, their presence is still shaped by the continued dispossession of Indigenous peoples. How does Nagy push us to move beyond self-reflexivity as an endpoint? In what ways can theorizations of un-belonging open up alternative pathways toward decolonization?
This term I am registered for an Indigenous health policy course at the School of Population and Public Health. Over the past 11 weeks, we had intense and thought-provoking conversations around Indigenous-specific racism in Canada, as a class. We have the privilege of learning alongside Indigenous students and teaching staff for this course. Every class I have learned more about how Canada’s genocide towards Indigenous communities is not a thing of the past; but rather continues to harm Indigenous lives even today. That’s why this week’s readings were powerful. It resonated with my journey in the course so far – unlearning colonial realities and bearing witness to Indigenous truths.
I agree with Aimee and Regan (2020) when they mention that the Canadian government often provides “a generally romanticized and sanitized representation of Canada”. As an immigrant in Canada, colonial manipulation of narratives make you perceive this country as a rite of passage to a brighter future. You picture Canada how you have been socially conditioned to picture the nation, as a friendly country that welcomes all. Then you learn of indigenous realities and their daily battles in a land that belongs to them; and you awaken to a different reality. Laying witness to the histories of the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, Indian hospitals, Indian residential school system, and the Highway of Tears amongst many other truths was eye-opening for me. I feel now that I know, I cannot turn my back. As a health policy and gender advocate, I feel a resounding accountability to my Indigenous classmates in the SPPH course who said that till date they do not trust leaving their relatives alone in hospitals.
Nagy (2020) mentions how even when witnesses respond with empathy, it may be “passive empathy that fails to produce action toward social justice or critical self-reflection about complicity”. This form of “passive empathy” is pervasive across the federal government who continue to “empathise” with Indigenous issues in the news; but then do not allocate sufficient financing to Indigenous programs. Naga (2020) further mentions how witnessing is not a one-off moment but an ongoing one in which we must “disrupt or dismantle colonial structures in order to secure Indigenous futurity.” Hunt (2018) also discusses how being a witness entails “stepping up to validate what you have observed when an important act is denied or forgotten”.
In several of our classes, we have discussed how to do the upstream work of unlearning and undoing years of Indigenous-specific racism in Canada. I perceive Indigenous communities as ‘memory entrepreneurs’ because for years now, they have been preserving their own histories through oral storytelling, art, and activism. They have been battling the Canadian government’s political motives to obliterate the stories of their past atrocities and misconstrue national memory. Hence, as witnesses, it is our responsibility to be allies to their truths. My professor mentioned that as allies and witnesses to these truths, one of our key responsibilities is to do our own homework on the foundational documents of Indigenous communities. This includes the Indian Act, the UNDRIP, the TRC, the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, and the “In Plain Sight” report amongst others. We need to understand what has already been done, what has been committed and left unimplemented, and finally what is needed to bridge existing gaps.
Question for the class: Since learning of Indigenous truths in Canada, what role have you played as a “witness” and do you think you have gone past “passive empathy”?
There are weeks when readings sit with you, quietly demanding attention. And then there are weeks when they refuse to leave, when they settle into your bones and alter something in the way you see the world. This week was the latter.
When I first arrived in Canada, I took a Global Indigenous Policies course, thinking that understanding treaties, governance structures, and reconciliation frameworks would give me insight into Indigenous histories. I studied policies, TRC Calls to Action, and read government commitments to change. But none of that prepared me for the Fifth Estate documentary, the way survivors spoke about losing their childhoods, the way their voices cracked when they described watching friends disappear. It did not prepare me for the moment when EVERY survivor remembering the unmarked graves, said simply, “We always knew.”
And that is what haunts me. They always knew. Survivors whispered about children buried in the orchard for decades. They saw the holes, watched classmates vanish, heard stories of babies discarded into incinerators. But truth alone was never enough. Not until ground-penetrating radar confirmed it in 2021 did settler institutions begin to listen. It felt like something I wasn’t just watching but inheriting, like something that demands to be carried forward. Sarah Hunt writes that witnessing is a responsibility, a refusal to let colonial silences consume what has already been spoken. This takes me back to our class discussions about truth as a piece of evidence in the justice system. Indigenous communities have been testifying to these realities for decades, but it was not until settler technologies validated them that governments and institutions acknowledged them. What happens when truth is ignored until it is made visible through technology? What does that say about whose voices are considered evidence?
I kept thinking about the Highway of Tears, a stretch of Highway 16 in British Columbia where Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been murdered for decades. Just the year before last, in 2023, new cases emerged. Indigenous families have been speaking about this crisis for years. They have held vigils, named their missing daughters, demanded action. Yet, much like the residential school survivors, their truths were dismissed.
The pattern is the same. The state only acts when it can no longer deny. It acknowledges harm but does not dismantle the systems that make it possible. The TRC documented thousands of survivor testimonies and issued 94 Calls to Action. And yet, most remain unfulfilled. The Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls demanded immediate change, but the response has been slow, selective, conditional. Canada grieves, but does not repair. It apologizes, but does not return what was taken. It acknowledges genocide, but resists justice.Recognition without transformation is just another form of control.
Daniel Heath Justice writes that Indigenous stories are about continuance. They refuse the narrative that Indigenous peoples are disappearing. Governments like to frame Indigenous communities as at risk of vanishing, as if history is slowly pulling them away. But history is not doing this. Policy is. Policing is. Colonialism is. The Highway of Tears is an active failure of the justice system, a continuation of the same logic that ran through the residential school system: that Indigenous lives are disposable, that Indigenous voices can be ignored until they are too loud to suppress.
I have been thinking about India. How Adivasi communities are pushed from their lands for mining projects, how their languages disappear from school curriculums, how their deaths are framed as the inevitable price of modernization. I was never taught their histories in school. No one called it cultural genocide, but what else do you call the systematic destruction of language, land, and self-determination? Sarah Hunt writes that violence is not just the act itself, that it is the refusal to name it, the demand that victims move on without accountability. That is what I see happening here. The graves in Kamloops were acknowledged, but where is the justice? The Highway of Tears is still being traveled by Indigenous women with no guarantees of safety. The families are still searching. The patterns are still repeating.
And so I am left with these questions:
If truth alone could create change, why do survivors have to keep repeating it?
At what point does the refusal to act on truth become its own form of violence?
I apologize first of all because my reflection for this week is literally all over the place. Way too many scattered thoughts to put into a somewhat coherent reflection.
I remember when the news broke out about what was found in the Kamloops Residential School. And then I remember having to explain to my parents, who do not live in Canada nor fully understand the extent of the violence that Indigenous people in Canada have experienced and continue to experience, why this a major moment. I think to this day, they still do not understand. I remember when people started to question why, months after the discovery of the remains, the memorial for all the children that were found that was put on the stairs of the Art Gallery was still there; people preferred to live in ignorance rather than to confront the violence that occurred and continues to occur.
The article by Rocke and King’s article particularly resonated with me. As someone who not that long ago took the Citizenship test, I do question where does Canada, as the State, see its relations with Indigenous people going forward. I do not think I was asked anything about Indigenous peoples in the test; the guide for the best barely acknowledged the history of residential schools. And I get reminded of a quote the investigator from the Fifth State said at the beginning of the documentary: “But the truth has brought new burdens here, the weight of what continues to be revealed and the scrutiny of a country they say talks reconciliation but has yet to deliver.” How does Canada expect Indigenous people to move on when violence is still present? How do we as immigrants and newcomers become complicit in the violence against Indigenous people? And like some of the participants in Rocke and King’s article said, some of us may come from countries that had nothing to do with the violence against Indigenous people in Canada, but all of us have experienced and/or have been witness to oppression. There was one time when I went to visit a Mexican friend in Winnipeg and we were driving around the Finance district, and one of her Mexican friends asked me if we had that many Indigenous people in Vancouver. I was so shocked by the casual racism, I do not remember what I replied. But I do remember thinking that how can we question their existence in any particular place when we are the ones who immigrated here. And here, it is a question over who is the perfect immigrant in the eyes of Canadian immigration laws, it is a question of who can assimilate more to the dominant culture.
This week’s readings also made me reflect on what I know about Indigenous peoples in Mexico. For most of my education in Mexico, I was taught to see Indigenous people as a group of people from the past, there was no mention whatsoever that there are more than 11 million Indigenous people in Mexico. There was no mention of how the Maya language and Nahuatl are two of the most spoken Indigenous languages in the country. There was no mention of the violence that still exists against Indigenous people. Not that long ago, a Raramuri woman (one of the many Indigenous groups that live in northern Mexico) ran for the municipal presidency in Guachochi. However, during one of the debates between the candidates she spoke in Raramuri, and the national electoral institute did not bother to hire someone to translate or to at the very least put subtitles when they uploaded the video of the debate. This goes on to show that violence is not always physical but it also to deny linguistical rights, as protected by the Mexican constitution.
I think my question for this week is so open that even I have no idea where to even begin to try to answer it:
How do we continue to fight oppression, to listen, to seek the truth, to believe, when there is a world telling us that it is not worth it?
I have a lot of questions this week. As I watched “Kamloops residential school survivors recall students going missing, digging of graves in orchard,” I sat with my own discomfort at not wanting to know some of the truths that were being told. I wondered, what form and content of testimony am I willing to sit with? What do I reject? This theme also came up in “Settler Witnessing at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada” when Rosemary Nagy discussed one TRC event in which one speaker expressed strong feelings of anger, “scar[ing] the crap out of everyone in the room who was not Indigenous” (234). Nagy notes how this anger was not represented in the highlights reel at the end of the day despite the intensity of the moment.
I’m also wondering, does justice require a paradigm shift in thinking about time? Nagy calls out the imposed linear temporality of transitional justice, arguing that “temporal governance includes the predominant conceptualization of transitional justice as drawing a line between past and future, failing to attend to the gap between “institutional temporalities and lived time,” and imposing colonial time” (222). Not is this not in attunement with Indigenous temporalities that are often circular or spiral, it does not understand trauma. Trauma bends and overlaps time, dragging us forward and backward through it, holding us frozen in it while all around us, others go on. In “Kamloops residential school survivors recall students going missing, digging of graves in orchard,” Norman Retasket says, “I never had a life for 65 years. From the time I was abused until they found the 215, I never had one good breath. It, truly it gave me permission to tell my story.”
Finally, I am asking myself about the link between witnessing and relationality. Learning that at the potlach, witnesses were given payment for their role in validating what they saw made me wonder about witnessing in my own life. I think most people around me either seem to think of witnessing as a burden or as a privilege depending on the circumstance. But I don’t think most would understand it as a responsibility. In “Researching within relations of violence: Witnessing as methodology,” Sarah Hunt asks, “How can I step up to my obligation as a witness, recalling the realities facing our relations engaged in sex work, who are most at risk of being silenced? At the same time, how can I live up to obligations to centre the agency, voice, and self-determination of the people whose stories I seek to validate, given the institutional constraints in which I work?” (286)
I began this week’s reading list with the Fifth Estate documentary, and it was (needless to say) a hard watch. The part where school survivor Jennifer Camille recalls how the children who screamed were the ones who were killed was particularly haunting in its violent act of historical erasure. While the documentary spoke to the truth of cultural genocide at the residential school, it also highlighted to me how the land itself bore witness to these atrocities over the years, and provided the evidence when the time had come – it held a memory until it could no longer be ignored. I had similar feelings watching Sugarcane the previous week. The Academy Award nominated documentary follows the investigation into the unmarked graves at St. Joseph’s Mission and the interwoven stories of survivors, families, and the land. It was striking how both the films emphasized bearing witness not just as an act of remembrance, but as a means of breaking intergenerational cycles of silence and trauma.
Rosemary Nagy’s framing of settler witnessing was an interesting read. The author’s call to move ‘beyond recognition’ and into active and ongoing responsiveness to Indigenous sovereignty was something that I resonated with. Rather than seeing reconciliation as something linear or complete after a government apology, Nagy’s argument underlines how witnessing is a continuous process. It is deeply rooted in reciprocity, responsibility, and respect for Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
Sarah Hunt’s work reading helped ground my understanding of witnessing within relationships and networks shaped by colonial violence. Witnessing is not a passive but a methodological responsibility – to call out silences, erasures, and acts of denial when we encounter them. For me, this reinforced the idea that witnessing is not about empathy from a distance, but about centering the voices of those pushed to the periphery and holding space for their stories while actively challenging the structures that caused their marginalization.
Understanding these readings as an immigrant settler made me reflect on my own positionality. Like Craft and Regan argue, many newcomers to Canada often do not see reconciliation as relevant to them. I’ve met many immigrants who are unaware of Indigenous histories, and whose understandings were limited to those tidbits of information they need to pass their citizenship test. I realize my own privilege lies in being able to learn about these issues at UBC – something not accessible to everyone. Coming from a country still grappling with colonial legacies and systemic violence, these reflections also made me think about how I bear witness to ongoing injustices back home.
The readings’ engagement with temporal plurality and the need to resist a linear view of reconciliation reminded me that reconciliation is not about “moving past” the harms of residential schools, but about also affirming Indigenous futurity. As witnesses, we are also called to continually interrogate colonial structures, and to keep learning and unlearning. Witnessing is not one moment, it’s an ongoing commitment.
My question: How might the concepts of integration or acculturation be rethought by newcomers in light of Canada’s Indigenous histories and ongoing systemic injustice?