Reconciliation Curriculum Guide

At its core, Indigenous Child and Youth Care Practices: Weaving Two Heart Stories Together is about unity. It seeks to create a heart-to-heart practice by bridging Indigenous ways of knowing with Western Child and Youth Care practices, encouraging students to approach their work with a more open understanding of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit worldviews. Author Cherylanne James guides students through self-location by dismantling their pre-existing biases regarding Indigenous Peoples, understanding personal privilege and power, educating themselves on Canadian and Indigenous history and contexts, and learning about the pervasive impacts of colonialism. Students will cultivate a practice that encourages ethical spaces of engagement while steering away from surface-level or disingenuous interactions.

Western theory and practice are over-represented in child welfare services for Indigenous peoples, not the other way around. Contributors to this collection invert the long-held, colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and systems of child welfare in Canada. By understanding the problem as the prevalence of the Western universe in child welfare services rather than Indigenous peoples, efforts to understand and support Indigenous children and families are fundamentally transformed. Child welfare for Indigenous peoples must be informed and guided by Indigenous practices and understandings. Privileging the iyiniw (First people, people of the land) universe leads to reinvigorating traditional knowledges, practices and ceremonies related to children and families that have existed for centuries. Taken together, this collection forms a whole related to the Turtle Lodge Teachings, which expresses nehiyaw (Cree) stages of development, and works to undo the colonial trappings of Canada's current child welfare system.

A collection of graduate research by Indigenous social work scholars, Stitching Our Stories Together showcases emerging scholars who, by centering their own nations, communities, and individual realities, demonstrate how Indigenous knowledges can challenge settler ideas and myths around pan-Indigeneity. This collection is bookended with reflections from the scholars' thesis supervisors, who describe their philosophy of mentoring and supporting students through an Indigenous lens, and how their pedagogies embrace the significance of relationality in Indigenous worldviews. Stitching Our Stories Together points toward a future where Indigenous ways of knowing and being take their rightful place in spaces of higher learning and social work practice--a necessary intervention in a discipline that has historically been complicit in colonialist harm.

Recent events including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the discovery of mass graves at the sites of former residential schools have brought increased coverage of Indigenous Peoples to Canada's mainstream media outlets. However, there is no guide for current and aspiring journalists to building respectful and reciprocal relationships with Indigenous people and communities when researching and sharing their stories. Written by a leading Indigenous journalist, Duncan McCue, specifically for journalism students in Canada, Decolonizing Journalism delivers practical, up-to-date advice in a guidebook-like text that students will use throughout their studies and careers.

The first book to examine the role of Canada's newspapers in perpetuating the myth of Native inferiority. Seeing Red is a groundbreaking study of how Canadian English-language newspapers have portrayed Indigenous peoples from 1869 to the present day. The authors uncover overwhelming evidence that the colonial imaginary not only thrives, but dominates depictions of Indigenous people in mainstream newspapers. The colonial constructs ingrained in the news media perpetuate an imagined Native inferiority that contributes significantly to the marginalization of Indigenous people in Canada. That such imagery persists to this day suggests strongly that our country lives in denial, failing to live up to its cultural mosaic boosterism.

In the spirit of truth and reconciliation, judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officers write about working with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples through their trials and tribulations with the criminal justice system.

In August of 2016, Cree youth Colten Boushie was shot dead by Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley. Using colonial and socio-political narratives that underlie white rural settler life, the authors position the death of Boushie and trial of Stanley in relation to Indigenous histories and experiences in Saskatchewan. They point to the Stanley case as just one instance of Indigenous peoples' presence being seen as a threat to settler colonial security, then used to sanction the exclusion, violent treatment, and death of Indigenous peoples and communities.

In August 2016 Colten Boushie, a twenty-two-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm by white farmer Gerald Stanley. In a trial that bitterly divided Canadians, Stanley was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter by a jury in Battleford with no visible Indigenous representation. In Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice Kent Roach critically reconstructs the Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie case to examine how it may be a miscarriage of justice. Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice is a searing account of one case that provides valuable insight into criminal justice, racism, and the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

This critical new volume to the field of health studies offers an introductory overview of the determinants of health for Indigenous Peoples in Canada, while cultivating an understanding of the presence of coloniality in health care and how it determines First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples' health and well-being. The text is broken down into the What, Where, Who, and How, and each part contains a comprehensive and holistic approach to understanding the many factors, historical and contemporary, that are significant in shaping the life and health of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and beyond. Comprising wisdoms from First Nations, Inuit, and Métis leaders, knowledge holders, artists, activists, clinicians, health researchers, students, and youth, this book offers practical insights and applied knowledge about combating coloniality and transforming health care systems in Canada.

Food insecurity in the North is one of Canada's most shameful public health and human rights crises. In Plundering the North, Kristin Burnett and Travis Hay examine the disturbing mechanics behind the origins of this crisis: state and corporate intervention in northern Indigenous foodways. Using food as a lens to track the institutional presence of the Canadian state in the North, Burnett and Hay chart the social, economic, and political changes that have taken place in northern Ontario since the 1950s. They explore the roles of state food policy and the HBC and NWC in setting up, perpetuating, and profiting from food insecurity while undermining Indigenous food sovereignties and self-determination.

Dr. Nicole Redvers, a naturopathic physician and member of the Deninu K'ue First Nation, analyzes modern Western medical practices using evidence-informed Indigenous healing practices and traditions from around the world. Redvers, who has traveled and worked with Indigenous groups around the world, shares the knowledge and teachings of health and wellness that have been passed down through the generations, tying this knowledge with current scientific advances. Knowing that the science backs up the traditional practice allows us to have earlier and more specific interventions that integrate age-old techniques with the advances in modern medicine and technology.

Food insecurity in the North is one of Canada's most shameful public health and human rights crises. In Plundering the North, Kristin Burnett and Travis Hay examine the disturbing mechanics behind the origins of this crisis: state and corporate intervention in northern Indigenous foodways. Using food as a lens to track the institutional presence of the Canadian state in the North, Burnett and Hay chart the social, economic, and political changes that have taken place in northern Ontario since the 1950s. They explore the roles of state food policy and the HBC and NWC in setting up, perpetuating, and profiting from food insecurity while undermining Indigenous food sovereignties and self-determination.