Review of Indigenous Resurgence in an Age of Reconciliation by Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, Aimée Craft, and Hokululani K. Aikau (eds.)
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark's, Aimée Craft's, and Hōkūlani K. Aikau's edited volume is an insightful collection that centres Indigenous perspectives on how to navigate the challenges of pursuing resurgence.A crucial challenge that is grappled with throughout the volume's fourteen chapters is elucidated in Stark's introduction: the very meaning of resurgence and what doing the work of resurgence might entail.Stark explains that resurgence can be misunderstood because it is often placed in a false dichotomy with reconciliation; resurgence is posited as being essentialist and unviable compared to a more "balanced" vision of settler-Indigenous coexistence that represents reconciliation.Stark challenges this binary and suggests that a critical lens informed by resurgent Indigenous knowledge can facilitate transformative changes that disrupt the colonial status-quo.Such a lens can also bring to light the ways in which the politics of reconciliation can be mobilized to obfuscate, co-opt, and diminish this transformative spirit such that Indigenous worldviews become contained by colonial ideas.This nuanced position situates the volume in conversation with pressing questions about how Indigenous knowledge, worldviews, and practices can continue to produce alternative ways of being.Indeed, these are broadly the two main objectives of the volume: employing critical approaches to understand how resurgence can be advanced by all Indigenous peoples and identifying the negative effects of state-centered reconciliation efforts on Indigenous political movements.When speaking about the barriers to Indigenous resurgence efforts, this collection persuasively problematizes the turn to reconciliation within settler institutions and settings and its effects on Indigenous movements.Starblanket (Chapter 5) and Craft (Chapter 6) each caution against simply acknowledging Indigenous rights and treaties within the Canadian constitutional order, which works to constrain Indigeneity to the past while legitimating state authority.These authors explain that revitalizing and applying Indigenous legal orders and traditions, including treaty making, to Indigenous societies can promote a decolonial future.Goeman's (Chapter 1) and Corntassel's (Chapter 9) respective chapters explore how state-based apologies and truth-telling, which are cornerstones of the politics of reconciliation, can perpetuate settler "unknowing" and erasure if it neglects accountability to relationships in favour of restoring settler innocence.Relatedly, O'Bonsawin (Chapter 12) illustrates how land acknowledgements can turn Indigenous protocols into spectacle when Indigenous nations' position on who can enter their territory is wantonly ignored and even punished by incarceration.These contributions convincingly demonstrate that decolonial futures cannot be centred on the state and its institutions.That being said, Snelgrove and Wildcat (Chapter 10) showcase how the state's pivot to reconciliation politics can provide strategic opportunities for political change.This point is supported by their analysis of the Maskwacîs Education Schools Commission, which was able to effectively organize and establish a First Nations-led school division during a moment of state vulnerability.As echoed in
Author: Minh Do
Institution: University of Guelph
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4411080034