Literary / Arts
Unsettling Spirit
Denise M. Nadeau, Foreword by deanna Reder
Volume 34 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: March 30, 2020
What does it mean to be a white settler on land taken from peoples who have lived there since time immemorial? In the context of reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence, Unsettling Spirit provides a personal perspective on decolonization, informed by Indigenous traditions and lifeways, and the need to examine one’s complicity with colonial structures.
What does it mean to be a white settler on land taken from peoples who have lived there since time immemorial? In the context of reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence, Unsettling Spirit provides a personal perspective on decolonization, informed by Indigenous traditions and lifeways, and the need to examine one’s complicity with colonial structures.
Applying autoethnography grounded in Indigenous and feminist methodologies, Denise Nadeau waves together stories and reflections on how to live with integrity on stolen and occupied land. The author chronicles her early and brief experience of “Native mission” in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Northern Canada and Chiapas, Mexico, and the gradual recognition that she had internalized colonialist concepts of the “good Christian” and the Great White Helper Drawing on somatic psychotherapy, Nadeau addresses contemporary manifestations of helping and the politics of trauma. She uncovers her ancestors’ settler background and the responsibilities that come with facing this history. Caught between two traditions – born and raised Catholic but challenged by Indigenous ways of life – the author traces her engagement with Indigenous values and how relationships inform her ongoing journey. A foreword by Cree-Métis author Deanna Reder places the work in a broader context of Indigenous scholarship.
Denise M. Nadeau is affiliate assistant professor in the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University.
Deanna Reder is associate professor of English and Chair of First Nations Studies at Simon Fraser University.
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Denise M. Nadeau, Foreword by deanna Reder