NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Winner of the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction From ground zero of this country's most important project: reconciliation. Niigaan Sinclair has been called provocative, revolutionary, and one of this country's most influential thinkers on the issues impacting Indigenous cultures, communities, and reconciliation in Canada. In his debut collection of stories, observations, and thoughts about Winnipeg, the place he calls "ground zero" of Canada's future, read about the complex history and contributions of this place alongside the radical solutions to injustice and violence found here, presenting solutions for a country that has forgotten principles of treaty and inclusivity. It is here, in the place where Canada began—where the land, water, people, and animals meet— that a path "from the centre" is happening for all to see. At a crucial and fragile moment in Canada's long history with Indigenous peoples, one of our most essential writers begins at the centre, capturing a web spanning centuries of community, art, and resistance. Based on years' worth of columns, Niigaan Sinclair delivers a defining essay collection on the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Here, we meet the creators, leaders, and everyday people preserving the beauty of their heritage one day at a time. But we also meet the ugliest side of colonialism, the Indian Act, and the communities who suffer most from its atrocities. Sinclair uses the story of Winnipeg to illuminate the reality of Indigenous life all over what is called Canada. This is a book that demands change and celebrates those fighting for it, that reminds us of what must be reconciled and holds accountable those who must do the work. It's a book that reminds us of the power that comes from loving a place, even as that place is violently taken away from you, and the magic of fighting your way back to it.

Returning to Ceremony is the follow-up to Chantal Fiola’s award-winning Rekindling the Sacred Fire and continues her ground-breaking examination of Métis spirituality, debunking stereotypes such as “all Métis people are Catholic,” and “Métis people do not go to ceremonies.” Fiola finds that, among the Métis, spirituality exists on a continuum of Indigenous and Christian traditions, and that Métis spirituality includes ceremonies. For some Métis, it is a historical continuation of the relationships their ancestral communities have had with ceremonies since time immemorial, and for others, it is a homecoming – a return to ceremony after some time away. Fiola employs a Métis-specific and community-centred methodology to gather evidence from archives, priests’ correspondence, oral history, storytelling, and literature. With assistance from six Métis community researchers, Fiola listened to stories and experiences shared by thirty-two Métis from six Manitoba Métis communities that are at the heart of this book. They offer insight into their families’ relationships with land, community, culture, and religion, including factors that inhibit or nurture connection to ceremonies such as sweat lodge, Sundance, and the Midewiwin. Valuable profiles emerge for six historic Red River Métis communities (Duck Bay, Camperville, St Laurent, St François-Xavier, Ste Anne, and Lorette), providing a clearer understanding of identity, culture, and spirituality that uphold Métis Nation sovereignty.

This edited collection tackles “unsettling” as an emerging field of study that calls for settlers to follow Indigenous leadership and relationality and work toward disrupting the colonial reality through their everyday lives. Bringing together Indigenous and non- Indigenous scholars and activists, Unsettling Education considers how we can reconcile and transcend ongoing settler colonialism. The contributors reflect on how the three concepts of unsettling, Indigenization, and decolonization overlap and intersect in practical and theoretical ways. Questions are raised such as how can we recognize and address historical and current injustices that have been imposed upon Indigenous Peoples and their lands? How can we respect the fundamental and inherent sovereignty and rights of Indigenous Peoples as we work toward reconciliation? And how do we work collectively to build more equitable and just communities for all who call Canada home? Unsettling Education is well suited for college and university courses in Indigenous studies or education that focus on decolonization, land-based learning, Indigenization, unsettling, and reconciliation.

There is increasing pressure on university scholars to reach beyond the “ivory tower” and engage in collaborative research with communities. But what does this actually mean? What is community-based participatory research (CBPR) and what does engagement look like? This book presents stories about CBPR from past and current Manitoba Research Alliance projects in socially and economically marginalized communities. Bringing together experienced researchers with new scholars and community practitioners, the stories describe the impetus for the research projects, how they came to be implemented, and how CBPR is still being used to effect change within the community. The projects, ranging from engagement in public policy advocacy to learning from Elders in First Nations communities, were selected to demonstrate the breadth of experiences of those involved and the many different methods used. By providing space for researchers and their collaborators to share the stories behind their research, this book offers valuable lessons and rich insights into the power and practice of CBPR.

This book examines the concept of peace leadership, bringing together scholars and practitioners from both peace and conflict studies and leadership studies. The volume assesses the activities of six peace leaders, the place and role of women and youth in leading for peace, military peace leadership, Aboriginal peace leadership, and theoretical frameworks that focus on notions of ecosystems, traits, and critical care. It provides insights into how Peace Leaders work to transform inner and external blockages to peace, construct social spaces for the development of a culture of peace, and sustain peace efforts through deliberate educative strategies. Conceptually, the primary aim of this book is to obtain a better understanding of peace leadership. Practically, this book presents one means of influencing our community (communities) to face its problems for the sake of challenging and helping our readers to understand and make progress on all that stands in the way of peace (connectedness). The contributions to this volume are drawn together by the overarching aim of this volume, which addresses the following question: What are the concerns, dilemmas, challenges, and opportunities for those who choose to lead and take risks for peace? This book will be of much interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, leadership studies and IR in general.

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Calls to Action in June 2015, governments, churches, non-profit, professional and community organizations, corporations, schools and universities, clubs and individuals have asked: “How can I/we participate in reconciliation?" Recognizing that reconciliation is not only an ultimate goal, but a decolonizing process of journeying in ways that embody everyday acts of resistance, resurgence, and solidarity, coupled with renewed commitments to justice, dialogue, and relationship-building, Pathways of Reconciliation helps readers find their way forward. The essays in Pathways of Reconciliation address the themes of reframing, learning and healing, researching, and living. They engage with different approaches to reconciliation (within a variety of reconciliation frameworks, either explicit or implicit) and illustrate the complexities of the reconciliation process itself. They canvass multiple and varied pathways of reconciliation, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, reflecting a diversity of approaches to the mandate given to all Canadians by the TRC with its Calls to Action. Together the authors—academics, practitioners, students and ordinary citizens—demonstrate the importance of trying and learning from new and creative approaches to thinking about and practicing reconciliation and reflect on what they have learned from their attempts (both successful and less successful) in the process.

Grassroots Approaches to Community-Based Peacebuilding Initiatives examines how change is affected in society by studying the experiences of community leaders involved in social activism in Winnipeg, Canada. Documenting the peace-building activities of a host of Community Based Organizations (CBOs), it explores how these activities are used strategically to impact conflict transformation related to issues such as racism, inequality, and extremism in local settings. Due to its combination of a theoretical foundation and first-hand accounts of actual peace-building projects, this book is a highly useful resource for understanding policy and praxis related to peace-building, and a significant contribution to the literature on peace and conflict studies and policy formation.

Human rights work takes place everywhere, every day, and in every way, but good intentions don’t always bring the intended results. Messy Ethics in Human Rights Work invites readers into a series of overlapping conversations, as activists, researchers, and others consider the complex messiness of ethics in practice and the implications for human rights work in academia and beyond. Although formal ethics guidelines can be useful, their focus on seeing the “messiness” as a problem rather than reality often misses the point. Human rights work entails intricate relationships of social, political, and economic power and responsibility that emerge only in the process of doing the work itself. Contributors share their ethical dilemmas: How did they evaluate a situation and the options to resolve it? Where did or didn’t they seek guidance? What would they do differently next time? This thoughtful work proposes that personal reflection and sometimes uncomfortable discussions are essential components of critical human rights practice.