Great Plains talk: “An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation”

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

11/21/2023 Added

40 Plays

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Legal experts Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii) spoke at the Center for Great Plains Studies on Nov. 17 about racism and reconciliation on Canada’s Great Plains. Sniderman and Sanderson’s “Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation” (Harper Collins, 2022), is the winner of the 2023 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize.

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[00:00:00.360]And welcome to the Center for Great Plain Studies.
[00:00:03.120]My name's Margaret Jacobs and the Center's director.
[00:00:06.690]And we are really thrilled that you're here today
[00:00:09.390]on a Friday afternoon of all days.
[00:00:13.170]I know many of you may have other options,
[00:00:16.110]but we're really grateful you're here.
[00:00:19.417]And we're celebrating the 2022 Stubbendieck Great Plains
[00:00:26.220]Distinguished Book Prize today.
[00:00:28.440]And we have our two winners with us today.
[00:00:31.230]Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson.
[00:00:35.910]We wanna begin our event today by acknowledging
[00:00:40.260]that the Center for Great Plain Studies
[00:00:42.390]is part of the University of Nebraska,
[00:00:46.080]which is a land grant institution with campuses and programs
[00:00:51.000]on the past, present, and future homelands
[00:00:53.490]of the Pawnee, Ponca, Oto-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota,
[00:00:58.440]Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples,
[00:01:01.110]as well as those of the relocated Ho Chunk, Sac and Fox,
[00:01:04.920]and Iowa peoples.
[00:01:06.960]The land we currently call Nebraska has always been
[00:01:10.350]and will continue to be an indigenous homeland.
[00:01:14.070]And we ask you to take a moment to consider the legacies
[00:01:17.100]of more than 150 years of displacement, violence,
[00:01:20.940]settlement, and survival that bring us here today.
[00:01:27.030]This acknowledgement and the centering of indigenous peoples
[00:01:29.690]is a start as we move forward together.
[00:01:35.400]I wanna thank two people who are responsible
[00:01:39.570]for the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize Committee
[00:01:43.740]and that is Jim and Cheryl Stubbendieck.
[00:01:46.467]And if you would like to give them a hand.
[00:01:49.043](audience clapping)
[00:01:56.100]This started, what, what?
[00:01:57.180]I think it started in 2005,
[00:02:00.007]so we're coming up on our 20th anniversary of this.
[00:02:04.860]Jim is a former director
[00:02:06.710]of the Center for Great Plain Studies.
[00:02:08.130]We're also really grateful, Jim,
[00:02:09.750]for all of this work over the years.
[00:02:14.130]And I also, I think, this is really an important prize.
[00:02:18.240]It's an important recognition of the dynamic
[00:02:21.510]and vital scholarship and creative expression
[00:02:24.000]that occurs within and about our region.
[00:02:28.320]So the book that we're featuring today,
[00:02:30.997]"Valley of the Birdtail", it's really an extraordinary book
[00:02:35.790]along with many of our other prize winners each year.
[00:02:38.847]And we hope you will read it.
[00:02:41.220]And there's copies to purchase in the library in the lobby.
[00:02:45.210]I was looking at a librarian and thought library.
[00:02:48.075](people laughing)
[00:02:50.070]And I'm sure authors will be happy
[00:02:52.230]to sign copies after the event.
[00:02:55.350]We also are giving away five copies of the book
[00:02:59.370]and we are drawing them throughout the event today.
[00:03:03.927]And I'm gonna start with two.
[00:03:06.150]So Allison has gotten the two.
[00:03:12.240]Jacob Bank.
[00:03:15.900]Jacob?
[00:03:17.820]You wanna get your copy?
[00:03:19.620]Or she'll bring it to you.
[00:03:22.050]And Faye Doolittle.
[00:03:23.643]Woo.
[00:03:24.476]Yay.
[00:03:25.309]Yay.
[00:03:26.142](audience clapping)
[00:03:27.429]So we've got three more,
[00:03:29.823]three more to give away throughout the event.
[00:03:35.010]I'd also like to recognize the ongoing partnership,
[00:03:39.510]the Center for Great Plains Studies has
[00:03:41.250]with the Canadian Consulate of Minneapolis
[00:03:44.610]or in Minneapolis.
[00:03:46.170]We've collaborated on several events
[00:03:48.330]related to reconciliation as a topic of shared interest
[00:03:52.620]between the Canadian Consulate and the Center.
[00:03:55.380]And we are super grateful for the consulate's support
[00:03:59.430]and partnership.
[00:04:01.200]And I wanna invite the Canadian consul,
[00:04:03.540]Colin McLeod, forward to say a few words.
[00:04:07.500]So on behalf of the Consulate General Canada,
[00:04:10.350]the government of Canada, I'm honored to be here
[00:04:12.300]at the Center for Great Plain Studies
[00:04:13.890]to celebrate the 2023 book prize recipient,
[00:04:17.467]"Valley of the Birdtail" and its authors,
[00:04:19.740]Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson.
[00:04:22.980]The Great Plains of North America link Nebraska
[00:04:25.950]and the midcontinent states to the Canadian provinces.
[00:04:28.650]I knew the first time I walked in here,
[00:04:30.510]and you'll see the big map right as you walk in,
[00:04:34.020]that we had to work together
[00:04:35.430]because the Great Plains really crosses the border
[00:04:38.190]into Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
[00:04:41.490]And part of the work we do at the Consulate
[00:04:42.900]is Canada and the US
[00:04:44.700]are very much the world's strongest partners,
[00:04:47.010]neighbors, allies, friends.
[00:04:49.800]And through vast volumes of trade,
[00:04:51.420]we nourish each other's communities.
[00:04:53.100]We help feed Nebraska's families, communities,
[00:04:56.160]support their businesses,
[00:04:57.870]and through our shared geography, our similar histories,
[00:05:00.570]cultures, and values.
[00:05:02.760]In 2017, on the occasion
[00:05:05.010]of Nebraska's shared sesquicentennial year,
[00:05:08.220]we presented the state of Nebraska with a gift,
[00:05:11.250]a series of paintings by an artist named Simone McLeod.
[00:05:14.670]No relation to me.
[00:05:16.127](people chuckling)
[00:05:17.580]So Simone is a Cree-Ojibway poet
[00:05:19.530]and a member of the Pasqua First Nation in Saskatchewan.
[00:05:22.440]Simone's paintings carry and represent the beliefs
[00:05:25.440]and identity of her ancestors, their long migration history,
[00:05:28.770]their strength and their resilience and healing as a people.
[00:05:32.220]The paintings we chose, sharing experience,
[00:05:35.100]building partnerships, working for the future,
[00:05:37.920]these represent the Canada-Nebraska partnership,
[00:05:40.830]our shared past, our current work together,
[00:05:42.750]and our joint future.
[00:05:44.730]But here in the United States and in Canada,
[00:05:46.740]we're grappling with our shared histories and injustices
[00:05:49.650]against indigenous peoples,
[00:05:51.270]which includes inequalities in the education system,
[00:05:54.000]funding and outcomes as meticulously outlined in this book.
[00:05:58.230]But we're learning from one another
[00:06:00.150]as both countries try to move forward.
[00:06:02.280]So Prime Minister Trudeau said this year on the occasion
[00:06:04.500]of Canada's National Day of Truth and Reconciliation,
[00:06:06.660]which is every September 30th, he said,
[00:06:08.887]"Reconciliation is not the responsibility
[00:06:10.700]of indigenous peoples, it's responsibility of all of us.
[00:06:14.490]It's our responsibility to listen to, to learn from,
[00:06:17.430]and to give space to First Nations, Inuit, Metis voices
[00:06:21.000]and stories and face the truth of our past
[00:06:23.940]to build a fairer, more equitable
[00:06:26.100]and more inclusive Canada for generations to come."
[00:06:29.220]So after my congratulations to Douglas and Andrew
[00:06:31.800]for this award
[00:06:32.633]and I thank you for giving space to the voices
[00:06:34.500]and stories represented in the "Valley of the Birdtail".
[00:06:37.649]As written in the book,
[00:06:38.670]listening to each other's stories is one way
[00:06:40.410]to stitch Canada back together.
[00:06:42.240]Reconciliation will require us at the very least
[00:06:45.030]to acknowledge each other's (faintly speaking).
[00:06:47.046]So I'm looking forward to listening to
[00:06:48.600]and learning from you both today.
[00:06:50.130]Thank you.
[00:06:50.963](audience clapping)
[00:06:51.870]So I also now want to introduce Athena Ramos.
[00:06:54.540]Athena is a member of our center's board of governors.
[00:06:58.320]She's also a member of our book prize committee
[00:07:00.990]and an associate professor
[00:07:02.610]in the Department of Health Promotion
[00:07:04.740]at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
[00:07:07.590]And I also wanna thank the book prize committee,
[00:07:09.690]many of whom are here today.
[00:07:11.250]So thank you so much.
[00:07:12.697](audience clapping)
[00:07:19.979]I have to adjust that.
[00:07:21.240]I'm quite a bit shorter than most of the people
[00:07:23.550]who come up here. (chuckles)
[00:07:26.700]So good afternoon, everybody,
[00:07:28.350]and thank you so much for being here.
[00:07:30.240]On behalf of the book prize committee,
[00:07:32.100]we are so pleased to be able to announce this year's winner
[00:07:35.790]of the 2023 Stubbendieck Great Plains
[00:07:38.640]Distinguished Book Prize to be "Valley of the Birdtail:
[00:07:42.270]an Indian Reserve, a White Town,
[00:07:44.880]and the Road to Reconciliation".
[00:07:47.130]And to be able to recognize the two authors
[00:07:50.040]that we have here today,
[00:07:51.210]I'm going to tell you a little bit more
[00:07:52.920]about the two authors here in a minute.
[00:07:55.620]First, I do want to recognize
[00:07:57.810]that we had two other finalists,
[00:07:59.970]two other books that were finalists for this prize.
[00:08:02.820]One was "Born of Lakes and Plains:
[00:08:05.160]Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West"
[00:08:08.190]by Anne F. Hyde.
[00:08:10.230]And the second was "Cattle Beet Capital:
[00:08:13.080]Making Industrial Agriculture in Northern Colorado"
[00:08:16.470]by Michael Weeks.
[00:08:19.140]So now, to tell you a little bit more about the book
[00:08:21.750]that we're all here to hear so much more about,
[00:08:25.650]this book was by a unanimous decision
[00:08:29.580]of our book prize committee far away the winner
[00:08:32.220]of the prize this year.
[00:08:34.170]So divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism,
[00:08:39.270]the town of Rossburn and Waywayseecappo Indian Reserve
[00:08:43.170]have been neighbors
[00:08:44.430]nearly as long as Canada has been a country.
[00:08:47.640]Their story reflects so much of what has gone wrong
[00:08:50.790]between indigenous peoples and non-indigenous Canadians,
[00:08:54.900]but it also offers in the end an uncommon measure of hope,
[00:08:59.100]which I'm excited to hear more about today.
[00:09:02.100]So while the events conveyed are broadly relevant
[00:09:05.190]and resonate across the Great Plains,
[00:09:08.070]Sniderman and Sanderson focused their telling
[00:09:11.430]on two families, one from each side of the Bird Tail River,
[00:09:15.510]a specificity that makes the history feel uniquely vital
[00:09:19.500]and urgent.
[00:09:20.610]Indeed, the family stories culminate in a hopeful instance
[00:09:23.880]of reconciliation, hope the authors build upon
[00:09:27.150]by outlining bold and achievable steps
[00:09:30.540]toward broader reconciliation
[00:09:32.340]between settler and indigenous communities.
[00:09:35.790]This is coming directly from our book prize chairman,
[00:09:40.650]Dr. Todd Richardson.
[00:09:42.030]If you wanna wave, he's back there in the back.
[00:09:45.270]He is a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
[00:09:50.100]The "Valley of the Birdtail" really is one
[00:09:53.370]of the most engaging books that I've read in a long time
[00:09:56.400]and it's very thoughtfully researched
[00:09:59.610]and it warrants I think much greater readership
[00:10:03.030]and it's something that we think is very much worthy
[00:10:06.630]of the book price here that we present
[00:10:09.480]from the Center for Great Plain Studies.
[00:10:11.250]I just wanna give you a hint of what's in the book.
[00:10:17.490]So thinking again about the idea of reconciliation,
[00:10:20.160]how important that is for all of us to take to heart.
[00:10:23.880]They note that reconciliation will require us
[00:10:27.330]at the very least to acknowledge each other's dignity.
[00:10:30.630]Listening activates our hearts,
[00:10:32.610]which allows us to not simply listen to one another
[00:10:35.730]but to really hear what is being said.
[00:10:38.910]These are lessons that we can apply
[00:10:41.430]from both sides of the River Valley.
[00:10:43.260]These are both teachings that we all need
[00:10:45.510]to be able to hear.
[00:10:47.070]And so with that, let me announce or introduce, better said,
[00:10:52.830]the authors of the book.
[00:10:55.230]First, Douglas Sanderson, Amo Binashii,
[00:10:59.130]is Beaver Clan from the Opaskwayak Creek Nation.
[00:11:03.180]He's a Fulbright Scholar,
[00:11:04.530]and holds the Prichard Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy
[00:11:08.460]at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
[00:11:11.910]Professor Sanderson has served as senior advisor
[00:11:15.000]to the government of Ontario in the offices
[00:11:17.850]of the Attorney General and Aboriginal Affairs.
[00:11:21.030]His research areas focus on indigenous legal theory
[00:11:24.540]as well as private and public law.
[00:11:27.210]His current research interests include the peace
[00:11:29.490]and friendship treaties of 1600 to 1763
[00:11:33.360]and the fur trade in Canada.
[00:11:35.760]So Mr. Sanderson, can I please invite you to come up
[00:11:38.760]and present you with a medal?
[00:11:40.483]Oh, yay.
[00:11:41.316](audience laughing)
[00:11:43.230]Yes, please.
[00:11:44.092](audience laughing)
[00:11:46.710]Congratulations on behalf of our committee.
[00:11:49.062]Thank you very much.
[00:11:50.889](audience clapping)
[00:11:58.846](Douglas faintly speaking)
[00:12:00.067](audience laughing)
[00:12:02.730]See, good things happen when you come to Nebraska.
[00:12:05.114](audience laughing)
[00:12:06.507]And our other author is Andrew Stobo Sniderman.
[00:12:09.900]He's a writer, a lawyer, and a Rhode Scholar from Montreal.
[00:12:13.590]He's written for the New York Times, and the Globe,
[00:12:16.440]and Mail.
[00:12:17.370]He's also argued before the Supreme Court of Canada,
[00:12:20.610]served as the human rights policy advisor
[00:12:22.980]to the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs,
[00:12:26.190]and has worked for the judge
[00:12:27.450]of South Africa's Constitutional Court.
[00:12:30.180]With that, Mr. Sniderman, can I present you with a medal?
[00:12:33.764](audience clapping)
[00:12:47.227]So now, thank you all again for joining us.
[00:12:49.740]I'm going to turn over the discussion to Margaret.
[00:12:53.250]I just wanted to start by asking you each,
[00:12:55.830]what was the genesis of this book?
[00:12:57.720]How did you come to want to write this book?
[00:13:02.880]I might start there and say, first of all, thank you.
[00:13:06.090]It's so wonderful to be here.
[00:13:07.650]Thank you to this big crowd of people.
[00:13:09.840]It's such a treat.
[00:13:10.980]And I wanna thank Katie and Allison and the whole team
[00:13:14.010]that have been so gracious and well-organized.
[00:13:16.890]It's a beautiful room that we're in
[00:13:19.470]with beautiful art, so thank you.
[00:13:20.970]I'm very touched.
[00:13:22.320]And I haven't gotten a medal since I was about 13 years old.
[00:13:24.961](audience laughing)
[00:13:25.889]It's pretty cool.
[00:13:27.690]So, okay.
[00:13:29.160]So where did this book begin for me?
[00:13:35.580]In 2010, I was a grown man
[00:13:39.510]who knew nothing really about the history of my country
[00:13:42.837]and there was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
[00:13:46.080]that was begun in Canada, which was already a strange thing
[00:13:50.370]for me 'cause I had grown up thinking
[00:13:52.830]that truth and reconciliation
[00:13:54.450]was something that happened in South Africa
[00:13:57.750]with Nelson Mandela at the head of it.
[00:14:01.380]And there was this kind of awful feeling I had
[00:14:05.340]that, oh, I don't think I know anything at all
[00:14:08.520]about my country.
[00:14:09.960]And I happened to see a presentation about the work
[00:14:13.770]of this commission that was learning
[00:14:15.300]about what in the United States are called boarding schools
[00:14:18.150]and what we would call residential schools,
[00:14:20.610]where indigenous children were stolen from their families
[00:14:24.240]for a long, long time and sent to.
[00:14:27.060]And I traveled with this commission
[00:14:28.770]as a freelance journalist.
[00:14:30.810]I kinda bluffed my way into it.
[00:14:32.220]I've never published anything in my life
[00:14:33.750]and I said, "Hey, I'm a freelance journalist."
[00:14:35.934](audience laughing)
[00:14:36.960]And they said, "Actually, there was not a single journalist
[00:14:40.380]who's interested in covering this work.
[00:14:41.910]We have a spot on our plane, so come along."
[00:14:46.980]And I think the big moment for me was,
[00:14:51.240]as you hear these stories,
[00:14:53.550]there's this very tempting part of all of this.
[00:14:56.400]And I think it's true of the stories
[00:14:57.840]that are told in this country and in our country.
[00:15:00.540]It's very tempting to think this is awful
[00:15:03.720]and it happened a long time ago.
[00:15:07.590]And in my country for my entire lifetime,
[00:15:11.010]I bet I then learned
[00:15:13.140]we had been mistreating indigenous children at schools.
[00:15:18.240]And so if you attended a school
[00:15:19.890]on what we would call a reserve
[00:15:21.270]and what you'd call here a reservation,
[00:15:23.730]there are about 110,000 students at these schools
[00:15:27.420]at that time and still today.
[00:15:29.100]And they were getting 40, 50% less funding per student,
[00:15:33.750]which meant in real terms
[00:15:35.460]that you had bad teachers who didn't stay.
[00:15:38.940]You had under-resourced classrooms.
[00:15:40.800]You ran out of crayons and it led to worse outcomes.
[00:15:44.910]And that the urgency, I like the word Athena,
[00:15:50.220]I think I appreciate that this committee recognized
[00:15:52.560]that this is an urgent book
[00:15:54.630]even though a lot of it is about the past.
[00:15:57.060]And we wanted to write a book about the past,
[00:15:59.220]but that was urgent
[00:16:00.240]because it's connected to big problems in the present.
[00:16:03.330]So I won't say too much more
[00:16:04.740]except to say that it was schools in the present in Canada
[00:16:09.840]that were unequal that really upset me
[00:16:14.490]and was gnawing at me.
[00:16:16.320]And I spent years looking for a story
[00:16:21.330]to tell the story of that problem.
[00:16:25.050]And so I came to this valley,
[00:16:28.950]which is shared by this community of immigrants
[00:16:32.100]from the Ukraine and an Ojibwe community.
[00:16:35.580]And it just so happened that Douglas
[00:16:37.110]had been my law professor and it became obvious,
[00:16:42.900]maybe we could talk more about this later,
[00:16:44.940]that this was not a book that could be written just by me.
[00:16:48.450]This was really a book about an indigenous community
[00:16:51.870]and a non-indigenous community.
[00:16:53.310]And the only way to do that right
[00:16:55.470]was to have it as a collaboration.
[00:17:00.840]So thank you, Stobo.
[00:17:02.214]So Stobo was a student of mine about about 10 years ago.
[00:17:09.510]And I remember him coming into my office
[00:17:12.630]after his first summer where he'd gone rogue,
[00:17:18.298]left the law school
[00:17:19.227]and decided to be a journalist for the summer,
[00:17:21.450]and stumbled into the story.
[00:17:25.107]And we talked about it during his time in law school.
[00:17:27.810]And then he graduated and went away,
[00:17:30.690]but we stayed friends and stayed in touch with one another,
[00:17:33.080]so I was aware that the project was coming along.
[00:17:36.180]And about four years ago maybe Andrew approached me
[00:17:40.443]with this project, which was, at that time, a manuscript
[00:17:44.400]full of research, full of footnotes
[00:17:47.460]but sort of missing an ending.
[00:17:50.040]And then also, you know, it turns out
[00:17:53.820]that although Stobo and I are a lot alike, you know,
[00:17:58.350]we come to the present day like everyone
[00:18:02.100]with a set of experiences that is unique to ourselves
[00:18:05.730]and grounded in different kinds of communities.
[00:18:09.150]And so, you know, of course, there were all kinds of places
[00:18:12.690]where in the text I felt like,
[00:18:15.060]oh, I think maybe we could do this differently.
[00:18:17.550]And a lot of that we had to negotiate along the way.
[00:18:20.880]We could talk about the actual right,
[00:18:22.620]the co-authoring of a project like this,
[00:18:26.610]is maybe something we should talk about later.
[00:18:29.040]But I'll say I then worked with Stobo
[00:18:32.790]for about two years on the actual rewriting of the project.
[00:18:37.710]So we sort of had a complete manuscript
[00:18:40.500]and then we went back and we just rewrote it again
[00:18:43.230]and again and again and again.
[00:18:44.700]And that's, you know, as an academic,
[00:18:47.700]in my publishing history, I tend to send a book
[00:18:51.450]or a journal article away to a proposed publisher
[00:18:55.260]and it comes back and it's been accepted,
[00:18:57.090]but then there's all these revisions
[00:18:58.320]and I usually just go like, I accept all.
[00:19:01.598](audience laughing)
[00:19:04.273]And then I wait two and a half weeks
[00:19:05.755]and then I send it back.
[00:19:07.711]But this was a much more involved project
[00:19:11.820]of really working to get to the words,
[00:19:16.620]which had this really interesting,
[00:19:19.680]we came to call it the problem of two authors.
[00:19:23.220]And that's that while we are not, you know, that dissimilar,
[00:19:28.620]we're not the same.
[00:19:29.640]And what you have in a project like this
[00:19:33.030]is you have two people with different points of view
[00:19:36.600]and one set of text.
[00:19:38.400]And then the reader comes to it with a third set of texts
[00:19:42.120]and we have to triangulate using words,
[00:19:45.450]meaning that is true to me and my upbringing
[00:19:50.550]and my reality true to Stobo's guts
[00:19:53.880]as between us walking a ridge line of truth
[00:19:57.330]and yet inviting the reader to come to that text
[00:20:00.330]with their own version of the truth,
[00:20:02.760]and to within that little triangle still find meaning
[00:20:07.530]that we think is appropriate and that delivers the language
[00:20:12.330]and the wording to carry a narrative
[00:20:15.300]that can describe these kinds of stories in a way
[00:20:17.670]but that is still meaningful to an audience reader.
[00:20:21.630]Thank you so much.
[00:20:22.620]This is a lot more than that is in the book
[00:20:24.840]and it was really fascinating to hear.
[00:20:28.617]And one thing you said, Stobo, I guess, it's probably Stobo.
[00:20:32.817]I like that.
[00:20:34.235]It's his legal middle name.
[00:20:35.952]I know, I like that.
[00:20:37.474]I'm just reminding the audience.
[00:20:39.189]Yeah.
[00:20:41.670]I mean what you said about this is not just in the past,
[00:20:46.140]but I was truly shocked to learn from your book.
[00:20:50.490]I learned a lot of things, but this was one,
[00:20:53.250]the year 2021, 2021, 2 years ago,
[00:20:58.410]marked the first time the federal government in Canada
[00:21:01.590]was providing students on Indian reserves
[00:21:04.620]funding roughly comparable to that of students
[00:21:07.650]in provincially funded schools.
[00:21:11.370]I was just shocked,
[00:21:12.810]especially because, you know, we have such a view
[00:21:14.940]that Canada is really progressive on most issues,
[00:21:20.310]and this was really shocking.
[00:21:23.010]And I think that gets to my next question is,
[00:21:28.350]well, how did we get to that point?
[00:21:30.510]How did it get to the point in Canada
[00:21:32.910]that funding was so lopsided?
[00:21:36.690]And this is one of the first things you mentioned
[00:21:38.087]in the book, any reconciliation must begin
[00:21:41.880]with an honest assessment of one's history.
[00:21:45.645]So I wanted you maybe to share with the audience
[00:21:48.750]what is the history that you highlight in the book.
[00:21:52.272](Andrew faintly speaking)
[00:21:53.820]Sure. Okay.
[00:21:55.290]So let me maybe start by talking just a little bit
[00:21:59.970]about the book's about and how we structure the narrative.
[00:22:04.170]And so "Valley of the Birdtail",
[00:22:07.020]it's really a history of Canada,
[00:22:09.120]and that's a story you can tell a lot of different ways
[00:22:12.597]and has been told a lot of different ways,
[00:22:15.450]but we wanted an intimate and honest account of a nation.
[00:22:22.410]And so to do that, we follow two families,
[00:22:25.230]one of them are Ukrainian immigrants to Canada
[00:22:28.252]who literally just arrived from the Ukraine
[00:22:32.227]and talk about, we can talk more later,
[00:22:34.670]but the program that Canada engaged in
[00:22:37.680]at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century
[00:22:41.160]to bring tens of thousands of Ukrainian immigrants
[00:22:43.770]to Canada to settle the prairies,
[00:22:45.660]because Canada had just finished clearing the prairies
[00:22:48.930]of Indians putting them onto Indian reserves.
[00:22:51.840]And one of those communities,
[00:22:53.250]one of those reserve communities, Waywayseecappo,
[00:22:56.730]ends up being situated right across the river
[00:22:59.460]from this little town of Ukrainian immigrants
[00:23:01.481]called Rossburn.
[00:23:02.850]And the two communities are founded
[00:23:04.440]at more or less the same time right around confederation.
[00:23:08.430]So by following these two families
[00:23:11.280]from Confederation 150 some years ago
[00:23:14.356]all the way through to the present day,
[00:23:17.462]we get a chance
[00:23:18.527]to run this sort of terrible thought experiment.
[00:23:21.090]And this thought experiment
[00:23:22.590]is something like what would happen
[00:23:24.720]if we took two communities and one of them, we supported
[00:23:29.820]and we encouraged them to pursue their culture and history
[00:23:34.860]and language to become Ukrainian Canadians,
[00:23:38.250]and we integrated them into our economic system
[00:23:41.250]and we helped them out
[00:23:42.300]and we provided them decent education?
[00:23:44.582]And what would happen if just across the river,
[00:23:46.993]we took another community and we did exactly the opposite?
[00:23:50.415]We stole their children.
[00:23:51.819]We told 'em they couldn't speak their language anymore.
[00:23:53.640]We denied them access to markets.
[00:23:55.200]We denied them access to credit.
[00:23:57.150]What would happen if you did that?
[00:23:59.397]And it turns out that Canada has done that
[00:24:02.490]hundreds of times.
[00:24:04.140]But all across nation, there's a reserve
[00:24:07.085]and a little community,
[00:24:08.513]and one community is stuck in abject poverty
[00:24:11.730]and the other exists
[00:24:12.810]in a relatively normal socioeconomic state.
[00:24:17.631]And when you walk around the current Canada of today,
[00:24:20.880]you can see this inequality,
[00:24:22.620]it's ever present in overrepresentation
[00:24:25.344]in the prison system, underrepresentation in the boardrooms,
[00:24:29.244]and in all kinds of socioeconomic achievements,
[00:24:32.990]health achievements.
[00:24:34.897]And "Valley of the Birdtail" explains how that happened.
[00:24:39.450]And in the present day, it's easy to walk around
[00:24:41.550]and imagine that things just kind of came undone
[00:24:45.060]or they went the way they did for reasons
[00:24:47.014]that we can't understand.
[00:24:48.470]But what we are able to show by following actual families
[00:24:52.500]is that the Canada of today is not an accident.
[00:24:55.545]That it is a result of intentional government policies
[00:24:59.073]that began with the clearing of the prairies
[00:25:01.437]and the initial putting Indians onto reserves,
[00:25:04.500]and then the choosing to favor one population over another.
[00:25:08.430]And that inequality then extends forward and forward
[00:25:12.060]and forward all the way into the present day,
[00:25:14.760]including many of the policies
[00:25:16.860]that were set out very early on
[00:25:18.810]that continued into the present,
[00:25:20.370]including things like the difference in education funding.
[00:25:25.290]Even more shocking, the parts of federal legislation
[00:25:30.240]that provided the federal government the authority
[00:25:32.820]to enter into the homes of Indians
[00:25:34.350]and to take their children away to educational institutions.
[00:25:38.040]That legislation was repealed in 2014.
[00:25:41.801]That part of the legislation.
[00:25:43.380]My children were actually eligible
[00:25:44.970]to become status Indian in Canada,
[00:25:46.740]but I did not register them,
[00:25:48.651]because at the time, it was still possible
[00:25:53.160]and people would tell me like that's never gonna happen.
[00:25:56.610]But I look over at the old Jewish lady
[00:25:58.200]with a chicken in her bag and like, yeah, it could,
[00:26:00.453]and it did happen.
[00:26:02.070]And we only got to the point in Canada
[00:26:05.250]where we said it's not going to happen
[00:26:08.010]like about nine years ago.
[00:26:10.500]That was the same year
[00:26:11.333]that actually Canada made it legal
[00:26:13.410]for indigenous people on the reserve
[00:26:15.630]to sell grain to non-Indians.
[00:26:17.591]Like the access to economic markets is that closed
[00:26:21.360]from the time of confederation all the way through to 2014.
[00:26:24.940]So we show how these policies that started decades ago
[00:26:30.240]under unjust conditions have carried forward
[00:26:33.360]to the present day and show why it is
[00:26:36.150]there are so many indigenous people living in poverty
[00:26:38.490]with poor access to healthcare,
[00:26:40.230]engaged in the prison system.
[00:26:41.793]It's not an accident and it's easy to imagine that it was.
[00:26:45.810]But when you play the movie forward from the beginning,
[00:26:50.040]you begin to understand that this is no accident.
[00:26:53.220]This is a series of intentional policies
[00:26:55.470]and realizing that we think we hope allows us
[00:27:01.100]to get into a situation where we can understand
[00:27:03.600]that undoing all of this is going to require exactly this
[00:27:07.560]on the same sort of steps in reverse
[00:27:09.420]that same dedicated government policy year after year
[00:27:13.230]after year for decades into the future
[00:27:15.690]in order to right the ship
[00:27:17.160]and generate a situation of equality.
[00:27:21.510]Can I add two things to that?
[00:27:22.950]Thank you, Douglas.
[00:27:25.140]I wanna, you know, give an example of our method
[00:27:27.570]for telling this kind of story.
[00:27:28.860]So Douglas was just mentioning that there was a thing
[00:27:31.470]called a permit system, which meant it was illegal,
[00:27:36.180]as a status Indian to sell, for example, your grain
[00:27:39.990]to anyone off reserve
[00:27:42.180]without the permission of a federal agent.
[00:27:44.850]This was also in our law until literally 2014,
[00:27:51.450]around the same time.
[00:27:53.010]But it was enforced in the 1880s to the 1970s,
[00:27:56.520]so about a hundred years.
[00:27:57.450]So it's bad,
[00:27:59.370]but it has a lot more impact on the reader
[00:28:03.570]when you turn it into a story.
[00:28:05.427]You can turn a bad policy into a memorable story.
[00:28:09.390]I think we're trying to do that
[00:28:10.560]with every policy in this book.
[00:28:12.690]So for example, there is a story about a man
[00:28:16.470]named Hugh McKay.
[00:28:18.540]And Hugh McKay, as you would see if you had a copy
[00:28:21.060]of the book on page 162, there's a picture of this permit
[00:28:26.130]and he's trying to sell a load of barley
[00:28:29.550]that he grew in 1947,
[00:28:33.480]and he's trying to sell this load of barley
[00:28:35.100]for some small amount of money,
[00:28:37.050]and he needed the permission from a federal agent.
[00:28:41.370]And this guy, Hugh McKay, had just spent four years
[00:28:45.150]in the Canadian Armed Forces fighting Nazis literally
[00:28:49.320]in Europe, was almost killed, I think it was in France.
[00:28:53.850]And he comes home after World War II
[00:28:56.880]and he is subjected to this policy,
[00:29:00.150]which effectively makes it impossible to succeed
[00:29:02.850]as a farmer on reserve.
[00:29:04.950]So that's just one example.
[00:29:06.840]There's also a series of examples we give.
[00:29:09.150]I'll just mention that we had a pass system,
[00:29:12.330]which is a system that made it illegal to leave your reserve
[00:29:16.440]without the permission of a federal agent.
[00:29:18.720]Sometimes you needed literally a letter of recommendation
[00:29:21.540]for decades,
[00:29:22.380]and this meant that you couldn't visit your kids at schools,
[00:29:25.500]which is, of course, is the point.
[00:29:27.120]You couldn't go to work, you couldn't go to school,
[00:29:30.360]you couldn't go visit your cousins down the road
[00:29:33.930]to practice a ceremony.
[00:29:35.220]That was the point.
[00:29:36.420]And I wanna answer your question directly,
[00:29:38.580]which was how could this happen in Canada until 2021
[00:29:44.280]that these schools were treated so unequal?
[00:29:46.230]And I think the United States is very familiar
[00:29:48.780]with this kind of story, and there's a couple elements.
[00:29:51.810]One of them is people are physically separate
[00:29:55.620]in these reserves and it makes it easier not to see them.
[00:30:01.650]Administratively, they are also, in many cases, separate.
[00:30:05.310]Our federal government is doing its own thing
[00:30:09.570]when our state-like governments are running public schools.
[00:30:12.840]So administratively, they're also separate.
[00:30:15.960]In the same way, in United States,
[00:30:17.820]there's different federal administration of reservations.
[00:30:20.610]So that's a factor.
[00:30:22.380]But the biggest thing,
[00:30:23.430]which I think what this book is really about,
[00:30:25.710]is how can it be that it becomes normal
[00:30:30.660]and therefore totally unremarkable
[00:30:34.140]for people who share a valley who literally are neighbors
[00:30:38.580]to look down the road and not see the problem,
[00:30:44.280]to make it seem like it's natural.
[00:30:46.680]Oh, they're not doing that well,
[00:30:48.060]but that's kinda the way it is.
[00:30:51.390]That's what this book is really, I think, trying to attack
[00:30:55.410]or to make people hesitate before they make that judgment.
[00:31:01.465]Yeah.
[00:31:04.157]Again, I hope you're catching
[00:31:06.720]how powerful our two authors are in this book
[00:31:10.688]is I'm getting very moved by you
[00:31:17.070]as I was when I read the book.
[00:31:20.372]So there's so many-
[00:31:21.917]I usually cry too during presentations.
[00:31:23.929](audience laughing)
[00:31:25.079]We can cry.
[00:31:28.225]So, you know, you've described several different types
[00:31:31.710]of inequities, like how native or indigenous people
[00:31:36.300]in Canada weren't allowed to sell the produce
[00:31:40.230]that they grew.
[00:31:41.220]You've just described the past system,
[00:31:44.070]but the book primarily focuses on schools
[00:31:47.607]and the inequity at schools,
[00:31:49.050]whether it's the residential schools
[00:31:51.420]or the ways in which when children were integrated
[00:31:57.600]into public schools that they faced so much discrimination,
[00:32:01.770]and the graduation rates were 4% at some point,
[00:32:06.570]high school graduation rates.
[00:32:08.640]It was just shocking.
[00:32:10.650]And then the kind of schools
[00:32:13.410]that the community of Waywayseecappo wanted
[00:32:17.040]to have their own separate school
[00:32:18.270]after experiencing all this integrated school,
[00:32:21.660]and then it's funded so poorly.
[00:32:23.190]So you focus on schools.
[00:32:25.920]Why schools and not the past system or the agriculture
[00:32:29.760]or all the other inequities
[00:32:33.150]that have been built into Canadian society?
[00:32:41.340]So the answer to that question
[00:32:42.360]comes about two thirds of the way through the book,
[00:32:45.090]and it goes back to the original problem
[00:32:49.020]that Stobo became aware of, which was this problem
[00:32:51.300]of inequality as between indigenous schools on reserve
[00:32:56.130]and off reserve schools.
[00:32:58.920]And what actually happens
[00:33:03.210]is that there's a moment some years ago
[00:33:08.220]where through a lot of negotiation and a lot of effort,
[00:33:13.140]it happens that the school manages to convince
[00:33:17.370]the unreserve school in a way,
[00:33:18.780]convinces the federal government to give them the same level
[00:33:21.870]of funding as a provincial school would have.
[00:33:24.750]And part of that negotiation is that the reserve school
[00:33:29.070]has to join forces to become like a joint school district
[00:33:32.520]with the surrounding communities
[00:33:34.680]and has to contribute some of its money to shared resources,
[00:33:37.470]so that the reserve school finally has access
[00:33:39.720]to things like a speech pathologist.
[00:33:42.780]And so a few years out from that, you know,
[00:33:46.410]we could rapidly see that indigenous students
[00:33:49.890]were progressing, that they're making their grades,
[00:33:54.210]their reading comprehension level and math levels
[00:33:56.340]were shooting through the roof
[00:33:57.630]compared to just a few years ago.
[00:33:59.670]Once they had smaller classrooms,
[00:34:01.770]once they had good teachers, once they had proper support,
[00:34:05.310]of course, the children improved in all kinds of ways.
[00:34:10.230]The classrooms improved in all kinds of ways.
[00:34:12.510]And so this sort of started for us
[00:34:15.000]as a story about education and about how...
[00:34:18.930]You know, in addition to the story of residential schools,
[00:34:21.960]there was also a story in the present day
[00:34:24.150]about how communities could come together
[00:34:26.730]and about how, in some sense,
[00:34:29.160]the history of failed integration of underfunding
[00:34:32.430]was really a sort of metaphor for the indigenous condition
[00:34:35.490]in Canada much more broadly.
[00:34:38.517]And so education provided us a way of thinking
[00:34:41.880]about a long history of indigenous settle relations
[00:34:45.990]and in a way that I think everyone can relate to.
[00:34:48.840]We've all been to elementary, high school.
[00:34:51.717]And so we all share some familiarities with these stories
[00:34:54.810]and I'm sure almost all of us
[00:34:56.970]have either been that kid on the outside in school
[00:35:00.840]or you've seen them.
[00:35:01.710]And so even those stories of displacement and dispossession.
[00:35:05.220]Or in some sense, familiar to to the younger versions
[00:35:07.890]of ourselves if we look back.
[00:35:09.960]So education provided us that kind of a framework.
[00:35:18.030]So as you mentioned earlier, Douglas,
[00:35:21.150]the book isn't just about the community of Waywayseecappo,
[00:35:24.870]it's also as much about the Ukrainian community of Rossburn.
[00:35:30.060]And that's another fascinating part of the book.
[00:35:36.390]And I wonder if you could share with the audience,
[00:35:41.070]was there any overlap between the experiences
[00:35:43.890]of the early Ukrainian immigrants
[00:35:46.620]and the Ojibwe people who were on the reserve?
[00:35:53.700]Yeah.
[00:35:56.370]I wanna add one thing to what Douglas said first,
[00:35:59.460]which I should have said,
[00:36:00.450]which is that we also have urgent contemporary problems
[00:36:05.220]that are not just the schools.
[00:36:06.990]So you're right to say, and Douglas was saying
[00:36:09.510]that education was like a metaphor almost for the problems.
[00:36:14.850]But there's still lots of communities in Canada
[00:36:16.680]that don't have running water.
[00:36:19.920]The child welfare system is in crisis.
[00:36:24.720]And so every level of service on reserves is worse.
[00:36:28.020]And as Douglas was saying,
[00:36:29.070]we pick schools because we think that's the one
[00:36:31.950]where the reader will feel in their gut
[00:36:35.730]that they'll relate to people.
[00:36:37.230]And that's like the vehicle for us to open up readers
[00:36:40.380]and actually persuade them.
[00:36:41.970]I'm sorry, I wanna answer your latest question
[00:36:44.850]which is about the overlap
[00:36:47.010]between the stories of these two communities.
[00:36:49.920]And I also think that's fundamental
[00:36:51.690]to what we're trying to do here.
[00:36:53.580]And I think as Athena was saying earlier
[00:36:56.190]that part of this is about hearing each other's stories,
[00:37:01.440]and this could have been a book
[00:37:02.880]just about an indigenous community
[00:37:05.430]or a really good book about settler community.
[00:37:10.350]And we didn't wanna do either of those things.
[00:37:13.230]It's so much more powerful to talk about the relationship
[00:37:16.500]between these places
[00:37:17.910]because you can do things like show the commonalities.
[00:37:21.630]So to just give one obvious example,
[00:37:24.990]there was this past system
[00:37:26.940]which turned these indigenous communities
[00:37:29.640]into open air prisons.
[00:37:31.680]People could not get off 'em.
[00:37:33.720]And there's a moment in Canadian history,
[00:37:35.490]I actually don't know what the United States did,
[00:37:37.950]but during World War I, we imprisoned Ukrainian Canadian men
[00:37:44.280]because Ukraine was allied with the bad guys in Europe,
[00:37:48.390]and all of a sudden, they were potential enemies.
[00:37:51.420]So we interned them, and in many cases, we had forced labor
[00:37:56.430]and they built things like Banff National Park,
[00:37:58.770]if you've ever been,
[00:37:59.970]and all kinds of national parks all over Canada
[00:38:02.280]that were built with this labor.
[00:38:04.140]And it's an awful story which resonates still
[00:38:07.320]in the memory of Ukrainian Canadians.
[00:38:10.680]And part of this book is to tell the story of settlers
[00:38:15.360]who also faced real hardships.
[00:38:18.270]I'm sure in Nebraska, there are amazing stories
[00:38:22.830]about settlers who, yes, indeed it was rough
[00:38:26.490]on the Great Plains for settlers in meaningful ways.
[00:38:30.480]And the story of Ukrainian Canadians
[00:38:32.670]is a particularly trenchant example of that.
[00:38:36.420]When they arrived, they were not considered white
[00:38:39.810]and they were called all kinds of awful things
[00:38:43.050]and were discriminated against in real ways.
[00:38:45.420]It wasn't an imagined discrimination, it was real racism.
[00:38:49.470]And so this book in part is looking for commonalities
[00:38:54.150]and it's also looking for moments
[00:38:57.300]like when a young indigenous woman whose name is Maureen,
[00:39:02.460]who is the main character of the book
[00:39:03.810]and who also writes the afterward of the book.
[00:39:07.530]She, in university, is the first time she learns
[00:39:09.960]about her own community's history,
[00:39:12.930]including the past system,
[00:39:14.820]but it's also the moment which she learns
[00:39:16.410]about Ukrainian Canadian history.
[00:39:18.930]And there's this moment where she thinks,
[00:39:20.820]oh, they were interned too.
[00:39:24.930]And it kind of opens up this whole world of commonality.
[00:39:29.100]And I'll conclude by saying that we also, I think,
[00:39:32.130]are trying to be careful to say that yes,
[00:39:34.830]there are common parts of these stories
[00:39:38.640]but they are different,
[00:39:40.740]'cause if we just make it like they're the same,
[00:39:43.770]I think that's also its own kind of mistake.
[00:39:46.890]And we're trying to show the commonalities
[00:39:50.070]but also show the differences to create bonds between people
[00:39:54.360]but also to kind of open up people's hearts
[00:39:57.210]a little bit more.
[00:39:59.940]I have to say in this town,
[00:40:02.370]you'll often hear people say things like, we arrived,
[00:40:05.610]we were poor, we didn't speak English,
[00:40:08.100]and we had to work our asses off.
[00:40:09.720]And we did and we faced discrimination,
[00:40:12.870]and over time, we did better, which is true.
[00:40:17.760]And they look across this river to a community of people
[00:40:21.600]who started poor and remain poor.
[00:40:24.210]And there's a part of this story
[00:40:26.520]which says that's their fault
[00:40:28.380]'cause they don't see these policies
[00:40:31.320]that are sometimes hard to see.
[00:40:33.210]And so in that sense, we're trying to say no,
[00:40:35.070]it's not the same at all.
[00:40:37.350]And we need to tell you the story
[00:40:39.720]so that that becomes obvious.
[00:40:44.100]Yeah.
[00:40:44.933]Well, as Athena mentioned, this book,
[00:40:48.300]it documents these histories of inequity.
[00:40:52.170]It will make you mad.
[00:40:56.310]You're already mad.
[00:40:57.551](audience laughing)
[00:40:59.760]But it also gets to a point
[00:41:04.290]where there's a big change or there is a change,
[00:41:08.910]and it's reflected in the characters in the book,
[00:41:12.450]the individuals who reach across these divides.
[00:41:18.090]But I wondered if you could talk a little bit
[00:41:20.100]about what did change and how did it change,
[00:41:24.180]and how do you write about that change in the book?
[00:41:28.890]Well, change comes slow.
[00:41:32.640]So the communities of Rossburn and Waywayseecappo,
[00:41:38.220]once their children were bound together
[00:41:43.800]in a sort of shared future,
[00:41:46.380]they sort of found themselves
[00:41:47.970]in a really unique situation in Canada.
[00:41:54.510]One of the things that came out of the educational agreement
[00:41:59.280]between the reserve school and the surrounding communities
[00:42:02.910]was that some classes in high school
[00:42:06.900]would take place on reserve.
[00:42:08.640]So we think the only place in Canada
[00:42:11.100]where children from the non-reserve community
[00:42:13.740]cross the river into the reserve and attend class there
[00:42:17.087]in the same way that the children on the reserve
[00:42:20.130]cross the river and go to school in the camp.
[00:42:23.640]That has brought 'em together in unexpected ways.
[00:42:28.020]And the community itself has had to wrestle I think
[00:42:33.360]with its own past.
[00:42:34.710]I think, you know, the research from the book,
[00:42:36.477]the book itself there, the book being everyone's face,
[00:42:39.480]has caused perhaps some realignment of use.
[00:42:43.590]There's been a really complicated set of recent events
[00:42:49.590]that are heartwarming and also a little not.
[00:42:52.500]But the reserve community,
[00:42:55.260]once the war in Ukraine had broken out,
[00:42:58.440]out of solidarity, the band council office
[00:43:01.200]and the local gas station started flying Ukrainian flags,
[00:43:04.080]supports for their neighbors across the river.
[00:43:06.990]And recognizing that gesture,
[00:43:09.870]eventually, the town council determined
[00:43:12.690]that they would raise a treaty flag
[00:43:15.450]as part of the town flagship.
[00:43:18.480]Now, a former-
[00:43:19.313]I wish the story ended there.
[00:43:20.310]Yeah.
[00:43:21.143](audience laughing)
[00:43:21.976]Now, as it turns out, a former mayor of the town
[00:43:24.180]who was pretty racist, I remember that,
[00:43:27.710]in the middle of the night, sneaks out to the flag poles
[00:43:30.300]and steals the flag, takes it home.
[00:43:32.850]And the community figures it out
[00:43:34.410]and they have to send the librarian
[00:43:36.720]to go knock on the door.
[00:43:38.449]Come on.
[00:43:39.282](audience laughing)
[00:43:41.588]And former mayor eventually like turns it over,
[00:43:44.550]and they're like, you know, it's a funny little incident
[00:43:48.060]but this is a community that is struggling to try
[00:43:51.720]and figure out how to reconcile its past with its present
[00:43:55.710]and to see itself with a shared future.
[00:43:58.350]And there are no easy steps.
[00:44:00.600]There are only steps
[00:44:01.920]and sometimes those steps go backwards a little bit.
[00:44:04.680]But we think that the community, what we hear
[00:44:07.620]is that the communities themselves
[00:44:09.720]believe they'll never be the same,
[00:44:11.670]that something has happened.
[00:44:13.560]And I think more than anything else,
[00:44:15.360]it's not the book, it's not the detention,
[00:44:17.823]I think it is that their children's futures
[00:44:21.240]and presence are bound together
[00:44:23.970]in a way that they never have been before.
[00:44:26.520]Children have to like ride the bus with each other
[00:44:29.220]and sort through their problems and go to dances
[00:44:31.500]and do all the stuff that kids have to do with one another.
[00:44:35.280]And that has been such a rare experience
[00:44:38.880]all across the country with just kids being kids together,
[00:44:43.140]which is just some version of citizens
[00:44:46.860]being citizens with each other.
[00:44:48.900]And that's just not something
[00:44:50.640]that we've done much in Canada before.
[00:44:53.700]And so that's where the hope comes.
[00:44:55.140]The hope comes from children who learn about each other
[00:44:58.170]and learn to see each other as equals, learn to question
[00:45:02.790]and to ask questions about like, why is that school so poor,
[00:45:06.330]that school that I now attend, why is that so poor?
[00:45:12.050]And I think part of the lesson there
[00:45:14.460]is that when things happen to indigenous communities,
[00:45:19.530]no one notices because it's a separate system.
[00:45:23.100]So, you know, funding can be cut and no one cares.
[00:45:25.890]Whereas if funding gets cut up for schools across a province
[00:45:30.300]or across the state, there's outrage.
[00:45:31.890]Everyone knows, parents rise up.
[00:45:34.230]And so here for the first time,
[00:45:36.840]the fates of those indigenous and non-indigenous kids
[00:45:39.510]are bound together.
[00:45:40.560]And two communities rise up
[00:45:42.750]when something starts to go wrong.
[00:45:45.120]And that shared fate is a metaphor I think
[00:45:48.270]for a shared nation that we've just yet to realize
[00:45:52.590]They're here.
[00:45:54.207]Can I tell a quick story?
[00:45:55.260]Of course.
[00:45:56.520]I think one of the important things we're trying to do
[00:45:59.310]in this book is to put in the most pejorative way possible
[00:46:02.760]as we're trying to take racists seriously.
[00:46:06.120]And by that, I mean that there's...
[00:46:08.910]I'll tell the story of one person
[00:46:10.680]whose name is Nelson Luhowy,
[00:46:12.180]he's one of the main characters in this book.
[00:46:14.370]And this is someone who grows up on one side of this valley
[00:46:19.170]and until the age of about 65 has not a single conversation
[00:46:24.030]with an actual indigenous person.
[00:46:26.820]He doesn't have a single friend.
[00:46:29.640]He sits over lunch for pretty much his whole life laughing
[00:46:33.660]at the same stupid racist jokes with his friends,
[00:46:38.490]even though he's just a couple miles down the road
[00:46:41.070]from this community.
[00:46:42.600]And it's only after he retires as a public school teacher
[00:46:46.740]that kind of on a lark, he takes a job
[00:46:49.470]as a part-time adult ed teacher on the reserve,
[00:46:52.380]'cause his wife was still working at the local bank
[00:46:55.170]and he needed something to do.
[00:46:56.880]And so he checked whether his pension would be affected
[00:46:58.980]by taking this part-time job.
[00:47:00.600]It wouldn't be.
[00:47:01.650]They said, okay, I'm gonna try this out.
[00:47:04.200]And he was terrified
[00:47:06.180]'cause he actually had to go into an indigenous community
[00:47:09.780]and spend time with actual indigenous people.
[00:47:12.930]And what did he discover?
[00:47:15.540]He discovers it's complicated
[00:47:20.370]and he has to read their assignments
[00:47:22.500]and is actually hearing their stories.
[00:47:24.930]And little bit by bit, he realized, oh,
[00:47:28.650]I didn't know anything.
[00:47:31.380]And this is a process that's happening in his late '60s
[00:47:34.710]and his early '70s.
[00:47:35.790]And he comes to say at the end of the book, I was a racist.
[00:47:42.030]Which is very hard for anyone to say, I think.
[00:47:45.480]And he also says, "And I probably still am,"
[00:47:49.860]which is even harder to say.
[00:47:52.860]And I believe and I think this book is built on the premise
[00:47:57.120]that it actually is worth trying to speak
[00:48:01.020]to people like Nelson to turn them around.
[00:48:04.110]But you gotta hear them out first
[00:48:06.720]and then you've gotta kind of break down
[00:48:09.570]where that worldview is coming from,
[00:48:12.450]so that we can walk this path together.
[00:48:14.880]I think this view that you can just like wait it out
[00:48:17.220]and ignore them is not quite right.
[00:48:20.730]And if we're really gonna do reconciliation in this country
[00:48:24.600]or anywhere, we've gotta figure out a way
[00:48:28.230]to hear each other's stories
[00:48:29.730]and maybe to persuade each other to change our minds.
[00:48:37.560]Well, one of the things I love about your book too
[00:48:41.850]is that you shuttle between this very intimate stories.
[00:48:47.700]You take us into the world of these individuals
[00:48:50.820]who live in this distinct place, but then you shuttle out
[00:48:55.080]and you give us this big view of what's going on.
[00:48:58.230]So I kinda wanna do that too.
[00:48:59.739]Yeah.
[00:49:01.530]And I want to ask you, how would you end this sentence?
[00:49:07.200]Reconciliation will not be successful or take place until.
[00:49:14.250]Is this a jeopardy thing or (faintly speaking).
[00:49:15.677](audience laughing)
[00:49:17.497](Andrew faintly speaking)
[00:49:19.320]It's a mad word. (laughs)
[00:49:24.300]So a couple of thoughts.
[00:49:27.930]So first of all, you know,
[00:49:32.490]the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report came out
[00:49:36.210]in Canada in 2015
[00:49:38.130]and I was actually honestly pretty impressed
[00:49:41.310]by the degree to which provincial governments,
[00:49:43.740]federal governments, municipalities, institutions
[00:49:46.830]of all kinds really took on this product of reconciliation
[00:49:50.280]and wanted to do all kinds of things
[00:49:51.960]and engaged in some projects.
[00:49:55.140]And now, some years later as we've been on the tour,
[00:49:59.400]we've been hearing from people
[00:50:00.600]that like reconciliation is really hard.
[00:50:02.160]Why is it so hard?
[00:50:04.170]And so we've thought about this for a little while now
[00:50:08.190]and I think that we've come to some two understandings
[00:50:11.430]that helps explain reconciliation and why it's hard.
[00:50:16.590]The first is that, you know, remember,
[00:50:20.130]the Truth and Reconciliation report.
[00:50:22.710]And for whatever reason
[00:50:24.780]we all just blew past the truth part, right?
[00:50:27.060]Like we learned about residential schools,
[00:50:28.890]then we're done.
[00:50:29.723]Like, I don't need to know anymore.
[00:50:31.800]And "Valley of the Birdtail" is an answer to that.
[00:50:34.387]"Valley of the Birdtail" has much more to say
[00:50:37.170]about the inequality and its origins
[00:50:41.430]and its presence with us in the present day.
[00:50:44.160]And, you know, realizing that you need to know more
[00:50:49.440]is a kind of humility,
[00:50:52.200]and that kind of humility is a necessary first step.
[00:50:56.910]And then there's the reconciliation part.
[00:50:59.070]And I think that part of the problem there
[00:51:03.150]is that reconciliation is actually now, right?
[00:51:07.110]It's like trying to do potato, right?
[00:51:10.114]It's hard to get to potato.
[00:51:12.960]And reconciliation describes an end state, right?
[00:51:15.240]It doesn't help us to walk there.
[00:51:18.990]And so I think that what we need to do
[00:51:23.147]in the present day maybe is to think
[00:51:25.350]about what it is we must reconcile ourselves to
[00:51:28.697]in the present day.
[00:51:30.891]And what we wanna do with Valley
[00:51:32.610]is to reconcile all of us to the fact
[00:51:35.130]that there is a condition of inequality.
[00:51:37.590]That it's our choice.
[00:51:39.180]Reconcile ourselves to that.
[00:51:41.160]Reconcile ourselves to the fact
[00:51:42.510]that it's our politicians, the ones we elect
[00:51:45.660]who allow the inequality to continue,
[00:51:47.760]who perpetuated on a daily basis.
[00:51:50.250]And we need to reconcile ourselves
[00:51:52.080]to the fact that reconciliation is not going to be free.
[00:51:55.800]That, you know, on my side,
[00:51:57.810]indigenous scholars and activists,
[00:51:59.370]we act like our claims don't cost anything.
[00:52:02.550]I mean, they're just claims,
[00:52:03.840]so of course, we should just shout them out.
[00:52:06.150]But in order to develop policy
[00:52:08.940]and pass actual politics policy, we need to account
[00:52:12.780]for the fact that these claims, even though they are just,
[00:52:16.290]they impose costs on our settler neighbors.
[00:52:19.020]And we need to be realistic about that.
[00:52:20.790]We need to be honest about that.
[00:52:22.860]And that's reconciling ourselves in the fact
[00:52:24.960]that there's going to be a cost to this.
[00:52:27.630]And reconciling ourselves and what we try and do in the book
[00:52:31.200]is to try and figure out what ways can we think about
[00:52:34.800]to ameliorate some of those costs
[00:52:36.600]to accept that they're going to happen,
[00:52:38.400]but how can we soften the blow?
[00:52:41.100]How can we make that somewhat more palatable,
[00:52:43.140]more equitable all around?
[00:52:45.540]So I think that realizing
[00:52:50.310]that we all need to have the humility
[00:52:52.560]to do the truth part first,
[00:52:55.680]we'll make some of the steps around reconciliation
[00:52:59.220]and reconciling ourselves easier to do.
[00:53:01.830]It'll provide the context for thinking about long-term
[00:53:04.800]and comprehensive solutions.
[00:53:06.150]This is not about funding, right?
[00:53:08.400]Like we got to that part of the book
[00:53:09.900]where the two communities had equal funding,
[00:53:12.480]and we could've just left it there, yay.
[00:53:15.177]But we've both worked in politics
[00:53:17.850]and, you know, funding is discretionary.
[00:53:20.460]In fact, you don't even need to cut it.
[00:53:22.710]This is what our governments do now
[00:53:24.540]is they just keep it the same
[00:53:25.527]and let inflation do the work, right?
[00:53:27.630]So that year after year, there's less and less and less
[00:53:30.450]without any government policy that cuts anything.
[00:53:33.750]And so what we try to do is to try and find a way
[00:53:37.320]to think about the structure of our country
[00:53:39.930]that will allow what we might call reconciliation,
[00:53:44.430]but it is really just an equality of access to resources
[00:53:49.230]and territory, so that indigenous governments aren't reliant
[00:53:52.950]on transfer payments to fund their education system.
[00:53:55.620]So that instead they're the ones
[00:53:57.630]who are acting like governments, taxing resource companies,
[00:54:01.050]spending that money on their own students,
[00:54:02.940]and maybe even redistributing some of that money
[00:54:05.460]to the rest of the country as a way of saying, I understand
[00:54:08.643]that this is expensive and I'm willing to pitch in for it.
[00:54:11.910]So that's the way we try
[00:54:14.357]and think about what reconciliation is,
[00:54:16.950]but what the future might hold
[00:54:18.720]and what justice might really demand of us
[00:54:21.390]in the present day and in the future.
[00:54:23.550]And to begin speaking honestly about that,
[00:54:26.400]rather than simply saying,
[00:54:29.490]indigenous claims are just now pay the bill.
[00:54:32.430]We've done that for 150 years and it's not working.
[00:54:35.460]And I'm beginning to see why.
[00:54:37.672](Douglas chuckling)
[00:54:38.505]It's not a very pleasant thing to be faced with.
[00:54:40.740]And so we wanna think about how would adults approach
[00:54:45.060]this situation in a way that would allow them
[00:54:49.080]to share a just and honorable and equitable future together.
[00:54:55.140]Anything you wanna add?
[00:54:57.270]Well, I wanna open it up to the audience for questions,
[00:55:02.220]but before we do that, give you time
[00:55:04.590]to gather whatever questions you wanna ask,
[00:55:08.370]we're gonna do a draw for two more books.
[00:55:11.310]Now, everybody is like, oh, I get that book.
[00:55:14.897](audience laughing)
[00:55:18.900]For questions, we have about 15 minutes.
[00:55:20.611](Andrew faintly speaking)
[00:55:22.200]I'll stay as long as you want.
[00:55:23.220]Yeah, as long as you'd like.
[00:55:25.320]So Steve Ferris.
[00:55:28.260]Yay.
[00:55:30.533](audience clapping)
[00:55:31.366](Andrew faintly speaking)
[00:55:35.220]Kathy Ledge.
[00:55:37.275]Yay.
[00:55:38.108]Yay.
[00:55:39.214](audience clapping)
[00:55:41.460]We have one more to give away,
[00:55:42.480]we'll give away at the end of the questions.
[00:55:46.980]So does anybody have a question?
[00:55:49.500]Of course, you do, right?
[00:55:51.450]Yeah. In the blue.
[00:55:55.230]I'll give you a mic.
[00:55:56.520]All right.
[00:55:58.170]Thanks.
[00:55:59.535]I just wanna let you know (faintly speaking).
[00:56:03.791]Okay.
[00:56:04.624]No, it's good. Yeah.
[00:56:05.580]Because I drive. (faintly speaking)
[00:56:12.060]I haven't got through all of it.
[00:56:13.170]So I've just been listening to part,
[00:56:15.354]because I was listening to another book,
[00:56:16.913]which I wanna just mention to you,
[00:56:18.600]because it's very similar to the book (faintly speaking).
[00:56:22.916]Just came out October 1st.
[00:56:25.450]It's a very interesting story.
[00:56:26.610]I caught wind of it because a friend of mine
[00:56:27.953]gave me an article out a spiritual magazine
[00:56:32.100]and talked about a woman who's Jewish,
[00:56:36.150]Ashkenazi Jew, her family had then immigrated
[00:56:39.720]to South Dakota and was able to get benefits
[00:56:43.610]of a lot of land up in South Dakota around the Black Hills,
[00:56:48.270]which is really important to the native population up there.
[00:56:51.720]And over time, she started to realize
[00:56:54.600]how much wealth her family had taken
[00:56:57.120]from the indigenous population up there.
[00:56:59.850]So what she did is she went up there
[00:57:02.310]and spent two years building a relationship
[00:57:05.130]with the Lakota tribe up there,
[00:57:06.990]learning about her own background
[00:57:10.320]and the Jewish community up there and Lakota tribe.
[00:57:14.340]And then that was kind of the upshot of the story.
[00:57:18.120]And near the end, they started a fund up there
[00:57:21.240]that's privately funded for reconciliation and reparations.
[00:57:26.100]It's called the cost of free land.
[00:57:27.270]I can't remember, but it just came out
[00:57:29.700]and it's also an audible too.
[00:57:31.980]But now the reconciliation part I think
[00:57:33.930]is the real tricky part.
[00:57:35.130]And in that, she's Jewish
[00:57:38.430]and she spent a lot of time with a rabbi,
[00:57:41.580]one-on-one talking about atonement, the steps of atonement.
[00:57:46.123]And that's what kind of stirred her thinking
[00:57:49.170]about the whole reconciliation and so forth.
[00:57:52.680]I just hear a lot of parallels
[00:57:54.000]between what you're doing just on a different country.
[00:57:58.980]I'm gonna jump in really quick
[00:58:01.170]because the author's name is Rebecca Klarin
[00:58:04.440]and we are bringing her here next April for our conference.
[00:58:09.840]And yeah, she's been in touch with us a lot
[00:58:13.170]as she's been working on the book,
[00:58:14.520]and it is a remarkable book.
[00:58:17.250]And I think it is a great companion book to yours as well.
[00:58:23.180]So I'll just really quickly say,
[00:58:24.300]so I have some friends who are like Mennonite
[00:58:26.670]and they tell these stories about their fleeing oppression
[00:58:29.490]and how hard they worked when they got here,
[00:58:31.590]and it's this generation, they're like, wait a minute,
[00:58:35.220]like where did all the land we got come from?
[00:58:37.620]So I think that like part of the truth
[00:58:40.320]is the reconciling ourselves
[00:58:42.180]to like what our communities did when we got here,
[00:58:45.360]but what advantages that we got.
[00:58:47.070]And, you know, just like the Ukrainians, right?
[00:58:51.000]It's like seeing that my story can be really, really...
[00:58:54.270]I can be proud of my story as a settler.
[00:58:57.240]We did work hard.
[00:58:58.350]But then also I can see that these other communities
[00:59:00.990]have been challenged
[00:59:01.823]and that's what we're trying to bring to floor.
[00:59:12.115]As you mentioned,
[00:59:14.887]reconciliation's difficult, the costs you mentioned.
[00:59:19.380]Does this put reparations
[00:59:21.360]out of the picture a bridge too far?
[00:59:23.430]Is that impossible?
[00:59:28.050]What would they be?
[00:59:32.310]So I think a reparations a sort of like cash payments.
[00:59:38.129]I mean, I have a very shallow vision of,
[00:59:39.637]it's sort of like, hey, shame on we have your land,
[00:59:43.140]have some money.
[00:59:45.090]But what we think about
[00:59:46.278]is how are we gonna share in the future?
[00:59:48.267]Lik how can we build with a country
[00:59:50.940]that is, you know, backward looking
[00:59:54.270]in terms of the injustice
[00:59:55.440]only in terms of we wanna get the future right?
[00:59:57.780]And so that means thinking I think a little bit more
[01:00:00.390]structurally about which communities have access
[01:00:05.910]to lawmaking authority
[01:00:08.310]and also economic authority over lands.
[01:00:13.641]You know, in Canada,
[01:00:14.790]we settle modernly land claim agreements,
[01:00:17.310]which are, you know, very large areas of territory,
[01:00:20.820]comprehensive agreements that provide lawmaking authority
[01:00:23.760]to the First Nations who have those territories jurisdiction
[01:00:26.910]over all kinds of things.
[01:00:28.230]And that's really the vision of what we're thinking about
[01:00:31.580]in the future is more and broadly having more of those areas
[01:00:34.860]where indigenous communities are empowered to tax the land
[01:00:38.580]and the resources and to spend it on their citizens
[01:00:41.910]rather than a let's try and figure out what the damages
[01:00:46.350]from the past were, come up with a number,
[01:00:48.240]and then like settle this thing once and for all.
[01:00:51.810]The indigenous view
[01:00:52.680]is always that there is no once and for all,
[01:00:54.780]that this is a relationship, it's ongoing,
[01:00:57.270]it's permanent, we're in this together,
[01:00:59.100]so let's figure out how structurally we can live
[01:01:02.250]in a world that is fair for both of us
[01:01:04.440]rather than trying to, yeah, do the math on history.
[01:01:08.490]It's instead forward looking in terms of an equality view.
[01:01:14.187]And can I just quickly say on that
[01:01:16.290]to be very concrete about it, it's true that in 2021,
[01:01:20.590]about 40 years after the unequal funding started
[01:01:24.240]for these separate schools, the funding is equalized,
[01:01:28.170]but there's been zero effort to account
[01:01:31.260]for those 40 years before.
[01:01:33.360]There's this giant harm and there's no effort
[01:01:38.190]unless a court of law one day will force the government
[01:01:40.740]to deal with that.
[01:01:42.540]And so part of it is just accounting for the harm.
[01:01:46.710]And Douglas and I think where we end up
[01:01:49.860]is thinking about what's the remedy for that.
[01:01:52.710]And the remedy is not just cutting some check
[01:01:55.680]or even sending money to finance these schools.
[01:01:59.820]It's imagining another world
[01:02:03.060]where these communities have governments capable
[01:02:05.610]of funding their schools fairly themselves
[01:02:08.490]without needing a federal government
[01:02:10.350]to choose to do the right thing.
[01:02:12.720]And we're really focused on that
[01:02:14.880]and that's the image we're trying to leave people with
[01:02:18.300]at the very end of the book.
[01:02:22.510]Other questions?
[01:02:31.020]So this probably a very question,
[01:02:33.140]but Indian teachers are there.
[01:02:38.250]Who's hiring and (faintly speaking),
[01:02:46.170]how did you decide to...
[01:02:48.870]I mean, where did you go to school
[01:02:50.455]and decide to be a lawyer? (faintly speaking)
[01:02:56.910]So I did not really decide to become a lawyer.
[01:03:00.690]Happened by accident.
[01:03:02.883](Douglas laughing)
[01:03:05.370]I was educated in elementary schools
[01:03:09.000]all across the prairies,
[01:03:10.620]so I hung out with Ukrainian kids a lot.
[01:03:13.169]I thought Ukrainians were everywhere when I was a kid.
[01:03:14.970]I thought it was normal.
[01:03:16.860]And then I went to high school in northern DC
[01:03:20.730]and I was at some event and I remember asking like,
[01:03:22.860]where are the dessert pierogies?
[01:03:25.198](audience laughing)
[01:03:26.031]What you talking about?
[01:03:28.329]And found out like, oh,
[01:03:29.162]there's not Ukrainian immigrants everywhere,
[01:03:30.870]just most everywhere in Canada.
[01:03:33.390]And from there, you know, honestly,
[01:03:36.540]I had a really rough patch for quite a while.
[01:03:39.150]I had like a pretty serious addiction problem
[01:03:42.240]and I actually had to run away at some point
[01:03:45.000]and moved to Japan where I ran there
[01:03:49.920]in order to live with a woman
[01:03:51.210]who I had always wanted to live with.
[01:03:52.770]We got married, we're still married.
[01:03:54.240]It's been 23 years.
[01:03:55.860]From there, I went to law school in Toronto
[01:03:58.680]and graduate school in New York.
[01:04:01.320]And then one thing just sort of led to another
[01:04:02.850]and I ended up kind of in a teaching position.
[01:04:06.472]But that story is in some sense not really all.
[01:04:09.593]I mean, you know, running away to Japan Park
[01:04:13.290]is maybe a little unusual,
[01:04:14.790]but I don't think the rest of it actually is.
[01:04:17.010]I think a lot as my father was in the Air Force,
[01:04:19.260]I find a surprising number of indigenous academics,
[01:04:21.420]also parents in the Air Force or the Army.
[01:04:25.410]And I think access to, you know, a support system
[01:04:30.060]was always super, super helpful, and that made it possible.
[01:04:35.130]And my wife, I think especially, Tanya,
[01:04:37.140]I wish she were here today but she's not,
[01:04:38.407]and she's back in Toronto.
[01:04:40.680]But I think it was her support more than anything else
[01:04:42.720]that enabled me to feel...
[01:04:44.580]You know, it was a weird thing about becoming a lawyer
[01:04:46.350]was when I was trying to figure out what to do
[01:04:48.480]after I'd finished my undergraduate degree, my mother said,
[01:04:50.887]"You should go to law school."
[01:04:52.200]And at that point, I'd been living in this logging town
[01:04:55.500]for a long time
[01:04:56.333]and like, I didn't even know what a lawyer was.
[01:04:59.280]I couldn't even imagine it.
[01:05:00.720]And I think that like, that's the biggest problem
[01:05:04.320]in a lot of our communities,
[01:05:05.430]that our children can't imagine these futures,
[01:05:08.580]they just don't see themselves in those positions.
[01:05:12.780]And so, you know, realizing
[01:05:16.710]that there is that kind of future
[01:05:18.480]that all of us are capable of having
[01:05:20.970]is about access to equality of ideas, right, and dreams?
[01:05:24.870]And that like everything else
[01:05:27.990]had not been evenly distributed in Canada
[01:05:30.420]amongst indigenous and settler kids.
[01:05:32.940]So I hope the value of the "Valley of the Birdtail"
[01:05:35.362]is, I hope as well, we're hoping to try
[01:05:36.840]and get it in schools a lot to try and get more indigenous
[01:05:40.770]and non-indigenous kids to see that their futures
[01:05:43.500]are fused together, their presence are,
[01:05:46.080]and that with equality, all kinds of things are possible
[01:05:50.610]and all kinds of futures as well.
[01:05:52.680]Did you wanna talk about the number of teachers?
[01:05:56.280]There's not enough.
[01:05:58.530]And when I went to law school,
[01:05:59.970]were you the only indigenous faculty member?
[01:06:03.030]Yes.
[01:06:03.863]Yes. Until last year.
[01:06:05.280]I don't think that's unique to the University of Toronto.
[01:06:08.070]And I think everyone at the this university knows
[01:06:10.230]that, you know, the people of color who are on faculty,
[01:06:13.380]they have all this extra work they get to do.
[01:06:16.440]And this gentleman to my right, you know,
[01:06:19.017]I don't know how many indigenous students you've mentored,
[01:06:22.110]but a lot.
[01:06:23.040]And there's all this work that you've done.
[01:06:25.110]Even teachers here in Lincoln.
[01:06:27.510]That's right.
[01:06:28.388]And so there's still a big problem at that level.
[01:06:39.960]The question I have
[01:06:40.941]is this like earlier presentation,
[01:06:43.293]it seemed like your hope for optimism
[01:06:45.870]was based on, you know, the distorted Nelson moving to,
[01:06:49.500]or actually after retirement teaching on reservation.
[01:06:54.060]And then earlier in the presentation,
[01:06:56.160]you talked about how you ran, you know, (faintly speaking).
[01:07:01.937]So did you run similar (faintly speaking)
[01:07:05.610]like a Nelson situation?
[01:07:08.160]Like what if he had, you know, crossed over,
[01:07:10.890]like what if the change had happened?
[01:07:13.710]And have you like considered that a possibility?
[01:07:17.445](participant faintly speaking)
[01:07:21.156]Yeah, I mean, the possibility is the average.
[01:07:26.115](audience laughing)
[01:07:27.120]It's like most people are not like that.
[01:07:29.550]Most people in this town, and metaphorically,
[01:07:33.660]you're on your side of the river
[01:07:35.220]and you literally cannot imagine that your mind
[01:07:38.850]is captured by these stereotypes.
[01:07:41.460]So it's funny to hear you ask that question,
[01:07:43.680]although it's a good question.
[01:07:45.000]It's funny to me because it's like, yeah, I can imagine it
[01:07:47.777]'cause I see it every day.
[01:07:49.710]Like, this is the status quo.
[01:07:53.850]And I think Nelson's like, he is not representative
[01:07:59.370]but his story is important
[01:08:01.560]because it gestures at this possibility,
[01:08:04.110]whether that's what percentage of people
[01:08:06.270]are capable of that, I don't know.
[01:08:08.910]But we're saying it's not zero.
[01:08:12.000]And that's why it's important because that's someone's dad
[01:08:15.750]and that's someone's grandparent
[01:08:17.460]and he has gotta be a part of this story.
[01:08:19.770]And if you were with Nelson today
[01:08:21.867]and you went to a hockey game,
[01:08:23.910]you would see that on the reserve,
[01:08:25.590]he had polio as a kid and he uses crutches.
[01:08:28.560]People literally are constantly helping him to find a seat
[01:08:33.150]and they're like pulling up chairs to him.
[01:08:34.680]So the sad part of the story of Nelson
[01:08:39.540]is that it's uncommon, but it's possible.
[01:08:43.110]And so I derive a lot of hope from him, not just him,
[01:08:46.620]other people in this story.
[01:08:47.760]It's not just Nelson who's changing,
[01:08:50.160]it's also the indigenous characters
[01:08:52.770]who are learning about their neighbors too.
[01:08:54.600]So I also see hope in that.
[01:08:57.270]And I think Douglas and I are trying to say two things.
[01:08:59.370]One of them is at a personal level,
[01:09:02.610]human beings are capable of changing,
[01:09:06.060]but we're not pinning all our hopes on that.
[01:09:08.190]And we're saying there's these big structural forces at play
[01:09:12.900]and we also need to see how they have disadvantaged people.
[01:09:17.490]And we need to imagine how they can change outcomes
[01:09:20.940]at a very broad level.
[01:09:22.680]And I hope that image,
[01:09:24.750]which honestly is not commonly discussed or imagine,
[01:09:29.610]gives hope to people to think, oh,
[01:09:32.610]wouldn't it be good, for example, in Canada
[01:09:34.650]for there be a principle to say that, yes,
[01:09:37.470]these communities are actually entitled
[01:09:39.480]to comparable services?
[01:09:41.940]And I don't wanna get into the weeds too much
[01:09:43.590]about Canadian law, but across our country, there is a law
[01:09:48.390]or a constitutional provision that says, anywhere you are,
[01:09:52.860]you're entitled to comparable services.
[01:09:55.680]It's called equalization.
[01:09:57.480]If you go to a small poor province school or a hospital,
[01:10:01.260]you're still gonna have pretty decent services.
[01:10:04.530]Except if you're on an Indian reserve,
[01:10:07.860]you're totally excluded from that whole principle.
[01:10:11.310]And so we're trying to get hope from people stories,
[01:10:15.450]but also from painting a different future,
[01:10:17.760]which I think it is more hopeful
[01:10:19.950]in a way that's gonna drive outcomes.
[01:10:22.232]And there's gonna be more
[01:10:23.250]and more old people, so hopefully.
[01:10:25.410]Yeah.
[01:10:26.243](Douglas laughing)
[01:10:28.020]I think we have time for one more question.
[01:10:29.902](Margaret faintly speaking)
[01:10:32.040]Can we take a couple at a time
[01:10:33.480]and then just answer them together?
[01:10:35.210]Yeah, I was gonna use my discretion
[01:10:37.980]and call on my friend and colleague, Kevin Everest.
[01:10:42.720]Hi, yeah.
[01:10:44.160]We'll get you a microphone.
[01:10:45.638]Is there a microphone?
[01:10:48.737](Margaret faintly speaking)
[01:10:50.160]That's great.
[01:10:51.830]Yeah. Thank you for your presentation.
[01:10:53.430]Really powerful.
[01:10:56.010]You know, here in Lincoln,
[01:10:57.900]this is a fairly affluent reservoir.
[01:11:01.179](audience laughing)
[01:11:04.278](people chattering)
[01:11:08.061](Kevin faintly speaking)
[01:11:13.920]I think, easier for us to say
[01:11:16.352]that we don't have those problems.
[01:11:17.864]But here in Lincoln Public Schools,
[01:11:19.830]we have a graduation rate of 54% Native American students
[01:11:24.570]compared to 82% for all students.
[01:11:27.480]And so the question is, what other factors have you found
[01:11:32.190]in your work that affect this graduation rate
[01:11:35.070]besides this, you know, disparity in funding for schools?
[01:11:43.080]Thanks for that question.
[01:11:43.950]I think the most honest answer
[01:11:45.528]is, you know, I don't think we're that qualified
[01:11:49.290]to answer that question, truly.
[01:11:52.950]But it's all the stuff, you know.
[01:11:57.480]Even if you had a fairly resourced school,
[01:12:00.750]which we didn't, and don't still in a lot of places,
[01:12:03.990]you still have all this historic trauma in families.
[01:12:09.240]And you have all the ways that these policies
[01:12:12.180]have compounded over time to lead to unequal health
[01:12:17.340]and carceral and wealth outcomes.
[01:12:20.970]And that's driving a lot of what's happening in schools.
[01:12:24.750]And as any parent or anyone involved with schools knows,
[01:12:28.050]like what happens inside a school is important,
[01:12:31.500]but there's all the stuff outside of schools
[01:12:33.780]that you can't really control.
[01:12:35.520]And I like to think that we're getting a better handle
[01:12:40.440]on what's happening in the schools in particular.
[01:12:42.570]And that's not just the separate indigenous schools,
[01:12:44.760]it's also our public schools
[01:12:45.960]where most actually indigenous students attend,
[01:12:48.780]which are integrated.
[01:12:50.430]But it is all the 150 years of stuff.
[01:12:55.740]And, you know, Douglas always jokes,
[01:12:59.340]and I'm sorry to steal it, it's not really a joke,
[01:13:01.470]but Douglas often says and it really hits me in the gut
[01:13:04.770]where he says, you know, I'm really excited to get on,
[01:13:08.520]started on this reconciliation stuff,
[01:13:11.160]so that by the time my daughter has grandchildren,
[01:13:13.950]we will have made some real progress.
[01:13:17.280]And so I think facing up to the truth of all that we face
[01:13:21.150]helps us understand why, you know, you're at 54% here,
[01:13:25.500]because a lot of the stories are the same
[01:13:27.660]and it's compounded disadvantage over time.
[01:13:32.880]And also, often the busing, kids are tired.
[01:13:36.809](audience laughing)
[01:13:39.780]So before we end,
[01:13:43.410]I wanna do one more drawing for the book. (chuckles)
[01:13:48.090]And then our authors will be out in the lobby
[01:13:51.519]and they'll sign books.
[01:13:53.490]So here's our final line, Margaret Rona.
[01:13:57.495]Yay. Yay.
[01:13:59.136](audience clapping)
[01:14:03.907]We'll bring you the book.
[01:14:05.800]I want to ask you to join me
[01:14:09.300]in thanking our incredible presenters.
[01:14:12.376](audience clapping)
[01:14:21.041]Thank you for having us and for being such an engaging
[01:14:23.067]and wonderful audience.
[01:14:24.480]And we know that often people have questions,
[01:14:26.640]but (gibbers) so please feel free to reach out to us.
[01:14:30.270]We're really super easy to find either individually
[01:14:33.030]on the internet or valleyofthebirdtail.ca
[01:14:35.490]and you'll be able to find our contact information.
[01:14:37.650]Call us or email us or write to us.
[01:14:39.960]We're happy to answer any questions
[01:14:41.400]or engage in any way that we can.
[01:14:43.650]Thank you so much for coming out today.
[01:14:45.780]Can I also just thank our host and my mom and dad,
[01:14:49.080]Sarah now.
[01:14:50.066](audience applauding)

Great Plains talk: “An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation”

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Great Plains talk: “An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation”

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