How one woman came to understand her relationship with colonization through conversations with Indigenous people.
Can Indigenous and non-Indigenous people live in a treaty relationship despite over two hundred years of social, cultural, and political alienation? This is the challenge of reconciliation as well as its beautiful promise. Twenty-five years after the Ipperwash crisis, writer and social activist Heather Menzies showed up in Nishnaabe territory in Southwestern Ontario, near where her forebears settled, hoping to meet her would-be treaty kin. She was invited to help document the broken-treaty story behind the crisis, as remembered by Nishnaabe Elders and other community members involved in reclaiming their homeland at Stoney Point. But she soon realized that even the most sincere intentions can be steeped in a colonial mindset that hinders understanding, reconciliation, and healing. In Meeting My Treaty Kin, Menzies shares her journey. Her thoughtful, sensitive, nuanced account shows how a settler, through respectful listening, can learn what being in a treaty relationship might mean, and what changes—personal and institutional—are needed to embrace genuine reconciliation.
Can Indigenous and non-Indigenous people live in a treaty relationship despite over two hundred years of social, cultural, and political alienation? This is the challenge of reconciliation as well as its beautiful promise. Twenty-five years after the Ipperwash crisis, writer and social activist Heather Menzies showed up in Nishnaabe territory in Southwestern Ontario, near where her forebears settled, hoping to meet her would-be treaty kin. She was invited to help document the broken-treaty story behind the crisis, as remembered by Nishnaabe Elders and other community members involved in reclaiming their homeland at Stoney Point. But she soon realized that even the most sincere intentions can be steeped in a colonial mindset that hinders understanding, reconciliation, and healing. In Meeting My Treaty Kin, Menzies shares her journey. Her thoughtful, sensitive, nuanced account shows how a settler, through respectful listening, can learn what being in a treaty relationship might mean, and what changes—personal and institutional—are needed to embrace genuine reconciliation.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Introduction
1 At the Fence
2 Showing Up
3 First Doubts
4 A Chance to Really Engage
5 Who Do You Think You Are?
6 Showing Up Again
7 Dwelling in Discomfort
8 Challenged
9 Challenging Myself
10 Conversations Deepen
11 Witnessing Denial
12 Learning to Listen
13 Witnessing Denial – and Possibility
14 Surrendering Personally
15 Living a Land Claim
16 Connective Cadences
17 Colonialism Ongoing
18 Preparing to Leave
19 The Poignant Blessings of Relationship Building
20 Surrendering Professionally
21 Helping Prepare a Spirit Plate
22 Continuing the Journey: Toward a Possible Settler Counter-Narrative
Epilogue: Lighting the Eighth Fire?