Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada / COPY 2

by Michelle Good

Hardcover, 2023

Status

Available

Call number

305.897 G66 2023 c.2

Call number

305.897 G66 2023 c.2

Description

"A bold, provocative examination of Canadian Indigenous issues from advocate, activist and award-winning novelist Michelle Good Truth Telling is a collection of essays about the contemporary Indigenous experience in Canada. From resistance and reconciliation to the resurgence and reclamation of Indigenous power, Michelle Good explores the issues through a series of personal essays. The collection includes an expansion and update of her highly popular Globe and Mail article about "pretendians," as well as "A History of Violence," an essay that appeared in a book about missing and murdered women. Other pieces deal with topics such as discrimination against Indigenous children; what is meant by meaningful reconciliation; and the importance of the Indigenous literary renaissance of the 1970s. With authority, intelligence and insight, Michelle Good delves into the human cost of colonialism, showing how it continues to underpin social institutions in Canada and prevents meaningful and substantive reconciliation."--… (more)

Publication

HarperCollins Publishers (2023), 232 pages

Original language

English

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member gypsysmom
I think this book should be required reading for every person of settler ancestry in Canada. It explains how the policies of the colonialists did such substantial harm to the Indigenous peoples. And it explains how those policies continued to be promulgated into quite recent times. It will probably
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make you feel very uncomfortable. It certainly made me feel that way. But I encourage you to keep reading because Good has a message for how we can achieve reconciliation with our Indigenous neighbours.

Michelle Good probably now regrets giving Buffy Sainte-Marie as an example of people affected by the Sixties' Scoop. CBC has certainly cast doubt on whether she is even of Indigenous ancestry. In another chapter Good talks about "Pretendians" (non-Indigenous people who pretend to be Indigenous) and she is pretty scathing for those people who pretend to be Indigenous for material gain. She likens them to invasive plants that do harm to their surroundings. She has another category of non-Indigenous people "who have long history of association with Indigenous Peoples and communities in a good way and are welcomed and adopted into the community." These people are like naturalized plants which spread into non-native environments but don't harm the existing native plants. Buffy Sainte-Marie is probably a naturalized plant.
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ISBN

1443467812 / 9781443467810

Barcode

97814434678102
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