Rhetoric and Settler Inertia: Strategies of Canadian Decolonization by Patrick Belanger, and: Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin, and: Research & Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships by Shawn Wilson, Andrea V. Breen and Lindsay Dupré

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rhetoric and Settler Inertia: Strategies of Canadian Decolonization by Patrick Belanger, and: Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin, and: Research & Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships by Shawn Wilson, Andrea V. Breen and Lindsay Dupré Sheryl Lightfoot (bio) Rhetoric and Settler Inertia: Strategies of Canadian Decolonization by Patrick Belanger Rowman & Littlefield, 2019 Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016 Research & Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships by Shawn Wilson, Andrea V. Breen, and Lindsay Dupré Canadian Scholars, 2019 since 2015, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) issued its Final Report and 94 Calls to Action, which described the proper pathway for reconciliation in Canada, there has been a virtual explosion of academic literature on how the TRC’s Calls to Action can and should be operationalized. Many have taken the position that reconciliation—and decolonization—must be Indigenous directed, while also holding settler society primarily responsible and accountable for most of the actions that reconciliation requires. Numerous scholars also hold that academia, especially its research function, have a key role to play in reconciliation processes. This collection of three books advances both ideas. Patrick Belanger opens his book Rhetoric and Settler Inertia by asking how rhetoric can aid in the decolonial process, primarily as a tool to persuade settlers who are resistant to change. Amid a wider body of literature about decolonial rhetoric and settler response, Belanger explores forms of rhetoric and methods of delivery that impact settlers’ willingness to change in pursuit of decolonization. Belanger concludes that rhetoric focused on interest convergence (mutual benefit) lends possible advantages to the [End Page 78] decolonial project that dialogue and education neglect. Working within an “X leads to Y” framework in which X is decolonial rhetoric and Y is settler action, Belanger identifies Z (mutual benefit) as a spurious variable. Accordingly, Belanger aims to reveal that settler buy-in to decolonization could accelerate the process of decolonization–as outlined by Indigenous nations–in demands for restitution. Belanger affirms that decolonization must be led by Indigenous People and seeks to determine whether “public reason might, through communication, triumph over money and violence” (96). Belanger’s proposed path for achieving this end is for rhetorical frameworks to facilitate interest convergence. Rhetoric and Settler Inertia usefully examines theoretical rhetorical work in practice and expands the boundaries of what rhetoric captures. It is interesting to consider whether rhetoric can be a tool for acknowledging responsibility and constructing a decolonial, or less colonial, future. Belanger’s emphasis on an Indigenous-centered approach to reconciliation is worth noting but, regardless, this book is focused on how reconciliation can best appeal to settlers. In Arts of Engagement, Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin examine the TRC through a critical lens focused on aesthetic action: “how a range of sensory stimuli–image, sound, and movement–have social and political effects through our affective engagements with them” (2). This book examines the relationship between the TRC, aesthetic action, and political change. Together, contributors to Arts of Engagement tell the stories of the TRC and art, demonstrating that aesthetics can serve to distance or reconcile two groups; art can be either superficial or a recognition of epistemologically and ontologically relevant Indigenous-led healing. Arts of Engagement draws on qualitative evidence and is focused on art completed or witnessed by the authors. The evidence and case studies chosen were tangible and prominent, letting readers draw on their own conceptions of art. Many Indigenist methodologies were employed, even by the predominantly settler authors. The book’s larger argument is that large-scale institutional and societal transformation happens not only in the mind but in the body. Thus, recognizing Indigenous process to reconciliation is necessary for actual reconciliation to occur. The editors and authors aim to show the ways in which aesthetic actions are essential to Indigenous ontologies and therefore to truth-telling, law-making, and reconciliation. In the anthology Research & Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships, editors Shawn Wilson, Andrea...