Peace like a Red River: Indigenous Human Rights for Decolonising Reconciliation

Abstract

One of the great ethical complexities of peacebuilding in postcolonial contexts is the meaning of reconciliation for Indigenous people. Historically in Canada , supposed ‘peace’ has been brokered with Indigenous people in ways that ultimately have increased colonial oppression. Critical Indigenous scholarship is therefore concerned with the ethics that guide peacebuilding . The United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People serves as leverage for promoting Indigenous paradigms, frameworks, and ways of being as the normative ethical sphere for building peace . In this chapter the author will demonstrate that when Indigenous frames of reference are treated as the normative ethical sphere for building peace in colonial contexts, the moral vision of human rights is thickened. The author explores how, by elevating the unique values of a First Nation peace perspective, Indigenous ways of being can simultaneously promote Indigenous cultural reconciliation and nonviolent activism for transformative justice. Finally, in this chapter, the author presents the implications of Indigenous psychologies of nonviolence for policy and practice.

Jeffrey Ansloos, Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary educator, consultant, and psychologist with particular expertise in complex psychosocial trauma, indigenous perspectives in mental health, human rights, and the sociopolitical ethics of reconciliation. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care in the Faculty of Human and Social Development, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; E-mail: ansloos@uvic.ca. He is of Cree and English heritage, and member of Fisher River Cree Nation, in Manitoba, Canada.