Michael Asch, John Borrows, and James Tully, eds. Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous-Settler Relations and Earth Teachings. University of Toronto Press, 2018. 369 pp. ISBN: 9781487523275.

https://utorontopress.com/us/resurgence-and-reconciliation-2

Recent decades have seen a debate within North American Indigenous studies in which a focus on mending Indigenous-settler relations tends to be contrasted with an emphasis on assertive self-determination and cultural renewal. As its title suggests, this collection provides readers with an opportunity to engage with a community of scholars seeking a non-oppositional approach to this conversation. As its subtitle suggests, the volume is also invested in minding the ecological interdependencies of Earth's lands and seas. The conversations represented in this book emerged out of a series of dialoguing presentations involving its three editors held during 2012 and 2014 in Mi'kmaq territory. The conversation was significantly expanded with a 2015 event in Coast Salish territory that brought together most of the collection's contributors to engage with and respond to articulations of conceptual understandings and practical approaches to resurgence and reconciliation put forth by the project editors. One outcome of that dialogue is the publication of the book considered here, which retains and reflects the format and interactions of the 2015 exchange.

As noted, the volume sustains a commitment to a non-oppositional approach. At the same time, it is even more deeply and extensively committed to the transformation of Indigenous-settler relations, of the associated conditions of Indigenous lives, and of human peoples' relations with Earth and other-than-human peoples. The collection gestures toward critiques of what it characterizes as a "separate resurgence" viewpoint, but this remains a rather abstract reference ultimately left unassociated with particular advocates. According to the collection's introduction, "Some practitioners of resurgence refuse and reject reconciliation-based relationships between settler and Indigenous peoples, claiming they are assimilative or colonizing" (4). The editors leave these practitioners unidentified and their claims unattributed. A footnote linked to the passage just quoted does suggests that books by Glen Sean Coulthard and Audra Simpson are "taken to be" "the classic texts for resurgence contra reconciliation," yet the same footnote quickly jettisons substantive consideration of the complexities entailed, concluding that such a pursuit would be "a question for another time" (23, n1). The volume's generally elusive treatment of what would seem a core premise of its project will likely irritate some readers while relieving others. And still other readers will see in it a sophisticated navigation of tensions that frees contributors to focus their attention and energies on more pressing questions, possibilities, and pitfalls. In any case, the chapters do deliver consistent, even while varying, critiques of the unacceptable status quo of Indigenous-settler relations. Most importantly for its collaborative endeavor, the contributors reject programs of resurgence and reconciliation that eschew transformative aspirations and thus would settle for some kinder, gentler colonialism.

I have never successfully written and only very rarely have I read a review of an edited collection that manages to capably account for the full range, depth, and power of its contributing voices and content. This review cannot but likewise fall short. While all of the contributions to the volume seek pathways away from the devastation of ongoing colonialism and toward just relations, they do so diversely and in some instances divergently. The collection includes considerations of treaty-oriented constitutionalism, biospheric interdependency, gendered dys/relationality, conventional international law, cross-cultural mis/communication, convergent condominium, ethnoecology, erroneous unilateral settler sovereignty, and storied treaty ecologies. The chapters share the overall project's titular affirmation of both resurgence and reconciliation, as well as its active pursuit of transformation. Some are assertively grounded in the concerns and knowledges of particular Indigenous peoples, while some deliberately leverage the contours of dominant systems and frameworks. Taken together they present a sophisticated, multidimensional, and dynamic continuum. My own current research, teaching, and outreach engagements lead me to be particularly drawn to John Borrows' emphasis on the "inherent limits" of both ecology and treaty-dependent settler authority, to Kiera Ladner's incisive consideration of the hubristic assumption of Crown sovereignty, and to Kent McNeil's related inquiry into Canada's sovereignty claims vis-à-vis Native nations. I mention these not to suggest that they are the most important chapters in the collection, but rather because at this moment they happen to be the most important to me. Other readers will find other chapters particularly timely and resonant. The voices brought together here have a wide array of insights to offer to a wide array of readers, and the collection also succeeds in providing an exceptional one-stop destination for wide and deep learning about Indigenous resurgence and reconciliation in Canadian contexts.

Moreover, the chapters collectively exhibit an interdisciplinarity that is sometimes tacit and sometimes observed but always present. With work cutting across law, ecology, political science, philosophy, anthropology, governance, environmental studies, history, ethnobotany, sociology, and public policy, the volume will be of interest not only to students and scholars embedded in those fields but also to those more oriented toward the questions and possibilities at hand rather than to conventions of method and academic discourse. The book could be deployed in full for undergraduate and graduate courses, and selections from it would also readily stand alone as syllabi components. And while it is a scholarly text published by a settler academic press, the concepts and debates it addresses have broad resonance and utility in numerous community, institutional, cultural, and political contexts. At both its core and margins, the collection aims to contribute to discussions and actions that change this world, rather than merely comment on them. It thereby and necessarily would resonate with community audiences well beyond scholarly institutions and indeed undermines simple distinctions one might assume to draw between communities and the academy. Finally, the diverse and planetary readership of Transmotion will benefit from this collection's capacity to provide insight into how conversations regarding resurgence and reconciliation are taking place in and emanating from Indigenous studies in what is today Canada.

Joseph Bauerkemper, University of Minnesota Duluth