Right Relationships

       In working towards Reconciliation, allies (or accomplices) must take action to reach out, educate ourselves, and begin to build respectful and reciprocal relationships, with patience over time.  In One Truth About Reconciliation – Indigenous Context and Nuance Matter (2019) Horsethief explains collaboration, referencing Byram’s(1997) idea of “sense making from both perspectives” to create a “third space” which, as the Ktunaxa tradition emphasizes, doesn’t tell others they are wrong, but supports both contexts and promotes “epistemic hybrids over epistemic violence.”  He urges us not to erect barriers between people or “create islands”, but to communicate and reconnect as this is the antithesis of colonialism which took away Indigenous voices.  All of the literature(Mobbs, 2023) points to the vital importance of building good collaborative relationships, taking action together under Indigenous leadership, as the way forward.

     Becoming good allies and eventually accomplices, means recognizing our relationships, our interconnection, our interdependence; it is a life long journey of transformation which takes patience and time.  At first, we might approach Reconciliation through the lens of becoming allies rather than enemies. But as Kluttz et al.(2020) point out in “Unsettling Allyship, Unlearning and Learning Towards Decolonising Solidarity”, the idea of “ally” still implies a sense of Indigenous people as “other”.   While many Indigenous leaders/scholars promote the idea of allyship, the idea of “accomplice”(Southam, 2021) has more of a sense that we are on a journey together as equals towards our common improvement – a more just society.  Ultimately, the transformation of settlers into accomplices in Indigenization is Reconciliation: a spiritual journey of reconnection (Wright, 2023), opening communication, creating spaces for Indigenous voices (Horsethief, 2017, 2019), listening, developing good relationships (Southam, 2021),opening our hearts, and (re)becoming kin (Krawec, 2022)(Sumac, 2023).