John Borrows Books

In the past, I have not read a lot of John Borrows books because he's a lawyer and so I assumed that they would be too dry. But over the last few years I've read some of his work and he's actually a really interesting writer. I mentioned Drawing Out Law in a previous post.  Two other books of his are worth checking out as well. 

They are both the product of events, where scholars gathered to present papers and discuss a specific topic, and then followed up to create books. The first one is Braiding Legal Orders: Implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, edited by John Borrows, Larry Chartrand, Oonagh E. Fitzgerald, and Rita Schwartz. It's available online for free, but I got a hardcopy because I love books. It was published in 2019 and I read it shortly after it came out. But it's only become more interesting since then because the implementation of UNDRIP has progressed since then. A lot of it was definitely over my head, so some chapters I started to read and abandoned. The writer whose work I enjoyed the most was Sarah Morales, who wrote two chapters including one specifically on Indigenous women. I also really enjoyed the chapter on inherent dignity. 

The other book is Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous - Settler Relations and Earth Teachings, edited by Michael Asch, John Borrows, and James Tully. This one is actually kind of mind blowing. It's in response to a specific vein of thought which promotes resurgence and pits resurgence and reconciliation against each other. And so some degree, I suspect that this book is an attempt to try to ensure that reconciliation as defined by the TRC had a fighting chance to get off the ground. The introduction specifically names the work of Glen Coulthard and Audra Simpson as scholars who are "resurgence contra reconciliation." (p.23). To be fair though, those two scholars did not come up with this line of thinking on their own, rather, in my opinion their work is representative of  a larger conversation that was taking place, as evidenced by social media discourse at the time and signage in protests. The authors kindly didn't single them out in the body of the text, but did specifically mention them in the footnotes. 

The book is also in response to some veins of decolonization discourses which pit decolonization against reconciliation. To the casual reader, this may seem unexciting. But within Indigenous education, decolonization is mentioned in basically every book, so it's super unusual to pick up this book and see concerns raised about  decolonization. For example, they state that "some of the claims made in its name were over-broad and were applied in inappropriate ways. Dichotomies and binaries were advanced in a manner that did not always distinguish between contemporary North America and those of colonial Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1960s. Differences in temporal, spatial, and socioeconomic circumstances were flattened and universalized. Ideas were essentialized, and deficiencies in Third World decolonization were overlooked. Thus, positions rejecting all forms of reconciliation entered the field. This flowed from a binary framing that insisted the decolonizing resurgence of the colonized had to take place in separation from the colonizer. Some followers of this field argued that no good relationship or dialogue with the colonizer was possible, because such encounters were simply thinly disguised struggled over power between hegemons and subalterns. Those who thought otherwise were dismissed as being misguided, even colonized by 'the system.' This criticism spread to critiquing the majority of Indigenous people as being co-opted." (p.6). I don't think that they are saying that we should reject all decolonizing discourse, rather, that we should be careful about letting decolonizing discourse lead us down a path where we pit decolonization against reconciliation. 

The book is truly an effort at peace making and building solidarity, as it openly speaks of some philosophical fractures within contemporary Indigenous discourse, and seeks to find a way forward by imagining how resurgence and reconciliation can work together. They acknowledge some of the legitimate concerns that the resurgence contra reconciliation discourses raises specifically, that if reconciliation is just an expectation that we accept the status quo, then it will not do. The editors of this book propose that we consider "transformative reconciliation" - which is reconciliation which addresses injustices, and would in fact be compatible with the aims of resurgence, and then move forward by treating reconciliation and resurgence as complementary. I think if we can get to a place where resurgence and reconciliation efforts are complementary, that would be nice.