Canadian anthropologist Michael Asch, FRSC, has worked untiringly on the issue of finding just resolution of relations between Aboriginal Peoples and Canada. Dr. Asch will speak on some of the powerful arguments in his forthcoming book We are all Here to Stay: Between Canadian Sovereignty and First Nations’ Self-Determination (University of Toronto). In his new book he unpacks the history of legal, political, and knowledge relations between newcomers to Canada and Indigenous Peoples, and offers an empirically-sound proposition for the reconciliation of relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, following a path that “offers an opportunity for Canadians to come to terms, honourably, with our settlement in what we used to call the New World.” Dr. Asch argues that his proposition is grounded in a common capacity and common will to enter into committed peaceful political relations in shared lands — by way of deeply rigorous enactment of treaty as a practice of living reciprocal obligations among peoples. His discussion goes directly to the idea of mutual responsibility in reconciliation, and expanding relations around that principle into the future.
