ABSTRACT
I can clearly remember picking blueberries with my grandmother on a hot summer day up on the rock behind my grandparents’ house. This activity had several purposes that went beyond the obvious goal of pie making: Nokomis was trying to teach me the importance of patience, to learn my place in the world as an Anishinaabe kwe (woman), and that being part of a community means that everyone needs to contribute. She also told me stories (dibaajimowinan), both up on the rock and at her kitchen table. These were funny stories about her children growing up, stories about family history and cousin connections, and a distressing story that framed her life’s work as an Anishinaabe kwe active in community politics as a long time councillor and school board trustee. These are lessons that have not just informed me as a person, but also shaped the reason I wanted to pursue Indigenous history and events that had happened at home on Anishinaabe territory. The resulting project, which originally took shape during my graduate studies,
was a case study that interrogated Cold War uranium extraction in a global market and military context and its effects on the Serpent River First Nation, an Anishinaabe community on the north shore of Lake Huron in Northern Ontario. It is here that I need to position myself as an Anishinaabe kwe and both a citizen of the Serpent River First Nation and someone who grew up in Elliot Lake, Ontario, a nearby settler uranium mining town. In the study, I made connections between Indigenous and treaty rights, dispossession, and environmental devastation using both archival sources and oral history (Leddy 2011). While the overall project was an environmental and Indigenous history of uranium mining in Northern Ontario framed by Indigenous-settler relations, the process itself turned out to be a story on its own which will be discussed here: it is one of decolonizing research practices that reflects on oral history and Anishinaabe stories, the importance of humility and the learning process as a whole, and asserting legitimacy as an Indigenous historian. The balance between archival sources, which were records kept by colonial bodies in Canada such as the Department of Indian Affairs, and oral history interviews with Indigenous knowledge holders can be difficult. They represent two very different views of history, and have not traditionally been seen as equal by the scholarly historical community. Reconciling these different views of stories is a process that takes compromise, particularly
when one is trying to practice decolonizing methods and at the same time meet the expectations of the historical profession. As the editors of this collection have noted (p. 4), “decolonizing nature-
culture-history research … requires conducting research differently, both at the archives and beyond.” One of the keys to accomplishing this is to understand that Indigenous ways of knowing are reliant on oral history and storytelling, and are not considered new or experimental in our communities. Western sources such as archives and newspapers are necessary research tools, but they must be used with caution and balanced with Indigenous sources. When Indigenous histories are explored from Indigenous perspectives, and, in particular, when Indigenous knowledge holders’ voices are heard, we gain a better understanding of the intersections of environmental and Indigenous history, and of the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples. Yet, as Jo-ann Archibald (Q’um Q’um Xiiem, Stó:lo-) has written, “going out to the field to ‘talk story’ takes time, patience, openness, and the will to keep talking with one another in order to learn how to engage in story listening and to make story meaning; none of this is unproblematic. It is hard work” (Archibald 2008: 126-127). This work is not always accepted by mainstream disciplines, particularly when Indigenous researchers are conducting work ‘from home’ and also seeking acceptance in academic departments. While oral history may be a relatively new research method for Western-
trained scholars, it is an essential part of Indigenous research. Part of the newness of these stories for settlers, even when they are in fact very old, has a lot to do with the fact that, to use a phrase by Paulette Regan (2011), they unsettle the settler within. As just one current example, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard testimony from more than 6000 witnesses, and its summary report, released in June 2015, has resulted in not only an extensive record of residential schools, their legacies, and recommendations to address this history, but also a national research centre and archive. Truth-telling exercises have controversies, and the TRC spawned a debate
about whether or not to save the records gathered through witness testimony. The director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, Ry Moran, has called the preservation of records pertaining to the IRS system as “a sacred obligation” (https://umanitoba.ca/centres/nctr/director.html). But this has been a controversial discussion, as the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has reported that some claimants made their very personal and painful statements regarding their experiences at residential schools with the promise that they would be destroyed. Some survivors have worried that their stories will be made public, and that they did not know that would be the case (www.cbc.ca/news/ politics/residential-school-survivors-fear-testimony-could-be-made-public1.2644349?autoplay=true). On the other hand, Terri Brown, a residential school survivor has said, “it’s the true record of what happened to us, once it’s destroyed, it’s gone forever” (www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/fate-of-documents-detailingabuse-at-residential-schools-undecided-1.2681138). The courts will decide the outcome of this controversy, but the purpose of discussing the TRC here is to talk about the importance of stories, truth-telling, and evidence.
