National – Divided by racism, united by hope

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National – Divided by racism, united by hope – CBA National Magazine

by ahnationtalk on December 5, 2022197 Views

5 Dec 2022

Valley of the Birdtail is a must-read for legal professionals on the role law played in carrying out discriminatory and racist policies and how it can help achieve reconciliation.

Of all the words we associate with the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada, “hope” generally sits near the bottom of the list. The authors of a new and remarkably compelling book, Valley of the Birdtail, want to change that.

“Something that’s important about the book is that we want people to leave hopeful,” explains Andrew Stobo Sniderman, a lawyer and Rhodes scholar from Montreal. “And we do traverse some very difficult material; we hear from people that they have to put down the book in rage, or in sadness, quite often. But the characters in the book show this amazing capacity for change, and for growth. And we think that’s a really important part of what we’re trying to do here.”

It’s an ambitious project. What Sniderman and his co-author, Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii), who is Swampy Cree, Beaver clan, of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, set out to do is show that the two entities, Indigenous peoples and settlers, “are not and have never actually been separate, that we’ve all been part of the same project.”