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Who was here before me?

Taking Reconciliation Personally
by Richard Butler

Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023
$15  /  9798849376998

I Dare Say…Conversations with Indigeneity
by Richard Butler

Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023
$11  /  9798871999066

Reviewed by Trevor Marc Hughes

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As a boy, I would regularly hike through East Sooke Regional Park on Sundays in the spring, with my family, along the Aylard Farm to Beecher Head trail, just to the point where a petroglyph depicting a harbour seal was etched upon a large stone. Growing up on south Vancouver Island, I was surrounded by such indication of Indigeneity, one might say hiding in plain sight. It clearly had meaning, that someone had made the effort to etch this image in to the rock in front of me. What did the image mean for that person? For me, it meant the turnaround point of my hike. I’d then go back to my home in Saanich, and start another week at school. But the curiosity remained: what was that petroglyph for? Who was here before me?

Yes, I grew up with settler privilege in the 1980s. As an adult, I have addressed reconciliation in my own ways. Author Richard Butler, in his two recent titles, has decided, quite admirably, to describe his own path in addressing reconciliation. He begins Taking Reconciliation Personally upfront about his own settler privilege.

A retired government lawyer who now teaches at Thompson Rivers University, Butler has, in Taking Reconciliation Personally, assembled, essentially, a collection of book reports. Beginning with the summary report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he moves on to published titles such as Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws by Marianne Ignace and Ronald E. Ignace that address “Canada’s so-called ‘Indian problem.’” This would be a chance to read and reflect, a kind of book-of-the-month club that presents various perspectives on Indigenous Canada. He establishes his settler history, and then writes “settlers like me be have always been Canada’s Indian problem.” Although Butler is a lawyer and his random choice of books may have been guided by his own experience and conditioning, he nonetheless ventured forth into bookshops and selected books to broaden his horizons, to make a conscious effort to further his understanding on this topic (something all in BC of settler background can do who have access to a public library).

Some things do need to be set straight off the top:

Canada’s official path to reconciliation did not start with the TRC. Much had happened before the commission had come into being and there had been too many false starts to number. The Commission’s process and work product can perhaps best be viewed as a reset.

The book shows a path of evolving understanding that all can take in their own way, leading by example, through titles that are available at a local library, allowing an accessible path for those that want to follow in Butler’s footsteps. The results of his reflections are eye-opening to say the least.

Observing, for example, his notes of Ignace & Ignace, he points out the mode of telling, through stories, resisting the urge, as a lawyer, “to question the literal accuracy of the stories when they are seemingly being presented as proof of the facts asserted. I learned to focus instead on their intrinsic truth.” In noting different ways of seeing the world, Butler is suspending his disbelief, giving another paradigm to his own a chance. He then dives into Indigenous concepts of law:

This book is about people, land and laws. The authors “weave together the memories and stories of elders about events, people, the way things are done, and the laws behind them.” They speak of one kind of laws which were “first written on the land in pictographs, rock formations, and places names thousands of years ago and which guided Secwepemc people’s social and political interaction and their spiritual relationships with all living things.” They speak of a second conception of law, which “lays out the fluid, mobile and forward looking way that can enact new laws and determine what is best for us as a people.”

Butler further notes: “At this early stage of the book, a lawyer schooled only in the Anglo-Canadian common law tradition might find all of this little difficult to understand or credit.”

What struck me as significant here is that Butler is willing to admit his own shortcomings and makes the effort to learn a new paradigm. Is this kind of individually-enabled transformational experience not in the spirit of reconciliation? Could it be a beginning: when a no-nonsense lawyer is willing to take this leap of faith? For me, a process like this would allow for a deeper understanding of that petroglyph I’d hiked to as a boy, with more reading, developing my own limited understanding with meaning more profound, accurate, and truthful.

In I Dare Say…  Butler shows how his reflections have developed. It is clear much more thought has gone into reconciliation since writing the first book. He writes Taking Reconciliation Personally was limited in that “it did not include enough Indigenous voices telling Indigenous stories.” Further, he notes on the subject of cultural appropriation, that it is racializing and colonizing. He has developed his understanding to see that “reconciliation is not only the responsibility of government but also, as I had come to believe, a deeply personal matter.”

In this sense I don’t think it’s for me to write a traditional, critical review. I think all I can do is note Butler’s transformation, see the reciprocation it may allow for, and acknowledge that personal interpretations of reconciliation will come from our own life experience, conditioning, and worldview.

The back cover of Richard Butler’s Taking Reconciliation Personally. The lawyer and author makes an effort to learn a new paradigm.

Expectations aside, each of us of settler background will have to address reconciliation based upon our own abilities, conscientiously. That will look different from one person to the next.

The cultural appropriation awareness in this book has significant value. If anything, it could be a guide to building trust and respect.

After reading Butler’s books, I borrowed Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws from my local library branch, as well as one of his discussed books from I Dare Say…, Wendy Wickwire’s At the Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging, intent to start down my own road: a habit, perhaps, a new beginning.

I don’t know.

Is there power in that statement?

Perhaps exploration of place has been replaced with exploration of conscience, a development of introspection, and reflection.

Butler should be commended for his example.

[Editor’s Note: Richard Butler is writing a third book in this series, titled Things that Needed Saying at the Time.]

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Trevor Marc Hughes

Trevor Marc Hughes is the author of Capturing the Summit: Hamilton Mack Laing and the Mount Logan Expedition of 1925. He is currently the interim non-fiction editor for The British Columbia Review and recently reviewed books by Wade Davis, David Bird (ed.), Ian Kennedy, John Vaillant, Peter Rowlands, and Daniel Arnold, Darrell Dennis, & Medina Hahn.

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The British Columbia Review


Interim Editors, 2023-24: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie


Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster

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