At a time when some governments have undertaken processes of apology, truth, and reconciliation for colonial violence and dispossession of Indigenous peoples, how can scholars in the humanities contribute to these imperfect gestures of repair? To hazard an answer to this question, I reflected on my process of narrating the story of an early-twentieth-century Anglican missionary in the Pacific Northwest who, after years of doing the work of Christian colonial settlement on Indigenous land, came to think that telepathy was the solution to everything from class warfare to religious divisions.
“The Medium is the Medicine: Stories and the Work of Reconciliation in Canada”, Public Lecture, Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, May 3, 2018.