Tracing E-race-sures, Finding Reclamations: Embodied Perspectives of “Canadian” Immersion

Abstract

At this critical time of reckoning with histories and present legacies in Canada, we come together as an emergent collaborative research team to reflect on how education and wider systems in this country have shaped our individual and collective experiences. As we affirm our practice of visiting and sharing histories from embodied perspectives and commitments in order to build relations, we find echoes in the concepts and practices of Métis and Black/African-Caribbean diasporic communities that we are in relation to. The notion of e-race-sures helps us name the gaps that our communities have experienced in the cultural imaginaries and literal making of Canada where racialized notions of belonging have enabled colonization and entitled (largely white) settlement. Beyond remediating these gaps, the notion of reclamations allows us to move past deficiencies and affirm what has always been there. This move facilitates thinking and acting accountably in relations that exceed what is underwritten by a seemingly coherent history and present story of Canada. By sharing our individual stories in places in the text, the authors name how we each come to know e-race-sures and reclamations in our own lives. But in collectivizing our stories and finding common resonances, we insist on the power of coalitional possibilities and on the need to make room for other communities and stories beyond ours.