52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk with Indigenous Peoples on the Path to Healing

Week 8 - Start a Second Book in Your Indigenous Book Club
from Robertson, David A. 52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk with Indigenous Peoples on the Path to Healing

Back in Week Two, Rev. Joanne invited us to consider starting an Indigenous book club. This week, Robertson gently nudges us a step further. If you started that journey, don’t let it become a one-time experience. Reconciliation is not meant to be “one and done,” and neither is reading Indigenous stories.

Robertson shares a similar concern about how easily meaningful efforts can become momentary. We might pay close attention on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and then slip back into old rhythms. A book club can fall into that same pattern. We read one book, feel informed, and move on. His encouragement is simple: keep going. Pick up a second book.

There are now vibrant Indigenous sections in many bookstores, filled with stories that both move and teach. Robertson suggests that memoir is a powerful place to start. If reconciliation involves listening to lived experience, memoir allows us to do exactly that. Drawing on Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s idea that books can be mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors, he describes Indigenous memoirs as those sliding glass doors. They invite us to step into someone else’s life and see the world through their eyes.

He names several meaningful options, including Broken Circle by Theodore Fontaine, The Reason You Walk by Wab Kinew, From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott, and the classic Halfbreed by Maria Campbell, among others. Each offers a deeply personal account of resilience, struggle, identity, and healing shaped by colonial history and its ongoing impacts.

Rather than prescribing one title, Robertson encourages us to browse, reflect, and choose what resonates. The point is not simply to check off another book, but to continue building connection. Memoir helps us move beyond abstract history into real lives and real relationships. It reminds us that reconciliation is not about mastering information but about walking together with greater understanding.

If Rev. Joanne’s invitation in Week Two helped start the conversation, perhaps this week is about sustaining it.

What story might your group be ready to read next, and how might continuing to listen shape the way you live out reconciliation in your everyday life?

Want to read last weeks post, you can do so here.