Paulette Regan is the Director of Research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. She holds a Ph.D from the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria. Her book is Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada (UBC Press, $34.94) with a foreword by Taiaiake Alfred. According to UVic's Bryna Hallam: "The book recounts Regan’s personal journey into what she calls 'the visceral heart of Indigenous-settler relations,' from her days as a student at UBC to her work with residential school survivors in Hazelton, BC. Regan, a non-Indigenous person, prepared for her work as claims resolution manager in the small northern village by reading and reviewing documents in Vancouver, but found that hearing the live testimony of survivors brought home the full impact of the residential schools in a way that reading about it never could. 'In their eyes, I was not an ally, but a perpetrator,' she said—a realization that brought feelings of empathy, denial, guilt, anger and fear. But in that time–one marked by her uncertainty and lack of knowledge–Regan also realized that 'the real work of reconciliation is forged in the hard places.'"

According to the publisher: "In 2008, Canada established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that created Canada's notorious residential school system. Unsettling the Settler Within argues that non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation. Settlers must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge the destructive legacy of a society that has stubbornly ignored and devalued Indigenous experience. A compassionate call to action, this powerful book offers a new and hopeful path toward healing the wounds of the past."

978-0-7748-1778-3

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada

[BCBW 2011]