Adele Perry is the Canada Research Chair in Western Canadian Social History at the University of Manitoba. She recently gave a talk on the #IdleNoMore movement, a grassroots, non-hierarchal, feminist and environmentalist social movement founded by women, which originated among Canada’s indigenous peoples. This talk has now been reproduced online.
More than simply resonating with postcolonial New Zealand, the #IdleNoMore movement has taken root within some Māori communities. Māori commentators are discussing it and New Zealand’s mainstream media is too. New Zealand historians, though, might be especially interested in Adele’s piece. Her statement that “We need to be alert to when our scholarly and pedagogical practice colonize instead of decolonize, to find ways to better circulate the stories we find: stories of wars, of treaties, of marriages, of smallpox, of land, of communities and alliances, missions, residential schools, trade, labour, and of protest”, surely gives pause for thought on this edge of empire.
The New Zealand Historical Association 