Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith

Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith

2. A More Subtle Violence: The Footnoting of "the Aboriginal Principle of Witnessing" by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith

Adam Stewart [+-]
Crandall University
Adam Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Crandall University, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.

Description

The author argues that—despite its manifest objective of contributing to the decolonization of Indigenous-Settler relations in Canada—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was guided by a latent taxonomy of Indigenous religion that essentialized inconvenient differences surrounding Indigenous practices of witnessing and perpetuated the colonial violence of homogenization. Adam Stewart recommends Annette Yoshiko Reed’s method of narrativization as an alternative strategy for use by scholars, bureaucrats, and politicians when studying, or developing or implementing public policy involving, religious data that similarly fails to neatly fit into existing scholarly taxonomies of religion. The author proposes that this methodology can help prevent the same kinds of totalizing mistakes as those made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

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Citation

Stewart, Adam. 2. A More Subtle Violence: The Footnoting of "the Aboriginal Principle of Witnessing" by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 27-37 Oct 2019. ISBN 9781781796764. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=34167. Date accessed: 28 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.34167. Oct 2019

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