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A review by hollyd19
Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance by Jesse Wente
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
What a phenomenal memoir. Jesse Wente is an Ojibwe film critic from Toronto, Canada who uses his own story to highlight the ways that Canada has failed to reconcile with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples despite the feigned social and political focus on the subject. With wit and clarity, Wente shares about his family in Serpent River, his absolute love of movies, his radio career, and his activism on behalf of the wider Indigenous community.
What Wente shares is not new — in fact, that’s one of his points. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported clear steps to take (that have not been honored), but it essentially reiterated a previous report from 1991 called Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. These issues have been raised repeatedly over decades, but it’s in a colonizer’s best interest to whitewash history wit a more palatable story or act as if all injustices exist entirely in the past, both of which are egregious lies. Wente firmly calls for an awakening, a reckoning, a commitment to truth.
This book belongs alongside Minor Feelings (Cathy Park Hong) and White Tears Brown Scars (Ruby Hamad). Wente does an excellent job of exposing the ways that culture and media perpetuate violence, further oppressing those who have already been deeply harmed.
What Wente shares is not new — in fact, that’s one of his points. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported clear steps to take (that have not been honored), but it essentially reiterated a previous report from 1991 called Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. These issues have been raised repeatedly over decades, but it’s in a colonizer’s best interest to whitewash history wit a more palatable story or act as if all injustices exist entirely in the past, both of which are egregious lies. Wente firmly calls for an awakening, a reckoning, a commitment to truth.
This book belongs alongside Minor Feelings (Cathy Park Hong) and White Tears Brown Scars (Ruby Hamad). Wente does an excellent job of exposing the ways that culture and media perpetuate violence, further oppressing those who have already been deeply harmed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Cultural appropriation
Moderate: Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Gaslighting, and Colonisation
Minor: Alcoholism, Genocide, and Murder