Overview
In this incisive and powerful work, Douglas Sanderson contends that reconciliation alone will not build a better future for Indigenous peoples. We must instead visit our shared—and forgotten—past to fix what was broken.
We Were Once Brothers is a collection of essays that together form a powerful argument: Canada’s historic relationship with Indigenous peoples was not always one of domination, and the path to justice lies not in reconciliation, but in restructured political relationships grounded in respect, memory and law. Where Douglas’s previous work, Valley of the Birdtail, traced the lived experience of inequality through narrative and family history, We Were Once Brothers turns that experience into an intellectual road map. This is a book about what was broken, how it was broken and how it might be fixed—not just morally, but structurally, legally and politically.
Douglas begins by sharing his experiences growing up Cree in a family that never used the word; being in law school and the trauma of reading decisions on Aboriginal rights; and working in government on land claims and policy reform. From that foundation, the book moves across different aspects of our shared history, tackling everything from the Land Back movement to the rise of Pretendians. Douglas sharply argues where we went wrong while also supplying clear, achievable paths toward justice and self-determination. Through it all, he returns always to one central conviction: that we once knew how to live together as equals, and we can learn to do so again.
We Were Once Brothers demands much of its readers—but offers them something rare in return: not a call for guilt or apology, but a practical vision for living side by side under a condition of equality.
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