Our shared future: two alumni behind important new book

Laura Reimer and Bob Chrismas, alumni of both UM’s Peace and Conflict Studies program, and our Master’s of Public Administration program, have co-edited a groundbreaking new book on reconciliation in Canada.

Mikayla Plett created the cover art for the book, depicting our shared future from the shared wampum of our past

Our Shared Future, a peer-reviewed book featuring an foreword by President Emeritus David Barnard, contains contributions from some of Canada’s most renowned scholars and leaders in positive reconciliation. Each chapter provides readers with windows into the tangible ways that Canadians are building a peaceful shared future, together.

“This book presents a sample of the activities that some individuals and some groups have undertaken as their particular contributions to our shared future,” Barnard writes in the foreword. “A multifaceted approach is clearly required, but we do not yet know how effective some of the particulars will be. In this book the editors”—Reimer, a member of the UM Board of Governors, and Chrismas, a member of the Mauro Institute Board of Directors—”have brought together descriptions of some of the many attempts to bridge the gap between our two realities. We are not faced with two solitudes (a metaphor from Anglophone and Francophone Canadian interactions in the past) but with a more dynamic image: a shared journey, with different particular choices of what might draw us closer together as we travel.”

The book features writings of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers from across Canada and it puts forth a multi-disciplinary treatise on decolonization, peacebuilding, and conflict transformation that is a must-read for those scholars, students, and practitioners of peacebuilding seeking a deeper understanding of reconciliation, decolonization, and community-building.