Positionality Statement

Dr. Steven Kohm, University of Winnipeg

I am a non-Indigenous, White settler scholar of mixed European and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, born and currently residing on traditional territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Dakota, Dene, Métis, and Oji-Cree Nations in what is now Winnipeg, Canada. At the University of Winnipeg where I teach courses in criminology and criminal justice, formal land acknowledgements usually begin by recognizing that this area is within Treaty 1 Territory—the first of several numbered treaties between British colonizers and Indigenous peoples in what is now western Canada. Although this land was taken from Indigenous peoples using the legal framework of a treaty, those who live here today are haunted by the ghosts of colonialism. My childhood home was located two blocks from the former Assiniboia Residential School, which operated from 1958 to 1973. By the time I was old enough to notice, it was long abandoned, boarded up and left for bored teenagers to break into at night. I’m still haunted by the memory of the dusty rooms, rusty metal bedframes, and darkened hallways left behind as traces of a genocide that took place right in my own backyard. Growing up in Winnipeg, I never gave clean, plentiful drinking water much thought. However, years later I discovered that the city’s water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation via an aqueduct connecting the city to a small Indigenous community in Northwestern Ontario. In order to ensure White settlers had clean water, this Indigenous community was forced to move to an island that was cut off from the mainland without all-weather road access for one hundred years until the completion of “Freedom Road” in 2019. Ironically, the community endured for more than 25 years under a boil water advisory while we enjoyed clean, plentiful drinking water. I am haunted by the colonial foundations of this nation and this city, which have brought me and my settler ancestors great benefit while displacing, marginalising and criminalising Indigenous people. This chapter is a small reflection of my commitment to reconciliation and reckoning with colonialism, and I hope it demonstrates that cultural criminology can play a role in exposing and critiquing the colonial injustices that continue today.