What does reconciliation look like when it is understood not as a completed task, but as an ongoing practice—here on earth, in our everyday lives?
with Dr. James Tully
In this reflective conversation, Dr. James Tully invites our audience to think carefully about reconciliation as a practice of living well together, rather than a policy outcome, legal framework, or symbolic gesture. Drawing from his chapter “Reconciliation Here on Earth,” Tully explores how reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples is inseparable from our relationships with the living earth and with one another.
Rather than offering prescriptions or solutions, Tully turns our attention to the everyday practices—political, economic, social, and ecological—through which relationships are sustained, strained, or repaired. He reflects on what Indigenous teachings, ecological understandings, and traditions of non-violent democratic practice reveal about interdependence, responsibility, and limits in a time of overlapping social and environmental crises.
This conversation invites reflection on questions such as:
- What does it mean to practice reconciliation with others, rather than reconcile to existing systems?
- How do everyday habits of governance, consumption, and political life support—or undermine—reconciliation?
- What responsibilities arise when we understand ourselves as members of living, interdependent communities?
Through careful reflection and grounded examples, Tully invites audiences to move beyond reconciliation as a checklist or outcome and toward reconciliation as a lived practice—shaped within communities, institutions, and relationships with one another and the land.
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Edited by Michael Asch, John Borrows and James Tully
Dr. James Tully is Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Law, Indigenous Governance and Philosophy at the University of Victoria, and one of Canada’s most respected political philosophers. His work has influenced constitutional theory, legal pluralism, civic freedom, and the understanding of Indigenous–settler relations through decades of scholarship and engagement.
After completing a BA at the University of British Columbia and a PhD at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Tully taught at McGill University and the University of Toronto before joining UVic, where he helped shape cross-disciplinary programs at the intersection of political science, law, and Indigenous governance.
Dr. Tully’s scholarship emphasizes dialogical and relational approaches to constitutionalism and democratic citizenship, inviting political communities to think and act differently about freedom, recognition, and coexistence. He has been recognized as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Emeritus Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation, and his contributions to political thought have garnered major awards including the Killam Prize in the Humanities.
As co-editor of Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous–Settler Relations and Earth Teachings, Dr. Tully’s work bridges theory and practice, calling attention to the ongoing responsibilities of citizens in building just, respectful, and relational futures.