Transculturality and Uneven Belonging in Multicultural Canada

Mark Sakamoto’s Forgiveness and Lisa Bird-Wilson’s Probably Ruby

Bibliographic Data

ID22058309
AuthorsGideon Umezurike (0000-0002-4059-7644, University of Saskatchewan, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume15
Pages99-118
Publication date2026-05-30
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanada and Beyond A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2254-1179 • E-ISSN: 2254-1179
PublisherEdiciones Universidad de Salamanca (PUBLISHER • ES)
DOI10.14201/candb.v15i99-118
OpenAlexW7163134338
LanguageEN
References cited9

Set chiefly in the Canadian prairies’ Indigenous-settler contact zones, Mark Sakamoto’s Forgiveness and Lisa Bird-Wilson’s Probably Ruby illuminate how histories of colonial violence and trauma shape contemporary Canadian society and show the inadequacies of transcultural theory in capturing Canadian cultural formations. In the Canadian lifeworld depicted in these texts, cultures are imagined as distinct and separate, with asymmetrical power dynamics serving as the ideological bulwark of Canadian multiculturalism. While Forgiveness depicts the capacity of Canadian multiculturalism to pave the way for non-white migrants’ transculturation, Probably Ruby uses Ruby’s deracination from her Métis roots to portray how settler colonial histories affect Indigenous cultural lifeworlds, dictating Indigenous peoples’ relationship with the Canadian state. The structural erasure of Indigenous identities through historical acts of cultural genocide continues to hinder bidirectional settler-Indigenous cultural exchange and instead fosters the assimilation of Indigenous persons, such as the deracinated Ruby, into the dominant culture

Colonialism · Forgiveness · Genocide · Historical trauma · Ideology · Indigenous · Lifeworld · Multiculturalism · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Interdisciplinary Cultural and Social Studies · Short Stories in Global Literature

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Open DOIOpen Access