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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is available for purchase here, at your local independent bookstore, or check out your local library. It won the Booker Prize in 2023. (Read an article by Gillian about the Booker Prize.)

Chair of the Booker Prize judges Esi Edugyan described it as "claustrophobic", while Lynch said it was "an attempt at radical empathy."

We mentioned Métis author Cherie Dimaline's novels The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Hunting by Stars (2021).

We referred to the Indian Residential School system in Canada, where Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities, and separated from their families, communities, and cultures in favour of a colonial "education." The 2015 Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission described this as cultural genocide. Read the Final Report and the Calls to Action on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's website.

The westernmost point of Europe is Cape Roca, which is in Portugal.

The surge of applications for Irish citizenship after Brexit. (The Guardian)

The attempt to introduce mandatory military service in the UK under Rishi Sunak. (The Guardian)

The border-crossing powers of The Sound of Music (1965) had a lasting impact on both Gillian and Zalfa.

Refugee Council resource on the "small boats" issue exercising UK politics.

Gillian briefly channels Estelle Getty as Sophia in The Golden Girls.

The Peace Arch.

Prophet Song is about families in a time of crisis. In the real world, please consider donating to Watermelon Relief,

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the University of Leicester's School of Arts, Media and Communication for use of recording equipment; to India Downton for her invaluable expertise; and to the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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Content Note: This episode makes reference to the use of racist language/slurs.

This is what a walrus sounds like (righteousness unconfirmed).

“Columbus was a Dick” is a song by Princess Goes.

Here’s the McMaster University Indigenous Studies programme.

See the Decolonial Atlas’s map of the Six Nations Reserve.

Read more about Idle No More.

Emma uses Gerald Vizenor’s (Minnesota Chippewa) term “survivance.”

Check out Adam and Emma's book Settler (2015) .

Paulette Regan's book is Unsettling the Settler Within (2011).

Adam mentions an article he wrote on the War of 1812.

Listen to January Rogers’s poem “Forever."

Read more about residential school history in Canada on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation website. On residential school denialism, see Sean Carleton and Daniel Heath Justice’s “Residential School Denialism Is an Attack on the Truth.”

Patrick Wolfe writes “Settler colonialism destroys to replace” in “Settler colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” (388).

Read more about Haudenosaunee governance here.

Thomas King’s short story “Borders” appears in One Good Story, That One: Stories (1993) and as a graphic novel (2021) illustrated by Natasha Donovan (Métis).

For more on the Haudenosaunee Lacrosse Team’s issues with border crossing, see Sid Hill’s 2015 Guardian article.

For more on treaties, British Columbia, and the Supreme Court, see, for example, the Calder case.

Alan Taylor’s War of 1812 books include The Civil War of 1812 (2010) and The Divided Ground (2006).

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the University of Leicester's School of Arts, Media and Communication for use of recording equipment; to India Downton for her invaluable expertise; and to the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Send us a Message

David mentioned "pretendians," a term used to refer to individuals who falsely claim Indigenous heritage.

David mentioned work by Eric Gansworth (Onondaga). Read more about Gansworth’s work here.

Find a map of Anishinaabe territory here.

Find a map of Mohawk territory here.

The Jay Treaty (1794), a treaty between the United States and Great Britain (and now Canada) signed after the Revolutionary War, guarantees the rights of Indigenous people to cross the border "without hindrance." Read the Treaty here.

Find a map of Tohono O'odham territory here.

Maquiladoras are assembly plants for international corporations that proliferate at the US-Mexico border, especially after the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994).

Unsurprisingly, we talked about a lot of artwork:

• Alberto Caro's Border Coffins (1994): see it and read more about US-Mexico border art here.
• Ursula Biemann’s Performing the Border (1999).
• Zalfa mentioned art on billboards in Texas; they were actually in New Mexico. A series of ten billboards erected along Interstate 10 in southern New Mexico by the art organization Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND).
• Postcommodity’s Repellent Fence (2015) can be seen here.
• David mentioned Christo, who with his late wife Jeanne-Claude wrapped landmarks.
• Ana Teresa Fernández’s 2011 (and ongoing) project Borrando La Frontera (Erasing the Sky). Hear the artist speak about the project here.
• Javier Tellez’s One Flew over the Void (Bala Perdida) from 2005. You can watch it here.
• Richard Lou’s The Border Door (1988). See it and read more about it here.
• David continues to be inspired by Alan Michelson’s Third Bank of the River (2009).
• Read more about the Two Row Wampum Belt here
• David mentioned Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas' work

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the University of Leicester's School of Arts, Media and Communication for use of recording equipment; to India Downton for her invaluable expertise; and to the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com