Memory

Philippe Tortell is director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and a professor in the departments of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and Botany. Mark Turin is an associate professor in the department of anthropology and First Nations and Endangered Languages. Margot Young is a professor in the Peter A. Allard School of Law. All the editors work at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, which is located on traditional, ancestral, and unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory.

B. Osborne, emeritus, Queen's University at Kingston:

...the book is better suited for reflection than for focused study, but the essays read together effect a thought-provoking exploration of timely themes and enrich readers' understanding of memory in its many facets. | Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond (Aki-Kwe), Director of the UBC Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre:
The contributions to this astounding collection reframe our inner construct of remembering and forgetting – exposing, for example, our socially constructed pressures to edit out the political reality of colonial oppression, as well as our amnesia around the destruction of the environment. The power of reflection, thought, and dialogue is found on every page. A more creative assemblage of essays on this important and timely topic would be difficult to find.

Linda Hutcheon, University Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto:
If you care about the nuances of how, what, where, and why we remember (and forget), then Memory is the book for you. The concise and cogent explorations undertaken here range in focus from the molecular to the planetary, mapping all the complexities of memory: cognitive and cultural, biological and historical, social and ecological, collective and individual.

David Suzuki, scientist, broadcaster, author, activist, and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation:
The enormous memory capacity of the human brain has been the key to our success as a species as we learn through observation, trial and error, mistakes and successes, passing along priceless life lessons to succeeding generations. From Indigenous knowledge to neuroscience and engineering, this excellent collection of essays provides a multi-pronged approach that puts memory into a much-needed context at a time when change has become so ubiquitous and rapid.