Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization - Paperback

by Elaine Enns (Author), Ched Myers (Author)

Healing Haunted Histories tackles the oldest and deepest injustices on the North American continent. Violations which inhabit every intersection of settler and Indigenous worlds, past and present. Wounds inextricably woven into the fabric of our personal and political lives. And it argues we can heal those wounds through the inward and outward journey of decolonization.

The authors write as, and for, settlers on this journey, exploring the places, peoples, and spirits that have formed (and deformed) us. They look at issues of Indigenous justice and settler "response-ability" through the lens of Elaine's Mennonite family narrative, tracing Landlines, Bloodlines, and Songlines like a braided river. From Ukrainian steppes to Canadian prairies to California chaparral, they examine her forebearers' immigrant travails and trauma, settler unknowing and complicity, and traditions of resilience and conscience. And they invite readers to do the same.

Part memoir, part social, historical, and theological analysis, and part practical workbook, this process invites settler Christians (and other people of faith) into a discipleship of decolonization. How are our histories, landscapes, and communities haunted by continuing Indigenous dispossession? How do we transform our colonizing self-perceptions, lifeways, and structures? And how might we practice restorative solidarity with Indigenous communities today?

Author Biography

Elaine Enns has worked across the restorative justice field since 1989, from facilitating victim-offender dialogue in the Criminal Justice System to addressing historical violations and intergenerational trauma. With a DMin from St. Andrews College Saskatoon, she trains and teaches throughout North America, and with her partner Ched published the two-volume Ambassadors of Reconciliation: A New Testament Theology and Diverse Christian Practices of Restorative Justice and Peacemaking (Orbis Books, 2009). They codirect Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (www.bcm-net.org).


Ched Myers is an activist theologian and New Testament expositor working with peace and justice issues. He is a popular educator, animating scripture and literacy in historic and current social change movements. Myers has published over a hundred articles and eight books, including Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (Orbis, 1988). He and Elaine are ecumenical Mennonites based in the Ventura River Watershed of southern California in traditional Chumash territory.