I’ve had a lifelong fascination with diverse traditions of symbolism, emblemry, iconography, and heraldry, and the ways in which distinctive and carefully designed visual images can distill and capture the essence of identity, values, and relationships of significance. This, plus my lifelong love of fantasy literature and film, made an interest in heraldry almost inevitable. When I was working on the early stages of my badger book and looking for good images to include, I came across…

[This is a slightly revised version of a piece that originally appeared on 19 September 2017 on theconversation.com; the original includes editorial links to additional content.]   It’s a depressingly common experience for Indigenous people in Canada, and in other settler-colonial countries. It happens on a daily basis: at work with colleagues, in encounters with strangers, in news commentaries, in social media exchanges, and at parties when we just want to relax. It’s almost a…