Abstract

Abstract:

The findings and recommendations of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 2008-2015) offer Canadians and their public institutions an opportunity to better confront the ongoing injustice of their colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples, but this task requires also assessing the specific contributions of the TRC. The specific contribution in which this article is interested is the discourse of reconciliation that the commission has made Canada’s master keyword for debating Indigenous-settler relations. The article analyzes representations of reconciliation in the mainstream Canadian print media before and over the life of the commission, concluding that the commission during its national events did much to promote a relatively quiescent notion of reconciliation that in fact displaced conceptions with more substantive connotations of the return of land, jurisdiction, and resources. This finding has implications for how Canadians discuss reconciliation in the future and for the broader literature interested in the role of reconciliation discourse in truth commissions and other enterprises of transitional justice.

Resume:

Les resultats obtenus par la Commission de verite et reconciliation relative aux pen-sionnats indiens du Canada (la Commission, 2008-2015) et les recommandations qu’elle a formulees donnent a la population canadienne et a ses institutions l’occasion de regarder en face l’injustice qui continue de caracteriser leur relation coloniale avec les peuples autochtones; mais cela ne saurait se faire sans evaluer egalement les apports precis de la Commission. L’apport particulier sur lequel se penche cet article est le discours de reconciliation, devenu, a la suite des travaux de la Commission, l’expression cle des debats sur les relations entre autochtones et pionniers. L’article analyse les representations de la reconciliation dans les principaux journaux canadiens imprimes avant et pendant la tenue de la Commission. Il en conclut qu’au fil de ses rencontres nationales, celle-ci s’est efforcee de promouvoir une version relativement passive de la reconciliation qui, dans les faits, a supplante les idees porteuses de connotations plus substantielles, telles la restitution des terres, la juridiction et les ressources. Ce constat a des consequences sur la facon dont les Canadiens discuteront de la reconciliation a l’avenir, de meme que sur les travaux plus generaux concernant le role du discours de reconciliation dans les commissions de verite et autres projets de justice transitionnelle.

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