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  • Intra-American Philosophy in Practice:Indigenous Voice, Felt Knowledge, and Settler Denial
  • Anna Cook

In a global era of apology and reconciliation, Canadians, like their counterparts in other settler nations, face a moral and ethical dilemma that stems from an unsavoury colonial past. Canadians grew up believing that the history of their country is a story of the cooperative venture between people who came from elsewhere to make a better life and those who were already here, who welcomed and embraced them, aside from a few bad white men.

—Alfred, “Foreword” ix

on 11 June 2008, the (now former) Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper made a Statement of Apology on behalf of the Canadian government for the Indian Residential Schools system (hereafter IRS): “The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian Residential Schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on Aboriginal culture, heritage and language” (Harper). This Apology finalized the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), which was sparked by thousands of lawsuits by IRS survivors.1 The Prime Minister asserted that the IRS2—which was fundamental to the settler colonial endeavor of culturally, spiritually, and legally devastating Native3 populations by separating children from their families and communities—“is a sad chapter in our history” (Harper). The official Apology was accompanied by the allotment of lump sums to the survivors of the IRS system, and the creation of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (hereafter the TRC).

The TRC was formally established on 1 June 2008, and had a five-year mandate to focus on “a sincere indication and acknowledgement of the injustices and harms experienced by Aboriginal people … as part of an overall holistic and comprehensive response to the IRS legacy” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mandate). Crucially, the TRC does not have powers of [End Page 74] subpoena to name names of people who have not yet been convicted.4 The TRC has the stated purpose of promoting public awareness about the IRS by undertaking a truth-telling and reconciliation process, and producing a report on the 150-year history of residential schools. As part of the truth-telling process, there have been seven national events that aim to engage and educate the Canadian public about the history of the residential school system through personal testimony from survivors.

The final report, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, was published in December 2015. The report states that for over a century, “the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Honouring the Truth 1). It names the establishment and operation of Indian Residential Schools system as a policy of cultural genocide [under Article 2(e) of the UN’s Convention on Genocide] in that it sought to destroy structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group (3).5 The report is accompanied by Calls to Action to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of reconciliation with respect to child welfare, education, language and culture, health, and justice (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Calls to Action).

The truth-telling events as well as the final report seem to express a commitment to foreground the experiences of IRS survivors in order to face the legacy of Canada’s colonial past, and to transform present-day relationships between Native and non-Native Canadians. The reconciliatory potential of the TRC rests, however, on how these expressions are heard and remembered.6

The creation of the TRC has been met with a fair amount of criticism from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars. Paulette Regan and John Milloy have focused on the implications of a model of reconciliation that is grounded in a public confession that performs a form of voyeurism for a mostly settler audience; Taiaiake Alfred (Kahnawake Mohawk) has argued that the absence of significant material changes and...

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