Power through Testimony: Reframing Residential Schools in the Age of Reconciliation ed. by Brieg Capitaine and Karine Vanthuyne (review)

Completed in 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools (TRC) has been hailed by many in Canada as a ground-breaking process that should be used by Canadians to re-think (or 'restory', (p. 8)) Canada's past and create a new postcolonial future. At the core of this praise is the simple– and simplistic–notion that if Canadians just 'know their history' they will establish better, more equitable, relationships with Indigenous Canadians. As this collection of essays makes very clear, however, the journey between 'restorying' Canada's past and the establishing a new pattern of Indigenous–non-Indigenous relations in Canada is neither linear nor without significant challenges. The editors and authors in this book (mostly sociologists) should be commended for their ability to show, in a variety of ways, the messy, non-linear relationship between the remaking of 'history' (i.e. knowledge of the past) through the TRC, and the making of a new Canadian future.

The editors' introduction poses the principal questions of the book: does/will the TRC actually promote 'countermemories' (p. 17) of Canada's past and lead to real transformative change? While the editors themselves seem to hold a sympathetic view of the TRC as a tool that can change the structural relationships underpinning colonialism, the evidence from the book's nine tightly written and well edited chapters tends to reinforce the ineffective, problematic, and sometimes unintended implications of the TRC. Chapters 1 to 4, grouped as 'The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Action', question whether a commission designed to 'give voice' to, and help the healing of, former students can effectively redress the injustices of the schools (it seems not). Chapters 5 to 7, 'Conflicting Memories and Paths of Action', explore the unintended legacies of the commission. Included here are essays on how the power of the TRC created both new layers of identity among some Indigenous people (through the identity of 'survivor' for instance), while also creating feelings of exclusion from history among those Indigenous communities, such as the Inuit of Labrador, who were left out of the official settlement and report of the TRC. These studies about the unintended legacies of the TRC point to one of the most significant areas for future research. The last section of the book, '(Un)reckoning with Historical Abuses', suggests how both the structure of the TRC and the different cultural worldviews of the players involved explain why non-Indigenous Canadians, especially Churches, have been unable or unwilling to recognise the systemic nature of colonialism associated with the schools.

This is an important book, which poses a number of significant and complex questions about the TRC's intended and unintended legacies. The book's critical analysis of the TRC, particularly in its community-based studies in the second section of the book, suggests a complex future for both Canada and the meaning of 'reconciliation'. I recommend this book to students and researchers interested in the implications of 'reconciliation' and the TRC, and in the contemporary dynamics and politics of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations in Canada.