Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Canada)

Background

Aboriginal men and women who lived through residential schools brought the concern of residential schools onto the public agenda. Their work resulted in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, which stipulated a residential school Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada be conducted. The commission concluded that the Canadian residential school system was established for the purpose of separating children from their families. According to the commission, this was done with the intention to minimize the family's ability to pass along their cultural heritage to their children. The commission spent six years traveling to different parts of Canada to hear the testimony of approximately six thousand Aboriginal people who were taken away from their families and placed in residential schools as children.

After the closing of the Indian residential schools, which operated from the 1870s to 1996 and held some 150,000 aboriginal children over the decades. Some former students made allegations of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and neglect. The commission studied records and took testimony for evidence of activities alleged to have occurred at residential schools, as well as the negative effects resulting from the schools' stated aim to assimilate First Nations children into the majority culture. The matter of student deaths at these institutions and the burial of deceased students in unmarked graves without the notification or consent of the parents was an additional item on the agenda.

In March 2008, Indigenous leaders and church officials embarked on a multi-city 'Remembering the Children' tour to promote activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On January 21–22, 2008, the King's University College of Edmonton, Alberta, held an interdisciplinary studies conference on the subject of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. On June 11 of the same year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the role of past governments in administration of the residential schools.

Commission Name

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) follows the lineage of commissions by the same name in Chile in 1990 and South Africa in 2001. The term reconciliation means: the act of restoring a once harmonious relationship. The Commission came under criticism for using the term 'reconciliation' in their name, as it implies that there was once a harmonious relationship between settlers and Indigenous peoples that is being restored, while it is clear that no such harmonious relationship existed. "To some people, 'reconciliation' is the re-establishment of a conciliatory state. However, this is a state that many Aboriginal people assert never has existed between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people". This fiction of a once harmonious relationship is written clearly in the Commission's report, which states: “A critical part of this process involves repairing damaged trust". In contrast, the term conciliation denotes the peaceful union of two previously separate groups, therefore acknowledging the existence of Indigenous peoples before settler contact. However, the myth of the ‘new world’ (North America) as an empty, untamed land in need of civilization is deeply ingrained in the Canadian psyche. The use of the term reconciliation perpetuates that myth by continuing to deny "the existence of pre-contact Aboriginal sovereignty". It is historically evident that colonizers recognized the ideological importance of language, as "Aboriginal languages and cultures were demeaned and suppressed" at Residential Schools. That same ideological function of language has not changed, as the linguistic choice of 'reconciliation' implies the false history of a harmonious relationship.

Creating a false history for the purpose of rationalizing domineering colonialist behaviour has been a strategy used many times in Canada; "for example the phrase 'two founding nations', referring to the French and the English, is often used to describe Canada's history and ignores the undisputed fact that the interaction between Aboriginal people and Europeans has been central to Canada's history". Such an example reveals a precedent in Canada for fabricating a version of the truth for the ideological purpose of "[eliminating] Aboriginal people as distinct… and… [assimilating] them into the Canadian mainstream". This is consistent with a colonialist pattern of creating a "false history" in order to "cover up the truth". It is clear that when the ideological function of language does not support colonial domination (like the use of Indigenous languages) Canada went to great lengths (residential schools) to eradicate them, but when the use of language does support colonial domination (like choosing the word reconciliation instead of conciliation) the ideological implications are overlooked. Indigenous artist and writer Lawrence Paul Yuxwelptun wrote: “if you allow only the colonialists to record history, they record it to their own glorification” The Commission states in its name that its mandate is to uncover the truth about residential schools; however, the word choice of reconciliation “imposes the fiction” of a ‘harmonious’ relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The government "knows perfectly well that no phraseology can be a substitute for reality" but it is hoping to bury Indigenous history in coded colonialist language. The commission claims to be forming a new relationship with indigenous people, when in fact the very name of the Commission is "a deliberate tactic in the ongoing assimilationist strategy of the Canadian empire".

Commission

Justice Harry S. Laforme of the Ontario Court of Appeal was named to chair the Commission. He resigned on October 20, 2008, citing insubordination by commissioners Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Brewin Morley. Although Dumont-Smith and Morley denied the charge and initially stayed on, both resigned in January 2009. In June, Murray Sinclair, Manitoba's first aboriginal associate chief justice, was appointed to chair the panel. The other members of the commission were Marie Wilson, a senior executive with the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and Wilton Littlechild, former Conservative Member of Parliament and Alberta regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations.

The TRC set out to "[acknowledge] the past through truth-telling". Given that the Commission was launched, it shows recognition by the Canadian government that there were feelings of anger and resentment on the part of Indigenous people, and it was the government's view that those feelings "[needed] to be overcome". In keeping with settlers' perennial fear of anything that "[threatens] to disrupt settler-colonialism's sovereign claim over Indigenous people" the TRC set out to appease Indigenous resentment. The reconciliation "policy in Canada is deeply invested in the view that Indigenous peoples suffer from resentment". Settlers are afraid of resentment because the emotion implies an Indigenous awareness of "[instances] of maltreatment or injustice". As author Glen Coulthard has noted: the Commission’s premise that Indigenous peoples’ harboring of emotions and resentment needs to be overcome is flawed because oppressed peoples, like Indigenous peoples, “are often voiceless except in their ability to articulate and express resentment”. The government, however, saw these "passionate expressions of resentment as yet more proof of that community's need to get over the past and move on". What is treated by the Canadian government as an unhealthy and debilitating incapacity by Indigenous people to forgive and move on is actually a sign of an Indigenous critical consciousness, an awareness of injustice, and an unwillingness to reconcile with a government who still participates in colonialist activities. In the governments' urge to get over the past in order "to be made innocent" they have forgotten that reconciliation is not to "forgive and forget" but "is to remember and change".

The Commission focused "exclusively on the tragedy of residential schools", thereby framing "reconciliation in terms of overcoming a 'sad chapter' in [Canadian] history". Because of this "there is no recognition of a colonialist past or present". "Reconciliation, as [it's] framed by Canadian policy makers, is not about colonialism", rather, "it is about what [Canadian policy makers] would like to think is a misguided humanitarian project that was undertaken in the form of residential schools". Through the Commission the government singles out residential schools as its signature issue to reconcile with Indigenous people, choosing to ignore that "residential schools were one aspect of a larger project to absorb or assimilate Aboriginal people".

Many writers have observed the way the TRC historicizes the events of colonialism and does not recognize that the Indigenous-settler relationship is "perpetual". The TRC believed that: “residential schools were bad, and we recognize that they were unjust, they were immoral, but they are over now”. This historicizing implies that the government believes colonialism was a “fixed period in history which unfortunately continues to have negative consequences… in the present”. Historicizing is further evident in the TRC's 'Principles of Reconciliation', as stated in Step 3: "Reconciliation is a process of healing of relationships that requires public truth sharing, apology, and commemoration that acknowledge and redress past harms". "The policy implications of the states historical framing of colonialism are troubling" because it offers the government a way to appear to be addressing Indigenous concerns; but, because it is a 'historical' problem there are no changes to the current policy. As a result "the TRC temporally situates the harms of settler-colonialism in the past and focuses the bulk of its reconciliatory efforts on repairing the injurious legacy left in the wake of this history". Because of this historicizing, the TRC concentrated its efforts largely on 'psychological' healing through the gathering and airing of stories; however, it lacked significant institutional change, particularly change to the kinds of government institutions involved in residential schools and other forms of colonial domination. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang note: “settler colonialism is a structure not an event”. The Commission "is a project aimed at settling past wrongs but leaving the present and future comparatively unexamined".

Another problematic premise of the Commission is that society is only allowed “reconciliation on terms still largely dictated by the state”. Rather than allowing a grassroots movement to gain traction or forms of 'moral protest' to develop, it was the government that initiated the process of reconciliation and set the terms of it, thus it is still the colonial power that is dictating the terms of their colonial subjects' healing. This is clearly proven in the way the government "[imposed] a time limit on 'healing'"; so that this event can be reconciled and then moved on from. The approach by the Commission to engage with Indigenous peoples when and how it is most convenient for settlers can be seen as "yet another form of settler colonialism". Because Indigenous "recognition and reconciliation, from a Canadian perspective, [is] focused only on the wrongs of the past, and the situation as it exists today is ignored".

Unlike the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, the Canadian commission had no power to offer known perpetrators of abuse the possibility of amnesty in exchange for honest testimony about any abuses that may have been committed. The Canadian commission heard mostly from victims, and in "an effort to understand all aspects of the residential school experience... made a concerted effort to gather statements from former staff of residential schools". Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology, and Rodney A. Clifton, professor emeritus of education and a residential school supervisor in the 1960s, held that, while the residential school program had been harmful to many students, the commission had shown "indifference to robust evidence gathering, comparative or contextual data, and cause-effect relationships," which resulted in the commission's report telling "a skewed and partial story".

The commission held a series of national events in Winnipeg, Inuvik, Halifax, Saskatoon, Montreal, Edmonton, and Vancouver. In 2014, it reported that at least 4,000 Aboriginal children died in residential schools; five to seven percent of those who were enrolled in the institutions. The truth and reconciliation report did not compare its findings with rates and causes of mortality among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children attending public schools. Rubenstein and Clifton noted that the report also failed to consider Indian residential schools were typically located in rural areas far from hospitals, making treatment more difficult to acquire.

The commission's mandate was originally scheduled to end in 2014, with a final event in Ottawa. However, it was extended to 2015 as numerous records related to residential schools were provided to the commission by the federal government by order, in January 2013, of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. They needed to review these documents. The commission held its closing event in Ottawa from May 31 to June 3, 2015, including a ceremony at Rideau Hall with Governor General David Johnston.

What the Commission did

“During the six years of its operation, the Commission held events in all parts of the country" to meet with people who had attended residential schools, and the information gathered informed the 'Calls to Action' the commission produced. Much in the way that capitalist exploitation of land motivated early colonialism, the TRC seemed to set out to “own, and to exploit” the stories and experiences of Indigenous people as another “potential commodity". Cherokee artist and writer Jimmie Durham says he is "careful not to reveal too much" about himself or his culture because, as he writes: “understanding is a consumer product” in colonial society. A similar sentiment is voiced by Indigenous writer Alfred Simpson who wrote: “’I worry our participation [in the TRC] will benefit the state". It is the "colonial attitude… to assume control over the space, bodies and trade of others" and the TRC's information gathering method can be seen as an extension of this. For the colonial assimilation strategy, residential schools are "the remnant of [a] traditional culture which simply refuses to die or go away" and must be "transformed into the culture of the dominating society". The Commission, therefore, becomes a method for settlers to transform or absorb Indigenous memories of residential schools “into the culture of the dominant society, becoming popular and therefore profitable”. There are "many residential school survivors [who] will not tell their stories to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission". David Garneau suggests that an effective form of Indigenous resistance is "to refuse translation and full explanations" to settlers, because any knowledge acquired will be exploited. "The extraordinary people who do share their residential school experiences with Canada" do so "not [as] confessions designed to be reconciled in the sense of being smoothed over or even brought to agreement,… they are open wounds". An alternative interpretation of the TRC could be that the Commission sees itself as doing history a favor: that Indigenous people are becoming extinct and they need to hand over the stories of their “very Indian-ness to the settler for safekeeping”. This premise implies the extinction of Indigenous communities and the futurity of the settler, clearly assuming settler domination.

In its final report the TRC claims "Reconciliation must support Aboriginal people as they heal from the destructive legacies of colonization that have wreaked such havoc in their lives". This statement by the Commission says that colonialism is a legacy, when in fact it is undisputedly still happening today; "colonialism is not a singular historical event – the colonizer has not left". The statement by the TRC also implies that Indigenous people are "solely responsible for reconciliation: they must overcome their past”, and this problematically eradicates responsibility from the settler.

The Commission has branded itself as “healing” relationships by sharing the stories of Indigenous people to generate a more informed Canadian public. This "optics of recognition and reconciliation" has been seen as posturing on the part of the government; to appear to be addressing Indigenous peoples' concerns through the TRC, while managing to avoid addressing other issues, notably land-claims. The TRC has been a "distraction, [to] relieve the settler feeling of guilt or responsibility, and conceal the need to give up land, power and privilege". The Canadian government "sees its own ideas of sovereignty and nationhood as somehow threatened by Indigenous assertions" and they attempt "to contain these outbursts through largely symbolic gestures of political inclusion and recognition". The TRC only appears "to address its colonial history through symbolic acts of redress while in actuality 'further entrenching in law and practice the real bases of its control'".

As the Commission progressed, its focus turned back to colonialism and the settler, even in its final report stating: what is "at stake is Canada’s place as a prosperous, just, and inclusive democracy within [the] global world" – focussing on Canada rather than Indigenous peoples.Template:113 While the Commission claimed to be a "process of truth and healing, leading toward reconciliation" it also “[extended] innocence to the settler". The TRC's claim to be 'healing' Indigenous–settler relationships gets lost; instead the commission becomes a tool for settlers "to alleviate any sense of guilt or responsibility for Aboriginal oppression". Settlers are constantly striving to move past Indigenous issues because they are "disturbed by [their] own settler status", they are trying to "escape or contain the unbearable" reality of their "having harmed others just by being one's self". In this way the TRC can be seen as a "white harm reduction model"; not in the sense of reducing the harm white people have caused Indigenous people, but a model to "reduce the harm that white supremacy has had on white people", a model to reduce white guilt for white supremacy. In many ways "reconciliation will remain a 'pacifying discourse' that functions to assuage settler guilt, on the one hand, and absolve the federal government's responsibility to transform the colonial relationship". The government's "desire to reconcile is just as relentless as the desire to disappear the Native; it is a desire to not have to deal with this (Indian) problem anymore".

Calls to action

Upon closing, the commission issued a document identifying 94 "Calls to Action" to "redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation". These were divided into two categories: "Legacy" and "Reconciliation":

Redressing the harms resulting from the Indian residential schools, the proposed actions are identified in the following sub-categories:

In order to bring the federal and provincial governments and Indigenous nations of Canada into a reconciled state for the future, the proposed actions are identified in the following sub-categories: