Recognition, Redistribution, and Representation: Assessing the Transformative Potential of Reparations for the Indian Residential Schools Experience
Introduction Through treaty settlements reached with Indigenous[2] nations beginning in the 1800s, the government of Canada was invested with responsibility for the education of Indigenous children. Therefore, policies related to the education of Status Indians fell under the jurisdiction of the federal government and these policies were later expressed in the establishment of the Indian residential school (IRS) system (Episkenew 2009). During the residential school era, approximately from the 1830s to the 1990s, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children, along with their relatives and communities, suffered wrongs committed against them by the Canadian government and churches. These wrongs include but are not limited to: widespread sexual, physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse; bullying (student-on-student abuse); the aggressive assimilation of Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture; substandard living conditions at IRS; and neglect resulting in death and disease (Milloy 1999). Various attempts at reconciliation, such as the 1998 Statement of Reconciliation, the Alternative Dispute Resolution Program, the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA 2006), and the 2008 Statement of Apology, have been introduced to redress the IRS experience and acknowledge the harm done. The heretofore lack of conflict resolution success demonstrates the complexity and seriousness of the legacy of IRS, as well as the inadequacy of the previous processes to heal the resulting damage.In the context of IRS reparations, of particular interest are the 1998 Statement of Reconciliation and the corresponding 1998 Gathering Strength report on the one hand, and the 2008 Statement of Apology and the IRSSA on the other. These are the primary focus of this paper because they embody the federal government's responses that, with varying success, have been directed at resolving the former IRS students' calls for reparations and could also be considered the major milestones in the history of IRS legal battles. By critically evaluating these responses, this paper seeks to assess their ability to address the issues that are at the genesis of the Indigenous-settler colonial state relations in the post-IRS era. More precisely, the question that I pose here is, "Do these mechanisms of redress have the potential to challenge and destabilize the foundations of colonialism?"Scholars such as Taiaiake Alfred (1999; 2005; 2009), Matt James (2008), and Paulette Regan (2010) draw connections and critically evaluate the intersections between state-issued reparations such as apologies, monetary compensation schemes for historical injustices, and decolonization. Chrisjohn, Young, and Maraun (2006), for example, note that in order to right a historical wrong like IRS, a complete acknowledgement and recognition of the harm done must occur. Others advance that apologies must be coupled with monetary compensation or any appropriate type of reparations in order to be considered meaningful or risk being disregarded as empty words (see, for example, Corntassel and Holder 2008). Furthermore, Corntassel, Chaw-win-is, and T'lakwadzi (2009) observe that colonial injustices, such as IRS, are often intertwined and interrelated with other injustices, which must be resolved collectively. They go on to argue that in Canada, the IRS experience is often treated in isolation and separate from the issue of land and therefore "ignor[es] the fact that the issues [IRS] survivors[3] contend with from the residential school era are rooted in the forced removal of entire families and communities from their homelands" (p.8).Political theorist and philosopher Nancy Fraser suggests that in order to resolve systemic wrongs like colonialism, a theory of justice must first conceptualize them as unjust (Nelund 2011). As such, comprehensive and holistic remedies are required not only for symptoms of systemic injustices such as the IRS system, but they must also address the deeper structural and institutional causes of these injustices. …
Decolonization as Reconciliation: The Colonial Dilemma of Canada's Residential School Apology and Restitution
Between the 1870s and the 1980s in Canada, 150,000 indigenous Canadian children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to residential schools in a government-led policy aimed at assimilating them into Christian Canadians. Many indigenous children were subjected to psychological, physical, and sexual abuse in these institutions. This article examines the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) launched by the Canadian Prime Minister in 2008, and questions its ability to bring about reconciliation. It argues that the structure and nature of the TRC stems from the same colonial structure and context that led to the formation of residential schools in the first place, and argues that for genuine reconciliation, non-indigenous Canadians must engage in a 'decolonizing' process and accept responsibility that the colonial mindset behind the policy of residential schools continues to affect relationships with indigenous people today.
Aristocratic Century: The sinews of power: political
In his excellent book on the Secretaries of State, Mark Thomson offered ‘the paradox of continuing domination of the aristocracy and the simultaneous insignificance of the House of Lords, per se ’. It is true that, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the supremacy of the House of Commons in financial matters was a wellestablished convention. The claims of the Commons to an undisputed control over money matters, which had been urged before the Civil War, were resumed immediately after the Restoration and a protracted dispute with the House of Lords began. In 1661 the Lords resolved that there were no precedents in history for this new claim by the House of Commons. In 1671, the Commons retorted that taxation ought not to be questioned by the Lords and in 1678 they reiterated that supply was ‘the undoubted and sole right of the Commons’ and ‘ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords’. The Lords' attempt in 1692 to assess their own taxes was also abandoned, though they retired under cover of a rather insubstantial smoke-screen that they maintained their power of amendment to be a ‘fundamental, inherent and undoubted right from which their lordships can never depart’. That established, they departed. Geoffrey Holmes quotes a nice example from 1702 when the bishop of Carlisle found himself the only peer answering to a money bill, ‘no other lord in the House regarded what was doing, this being only (pro forma) to preserve a seeming right to dissent from, or amend, any part of a money bill’.