The challenges of structural injustice to reconciliation: truth and reconciliation in Canada

ABSTRACT

Lu’s distinction between interactional and structural injustice helps to clarify both the normative significance and some of the shortcomings of recommendations adopted by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). At the same time, the TRC highlights three challenges to addressing structural injustice in the context of reconciliation.

KEYWORDS:

• Truth and reconciliation
• Canada
• structural injustice
• Indigenous people

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ See, for example, Lu’s discussion (2017, 126–39) of Korean comfort women under Japanese imperial rule.

² As Lu argues, the coverage of a structural approach may also be incomplete; even broad and potentially radical structural change may do little to address the alienation experienced by victims of conflict.