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ABSTRACT
Since the release of the Final Report of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, many non-Indigenous Canadians, politicians, and educational and cultural institutions have embraced reconciliation. Yet, many Indigenous people in Canada remain skeptical. In this article, I examine six reasons Indigenous people may resist reconciliation. Reconciliation may aim to restore a relationship that never existed in the first place, and may limit an Indigenous future. Reconciliation may look more like adaptation than transformation. Reconciliation may serve as a government project whose primary aim is to bolster state legitimacy. Reconciliation may reflect the desire, for settler-descendants, for expiation or a ‘move to innocence.’ Ultimately, reconciliation is about living together, which may be incompatible with more transformative political projects, such as decolonization.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Courtney Jung is a professor in the Department of Political Science at University of Toronto. Along with many articles and chapters, she is the author of Then I was Black: South African Political Identities in Transition (Yale University Press, 2000); The Moral Force of Indigenous Politics: Critical Liberalism and the Zapatistas (Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Lactivism (Basic Books, 2015). She has been a member at the Institute for Advanced Study and received fellowships from Fulbright, The Mellon Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is currently a Jackman Humanities Institute Faculty Fellow, working on the problem of reconciliation in Canada.
Notes
1. Canada Council for the Arts (Citationn.d.). http://canadacouncil.ca/funding/reconciliation. Accessed April 4, 2017.
2. Canada (Citationn.d.). http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/france/150Canada150.aspx?lang=eng. Accessed July 31, 2018.
3. Belcourt and McMahon (Citation2016). https://www.redmanlaughing.com/listen/2016/3/red-man-laughing-reflections-on-reconciliation-christi-belcourt. Accessed November 10, 2017.
4. http://activehistory.ca/2016/01/political-depression-in-a-time-of-reconciliation/. Accessed March 28, 2017.
5. Others disagree. Patrick Macklem argues that settlers initially sought to secure their ‘precarious legal and factual footing on Indigenous territories by acts of mutual recognition,’ looking back to a period of legal pluralism in Indigenous – settler relations, when ‘manifold Indigenous legal orders exercised law making authority over territories and peoples in the Americas.’ Macklem retrieves this history to argue that the ethos of legal pluralism that once characterized Indigenous – Canadian relations ‘could form a foundation for the recovery of legal pluralism’ in the contemporary constitutional environment. Macklem (Citation2016, 4, 12).
6. [Citation1996] 2 S.C.R. 821. R. v. Pamajewon.
7. Exceptions may be made for hunting with guns, but the rights do not include, for example, commercial fishing.
8. See for example Torres and Milun (Citation1990).
9. Coulthard (Citation2014, 169).
10. Liberal Party of Canada (Citation2015) .
11. Natural Resources Canada (Citation2014) .
12. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (Citation2014). https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1423075088981/1423075164050. Accessed April 9, 2017.
13. Broadbent Institute (Citation2017). http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/annastanley/internal_documents_indigenous_children. Accessed April 17, 2017.
14. Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Canada) (Citation2015).
15. Newman (Citation2016).
16. Canada (Citation2017b). https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/news/2017/02/government_of_canadalaunchesindigenousyouthemploymentprogram.html. Accessed July 31, 2018.
17. Canada House of Commons (Citation2014). http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=6658485&Language=e&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=2&File=225. Accessed April 3, 2017.
18. Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (Citation2014). https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1423075088981/1423075164050. Accessed April 9, 2017.
19. Canada (Citation2017a). http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100033607/1100100033608. Accessed April 3, 2017.
20. Altman (Citation2016).
21. Altman (Citation2016, 221).
22. Altman (Citation2016, 226).
23. Coulthard (Citation2013); also in Coulthard (Citation2014).
24. Arthur (Citation2009).
25. Arthur (Citation2014); de Greiff (Citation2006).
26. Jung (Citation2010).
27. Malamud-Goti (Citation1989).
28. Clark, da Costa, and Maddison (Citation2016, 4).
29. Jung (Citation2008).
30. Jung (Citation2010).
31. Mackrael (Citation2015); Anaya (Citation2014).
32. Assembly of First Nations (Citation2006, 1).
33. Putz (Citation2008, 1).
34. Canada's Residential Schools: Reconciliation. The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 6, p.230. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples also recommended such a proclamation, which was never issued.
35. Wolfe (Citation2006).
36. Coulthard and Epstein (Citation2015).
37. Canada's Residential Schools: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 6, p. 30.
38. Canada's Residential Schools: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 6, p. 32.
39. beginningcatholic.com (n.d.).
40. Tuck and Yang (2012, 9).
41. Tuck and Yang (2012, 10–13).
42. Tuck and Yang (2012, 17–19).
43. Tuck and Yang (2012, 35).
44. Jung (Citation2010, 13).
45. Simpson (Citation2016).
46. Belcourt (Citation2016).
47. Tuck and Yang (Citation2012, 7).
48. Tuck and Yang (Citation2012, 26).
49. Tuck and Yang (Citation2012, 27).