Recently Re-read: Country of My Skull
January 30, 2010
While I was preparing for my specialization exams last summer, I read a ton of books. For the two exams, I had about 100 books to read in a very short period of time. I got good at skimming the material and pulling out relevant quotes, but because of the pressure to read quickly, I lost out on some of the nuances and beauty of the texts. Luckily, I recently had the chance to re-read one of these books and found that without the looming exam, I was able to appreciate the text much more.
In Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa, journalist Antjie Krog tells the story of the South African truth commission. It is a highly personal reflection on the process of national reconciliation after the fall of apartheid. When I first read it, I was looking for two sorts of information: 1) What were the basic facts of the commission? Who were the commissioners? Who testified? What was the public response? And 2) What were some of the theoretical issues with which the commission wrestled? How did it conceptualize truth? How did the concept of reconciliation change during the process? What did it mean to different sets of people within the country?
But on my second reading, I was able to focus far more on Krog’s personal experience of the commission and her struggle as a white Afrikaner dealing with the conflicting emotions of guilt, shame, pride, love and hope. It is a beautifully written, complex story that blends personal narrative with historical context and social commentary.
As I continue to follow the TRC in Canada, I wonder: How does one tell the story of a truth commission?With all its complexities and contestations, how does one weave together some sort of narrative that can speak to its inherent contradictions? Antjie Krog shows us that a layered text produced through a mixture of prose, poetry and journalism may be the answer.
Canada’s Colonialism – Article at TheMarkNews.com
January 21, 2010
A short piece on Canada’s colonial history, and Prime Minister Harper’s denial of it, is available at The Mark.
Alana Lajoie O’Malley writes:
“At the G20 Summit last September, our prime minister boasted that we “have no history of colonialism.” That the leader of our country can stand in front of dignitaries from around the world and speak these words is a testament to just how far we have to go in really understanding our national history.”
Read the full piece here.
Photo by axiepics available under a Creative Commons License
IRS TRC Heading West?
September 6, 2009
With the appointment of the new Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, there is talk of the IRS TRC moving from Ottawa to Winnipeg. An excerpt from a recent article in the Globe and Mail:
“The residential school population is primarily a Western Canada population,” [Justice Sinclair] said, estimating that about three quarters of the schools were located in Western and Northern Canada. “And so the survivor population is primarily in the west. Locating it outside of Ottawa was an easy decision.”
Justice Sinclair is also based in Winnipeg and so it seems like a natural choice. At the same time, others are concerned about the potential move. Mr. Cachagee, Executive Director or the National Residential School Survivors’ Society, worries that survivors that are not based in the west will feel isolated:
Specifically, Mr. Cachagee points to the fact that the headquarters will be in the west and that a 10-member advisory “survivor committee” does not include anyone from Ontario and Quebec and has only one eastern representative from Nova Scotia. The three commissioners are also from the west and north.
Debates regarding the make-up and location of the commission continue. The full article is available here.
A Fragmented Reconciliation Process?
July 9, 2009
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada continues to face obstacles. Delayed by one year, the Commission has now re-formed with three new Commissioners. The most recent debate involves the distinct groups that will be given voice through the Commission. In a recent Globe and Mail piece, Peter Irniq writes that the Inuit experience will not be adequately represented by the Commission. He calls for a separate Inuit TRC that will deal specifically with the Inuit experience in the Indian Residential School system, and writes that “The failure to appoint an Inuk to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a national disgrace.”
In a response piece a few days later, Bob Weber points out that there are Inuit members on the ten person panel that will advise the commission. The commission was not appointed through the Prime Minister’s office, as suggested by Mr. Irniq, but through an independent selection committee that included representatives from many of the stakeholders involved in the reconciliation process, including Mary Simon, head of the national Inuit group Inuit Tapirisat Kanatami. He also mentions that Mr. Irniq has actively started to raise support for a boycott of the commission.
Although I understand Mr. Irniq’s concerns that the Inuit experience will be marginalized in the national process of reconciliation, I don’t think that a separate Inuit TRC would solve this problem. The IRS TRC already fragments Aboriginal peoples experiences with assimilationist polices in Canada by focusing exclusively on the legacies of the IRS system. Further fragmentation will not promote reconciliation. Mr. Irniq’s concerns are valid, I just wonder if there isn’t a different way to approach this problem.
For example, I posted a few weeks ago on an exhibit at the National Archives in Ottawa, which focuses specifically on the Inuit experiences at the schools. The exhibit included testimonies from Inuit survivors of the schools. Some were in English, others were in Inuktitut, and the posters on the walls had translations available in French, English and Inuktitut. It’s important to recognize that cultural production of memory (through art, museum spaces, monuments, film etc.), and not just those discourses produced through commissions, play a vital role in raising awareness about this history, and can provide an outlet for survivors who prefer not to give testimonies to a commission linked with the state (even tangentially). It is also important not to get side-tracked by a focus on the three commissioners, especially since the commission will involve a large support staff including translators, administrators and counsellors from diverse communities.
The title for this post is “A Fragmented Reconciliation Process?” but perhaps this is misleading. All processes of reconciliation are fragmented, and in part it is through this fragmentation that questions are asked and dialogue is begun. The balance between fragmentation and a unified whole (however illusionary) is at the heart of these national processes of reconciliation.
To read Peter Irniq’s piece in the Globe and Mail, click here. For an article about these issues on CBC.ca, click here.
Update: The New Commission
June 10, 2009
As mentioned in a previous post, rumors have been circulating about the new Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Just after the one-year anniversary of its establishment, and on the eve of the anniversary of the official apology by Prime Minister Harper, the TRC confirmed that the new commission will be comprised of Justice Murray Sinclair of Manitoba, Marie Wilson, a former journalist and CBC North regional director from Yellowknife, and Wilton Littlechild, Alberta regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations. The mandate has been extended by one-year in order to make up for the time lost due to the resignations of the former commission. To read more visit: cbc.ca or the TRC website.
Given the setbacks of the first year, it may be helpful to re-visit some of the complicated issues that face the commission. Ovide Mercredi’s lecture on TVO’s Big Ideas last year could provide a good start, as could the article entitled “A Just Society? Canada’s Adventure in Truth and Reconciliation” published in Dissent by Feisal G. Mohamed. Both Mercredi and Mohamed raise questions and concerns about what kind of justice is pursued through these national commissions. In the Canadian case, these issues include how testimonies will be collected, how the commission envisions the concepts of “truth” and “reconciliation,” and the ways in which the commission may obscure other issues facing Aboriginal communities. It will be interesting to watch the coming weeks and months as the commission regroups and begins this process with renewed focus.
An anniversary and a fresh start?
June 3, 2009
UPDATE: JUNE 10th, 2009 – The IRS TRC has confirmed the appointment of the new comission. To read their official statement, see my recent post or visit the TRC website.
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We have just passed the one year anniversary of the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada. Although the TRC has not put out an official statement, the Globe and Mail is reporting that decisions have been made regarding the new commission. (All three original commissioners had stepped down by January 2009, and the search for the new commission has been ongoing since that time.) Mr. Justice Murray Sinclair, a respected aboriginal judge from Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench, will serve as the chair. The other two commissioners will be Wilton Littlechild, the Alberta regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations and Marie Wilson, a former regional director of CBC North.
The disputes that led to Justice Harry LaForme’s resignation last fall, particularly regarding the structure of power within the commission, have reportedly been resolved. To read more see the full article at the Globe and Mail. Hopefully, the TRC will soon confirm these appointments, and this new beginning will signal a significant step towards commencement of the five year mandate.
To read the statement from the outgoing commissioners, Jane Morely and Claudette Dumont-Smith, visit the TRC website.
Recently Read: On Forgiveness
March 3, 2009
In his essay, “On Forgiveness,” Derrida discusses the paradox of granting forgiveness: true forgiveness consists of forgiving the unforgivable. Throughout the essay, Derrida is working within the realm of contradictions. He negotiates the terrain between pure and mediated, conditional and unconditional, and individual and collective forgiveness.
Both forgiveness and reconciliation are concepts that have secular and religious interpretations. Although there is a trend towards an attempted liberalization and secularization of reconciliation discourse, the theological undertones of reconciliation continue to play an important role in the way in which reconciliation takes place. As Derrida illustrates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s role as Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission undoubtedly influenced the public’s perception of reconciliation in relation to forgiveness. The tensions between religious and secular conceptions of reconciliation also foreground the roles of individuals in comparison to those of the collective. Secular ideas of reconciliation tend to emphasize tolerance on the individual level and see amnesty on the collective level as a valid way to proceed. Religious conceptions of reconciliation, however, emphasize the idea of forgiveness and national healing.
Derrida argues that the concept of forgiveness is misplaced when used in relation to a national trauma. For example, he writes that “forgiveness must engage two singularities: the guilty (the ‘perpetrator’ as they say in South Africa) and the victim” (42). If a third party steps in to mediate this process (such as a national truth commission or juridical entity), pure forgiveness is no longer possible. Forgiveness then stays in the domain of the individual, not the state. And once the process of reconciliation has begun, pure forgiveness is no longer possible. Because once one embarks on a process of understanding the Other, the guilty, the perpetrator, the irreducibility and incomprehensibility of the Other is shattered. For Derrida, pure forgiveness “must plunge, but ludicly, into the night of the unintelligible” (49). Because reconciliation works to make sense of this unintelligibility, it drives one away from forgiveness.
At the end of this essay, he explores the implications of granting forgiveness. The granting of forgiveness implies a legitimate claim to power in order to do so. Derrida asserts that this form of power must be divorced from forgiveness; pure forgiveness is one without sovereignty (59).
Derrida himself notes that he is ‘torn’ between the “ethical vision of forgiveness” and the practicality of reconciliation (51). His ruminations on forgiveness do not imply that reconciliation as part of a political process is impossible, nor that it should be avoided. Rather, he is arguing against the conflation of the two terms: forgiveness and reconciliation.
Moving Forward – Search for New TRC Commissioners
February 16, 2009
Since its establishment in June of 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada has faced many setbacks. After the resignation of all three commissioners, a new selection committee has been formed with the hope of giving the process a fresh start. The committee is chaired by Honorable Frank Iacobucci and includes representation from various sectors involved in the TRC. The representatives include: Phil Fontaine, representative plaintiff and the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, on behalf of the AFN and the Métis National Council; Mary Simon, President of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, on behalf of the Inuit representatives; Michael Wernick, Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs, on behalf of the Government of Canada; James Scott, on behalf of The Anglican Church of Canada, The Presbyterian Church in Canada, and The United Church of Canada; Pierre Baribeau, on behalf of the Catholic entities; and Len Marchand, on behalf of claimants under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement.
One of the committee’s key goals is to clarify the governance roles of the chair and the commissioners. The early obstacles faced by the Canadian TRC illustrate that a clear mandate as well as clarity in administrative processes is vital to the success of an already difficult and complicated process.
To read more, visit: www.trc-cvr.ca
More Resignations at the Canadian TRC
January 31, 2009
The two remaining Commissioners of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Janet Morley and Claudette Dumont-Smith, announced yesterday that they will be stepping down. This announcement follows the resignation of the former Chair of the Commission, Justice Harry LaForme who left the Commission in October.
According to the official joint statement put forward by Morley and Dumon-Smith, they believe that the Commission would benefit from a fresh start and can learn from these early difficulties it has faced. They also remind the public that “Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is not the first such process to have a troubled start. Challenges such as we have faced are not uncommon and have been experienced by many other, if not all, Truth and Reconciliation processes around the world. Rather than seeing what has happened in the initial stage of our Commission as a reason to doubt its long-term success, we believe it should be seen as an opportunity to learn from the difficulties encountered in order to build a stronger process for the future.” (The full statement can be found here.)
It’s unfortunate that the TRC has faced another setback. They had already postponed their first national event, which was to be held in Vancouver last week. Hopefully, this signals a fresh start that will allow the new commissioners, whoever they may be, to have the credibility and trust necessary to continue this process.
Read more about responses and future plans at “Remaining Two Commissioners Resign” on cbc.ca.
Necessary Challenges?
December 18, 2008
As I posted a few weeks ago, the Chair of the Canadian TRC, Justice Harry LaForme has stepped down. My initial response was that this did not bode well for the TRC, that if the three Commissioners could not work out their differences, how could they deal with the complicated task of reconciling a nation?
Upon further reflection, I think this current obstacle is indeed indicative of the process that will follow, that there will be many challenges faced. But, I’ve realized that this may be necessary. How could it be any other way? The legacy of the Indian Residential Schools is a troubled and traumatic history. The process in dealing with this history will necessarily face obstacles. The history is complicated, so the process will be as well. The TRC should not attempt to simplify this part of Canadian history, or subsume it under a grander narrative. The discussions that arise out of this process will be valuable. They will illuminate some the larger issues being dealt with through the Commission. Justice LaForme mentioned that one of his reasons for stepping down is because the other two Commissioners wanted to focus more on ‘truth’ than on ‘reconciliation.’ It seems clear that the Commissioners hold different ideas regarding the definition of these two terms.
It is easy to forget that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Comission, generally applauded for helping to deal with the crimes committed under the system of apartheid, faced many obstacles and challenges through its mandate. At the same time, it thrust the idea of reconciliation into the national and international spotlight.
The Canadian TRC will continue to face obstacles, and the Canadian public will continue to both criticize and praise the motives and processes it follows. As I continue to research the national and international contexts for the Canadian TRC, one issue continues to be raised: what kind of justice comes from a truth and reconciliation commission? There are no easy answers to this question.
