Recently, I’ve been reading about the role that indigenous literature can play in the process of
reconciliation in Canada. I’m currently finishing Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing where she explores the work of Aboriginal authors including Basil Johnston, Maria Campbell and Beatrice Culleton Mosionier. But this post will focus on a short story from the collection, Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past (published in 2005).
Although the book is filled with excellent writing, the narrative that I found most striking was Thomas King’s piece entitled “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens.” Here, King tells a tale of a coyote who becomes involved in rounding up “enemy aliens.” The story is set during the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. As the definition of enemy alien changes in the story, King illustrates the fickle nature of dividing people into categories of “us” and “them.”
I have been curious for some time about how the process of redress for historical injustices in Canada has taken shape. In particular, the demand for an apology and reparation for Japanese Canadians interned during the second world war is one that I have followed closely. And I have often wondered how to relate these two experiences (of Japanese Canadians and Aboriginal peoples) to each other without erasing the important differences. Thomas King’s work in his short story is impressive in this regard. He uses the familiar character of the trickster coyote to tie the two historical narratives together. In his foreword to the story, he explains his intentions:
“I know the story of the Japanese internment in Canada. I know it as most Canadians know it.
In pieces.
From a distance.
But whenever I hear the story, I think about Indians, for the treatment the Canadian government afforded Japanese people during the Second World War is strikingly similar to the treatment that the Canadian government has always afforded Native people, and whenever I hear either of these stories, a strange thing happens.
I think of the other.
I’m not suggesting that Native people have suffered the way the Japanese suffered or that the Japanese suffered the way Native people have. I’m simply suggesting that hatred and greed produce much the same sort of results, no matter who we practice on” (158).
King’s story captured my imagination. Not only because it is a well-told tale, but because it opens up a way of creating a particular type of Canadian narrative, one that incorporates many voices while maintaining ties to an indigenous mode of story-telling. It also works to close a gap between seemingly disparate histories, drawing attention to similarities rather than differences. I recommend the book in general, and this story in particular.
Toronto Star: “No Truth, No Reconciliation”
July 24, 2010
The title of the front-page Toronto Star article today, “No Truth, No Reconciliation” refers explicitly to those former students who have passed on since the creation of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2006. For those students, the article states, there can be no truth, and no reconciliation. The article also implies that the quest for truth and reconciliation may be stalled in general, painting a picture of a commission facing extreme difficulties: “The saga of truth and reconciliation is fraught with scandal, power struggles, firings, lost friendships and soul-destroying delays,” writes author Linda Diebel.
I agree that the commission has faced struggles, and also that time is of the essence for aging survivors. I also believe, however, that the road to reconciliation is always fraught with challenges. Having attended the first national event in June in Winnipeg, I witnessed the complicated journey towards reconciliation. The event was filled with contradictions and conflicting voices. And having lived in South Africa almost a decade after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established (I was there from 2004-2005), I know that these challenges are not easily resolved. Indeed, people still debate the strengths and weaknesses of the South African TRC in dealing with the injustices of apartheid.
Linda Diebel’s article discusses the challenges of the commission, including the heavy hand of government involvement, the setbacks caused by resignations and staff shuffles, and budget concerns. It’s important that we are made aware of these challenges, and that dialogue about the commission occurs in the public sphere. I think too that it is important to remember that reconciliation must occur both through the commission’s work and outside of it. Otherwise, Canadians (both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) won’t feel engaged or implicated by the reconciliation process.
To read more from Linda Diebel’s article, click here.
Above: an image of the closing event at the Canadian TRC’s first national gathering.
Below: a list of some of the coverage of the Canadian Truth Commission’s first national gathering in Winnipeg. (Thanks to Viola, Leonard and Harmony for some these links!)
Truth and Reconciliation Walkers Headed for Winnipeg (Wawatay News Online)
Strahl Breaks Down at Hearings Into Residential Schools (Global Winnipeg)
Ottawa Makes Own Gesture of Healing at Truth and Reconciliation Event (Edmonton Journal)
Minister Strahl Delivers A Speech on the Truth and Reconciliation National Event (IsumaTV)
Residential Schools Will Be Nixed from Indian Act (The Vancouver Province)
Residential School Stories Move From Shadows (CBC.ca)
Ottawa Intends to Amend Indian Act (Financial Post)
Commission Will Hear Residential School Truths that Will ‘Heal Us All’ (Metro)
Residential Schools: Stories to Tell and Re-tell (The Globe and Mail)
Truth and Reconciliation (video clips covering the first national gathering – The National)
Harbinger of Truth Sees Hope for Future (Edmonton Journal)
Declaration Adoption is ‘a step on the journey of reconciliation’ (Indian Country Today)
Pupils to Study Residential Schools (Winnipeg Free Press)
Some Former Residential School Students Struggle with Church Presence at Reconciliation Event (The Globe and Mail)
IRS TRC National Gathering – Information
May 23, 2010
Information regarding the IRS TRC’s first national gathering is now available online here.
Here are some highlights as listed on the IRS TRC’s website:
Day One
*Lighting of Sacred Fire Ceremony, Pipe Ceremony and Four Direction Drum Calling
*Opening Remarks from Commissioners and Survivor Committee Representative
*Churches hosting Reception for Survivors
*Sharing Circle with Commissioners, dignitaries and survivors
*screening of ‘Older Than America’ with director Georgina Lightning in attendance
*Musical Performances
See Agenda
Day Two
*Prairie Perspectives on Indian Residential Schools, an academic conference
*Unity Ride enters site of Forks
*‘Untitled’ World Premiere of new play by Ian Ross
*Inuit showcase of Drum dancing and Throat singing
*Readings of works by Authors, including Scotia Bank Giller Prize winner Joseph Boyden
See Agenda
Day Three
*Metis Jamboree
*screening of ‘Muffins for Granny’ with director Nadia Mclaren in attendance
*Musical Performances
See Agenda
Day Four
*Red Rider Skateboarding Team demo with DJ
*Powwow
See Agenda
Also, the IRS TRC website has had a bit of a makeover. See the two versions of the site below. Notably the logo is different, and the newer site makes use of more archival imagery.
Old version:
New version:
I heart North Bay: Part I
March 8, 2010
I’ve just returned to New York from North Bay, Ontario where I attended Nipissing University’s conference on Truth, Reconciliation and the Residential Schools. The organizers put together a great program that involved both the academic community and the Nipissing First Nations community. I presented a short paper entitled: The Limits of Testimony: Contextualizing Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.
Because the IRS TRC is still in its early stages, the paper focused on a comparative analysis. In particular, I focused on one specific, puzzling testimony, given to the South African TRC in 1996 by Mrs. Konile, whose son was killed by apartheid security forces in 1986. A recent book has been published about this testimony, co-authored by Antjie Krog (an Afrikaner poet and journalist), Nosisi Mpolweni (Xhosa lecturer and linguist) and Kopano Ratele (psychologist). The book is entitled There Was This Goat: Investigating the Truth Commission Testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile and the authors spend the bulk of the book discussing one particular testimony, given by Mrs. Konile. This testimony was difficult to understand for many reasons – it did not follow a linear trajectory, it mixed her dream life with her waking life, and made reference to cultural and traditional symbols that would have been difficult for outsiders of her culture to understand. Add to that that her testimony was translated from Xhosa to English and transcribed, and one begins to understand how difficult it may be to comprehend one not-so-simple testimony. The authors of There Was This Goat, which is a line from Mrs. Konile’s testimony, embark on a journey of understanding as they imagine conversations about this testimony and begin to discuss with Mrs. Konile her experience of losing her son, with the truth commission and its aftermath. In one section of the text, where the authors imagine a conversation between two black South Africans, one says to the other:
To fully understand our words you have to understand a whole history of fear, hiding, running, evading, and still trying to maintain a sense of dignity and a life worth something. To truly hear Mrs. Konile’s truth, and the truth of most of the black people who testified at the Truth Commission hearings, you have to work hard to understand it, you have to gain our trust. It’s not going to be given to you just like that, because you may turn and use it against us, as happened many, many times under apartheid (32).
By looking at Mrs. Konile’s testimony and the work of Krog, Mpolweni, and Ratele, my paper explored how testimony is something that must be actively engaged and understood within a much larger historical and cultural context. (I posted a few weeks ago about another of Antjie Krog’s books, Country of My Skull, and There Was This Goat is another excellent, engaging read about the politics of truth commissions.)
Thanks to the organizers and the Nipissing First Nations, who were so generous with sharing their experiences.
Truth and Reconciliation Event (Dec. 11) in Toronto
December 4, 2009
I’m excited to be attending this upcoming event in Toronto:
“They Came for the Children”
December 11, 5:00-7:00 pm
Bennett Lecture Hall
Flavelle House
78 Queens Park
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
The Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, Chair of Truth and Reconciliation Canada, will speak on the Indian Residential School experience and its legacy.
Justice Sinclair’s presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.
The event is open to the public and admission is free.
To register for this event, please send an email to:conferences.law@utoronto.ca. Please put TRC in the subject line.
This event will also be webcast live at:http://www.law.utoronto.ca/conferences/sinclair.html
Conference Number 5: Washington, D.C.
November 21, 2009
The American Studies Association (ASA) Conference was held this year in Washington, D.C. (Nov. 5th – 8th, 2009), and I had the pleasure of presenting on a panel entitled, “The Courts of Public Memory: Trauma, Nation, and Reconciliation.”
The panel was chaired by scholar Lisa Yoneyama, and the papers were:
Robert Eap, University of Southern California (CA)
Rethinking Impunity: A Critique of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
Naomi Angel, New York University (NY)
Memory, Nation, and Social Transformation in the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Zenia Kish, New York University (NY)
Remembering Ukraine’s Famine-Terror of 1932–1933: Post-Soviet Memory as National Politics
Julie Thi Underhill, University of California, Berkeley (CA)
Elusive Justice: Democratic Kampuchea’s Cultural Genocide of the Muslim Cham
Before attending the conference, I was worried that I was suffering from ‘conference-burnout,’ so instead of rushing around and trying to take in too much, I decided to attend only a few panels and focus on learning from my fellow-panelists. It was great to draw connections between questions of social and criminal justice and the politics of memory across diverse geographical and temporal sites, and to continue this conversation after the panel. I was inspired by the work of my fellow panelists, and thrilled to meet Professor Yoneyama.
2009 has been a ridiculous year for conferences. I presented at five this year, and although each provided a unique and valuable experience, I’ve decided that maybe one or two would be far more manageable in the future! For now, it’s time to focus on my dissertation proposal…
For a brief recap of the other conferences:
Conference #1: American Comparative Literature Association, Cambridge.
Conference #2: Canadian Communication Association, Ottawa.
Conference #3: Encuentro (Hemispheric Institute Conference), Bogota.
Conference #4: Eleventh Berlin Roundtables: The Politics of Memory, Berlin.
Above image (from left to right): Julie, Naomi, Robert and Zenia
“Witnessing the Future” Event
October 13, 2009
On Thursday, October 15th, the IRS TRC chair, Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, the two commissioners, Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild, and the Governor General of Canada, Honourable Michaëlle Jean will attend the “Witnessing the Future” Event where the future of the TRC mandate will be addressed.
Survivors of the schools, government officials and church leaders will be in attendance to share their stories. A live webcast of the proceedings will be broadcast at www.trc-cvr.ca commencing at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 15th, 2009.
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.
