scholarly journals Introduction

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Bell ◽  
Hadley Friedland
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Many

The articles in this special issue all take up some of the many challenges and opportunities that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) identified as crucial for reconciliation in its 2015 Final Report. Some engage with the current Canadian political and legal system’s impact on Indigenous peoples, while others acknowledge these but focus more on the enduring principles and possibilities of Indigenous legal traditions and the potential for operationalizing jurisdictional spaces for implementation. All speak to the importance of developing a narrative and understanding of intergenerational responsibility and relationality at the core of any enduring reconciliation.

Reconciliation and Environmental Racism in Mi’kma’ki

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorene Bernard
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Healing Journey ◽  
United Nations Declaration

There has been more talk but not enough action on reconciliation since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its final report in 2015 containing ninety-four calls to action (Truth and Reconciliation Canada 2015). Indigenous people have not experienced the reconciliation intended in the actions that Canada has agreed to implement. Indigenous people and all Canadians need to hold Canada accountable to these actions for true reconciliation to manifest in Canadian society. The TRC calls to action and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) hold particular meaning and hope for me, as a survivor of Indian Residential Schools (IRS), and many other survivors who have gone through the TRC process. Truth is the first step toward reconciliation; understanding is the second step, and remediation is the third. Water is sacred. Protecting the water and asserting our rights in the Peace and Friendship Treaties are my responsibilities as a Mi’kmaw woman and rights holder. They are also an integral aspect of my healing journey. When I acknowledge Canadians’ habitation on the unceded lands of the Mi’kmaq, I mean that acknowledgment from the core of my spirit, the spirit of my ancestors, and my future generations. I am living that acknowledgment.

scholarly journals RECONCILIATION IN TRANSLATION: INDIGENOUS LEGAL TRADITIONS AND CANADA’S TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Anker
Keyword(s):  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
The World

One of the key elements of reconciliation identified in the recent final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [TRC] is the revitalization of Indigenous law and legal traditions. Indeed, the practices of the TRC itself have attempted to embody this principle. However, a concern about state-sponsored reconciliation is that the recognition of Indigenous legal traditions is an empty gesture without a robust engagement with them. This article offers one possible method for outsiders to engage with Indigenous traditions in a way that goes beyond lip service and beyond the limitations of superficial forms of recognition in which equivalence is too quickly assumed. By paying attention to the ways that Indigenous principles and practices are embedded in a network of ideas about the world, a picture of a whole “legal sensibility” emerges that, through comparison, shows the dominant legal sensibility to be one alternative among many. In this way, reconciliation is approached as a process of “unsettling” what is taken for 4granted in mainstream understandings of reconciliation and law. Un des principaux éléments de la réconciliation établis dans le récent rapport final de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada [CVR] est la revitalisation du droit autochtone et des traditions juridiques autochtones. À vrai dire, la CVR elle-même a tenté d’intégrer ce principe dans ses pratiques. Cependant, une des craintes relatives à la réconciliation chapeautée par l’État est que la reconnaissance des traditions juridiques autochtones soit un geste vain si elle n’est pas accompagnée d’un engagement ferme. Dans cet article, l’auteure présente un moyen possible de permettre aux profanes d’intégrer les traditions autochtones en dépassant les vœux pieux et les limites des formes superficielles de reconnaissance dans lesquelles l’équivalence est trop vite supposée. Lorsqu’on est attentif aux façons dont on intègre les principes et pratiques autochtones à une conception du monde, l’image d’une « sensibilité juridique » tout entière se dégage qui, par la comparaison, montre que la sensibilité juridique dominante n’est qu’une sensibilité parmi de nombreuses autres. Ainsi, la réconciliation est abordée comme une démarche consistant à « décoloniser » ce qui est tenu pour acquis dans la conception habituelle de la réconciliation et du droit.

Any Role for Human Rights in the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Addressing Forced Assimilation?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Hans Morten Haugen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The North ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
The Right

Abstract Norway’s policies regarding Sámi and most national minorities in an historic perspective can be characterized as forced assimilation; except for Jews and Roma, where the historic policy can be termed exclusion. The Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (trc) is intended to be a broad-based process, resulting in a report to the Norwegian Parliament in 2022. After identifying various explanations for the relatively strong standing of the (North) Sámi domestically and in international forums, the article identifies various ways that human rights will be important for the trc’s work and final report: (i) self-determination; (ii) participation in political life; (iii) participation in cultural life; (iv) family life; (v) private life; and (vi) human dignity. Some of these rights are relatively wide, but all give relevant guidance to the trc’s work. The right to private life did not prevent the Norwegian Parliament’s temporary law to enable the trc’s access to archives

Reading (Re)conciliation in White Settler and Chinese Canadian Narratives: From Liberal towards Transformative Approaches

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210005
Author(s):  
Petra Fachinger
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
White Settler ◽  
Chinese Canadian

This article explores how four settler narratives situate themselves differently within the reconciliation discourse in response to the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. In my reading of Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s The Spawning Grounds (2016) and Jennifer Manuel’s The Heaviness of Things That Float (2016) alongside Doretta Lau’s “How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?” (2014) and Amy Fung’s Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being (2019), I show how these narratives express different degrees of critical reflection on the settler colonial state and differ in their acknowledgement of Indigenous resurgence. I adopt David B. MacDonald’s distinction between “liberal reconciliation,” which is based on a “shared vison of a harmonious future,” and “transformative reconciliation,” which “is about fundamentally problematizing the settler state as a colonial creation, a vector of cultural genocide, and one that continues inexorably to suppress Indigenous collective aspirations for self-determination and sovereignty” as a critical framework.

scholarly journals Jordan’s Principle: Reconciliation and the First Nations Child

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Colleen Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Residential Schools ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Child Welfare Services ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Nations Child ◽  
The Individual

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was mandated to “document the individual and collective harms” of residential schools and to “guide and inspire a process of truth and healing, leading toward reconciliation.”  The stories of survivors revealed the intergenerational and egregious harms of taking children from their families and communities. In seeking to redress the legacy of the residential schools era, the TRC Calls to Action include greater recognition of self-governance of Indigenous Peoples, as well as numerous recommendations for equitable funding of health, educational, and child welfare services.

Gender Implementation in the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascha Bueno-Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Funding Sources ◽  
International Pressure ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Feminist Movements

This chapter examines how the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC) reinforces a logic that upholds social hierarchies while also opening new spaces to consider a gender analysis. When the PTRC began its investigation in August 2001, a gender analysis was not included. However, the commission was compelled to integrate the issue of gender into its investigation due to international pressure coupled with funding sources that required a gender component, as well as Peruvian women's and feminist movements' advocacy. This chapter analyzes the struggle for inclusion within the PTRC by focusing on the debate around the meaning of gender, its methodological operationalization, and incorporation into the final report. It shows how the push to document direct human rights violations against women led the PTRC to make a concerted effort to include a gender analysis and to address gender-based violence, specifically sexual violence.

scholarly journals Telling Our Stories / Animating Our Past: A Status Report on Oral History and Digital Media

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven High ◽  
Jessica Mills ◽  
Stacey Zembrzycki
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Status Report ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Hard Drives ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Many ◽  
Oral History Interviews

Tens of thousands of oral history interviews sitting in archival drawers, on computer hard drives, or on library bookshelves have never been listened to. Thousands of new interviews are being added each year by the many large testimony projects now underway, including Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Historica–Dominion Institute’s Memory Project. Although the existence of these immense collections is widely known, the interviews are difficult to access. How can we combine oral history and new media to ensure that the potential of such important projects is fully realized? Emergent and digital technologies are opening up new possibilities for accessing Canadian memories and transmitting them to various audiences. New forms of media are changing the ways we think about and do oral and public history.Des milliers d’entrevues d’histoire orale oubliées dans des tiroirs d’archives, sur des disques durs et sur des étagères de bibliothèque n’ont jamais été écoutées. En même temps, chaque année, de nouvelles entrevues viennent s’ajouter par milliers dans le cadre de grands projets de témoignage, y compris la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada et le Projet Mémoire de l’Institut Historica Dominion. Bien que l’existence de ces collections immenses ne soit guère un secret, les entretiens sont difficiles d’accès. Comment peut-on combiner l’histoire orale et les nouveaux médias afin de réaliser pleinement le potentiel de projets si importants? Des technologies numériques récentes présentent de nouvelles possibilités pour accéder aux souvenirs canadiens et les transmettre à divers publics. En effet, de nouvelles formes de média sont en train de changer les manières de penser et de pratiquer l’histoire orale et publique.

scholarly journals Anagnorisis (processing forgiveness): The mystical praxis-space of diaconal reaching out to the Other/others (the hopeful case of Joseph and his brothers)

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël J. Louw
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Other ◽  
Missio Dei ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Mode Of Life

The following question is at stake: What entails forgiveness and reconciliation within processes of healing regarding schisms in a very diverse and polarised society? Despite the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission the burning question that still prevails: What is meant by a praxis of forgiveness and a spirituality of reconciliation within a post-apartheid dispensation? It is argued that forgiving and reconciling are not instant or merely ‘handsome pardoning’. Both are embedded in processes of reaching out to the pain and hurt of the other. As a process, forgiveness starts with self-acknowledgement and should manifest in modes of compassionate being-with and diaconal acts of reaching out, creating spaces of ‘mystical encounters’. In this regard, the notion of anagnorisis, as captured by narrating the encounter between Joseph and his brothers, should be read as an exemplification of reconciliation, directed by the missio Dei, promissio Dei and passio Dei. Within a Christian paradigm, Ernst Bloch’s notion of docta spes, very aptly captures the core of pastoral, reconciliatory care: Hope care to the human soul (nēphēsh) – the search for life and meaning. ‘Dum spiro – spero’ [While I Breathe, I Hope].Contribution: It is often the case that reconciliation is viewed as an instant event. The case of Joseph and his brothers illustrates the fact that reconciliation is in fact a mode of life, embedded over many years. In this way, reconciliation could be rendered as part of one’s life story; as a mode of journeying through life, exemplifying the how of authentic human encounters. Reconciliation then becomes an ontic feature of relational integrity and indication of the quality of the human soul: Habitus as feeling from the hurt being of the other.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaymie Heilman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Shining Path ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation

From 2001 to 2003, Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación del Perú, or CVR) investigated and reported on human rights abuses committed in Peru by state forces and insurgents between 1980 and 2000. That twenty-year armed internal conflict began when militants of the Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) launched an armed struggle against the Peruvian State. The smaller MRTA (Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) waged a separate armed struggle from 1984 until 1997. Peru’s armed forces, police, and peasant civil defense patrols carried out a counterinsurgency that lasted until the collapse of Alberto Fujimori’s authoritarian regime in 2000. The CVR’s official mandate was to analyze why the violence occurred, determine the scale of victimization, assess responsibility, propose reparations, and recommend preventative reforms. The CVR collected nearly seventeen thousand testimonies about the violence, including harrowing stories of massacres, disappearances, torture, and sexual abuse. The CVR also held twenty-seven public hearings, broadcast on Peruvian television and radio. Commissioners determined that the death toll from the armed internal conflict was 69,280. This number was more than twice as high as previous estimates. The CVR established that 79 percent of the victims lived in rural areas, and 75 percent of the dead spoke Quechua or another Indigenous language as their first language. Commissioners also determined that the PCP-Shining Path was responsible for 54 percent of the reported deaths. The Final Report recommended institutional reforms including changes to Peru’s educational system, limits on military autonomy, changes to policing, and greater controls over intelligence agencies. It also made a series of recommendations regarding individual and collective reparations, as well as judicial actions. These conclusions and recommendations appear in the CVR’s Final Report, a nine-volume analysis of the violence, totaling about eight thousand pages. Commissioners forwarded forty-five cases to the Peruvian Attorney General’s office (Ministerio Público) and two cases to the Peruvian Judiciary (Poder Judicial) for investigation and possible criminal trials. Most of these cases, however, stalled in the courts. The most significant exception to these frustrated legal efforts was the trial of former president Alberto Fujimori, who was found guilty of human rights abuses and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. The CVR proved highly controversial inside Peru. Many Peruvians argued that reconciliation would be tantamount to forgiving and forgetting terrorists’ crimes. Another heated controversy involved the accusation that the CVR was unduly sympathetic to the Shining Path and unfairly critical of the Peruvian military. Although the CVR’s work galvanized civil society, the return to power of political and military figures sharply criticized in the Final Report has led many observers to question the Truth Commission’s impact. There has also been significant disappointment with the CVR because it generated expectations for compensation and sociopolitical transformation that have not been met.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Law of Prior Consultation: Obstacles and Opportunities for Democratization and Political Participation in Peru

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti ◽  
Lexy Seedhouse
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The State ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
The Law

A study informed by long-term fieldwork with Amazonian and Andean indigenous peoples examines their experiences of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Law of Prior Consultation. It engages with these efforts, which sought to address injustice by creating a new pact between the state and its indigenous citizens, their various failures, and the unintended opportunities that they have created for the political participation of indigenous peoples and their representatives.Un estudio basado en el trabajo de campo a largo plazo con los pueblos indígenas amazónicas y andinos examine sus experiencias de la Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación y la Ley de Consulta Previa de Perú, que buscaba abordar la injusticia creando un nuevo pacto entre el estado y sus ciudadanos indígenas. Aborda sus diversos fracasos y las oportunidades no previstas que han creado para la participación políticas de los pueblos indígenas y sus representantes.

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