Tag Archives: Truth and Reconciliation Commission
“A soul-deep desolation:” Reconciliation and the Vacuum of Unstoried Existence
Excerpted from The Theatre of Regret: Art, Literature, and the Politics of Reconciliation While it is intimately, and, perhaps, impossibly, entwined with Christian ideology and Western politics, the idea of reconciliation does not belong to the Western theory alone. Indigenous scholars such as Billy-Ray Belcourt, Daniel Heath Justice, Hadley Friedland, Val Napoleon, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, […]
Forgiveness, “a thousand pound word”
Conceived as re-joining, reconciliation is about groups who have been separated by historical injustice finding ways to cooperatively share space, both literal and epistemological. Apology is one aspect of that dialectic, but forgiveness—the discourse of the survivor—has been instrumental in providing theorists with the ground to imagine reconciliation.[i] Recognizing the significant role forgiveness studies have had on larger theories of reconciliation is vital to understanding the larger structure of feeling out of which the TRC model is constructed and maintained. That being said, because it is a topic that has been so thoroughly appropriated into theological and academic discourses, it is also necessary to bear witness to the ways in which surviours are grappling with the concept, particularly in the wake of the TRC.
Theatre of Regret Now Available in Paperback
The Theatre of Regret: Literature, Art, and the Politics of Reconciliation in Canada is now available in paperback via UBC Press. Some of the chapters were developed out of writing that I first shared on this blog. For instance the post “Reconciliation: ‘Like an Echo Turned Inside Out’” is the basis of the book’s conclusion, […]
sehtoskakew: “Aboriginal Principles of Witnessing” in the Canadian TRC
Witnessing and testimony are an essential component of every Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Canadian TRC is no exception. However, these key terms are ideologically loaded and have historically excluded Indigenous knowledge systems (for instance Delgamuukw v. British Columbia). While “Schedule ‘N’” (which contains the Canadian TRC mandate) gestures towards “Aboriginal principles of witnessing,” there […]
Apology’s Worth It: How Canada Profits from Apology
We live in an “Age of Apology“. In a way that was unimaginable during the Cold War, “sorry” is now a primary element of intra-state politics. Some label the post-Cold War shift out of realpolitik as an indication of “the new international morality,” but apology is also a means for Nation States to recuperate and monetize “sorry”. The […]