Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress

Truth and reconciliation commissions and official governmental apologies continue to surface worldwide as mechanisms for coming to terms with human rights violations and social atrocities. As the first scholarly collection to explore the intersections and differences between a range of redress cases that have emerged in Canada in recent decades, Reconciling Canada provides readers with the contexts for understanding the phenomenon of reconciliation as it has played out in this multicultural settler state. In this volume, leading scholars in the humanities and social sciences relate contemporary political and social efforts to redress wrongs to the fraught history of government relations with Aboriginal and diasporic populations. The contributors offer ground-breaking perspectives on Canada’s ‘culture of redress,’ broaching questions of law and constitutional change, political coalitions, commemoration, testimony, and literatures of injury and its aftermath. Also assembled together for the first time is a collection of primary documents – including government reports, parliamentary debates, and redress movement statements – prefaced with contextual information. Reconciling Canada provides a vital and immensely relevant illumination of the dynamics of reconciliation, apology, and redress in contemporary Canada.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Jennifer Henderson (Carleton University) and Pauline Wakeham (University of Western Ontario) I. Settler Culture and the Terrain of Reconciliation Matt James (University of Victoria), “Neoliberal Heritage Redress” Eva Mackey (Carleton University), “The Apologizer’s Apology” Jennifer Henderson, “The Camp, the School, and the Child: Discursive Exchanges and (Neo)liberal Axioms in the Culture of Redress” II. Citizenship, Nationhood, Law Lily Cho (University of Western Ontario), “Redress Revisited: Citizenship and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax” Dale Turner (Dartmouth College), “On the Idea of Reconciliation in Contemporary Aboriginal Politics” James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson (University of Saskatchewan), “Incomprehensible Canada” III. Testimony and Truth-Telling Roger Simon, “Worrying Together: The Problematics of Listening and the Educative Responsibilities of Canada’s TRC” Julia Emberley (University of Western Ontario), “Epistemic Heterogeneity: Indigenous Storytelling, Testimonial Practices and the Question of Violence in Indian Residential Schools” Dian Million (University of Washington), “Trauma, Power, and the Therapeutic: Speaking Psychotherapeutic Narratives in an Era of Indigenous Human Rights” IV. Grieving and Grievance, Mourning and Memory Amber Dean (McMaster University), “Public Mourning and the Culture of Redress: Mayerthorpe, Air India, and Murdered or Missing Aboriginal Women” Lindy Ledohowski (Carleton University), “The compulsion to tell falls on the next generation’: Ukrainian-Canadian Literature in English and Victims of the Past” V. Performing Redress Len Findlay (University of Saskatchewan), “Redress Rehearsals: Legal Warrior, COSMOSQUAW, and the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards” Anna Carastathis, “The Non-Performativity of Reconciliation: The Case of ‘Reasonable Accommodation’ in Quebec” VI. Redress and Transnationalism: Thinking Apology Beyond the Nation Roy Miki (Simon Fraser University), “Rewiring Critical Affects: Reading ‘Asian Canadian’ in the Transnational Sites of Kerri Sakamoto’s One Hundred Million Hearts” Pauline Wakeham, “From Rendition to Redress: Maher Arar, Apology, and Exceptionality” Appendices A. Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, 1879 Testimony of Duncan Campbell Scott, 1920 Duncan Campbell Scott, Notes on Indian Education, 1920 An Act to Amend the Indian Act, 1920 Confession of the Presbyterian Church, 1994 Notes for an Address by the Honourable Jane Stewart, 1998 Open Letter from Chief Phil Fontaine, 2008 House of Commons Apology, 2008 B. Acadian Deportations Petition to Governor of Nova Scotia from Acadian inhabitants, 1755 Acadian Deportation Order, 1755 Royal Proclamation designating “Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” 2003 C. Black Loyalist and Africville Injustices Nova Scotia Resolution, 1834 A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1957 Resolution 39, 1995 “Lessons from Africville,” 2001 Report on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance: Addendum Mission to Canada, 2004 Bill 213: An Act to Address the Historic Injustice Committed Against the People of Africville, 2005 Africville Apology and Agreement to Commemorate the Historic Community, 2010 D. Chinese Canadian Immigration Restrictions The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885 and 1923 Draft Letter from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 1896 Mack et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, 2000 Open Letter from the Chinese Canadian National Council,2005 House of Commons Apology, 2006 E. Indian passengers on the Komagata Maru An Act Respecting Immigration, 1910 The Court of Appeal: Re Munshi Singh, 1914 British Columbia Legislative Assembly Apology, 2008 House of Commons Motion M-469, 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Apology, 2008 F. WWI Internments The War Measures Act, 1914 Order in Council of October 28, 1914 Report on Internment Operations, 1914-1920 Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, 2005 G. WWII Internments Italian Canadian Internment Defence of Canada Regulations, 1939 Order in Council of June 10, 1940 A National Shame: the Internment of Italian Canadians, brief presented by the National Congress of Italian Canadians to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, 1990 Address by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to the National Congress of Italian Canadians and the Canadian ItalianBusiness Professional Association, 1990 Letter from Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, 1994 Agreement-in-Principle between the Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community, 2005 Japanese Canadian Internment and Relocation National Emergency Transitional Powers Act, 1945 "We Must Fight Deportation," The New Canadian, 1945 Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, Memorandum for The Members of the House of Commons and Senate of Canada on The Orders-In-Council P.C. 7355, 7356, 7357, 1946 National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, Submission to Prime Minister Re: Bird Commission, 1950 National Association of Japanese Canadians, Democracy Betrayed: The Case for Redress, 1984 House of Commons Apology, 1988 Terms of Agreement Between the Government of Canada and the National Association of Japanese Canadians, 1988 Emergencies Act, 1988 H. Jewish Refugees on the SS St. Louis Canadian government policy brief on Jewish refugees,1938 Petition to allow the S.S. St. Louis to land in Canada, June 7, 1939 Letter between O.D. Skelton and George M. Wrong,June 19, 1939 I. Doukhobor Residential Schools Righting the Wrong, report of the Ombudsman of British Columbia, 1999 Statement of Regret to Doukhobor Children, 2004