Appropriating Guilt: Reconciliation in an Aboriginal Canadian Context

Abstract

IF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS, in Elie Wiesel's words, age of testimony, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries might be called age of forgiveness. In the last twenty years, forgiveness and have become part of an international discourse. South Africa's Truth and Commission (1995-98), Tasmania's apology the Stolen Generation (2006), and Britain's apology the Maori (1995) are just a few recent instances of across different national contexts. In Canada, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) represented a similar gesture as the country confronted its colonial past and awakened the insistence of that past in the present. Two years after RCAP released its 1996 report, the Canadian government issued a Statement of Reconciliation former occupants of residential schools, stating it was deeply sorry for the collective and personal damage of these institutions on indigenous communities (Statement). Shaped by global politics, these attempts at reflect a current sensibility of revisiting national history. More buried in these public attempts at are questions about their ideological underpinnings and the interests they serve. In what ways does function as a way for the nation re-imagine and perform itself--less, that is, as a deconstruction of national master-narratives than a reconstruction of one? To what degree does the process of satisfy wronged parties? Ten years before RCAP, the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr. Prosecution (1986-88) undertook a public inquiry into the wrongful conviction and eleven-year imprisonment of Donald Marshall (Mi'kmaq). (1) The Marshall Inquiry was not void of value: the commission and its subsequent report identified a crisis in the criminal justice system, particularly in its treatment of racial minorities. Beyond recognizing problems like cultural misunderstandings between defense counsel and clients, the foreignness of the courtroom defendants of different cultural backgrounds, and institutional racism in policing bodies and the courts, the commission made a number of larger structural recommendations. On a local as well as a national scale, the Royal Commission set the ground for constitutional reconsiderations and legal reform by sounding a call for self-government, respect for treaty rights, and the implementation of indigenous, community-based models of justice. (2) Yet, the Marshall Inquiry, like RCAP and other processes globally, can also be read as part of a national narrative. Baldly criticized as Canada's favourite substitute for action, (3) these commissions are often seen as offering only a discursive balm for historical injustices that have profound, and potentially unsettling, political implications. Arguably, the Marshall Inquiry was motivated more by the hope of restoring public faith in the federal government (epitomized by Brian Mulroney's election promise of a public inquiry and a million-dollar compensation package for Marshall) than by a willingness for various parties admit responsibility for the personal toll suffered by Marshall and his community. Some contend that the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr. Prosecution originated from the Nova Scotia government's desire to find scapegoats (Wall 20), redirect responsibility other parties. On one level, then, the commission elided notions of guilt and responsibility as federal, provincial, juridical, and policing bodies looked other places assign blame. In addition questioning its efficacy, one might also ask how the process violates the understanding of forgiveness as a reciprocal act. In determining the notion of reparation and change--indeed, in deciding what the appropriate response of the wronged party should be--how does reconciliation erode the wronged subject's agency? …