Reconciliation Commission Research Articles

Health system learning with Indigenous communities: a study protocol for a two-eyed seeing review and multiple case study

BackgroundIt is well documented that Canadian healthcare does not fully meet the health needs of First Nations, Inuit or Métis peoples. In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples concluded that Indigenous peoples’ healthcare needs had to be met by strategies and systems that emerged from Indigenous worldviews and cultures. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission also called on health organizations to learn from Indigenous knowledges and integrate Indigenous worldviews alongside biomedicine and other western ways of knowing. These calls have not yet been met. Meanwhile, the dynamic of organizational learning from knowledges and evidence within communities is poorly understood—particularly when learning is from communities whose ways of knowing differ from those of the organization. Through an exploration of organizational and health system learning, this study will explore how organizations learn from the Indigenous communities they serve and contribute to (re-)conceptualizing the learning organization and learning health system in a way that privileges Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing.MethodsThis study will employ a two-eyed seeing literature review and embedded multiple case study. The review, based on Indigenous and western approaches to reviewing and synthesizing knowledges, will inform understanding of health system learning from different ways of knowing. The multiple case study will examine learning by three distinct government organizations in Northwest Territories, a jurisdiction in northern Canada, that have roles to support community health and wellness: Tłı̨chǫ Government, Gwich’in Tribal Council, and Government of Northwest Territories. Case study data will be collected via interviews, talking circles, and document analysis. A steering group, comprising Tłı̨chǫ and Gwich’in Elders and representatives from each of the three partner organizations, will guide all aspects of the project.DiscussionExamining systems that create health disparities is an imperative for Canadian healthcare. In response, this study will help to identify and understand ways for organizations to learn from and respectfully apply knowledges and evidence held within Indigenous communities so that their health and wellness are supported. In this way, this study will help to guide health organizations in the listening and learning that is required to contribute to reconciliation in healthcare.

Alex Janvier’sIron Foot Place: Indigenous Public Art, Survivance, and Settler Reconciliation in Edmonton’s Rogers Place

On 8 September 2016, Tsa Tsa Ke K’e (Iron Foot Place) was officially unveiled in the floor of the new Rogers Place Arena, home to the National Hockey League’s Edmonton Oilers. The circular, 45-foot-diameter tile mosaic is the creation of renowned contemporary artist Alex Janvier (Denesųłiné/Saulteaux), whose remarkable career has involved fighting for artistic sovereignty and resisting settler colonialism. This mural has prompted multiple expressions and practices of Indigenous survivance, performances and gestures of state and corporate reconciliation, and exists at the edge of some of the lived realities of exacerbated biopolitical necropolitics in Edmonton. In this article, we explore the intersections of art and professional men’s hockey as they coexist under ongoing settler colonialism at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century. In post–Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada, how do investments in public art in corporate-civic professional sport partnerships further celebrate Indigenous culture and persistent presence? And concomitantly, how do such investments continue to both obscure and intensify the genocidal conditions under which the settler nation of Canada was created, and just as importantly, continues to function?

Canadian National Sport Organizations’ Responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Calls to Action and Settler Silence

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 Calls to Action identified societal measures necessary for a successful reconciliation process between Indigenous peoples and settlers in Canada, five of which were specific to sport. Half a decade after the Calls to Action were published, the response by national sport organizations in Canada has escaped scholarly attention. Through a lens informed by settler colonial studies, the authors employed summative content analysis to examine the ways, if any, in which national sport organizations in Canada have implemented relevant Calls to Action. The results indicate a lack of response by most national sport organizations which, we argue, represents settler silence.

Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance by Jesse Wente

Reviewed by: Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance by Jesse Wente Stacie Charbonneau Hess Jesse Wente. Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance. Canada: Penguin Random House, 2021. 198 pp. Hardcover, $29.95 CAN / $22.95 US. Jesse Wente believes in a good story. He has built his career around story-telling: first, as a film student, then a radio columnist, a film critic, and now holding one of the most influential positions in Canada—Director of the Indigenous Screen Office—which was established in 2018. If Wente believes in a good story, he believes even more in "narrative sovereignty," defined by him as "the idea that people, communities, and nations should control their own stories and the tools used in that storytelling" (168). In the context of his memoir, Unreconciled, he is referring to the narrative sovereignty of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, those peoples whose presence preceded the invention of Canada by thousands of years. When Indigenous stories are told by another group—say, the powerful film industry moguls in Hollywood, or the white editor of a popular magazine—that's cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is the very topic for which Wente became a household name in Canada in 2017, after he cried on live television. Although there are many emotionally charged passages in Wente's memoir, two scenes might become painfully engraved in the readers' minds. The first is ten-year-old Jesse playing softball on his home turf in Toronto, when a crowd of neighborhood kids taunt him with a war whoop. Wente recognizes the sound—not as one he has ever made, or heard, in real life—but as one from Saturday morning cartoons. That war whoop is Wente's first experience with blatant racism, and shapes his ideas about Hollywood (mis)representation. In another blistering scene, Wente breaks down and sobs in emotional exhaustion on a live morning talk show—some three decades later. His exhaustion reaches its peak after a public battle over a now-legendary 2017 issue of Write magazine that featured all indigenous authors, authors whose names [End Page 260] would be obscured by the ensuing drama over cultural appropriation. Wente's exhaustion is with the white-centeredness of everything in Canada—even an issue that is supposed to celebrate indigenous writers. He is careful to name each of those writers in a chapter called "The Power to Tell Our Own Stories." Throughout the book, Wente's frustration is palpable, and Unreconciled reads as a manifesto to his educated, well-thought-out torment as a person still processing trauma as he presses on in the face of it. Wente is American and Anishinaabe, a member of the Serpent River First Nation. His grandmother Norma, to whom this book is dedicated, was a student in Spanish for ten years at a residential school. Despite living with Jesse for his entire adolescence, she spoke of it only once. Two generations separated from both the Reserve and the Ojibwe language, Wente laments that his upwardly mobile, English-speaking family is "the exact type of Indians residential schools were designed to produce" (17). In this way, Wente's story is a familiar one. He calls the "damage wrought by residential schools" his family's "unwanted inheritance" (75). Wente's parents are executives and he attended private high school. One chapter is even named: "Ojibwe Enough." Yet, the memoir does more than admit to the complication of straddling two identities; Wente's stories interweave personal tribulations in the context of the changing political landscape of Canada. The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was issued in 2015, seven years and six thousand interviews after it began. Whether the country has lived up to its intention to recreate a more equitable Canada is, according to Wente, not even a matter for debate. Despite the fact that Canada is years ahead of the United States in terms of reckoning with its genocidal past, Wente insists the wound colonialism has caused is still wide open, and not even healing. Unreconciled can be at times jarring and uncomfortable—but maybe that is the point. A nation can't get to the Reconciliation part without wading in the...

Rethinking Archives, Rewriting History: Other-Archives and the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Moroccan History of the “Years of Lead”

AbstractArchives are loci of power where state (and archive creators’) hegemony is reproduced and sustained through the stories they allow to be told and the ones they suppress. However, this applies only to contexts in which archives actually exist and are organized. I argue that Morocco’s postcolonial history challenges Western notions of archives and begs for a conceptualization of “other-archives” in which silenced stories find their way to the public arena and resist authoritarian amnesia. Not only do other-archives liberate history (re)writing from archival hegemony, but they also open up space for an interdisciplinary study of history. Other-archives, as I theorize them, allow the inscription of the voices of the subaltern into the other-archival documents while also helping to decenter history and historiographical discourses by creating the need for historians to collaborate with specialists in other non-history-focused disciplines, such as cinema, literature, sociology, and political science. This article reveals how the existence and wide dissemination of other-archives within the context of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission’s work in Morocco (2004–2005) spurred transformative debates among Moroccan historians and incited them to push the boundaries of their discipline through the use of tārīkh al-zaman al-rāhin (history of the present).

The Anticipation of #MeToo in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

In this article, I reconsider J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, often interpreted in the context of South Africa’s transition to post apartheid life and with an eye to the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, by instead reading it in light of the international twenty first century MeToo movement. I contend that, in retrospect, Disgrace both demonstrates affinities with MeToo and proleptically envisions, from the postcolonial periphery, the contours of the movement decades before its forceful emergence as a watershed moment in the West. Disgrace tells a story echoed in many MeToo accounts, depicting the public exposure and fall from grace of a privileged white man following his sexual exploitation of a non white student. My interests lie not in the matter of David Lurie’s potential redemption; rather, I explore Coetzee’s exposure of the persistence of institutionalized gendered and racial privileges through moments of historical transformation. I argue that Disgrace’s highlighting of its own unnarrated perspectives anticipates the forceful challenge to a lingering white heterosexual hegemony that characterizes MeToo, while at the same time exposing the perpetual marginalization of non white and non Western traumas in discourses of transitional justice in South Africa and globally.

Corruption Trends and Graft Control Progress in Sierra Leone: Study of Causes and Remedies

Corruption continues to affect the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans and is regarded as the greatest culprit of poverty, inequality and social cohesion. This publication shed light on corruption trends, control measures, causes, development implications and remedies for combating corruption in Sierra Leone. The data for this article was sourced from secondary/desk review. The secondary data sources were mainly from published articles, government reports, Acts, policies, workshops and conference proceedings, newspaper commentary, Transparency International Annual Reports, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Reports, and NGOs among others. Key words like corruption in Sierra Leone, causes of corruption, negative effects of corruption and bribery, and control measures of corruption were used to search for relevant information. Specifically, the study revealed that corruption was more prevalent from 2003 to 2018 but declined from 2018 to 2021. Most corruption cases in Sierra Leone arise from the abuse of public offices for private gains. Furthermore, systemic analysis of literature showed that corruption arises as a result of low salary wages, political ambition and other sociological factors. From 2019 to 2021, Sierra Leone has made remarkable progress and is been rated below Africa’s corruption average. This might be attributed to the various reforms and the pre-conviction corrupt asset recovery strategy adopted and the massive public outreach and awareness-raising drive adopted by the commission. It is recommended that the Anti-Corruption Commission of Sierra Leone be adequately empowered to go after any individual engaged in corrupt practices regardless of social status, ethnicity, political connection and wealth. It further recommended that the Anti-Corruption Commissioner appointment should not be political but by integrity and sound track record of citizens.

Indigenous Peoples and Occupational Therapy in Canada: A scoping review.

Background. Calls to Action outlined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) necessitate critical reflection and urgent action to improve occupational therapy with Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Purpose. This scoping review aims to synthesize the literature related to Indigenous Peoples and occupational therapy practice, research, and education in Canada, and appraise empirical research using adapted Indigenous Health Research criteria. Method. A scoping review was conducted across published academic and grey literature with additional appraisal of empirical studies. Findings. A total of 6 themes emerged from 47 articles spanning from 1970 to 2020: recognizing colonial history, responding to the TRC, participating in personal and professional reflection, identifying Western ideologies, engaging in partnership in practice, and recognizing social and systemic barriers. Empirical studies met appraisal criteria inconsistently. Implications. To meaningfully engage in reconciliation, the profession of occupational therapy must generate Indigenous-led and relevant research, critically transform curricula, and address tensions between themes in practice.

Practising an Anti-Colonial Citizenship Education Through a Blended Learning Course on Aboriginal Law

In the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians find themselves aspiring towards transitional justice. Yet they do so with a democracy in need of some repair. One prime site for fostering democratic renewal – the post-secondary sector – is under pressure from corporatization and political forces working to narrow freedom of expression and academic freedom. This sector, however, continues to offer some hope through liberal, anti-oppressive, anti-colonial, and Indigenous pedagogies that promote a public ethical responsibility beyond the self. Yet encouraging these pedagogies is not straightforward, including for those teaching courses such as Aboriginal law in a blended learning format. In the context of the spread of online education and the dearth of scholarship on anti-oppressive pedagogies therein, on the one hand, and the reluctance of legal educators to adopt anti-colonial pedagogies, on the other, there is an urgency to build knowledge about how to develop citizenship education. Anti-colonial citizenship education includes content about the establishment of settler society and the status of Indigenous nations. Furthermore, it is operationalized through active learning practices. Based on Indigenous and non-Indigenous pedagogical theories, these practices are argued to support a tripartite “intellectual framework” comprised of critical thinking, collaboration, and self-directed learning. Through a case study of an undergraduate course, the argument is made for the efficacy of a number of active learning practices to produce this intellectual framework. It is suggested that, in addition to better learning outcomes, an anti-colonial citizenship education is materialized insofar as the intellectual framework inspires a sensibility for complexity and independent thinking, “civic culture,” and autonomous inquiry and openness to alternative epistemologies.

A U.S. Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Social Work’s Role in Racial Healing

A U.S. truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) can advance racial justice by acknowledging the historical trauma tied to the United States' legacy of slavery and subsequent racism. This truth telling can facilitate a national reckoning with the past and set the stage for social transformation. This article aims to present insights into how such a U.S. TRC might work. It begins by defining TRCs and exploring their theoretical foundation of restorative justice. It connects TRCs to aspects of social work practice, including human rights-based approaches, trauma-informed care, and community practice. Then each of a TRC's core functions is analyzed: truth seeking, reconciliation, education, and engagement. Related topics of healing, accountability, and reparations are also discussed. The article draws from a diverse range of global experiences to emphasize lessons learned. It also highlights where local precedents in the United States have started this work, which can be drawn upon and developed further. The article concludes by noting the limitations of TRCs and calling on social workers to advocate for such a TRC to further racial justice.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Gives Municipalities the Opportunity to Defy their Status as "Creatures of the Province"

This paper analyses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) inclusion, or lack thereof, of Municipalities as a critical power structure in the process of decolonization and resurgence across settler-colonial Canada. The TRC only called upon Municipalities five times, suggesting that they have little importance to the process. This indicates that it is up to the Federal and Provincial governments to address the calls to action, to which they would only be able to apply a top-down and “one size fits all” approach. This approach is insufficient because many diverse subgroups of Indigenous people live across Canada. So, who will effectively help develop policies, resources, and urban planning for the local Indigenous communities? That would have to be municipalities, unlike what the TRC is suggesting. Municipalities are more capable of providing a grass-roots approach to urban planning and policymaking when addressing the calls to action, something the other levels of government can not do, therefore, defying the ideology of being known as “Creatures of the Province” and signifying their importance to the process. Throughout this paper, I identify how municipalities can effectively take on the calls to action by recognizing and including the unique Indigenous identities within urban spaces, a requirement in accomplishing true reconciliation, decolonization, and Indigenous resurgence.

Democracy and Theatre in Catalonia Since 1975

Democracy and Theatre in Catalonia Since 1975

Transitional Justice in Public and Private: Truth Commission Narratives in Greensboro

ABSTRACT In 1979, during an anti-racism march in the city in Greensboro, North Carolina, KKK and Nazi Party members opened fire on demonstrators, killing five and wounding eight. On the cusp of the 25th anniversary of these killings, efforts by community members culminated in the convening of the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission (GTRC) in the US. Drawing on a unique collection of public testimonies and private interviews with GTRC staff, we use a novel relational approach to array and compare discursive accounts offered in these distinct settings. We find that narratives offered in private were more varied, yet also cohesive in locating blame in social actors. Public testimony, in contrast, was more consolidated and singular, placing the majority of culpability on social structures. Based on these significant distinctions, we draw out implications for future research and policy around transitional justice initiatives.

Book Review: The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2020), ISBN-13: 978-1107178311, by Charles C. Jalloh

This article reviews the book by Professor Charles C. Jalloh, <strong>The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone</strong>, published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press. In this book, the author examines the “hybrid” international/national criminal tribunal, known as the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was created under a pathbreaking bilateral treaty between the United Nations (UN) and the country of Sierra Leone as a UN member state. Jalloh seeks to evaluate the contributions made by SCSL to the development of international criminal law. In particular, he assesses the scope and significance of SCSL legal contributions from its solutions to problems arising between its opening and the completion of its work in 2013, having to do with personal and temporal jurisdiction; gender crimes as crimes against humanity; recruitment of children as war crimes; head-of-state immunity; amnesty; and tensions between criminal tribunals and truth commissions. <strong>Keywords:</strong> ICTR; Kabbah, Ahmad Tejan; Liberia; Lomé Peace Agreement; Rome Statute; RUF; Sierra Leone civil war; Sierra Leonean law; SCSL appeals chamber, trial chambers, registrar's office, prosecutor's office, and defense office; Taylor, Charles; temporal jurisdiction; The Hague; Truth and Reconciliation Commission; United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Security Council, and Resolution 1315

Co-Constructing a Diverse Hybrid Simulation-Based Experience on First Nations Culture

BackgroundThe Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [TRC]: Calls to Actions (2015) appealed to nursing schools to provide cultural training to address the cultural gaps between the First Nations people of Canada and registered nurses. MethodIn collaboration with First Nations social workers and Elders, a pre-existing simulation-based experience (SBE) was transformed into a diverse hybrid SBE. In the diverse hybrid SBE, a Knowledge Keeper, embedded actors, and a medium-fidelity manikin were used to present First Nations knowledge and cultural practices associated with end-of-life care. ResultsThis article is a self-report of the co-construction and implementation of the diverse hybrid SBE with First Nations cultural experts. ConclusionThe co-construction and implementation of this diverse hybrid SBE required great effort and resources. Although the student anecdotal feedback identified a heightened understanding of First Nations cultural practices, moving forward, alternative debriefing models and evaluation by valid and reliable measures are required.

Promises Made or Promises Kept?

Reverberating effects of the Indian Residential School system's legacy continue to threaten Indigenous languages. In establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), all levels of Canadian governments and civil society received 94 ‘Calls to Action’ in coming to terms with Canada’s colonial past and rooted inequities. Some of these Calls stress the need to revive and preserve Indigenous languages. Statistics prove the existence of this decline. Government commissions and Indigenous governing bodies warn of the implications of neglecting this unique crisis facing Indigenous communities nationwide. With the introduction of the Indigenous Languages Act in 2016, the federal government appears ready to commit to the TRC’s recommendations on Indigenous language revitalization. However, what this research finds are that Canadian provincial and federal governments have much room for improvement. This paper assesses the details of legislation and compares inconsistencies with promises made and the results of government inaction. Therefore, contrary to Canada’s optimism, the steps it takes to revitalize Indigenous languages are inadequate and require significant rethinking to prove truly effective.

Challenges Of Peacebuilding In Matebeleland North And South ProvincesZimbabwe (1980-2010)

This paper is entitled “The Challenges of Peacebuilding in Matebeleland North and South Provinces. Zimbabwe (1980-2010).” The main objectives of this study include to establish the major factors contributing to failure of peace-building in the Matabeleland North and South Provinces. One of the research questions was what are the major reasons for the failure of peacebuilding and reconciliation processes in these Provinces? The design of the study was qualitative because the topic dealt with emotions and feelings of the people who were involved in the conflict. The research used purposive sampling technique in selecting the majority of respondents. Data was gathered through interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions. The major findings do indicate that the government has not been sincere in peacebuilding efforts and reconciliation was not properly implemented and that the communities in Matabeleland Provinces remain divided. The study concludes that the government has not made any apology for all the killings which were done by government forces. This paper recommends that government should make full acknowledgement of all the killings and compensate the regions affected. In addition, there is need to establish Truth and Reconciliation Commission to handle all the cases of violence.

Review: Living in Indigenous Sovereignty, by Elizabeth Carlson-Manathara with Gladys Rowe

Review: <i>Living in Indigenous Sovereignty</i>, by Elizabeth Carlson-Manathara with Gladys Rowe

Perpetration, impunity, and irreconciliation in Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools

AbstractThe influence of institutional mandates on knowledge can be seen particularly clearly in the preferences and absences of truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) proceedings. A recent trend in TRCs involves a shift away from the exercise of judicial powers and the quest for justice and towards more concern with affirming the experience of victims or ‘Survivors’. Canada's TRC on Indian Residential Schools illustrates the consequences of the shift towards victim‐centrism, which left gaps in knowledge – particularly about perpetrators – that was conveyed to the commission and produced conditions of impunity for those responsible for mass harm. This impunity coalesced into irreconciliation as the commission gave voice to people who had been forgotten, marginalized, and given little chance in life, while leaving out of the picture those who had actually stolen their lives and dignity.

Indigenizing Philosophy on Stolen Lands: A Worry about Settler Philosophical Guardianship

Indigenizing Philosophy on Stolen Lands: A Worry about Settler Philosophical Guardianship