The Indian Residential School Experience in Canada: Limitations and Challenges to Healing
On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a Statement of Apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools on behalf of the Government of Canada.
This apology is among other initiatives undertaken, including a settlement agreement for students of the Indian Residential Schools and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, aimed at initiating a process of renewed relations among indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in Canada. The apology, the settlement agreement and the TRC have been criticized by many Indigenous peoples who were also subjected to residential schools but fall outside the scope of these initiatives.
In addition, these initiatives are focused on the redress of harms related to a narrow aspect of Canadian policy and ignore the broader consequences of decades of discrimination and racism that indigenous peoples in Canada have faced. Addressing these broader consequences is an integral part of decolonization in Canada; a process that goes beyond the Government of Canada and engages both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
This colloquium aims at exploring some of the limitations and challenges that we face in this process of decolonization drawing on the Indian Residential School experience as the background. We will be joined by:
Clément Chartier is President of the Métis National Council. Chartier received his law degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1978, was called to the Saskatchewan Bar in 1980 and received the Queen's Counsel designation in 2004. During his political career, Chartier has held a number of executive positions in Indigenous political bodies, including: Native Youth Association of Canada, Association of Métis and Non-Status Indians of Saskatchewan, Métis National Council (MNC), World Council of Indigenous Peoples President, and Métis Nation-Saskatchewan. A strong advocate for Métis rights, Chartier was the defendants' counsel in R. v. Grumbo (1996), in R. v. Morin and Daigneault (1996), and in
R. v. Belhumeur (2007). He also served as MNC counsel in its intervention in the 2003 Supreme Court of Canada R. v. Powley. In December 2010, Chartier's book, Witness to Resistance: Under Fire in Nicaragua was released.
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is a full Professor and founding Director of the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria. He specializes in traditions of governance, decolonization strategies, and land-based cultural restoration. Taiaiake has been awarded a Canada Research Chair, a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in the field of education, and the Native American Journalists Association award for best column writing.
His writing includes numerous scholarly articles and contributed essays in newspapers and journals, substantial book-length project reports for First Nations and government clients, as well as three published books, °Â²¹²õá²õ±ð, named one of the decade's most influential books by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association in 2010; Peace, Power, Righteousness; and, Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors.
Paulette Regan, PhD (Indigenous Governance, University of Victoria) is currently Senior Researcher, Historical Memory and Reconciliation Project, for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and a Research Fellow at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia. Paulette has worked, since 1986, on various historical research and policy development projects related to Indigenous treaty and land rights and social justice issues. Her most recent publication, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth-telling and Reconciliation in Canada explores the pedagogical potential of truth and reconciliation processes as "unsettling," decolonizing, transformative, and liberatory sites of truth, resistance and critical hope. She argues that in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation, non-Indigenous Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization.
This event is brought to you by the CHRLP and the Aboriginal Law Students' Association at Â鶹´«Ã½ÍøÕ¾. For more information: ala.law [at] mcgill.ca.
