Indigenous Peoples, Truth and Reconciliation: Comparative and Critical Perspectives

The McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism has launched an initiative title "Responsibility to Connect: Legacies of Human Rights Abuses in Residential Schools in Canada."

This initiative aims at contributing to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada by educating students, colleagues and the broader community about human rights abuses within Aboriginal communities in Canada.

In conjunction with this initiative, the CHRLP is organizing a one-day, by invitation only, workshop (PROGRAMME [.doc]), whose will be to explore, from critical and comparative perspectives, the broader concept of reconciliation and the function of truth and reconciliation commissions through the following themes:

• Truth and Reconciliation: The Continuing Impact of Colonialism.

  How did colonialism shape and influence the residential schools policies in Canada? How does the continuing impact of colonialism affect the discourse on reconciliation and responsibility for historic wrongs?

• Pluralistic and Comparative Perspectives on Truth and Reconciliation.

  What approaches to reconciliation have emerged in settler states to redress historic wrongs against Indigenous communities, particularly the harms linked to residential schools? What are some of the complexities and contradictions in these initiatives?  How do diverse Indigenous traditions influence our understanding of reconciliation?

• Rights and Reconciliation: Pathways Forward.

  To what extent is human rights discourse helpful in developing ways to redress past wrongs and restructure relationships between individuals and communities? What is the relevance of international and domestic rights in relation to the residential school experience in Canada?  What are the limits of rights discourse?

The goal of the workshop is to share some preliminary ideas and thinking about these themes and to identify avenues of further research and reflection. We hope that participants will connect to form a working group to advance continued dialogue and research, culminating in a second workshop in 2012.

By invitation only. For more information, email Jessica Labranche-Hamelin at jessica.labranche [at] mail.mcgill.ca