Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress 9781442695467

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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. jennifer henderson is an associate professor in the Department of English with crossappointments to the Department of Sociology/Anthropology and the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University. pauline wakeham is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario.

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Reconciling Canada Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress

EDITED BY JENNIFER HENDERSON AND PAULINE WAKEHAM

UNIV ERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2013 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4311-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1168-9 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Reconciling Canada : critical perspectives on the culture of redress / edited by Jennifer Henderson and Pauline Wakeham. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4311-6 (bound) ISBN 978-1-4426-1168-9 (pbk.) 1. Reparations for historical injustices – Canada. 2. Reconciliation (Law) – Canada. 3. Canada – Ethnic relations – History. I. Henderson, Jennifer (Jennifer Anne) II. Wakeham, Pauline FC105.R46R43 2013

323.171

C2012-907155-2

Cover photographs: (l-r) William James Topley, LAC C-015037; LAC PA-118000; LAC PA-034015; LAC PA-127064; Children from Poplar River, c. 1916, United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, 2093.049P/1268N; Sam family fonds, LAC MG55130-No166; F.H. Kitto, LAC PA-101548; LAC PA-034014 The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction jennifer henderson and pauline wakeham

3

I. Settler Culture and the Terrain of Reconciliation 1 Neoliberal Heritage Redress matt james 2 The Apologizers’ Apology eva mackey

31 47

3 The Camp, the School, and the Child: Discursive Exchanges and (Neo)liberal Axioms in the Culture of Redress 63 jennifer henderson II. Citizenship, Nationhood, Law 4 Redress Revisited: Citizenship and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax lily cho

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5 On the Idea of Reconciliation in Contemporary Aboriginal Politics dale turner

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6 Incomprehensible Canada 115 james (sa’ke’j) youngblood henderson III. Testimony and Truth Telling 7 Towards a Hopeful Practice of Worrying: The Problematics of Listening and the Educative Responsibilities of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission 129 roger i. simon 8 Epistemic Heterogeneity: Indigenous Storytelling, Testimonial Practices, and the Question of Violence in Indian Residential Schools 143 julia emberley

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9 Trauma, Power, and the Therapeutic: Speaking Psychotherapeutic Narratives in an Era of Indigenous Human Rights 159 dian million IV. Grieving and Grievance, Mourning and Memory 10 Public Mourning and the Culture of Redress: Mayerthorpe, Air India, and Murdered or Missing Aboriginal Women 181 amber dean 11 “The Compulsion to Tell Falls on the Next Generation”: Ukrainian Canadian Literature in English and Victims of the Past 198 lindy ledohowski V. Performing Redress 12 Redress Rehearsals: Legal Warrior, COSMOSQUAW, and the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards 217 len findlay 13 The Nonperformativity of Reconciliation: The Case of “Reasonable Accommodation” in Quebec 236 anna carastathis VI. Redress and Transnationalism: Thinking Apology beyond the Nation 14 Rewiring Critical Affects: Reading “Asian Canadian” in the Transnational Sites of Kerri Sakamoto’s One Hundred Million Hearts 263 roy miki 15 Rendition and Redress: Maher Arar, Apology, Exceptionality pauline wakeham

278

APPENDICES A. Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools 1 Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, 1879 299 2 Testimony of Duncan Campbell Scott, 1920 304 3 Duncan Campbell Scott, Notes on Indian Education, 1920 314 4 An Act to Amend the Indian Act, 1920 317 5 Confession of the Presbyterian Church, 1994 321 6 Notes for an Address by the Honourable Jane Stewart, 1998 323 7 Open Letter to the Prime Minister from Chief Phil Fontaine, 2008 332 8 House of Commons Apology, 2008 335 B. Acadian Deportations 1 Petition to Governor of Nova Scotia from Acadian Inhabitants, 1755 340 2 Acadian Deportation Order, 1755 342 3 Royal Proclamation Designating “Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” 2003 343

Contents

C. Black Loyalist and Africville Injustices 1 Nova Scotia Resolution, 1834 346 2 A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1957 348 3 “Lessons from Africville,” 2001 349 4 Report on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance: Addendum, Mission to Canada, 2004 352 5 Bill 213: An Act to Address the Historic Injustice Committed against the People of Africville, 2005 354 6 Africville Apology and Agreement to Commemorate the Historic Community, 2010 355 D. Chinese Canadian Immigration Restrictions 1 The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885 and 1923 358 2 Draft Letter from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 1886 3 Ruling re Mack et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, 2001 366 4 Open Letter from the Chinese Canadian National Council to the Prime Minister, 2005 376 5 House of Commons Apology, 2006 377 E. Indian Passengers on the Komagata Maru 1 An Act Respecting Immigration, 1910 380 2 The Court of Appeal: Re Munshi Singh, 1914 381 3 British Columbia Legislative Assembly Apology, 2008 4 House of Commons Motion M-469, 2008 388 5 Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Apology, 2008 391

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F. First World War Internments 1 The War Measures Act, 1914 394 2 Order in Council of 28 October 1914 396 3 Report on Internment Operations, 1914–1920 398 4 Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, 2005

402

G. Second World War Internments I. 1 2 3

Italian Canadian Internment Defence of Canada Regulations, 1939 405 Order in Council of 10 June 1940 407 “A National Shame: The Internment of Italian Canadians,” brief by the National Congress of Italian Canadians, 1990 409 4 Address by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to the National Congress of Italian Canadians and the Canadian Italian Business Professional Association, 1990 414 5 Letter from Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Rejecting Redress Claims, 1994 419 6 Agreement-in-Principle between the Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community, 2005 420

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II. Japanese Canadian Internment and Relocation 1 National Emergency Transitional Powers Act, 1945 423 2 “We Must Fight Deportation,” The New Canadian, 1945 425 3 Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, “Memorandum for the House of Commons and Senate on the Orders-in-Council P.C. 7355, 7356, 7357,” 1946 427 4 National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, “Submission to Prime Minister and Members of the Government in the Matter of Japanese Canadian Economic Losses Arising from Evacuation,” 1950 431 5 National Association of Japanese Canadians, Democracy Betrayed: The Case for Redress, 1984 434 6 House of Commons Apology, 1988 435 7 Terms of Agreement between the Government of Canada and the National Association of Japanese Canadians, 1988 439 8 Emergencies Act, 1988 440 H. Jewish Refugees on the SS St Louis 1 Canadian Government Policy Brief on Jewish Refugees, 1938 443 2 Petition to Allow the S.S. St Louis to Land in Canada, 1939 445 3 Letter from O.D. Skelton to George M. Wrong, 1939 446 I. Doukhobor Residential Schools 1 Righting the Wrong, Report of the British Columbia Ombudsman, 1999 2 Statement of Regret to Doukhobor Children, 2004 455 Credits

459

Contributors 463 Index

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449

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank many people for their advice: Bruce Anderson, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Dan Conlin, curator of marine history, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax; Greg Cran, director, School of Peace and Conflict Management, Royal Roads University; Aaron Devries, Kingston Frontenac Public Library; Nancy Fay, rights and licensing specialist, Library and Archives Canada; and Lara Wilson, university archivist, University of Victoria Archives. The insight and support of friends and colleagues throughout the process of creating this book has been greatly appreciated. In particular, we wish to thank Matt James for inspiring us with his groundbreaking work in the field of Canadian redress studies and for sharing archival documents with us. Sincere gratitude also goes to Diana Brydon, Len Findlay, Robyn Green, Manina Jones, Smaro Kamboureli, Jenny Lawn, Eva Mackey, Heather Murray, Donna Pennee, and Cheryl Suzack. At Carleton University, we wish to express our thanks to the following graduate students for research assistance: Micheline Besner, Jennifer Dalziel, Tom MacDonald-Depew, Razvan Ungureau, and especially Cindy Ma and David Mastey for their forays into Library and Archives Canada, their excellent judgment, and attention to detail. At Western, Patrick Casey, Sally Fuentes, Jeremy Greenway, Edward Hanecak, Elan Paulson, Suvadip Sinha, and Marlon Thompson provided invaluable research assistance. Special mention must be made with regard to David Drysdale, who performed advanced work in co-researching and co-writing the glosses for the Chinese Canadian head tax section of the appendix, offered meticulous editorial assistance, and saved us countless times with his technological wizardry. It has been a gift to work with such a generous and committed scholar. Since the very beginning, we have also been exceptionally fortunate to benefit from the outstanding research and editing skills of Erica Kelly, to whom great credit is due. Erica took a leadership role in co-researching and co-writing the glosses for the Black Loyalist and Africville, Japanese Canadian internment, and Komagata Maru sections of the appendix. She also provided expert editorial assistance throughout. Her keen intellect, attention to detail, and tireless devotion to this project have earned our deepest gratitude and respect. We are grateful to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Western University for funding to assist with the publication of this book. Thank you also to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding that supported research assistantships integral to the production of this volume.

x Acknowledgments

We are indebted to two anonymous reviewers for the University of Toronto Press for their commitment to this project and their incisive feedback. We would like to thank Siobhan McMenemy, our editor at the University of Toronto Press, for her support, and John St James for his meticulous copy-editing. Thank you also to Emily Truman for preparing the book’s index. The creation of this book has been a truly collaborative process and we have learned much from working together. We thank our wonderful contributors for sharing their exceptional work and for their support of this project with all the patience that is required to see an essay collection appear in print. Jennifer: Thanks to my friends in Te Taunga Tahi Research Network, and to Sheryl Hamilton and Julie Murray closer to home. Thanks to Keith Denny, Arthur, and Frances for their love and patience, and Eleanor Rose (Atwood) Henderson, who has given so much. Most of all, I wish to thank Pauline for the initial invitation to co-edit such a collection. Our close collaboration on this project has been hugely rewarding for me and the greatest rewards of all have been the opportunities to learn lessons in persistence, rigour, and generosity from you along the way, as we imagined, read, and wrote together. Pauline: Thank you to the members of the SSHRC Insight Development Group on “The Aesthetics of Reconciliation” led by Keavy Martin and Dylan Robinson, who are already having such a profound impact on my thinking. Much love and thanks also go to Leigh Caiger, Lily Cho, Allison Hargreaves, and Julia Wakeham. Thank you to Thy Phu for walks, talks, and for being a near-daily interlocutor. Thank you to M.J. Kidnie and James Purkis – and Will and George – for mentorship and for greeting me with warmth and humour every time I walk up your back laneway. Most especially, thank you to Jennifer for everything. Our work together has been so sustained and sustaining that I cannot imagine you not being a part of my thinking on redress and reconciliation. Thank you for your exceptional intellect and your friendship through thick and thin. We wish to acknowledge and remember Roger Simon, our colleague and friend, who passed away just a few months before this book was published. Roger was a strong supporter of Reconciling Canada from the very beginning and we will be forever grateful for his kindness. His contributions to intellectual discussions regarding public pedagogy, social justice, and grappling with the ongoing reverberations of colonial violence have been immense. He was a powerful intellectual and a warm and deeply generous person. Roger’s words and thoughts will impact generations to come.

RECONCILING CANADA Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress

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Introduction jennifer henderson and pauline wakeham

On 20 November 2006, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution proactively declaring 2009 the International Year of Reconciliation, thereby choosing to mark “the end of the first decade of the new millennium” with an intensified commitment to “develop[ing] reconciliation processes … necessary to and a condition for firm and lasting peace.”1 The United Nations’ resolution provides official endorsement of the “proliferation” and “acceleration” of “scenes of repentance” that have taken place on the world stage in recent decades, collectively emerging as a phenomenon that Jacques Derrida has termed the “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness.”2 This project-in-the-making has been under development for more than six decades. In the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust, the West’s own “auto-violence” provided a motivation for grappling with crimes against humanity and genocide, concepts previously untheorized and unnamed even as Europe practised them on “other” bodies and geographies.3 At the same time, activists and intellectuals in decolonizing nations seized upon this moment of Western reflexivity to expand the project of righting wrongs to the atrocities of imperial violence, thereby re-tooling the logic of reconciliation with an emphasis on addressing Europe’s long history of colonial exploitation in diverse regions and contexts.4 The complex genealogies shaping processes of reckoning with injustices suggest that if forgiveness has indeed gone global, such a globalization, like all globalizations, is radically striated and uneven, contoured by the world-historical forces of empire and capital and their resultant neocolonial power asymmetries. International processes of reconciliation, therefore, are profoundly heterogeneous and require rigorous attention to the interplay between overarching cosmopolitan discourses of forgiveness and the specificities of local and national instantiations. Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress examines the domestication of global currencies of reconciliation within the particular geopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts of Canada. The federal government’s June 2008 apology to Aboriginal peoples for its role in the operation of compulsory residential schools constituted a significant moment in Canadian history, perhaps especially because representatives of major Inuit, Métis, and First Nations political organizations were, after much hesitation on the part of the government, permitted to respond to the apology from the floor of the House of Commons.5 The inauguration of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that same month enabled Canada to claim the title of the first “established democracy” and the first G8 nation to initiate a truth and reconciliation commission.6 These events have sparked a flurry of media, public, and scholarly respons-

4

Introduction

es, many suggesting that the present tense in Canada constitutes a watershed moment, a turning point in the history and future of government relations with First Peoples. While it is important to acknowledge the possibilities afforded by the apology and the TRC, a presentism that becomes myopic and overly celebratory risks occluding the complex history of struggle that led to recent events. At the current juncture, therefore, it is crucial to historicize the government’s 2008 reconciliatory initiatives towards Aboriginal peoples in relation to more than two decades of negotiations and government responses, including: the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples; the Minister of Indian Affairs’ 1998 Statement of Reconciliation; the establishment of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation; the development of the Alternative Dispute Resolution process; and the signing of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a multiparty legal agreement between former residential school students, Aboriginal political organizations, the federal government, and the church organizations involved in operating the institutions.7 Understood in relation to this background, the events of 2008 appear less the product of a magnanimous government and more the result of extraordinary political mobilization and tireless negotiation by Aboriginal organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations as well as the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Métis National Council, and the Native Women’s Association of Canada. Equally important to such a historicization of redress is the recollection that Canada’s assimilation of the global trend of reconciliation had its inception at least twenty years before the apology for residential schooling, and in relation to a so-called immigrant community rather than to autochthonous peoples. In 1988, the federal government offered its first official apology and compensation package for a historical grievance against a minoritized constituency – namely, the internment and forced relocation of Japanese Canadians and the seizure of their property during the Second World War. In surveying current news reports, state discourse, and even scholarly debates regarding the pressing question of Aboriginal redress, we have observed the recurring tendency (with some notable exceptions) to discuss First Peoples’ struggles for reparations without reference to other redress movements in Canada that have occurred contemporaneously. While it is vital to attend to the specificity of Aboriginal claims based upon pre-existing rights to land and self-determination, the distinctly devastating socio-historical conditions of colonialism, and the particularity of racist constructions of Aboriginality, a critical understanding of the current status of state recompense vis-à-vis First Peoples would be incomplete without a consideration of both the rise of Indigenous campaigns for colonial redress and self-determination across the globe and the emergence of an array of redress movements in Canada over the past few decades. In what ways, and to what extent, might the rise of a heterogeneous culture of redress in Canada have enabled the articulation of Aboriginal sovereignty claims in the current moment? Conversely, how might the state’s efforts to co-opt that same culture of redress within a discourse of nation building and citizenship inclusion undermine Indigenous efforts to be recognized as nations in their own right? If the culture of redress has opened a space for Indigenous claims to sovereignty, that space has also been seized by the state to rush settlement on matters such as land claims, as evidenced by the federal government’s new plan to provide bands with a three-year maximum period for negotiations on specific land claims, after which point the claims will be sent to the newly created Specific Claims Tribunal, where a unilateral decision is made by a panel of judges.8 Catalysed by such questions, Reconciling Canada seeks to broaden the terms of debate for understand-

Introduction

5

ing the rise of reconciliation as a prominent social paradigm, arguing for the necessity of tracing the complex relations between a range of redress movements that have, through processes of cross-pollination, collectively shaped the contemporary political and cultural fields. In attempting to examine in a single book that range of movements in Canada, we do not propose to relativize radically different redress cases or, conversely, to inscribe a didactic hierarchization of injuries but, rather, to thematize the complex articulations and disarticulations that shape a heterogeneous field of actors and grievances. By attending to the push and pull of intersecting and diverging interests among a multifarious web of actors, it is possible to formulate a more robust understanding of the conditions of possibility under which the culture of redress in Canada has emerged. If 1988 marked the federal government’s first apology to a minoritized community, this event must be acknowledged as contingent upon the work of a range of marginalized groups who began lobbying for redress many years prior. The federal government’s settlement with the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) was a result of decades of grass-roots mobilization, later galvanized in the 1970s and 1980s by the sansei or third-generation Japanese Canadians who invested their campaign for redress with the wider stakes of Canada’s claim to multiculturalism.9 Moreover, the NAJC’s work did not occur in a political context void of other citizen groups lobbying for social justice. The intersecting forces of these diverse redress campaigns gathered collective momentum, yielding intertwined effects. For instance, the NAJC’s victory may have been further strengthened by the actions of a private citizen from another cultural community. Narrating the birth of the Chinese Canadian redress movement for the “Head Tax” and Exclusion Acts, Lily Cho writes: In 1983, Dak Leon Mark walked into the offices of his local member of Parliament carrying his original head tax receipt for five hundred dollars and asked for his money back. The MP took the request to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Mark’s act inspired many other Chinese Canadians to do the same. When the prime minister rebuffed his request for an apology and compensation, the Chinese Canadian community went public with the request on Chinese New Year’s Day in 1984. This was the beginning of the Chinese Canadian head tax redress movement.10

If Mark’s visit to his MP inspired other Chinese Canadians to press for reparations, his actions also ignited similar mobilizations among a range of other constituencies. As Matt James explains, “the first major wave of Canadian redress claims” was sparked by the “entrenchment” of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. In the wake of this legislation, members of a variety of marginalized communities – including Japanese, Chinese, and Ukrainian Canadians, in addition to Aboriginal peoples – began to seize the possibilities of the equality rights embedded therein, drawing attention to Canada’s long history of inequality and agitating for state recognition of institutionalized discrimination against particular citizen groups.11 In this sense, it may be said that the culture of redress in Canada was born not of reflexive state initiatives but, rather, by the ingenuity of citizens who, through complexly interconnected political work, prompted a national reckoning with structures of socio-economic and cultural inequity and injustice. The government’s response to the NAJC’s campaign was framed as a one-time apology for a discrete historical policy. Nevertheless, the mea culpa set a powerful precedent that spurred a “second wave of redress politics, in which citizens of Italian, German, Jewish, and Indian descent joined the earlier claimants” in seeking reparations for a range of speci-

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Introduction

fied wrongs.12 While these heterogeneous movements, either intentionally or by contingent circumstances, at times bolstered each others’ campaigns, the emerging discursive plurality around redress could also lead to relativistic claims. As early as 1984, the strategy of framing a political grievance along the lines of the Japanese Canadian case for redress could be seen explicitly in Ukrainian Canadians’ insistence on their experience of a parallel wrong – wartime internment – at a different historical moment: “It’s the same deal isn’t it?” a Ukrainian Canadian internee’s son was quoted as saying in a Winnipeg Free Press article.13 The political and cultural reverberations of Japanese Canadian redress have expanded beyond such narrow claims to the “same deal,” however. Today, they encompass a discursive formation frequently organized around the pursuit of reparations for specifiable historical injuries and for reconciliation of social divides framed as stemming from those injuries. In response to minoritized constituencies’ calls for addressing and redressing wrongs, the state has offered a range of reconciliatory gestures over the past few decades, spanning a spectrum of “remedies,” from official and semi-official apologies, to fiscal reparations and token concessions, and even settlements designed to produce the semblance of reconciliation while evading an admission of culpability. Initiatives that fall within this varied field include: the previously discussed apology to Japanese Canadians in 1988; Brian Mulroney’s 1990 apology to Italian Canadians for the internment of suspected Fascist sympathizers during the Second World War; the High Arctic Relocation Reconciliation Agreement of 1996 that purported to compensate Inuit communities for their forced exile to isolated areas in the far North during the 1950s; the Ministry of Indian Affairs’ 1998 “Statement of Reconciliation” to Aboriginal peoples; the federal government’s 2003 official recognition of the Acadian expulsion of 1755 and the declaration of July 28 as the commemorative anniversary of the event; the November 2005 passage of Bill C-331 recognizing the internment of Ukrainian Canadians; and the formal apology delivered in June 2006 to Chinese Canadians for the head tax and related discriminatory immigration policies.14 The summer of 2008 ushered in an unprecedented season of contrition with a flurry of state gestures, beginning with the widely publicized residential schools apology and the commencement of the TRC in June. Prompted in part by the British Columbia legislature’s May 2008 apology to the South Asian Canadian community for its role in the government’s refusal, in 1914, to admit Indian passengers aboard the Komagata Maru into Canada, on 3 August, Prime Minister Harper issued a federal mea culpa. The pseudo-apology was quickly rejected by the aggrieved community due to Harper’s failure to consult South Asian organizations regarding his speech and his insistence upon delivering the statement in a Surrey park rather than in the House of Commons. Also in 2008, Harper’s Conservative government established the Community Historical Recognition Program that provides funding for community-initiated commemorative projects regarding “historical wartime measures and/or immigration restrictions.”15 During the summer of 2008, the federal government announced new grants under this program to Chinese Canadians to recognize racist immigration policies, and to Jewish Canadians to commemorate Canada’s role in turning away 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution aboard the St Louis steamship in 1939. A separate endowment, outside the framework of this program, was made to the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Schevchenko to memorialize the First World War internment. Since 2008, the Harper administration has only continued to build on its list of reconciliatory initiatives, with a public apology delivered by the prime minister to families of the Air India victims in June 2010. In August 2010, the minister of Indian affairs offered a

Introduction

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formal apology for the High Arctic Relocation, thereby ostensibly redressing the failings of the federal government’s previous attempt in 1996 to “resolve” Inuit claims for reparations with what Matt James has called “an aggressively preemptive non-apology leavened by compensation.”16 Such returns to remedy the shortcomings of past reconciliatory gestures have become familiar scenes in Canada’s culture of redress, underscoring how the state’s attempts to impose closure upon “historical” injuries may be undermined by its own preoccupations with haste, the deflection of liability, and the public relations of “saving face.” This ever-accumulating list of reconciliatory gestures risks being read as evidence of a state coming to historical self-consciousness, in the manner of an awakened, repentant individual who has crafted a progressively enlightened program of righting wrongs. In practice, however, the list of redress initiatives implemented since 1988 has been amassed inconsistently, shaped by the shifting and ambivalent domestic forces of a series of different government administrations and policy changes, partisan one-upmanship, and domestic and international political pressure.17 Despite these inconsistencies, the state has arguably framed its approach towards reconciliation as a more committed and coherent project than it actually is in order to shore up national mythologies of Canada’s dedication to pluralism and to reinforce Canada’s international reputation as a peacekeeping, peace-making nation. Like the project of “official multiculturalism” to which it is articulated, reconciliation has been appropriated by hegemonic discursive formations for the purposes of framing the Canadian nation-state as a leader in the “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness,” modelling values of civility and tolerance for the world. One need only recall the slogan for the nascent Canadian Museum for Human Rights – “From Canada. For the World.” – to grasp how integral the belief in Canadian planetary moral leadership is to the nation’s phantasmatic self-construction. The strategic depiction of reconciliation as a coherent social paradigm in Canada, however, is motivated by more than the desire to preserve a reputation as a supposed multicultural beacon; it is prompted by a pragmatic attention to a global context of shifting expectations of modern liberal-democratic nation-states, a context that requires demonstrations of historical reckoning, if not the overcoming of history itself, as a criterion of admission to the international civil society of free-trade zones and corporate investment. If the view of the redressing state as increasingly enlightened and magnanimous is ideologically and methodologically problematic, so also is the comparable view of the state as acting with the intentionality of a cynical and manipulative individual. One of the unpredictable effects of the culture of redress may be its sustaining of this very illusion of the state as the coherent subject orchestrating political practice, whether cynically or in good faith – a fantasized abstraction that Begoña Aretxaga calls the “imagined national state.” As Aretxaga contends, “The state as phenomenological reality is produced through discourses and practices of power, produced in local encounters at the everyday level, and produced through the discourses of public culture, rituals of mourning and celebration, and encounters with bureaucracies, monuments, organization of space, etc.”18 When that imagined centre is seen as the monolithic point of coordination of national reconciliation, missed are the ways in which processes of framing and addressing grievances are delegated, dispersed, and refracted. Seeking to move beyond a state-centred approach to understanding reconciliation and redress, the essays in Reconciling Canada collectively work to flesh out the complex network of actors and agents, the dialectic of advocacy and recuperation, and the dialogical relations between different redress movements that shape what we theorize as the culture of redress.

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Introduction

Mapping the Culture of Redress: Contexts of Case-Making Our collection’s titular reference to the phrase “Reconciling Canada” does not seek to confirm the meaning of “reconciliation” as fixed and self-evident. Instead, we invoke the present participle to foreground the active, heterogeneous phenomenon produced by the articulated forces of the state and its apparatuses, the mainstream media, multinational corporations, the Euro-Canadian cultural establishment, religious organizations, minority elites, grass-roots organizations, as well as individual citizens and residents. This complex network of actors is shaped by the power asymmetries born of Canada’s history and present as a settler state founded upon colonial invasion and territorial dispossession, as well as subsequent tactics of assimilation, controlled immigration, and other regulatory measures. If European processes of reconciliation at first skirted Europe’s history of imperial violence, Canada’s settler-state formation – with its urgent and defensive project of nation building and the location of its “civilizational barbarity” at home – has not allowed it the luxury of that reckoning without some consideration of imperial violence.19 Still, the specific forms and contexts in which attention is paid to that legacy require close examination. While Canada issued the formal apology to Aboriginal peoples for compulsory residential schooling in 2008, not much more than a year later the prime minister boasted to other members of the G-20 that “Canada has no history of colonialism.”20 The very possibility of such a denial underlines the situation of a settler state like Canada in which, as Elizabeth Furniss has put it, there has been no “radical decolonization” comparable to the processes undergone in former European colonies of occupation in the southern hemisphere, involving the “withdrawal of colonial governments and the transfer of political authority to indigenous elites.”21 The usual contradictions of “European bourgeois nationalism” are heightened in the context of a nation-state described by Himani Bannerji as “a capitalist state derived from a white settler colony with aspirations to liberal democracy.”22 In the current moment, allied forces within a discursive network connecting state, media, and corporate power collectively manage the settler state’s history and present conditions of violence by attempting to control the meaning of “reconciliation” itself. When the meaning of “reconciliation” is represented as transparent, debate about what “reconciliation” could or should mean, or what other terms might be more useful for effecting social justice, is in peril of being pre-emptively curtailed. Instead of reverently adhering to the rubric of “reconciliation,” our book cites the term in order to put it under pressure, to remain unreconciled, so to speak, with this canonical idiom. In the process, our collection labours to pry open the discursive field, creating space for alternative formulations of reconciliation while also offering a test site for other critical vocabularies of social justice. Throughout this introduction, we invoke a proliferation of signifiers, from redress, to recognition, reparations, reckoning, and recompense, without suggesting any easy equivalence between these terms. Although the alliterative quality of these conspicuously similar-sounding “r-words” might invite conflation and slippage, we understand them as plural and varied concepts. Moreover, we seek to put into play other “r” words that are frequently left out of this alliterative chain such as “redistribution,” which, to us, suggests processes of social, economic, and political transformation.23 Because the concept of “reconciliation” has been deployed in official gestures as a term that imposes closure upon grievances, and because this idiom is already burdened by theological, juridical, and political connotations, we have chosen the phrase “the culture of redress” to sig-

Introduction

9

nal the site for the polyphonic enunciation of diverse perspectives on grief and grievance, wrongs and repair, equity and justice. The term “redress” seems to be frequently invoked by marginalized constituencies in search of justice for grievances, connoting something more than the nebulous conception of a national “coming together” or “eliminating of differences” often associated with reconciliation, and suggesting, rather, a demand for accountability, compensatory action, and concrete reparations. This tentative distinction is not intended to suggest that reconciliation and redress are always traceable back to the state and marginalized communities, respectively, in a static division of conceptual categories or that their meanings have become ossified. Rather, we seek to balance attention to the genealogies of these different idioms with consideration of the contingencies of their crisscrossing enunciations. Thus, one has to speak of both redress and reconciliation because in Canada both terms are in play: they stand in slippery relation to one another, and do not always mean what one might think or, indeed, what they do in the wider global context of the “age of apology.” In the particular context of First Peoples, the term “reconciliation” has arguably become the more common rubric for framing questions of colonial grievances and present-day “remedies” with regard to Aboriginal peoples, mobilized by both the state and Indigenous constituencies. As Phil Fontaine, representing the Assembly of First Nations in the House of Commons on 11 June 2008, said, “What happened today signifies a new dawn in the relationship between us and the rest of Canada … The ‘common road of hope’ will bring us to reconciliation more than any words, laws or legal claims ever could.”24 In this context, it is possible to speak of a demand for reconciliation as having been formed, in part, by some leading Aboriginal political organizations, while other Indigenous intellectuals and activists lobby against the use of the term.25 The appearance of discursive unanimity between Aboriginal groups and the state – with the invocation of “reconciliation” as a shared signifier for renewed relations – may, however, obscure the complex negotiations surrounding the slippage of meanings attributed to this word, ranging from serious political and socioeconomic transformation to the maintenance of the status quo. The commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are currently engaged in such negotiations, seeking to press for clarity on what government and church representatives mean when they speak of “reconciliation,” rather than assuming its meanings as given, while also offering their own interpretations, including reconciliation within Indigenous families and communities as well as social justice in Canadian society.26 With these discursive tendencies and ambiguities in mind, “reconciling” and “redress” work together in our title to signal that the field discussed in this book includes reconciliation processes (formalized through commissions, negotiations, and settlements) and aggrieved communities’ campaigns for redress, as well as the interplay and tension between them. Of course, not all formal initiatives to reconcile divisions involve a redress component, and not all processes stressing the reparative and compensatory have an additional concern with reconciliation. Projects can be of very different orders when they attach themselves to “reconciliation” or “redress.” In the case of the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and Canada (a distinctive one within the culture of redress in this country due to the particular status of Indigenous peoples’ long-standing land rights and sovereignty), there are profound differences between constitutional negotiations over questions of sovereignty (or what James Sa’ke’j Henderson refers to as “constitutional reconciliation”) and the negotiations that succeeded in securing a “Common Experience Payment”

10

Introduction

for survivors of residential schools under the 2007 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (an agreement that might be understood as a mechanism of “redress”). Nevertheless, as the essay in this collection by Dale Turner shows, it is instructive to think about the relationship between the kinds of truths established in legal cases that test the Constitution Act, on the one hand, and the kinds of truths recognized and promulgated by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, on the other. Keeping both in view permits us to see how the limits of constitutional reconciliation are being tested in the legal arena even as the project of redressing the damage of residential schooling through payments and a TRC might pull the meaning of “reconciliation” away from issues of sovereignty. The discursive shaping of concepts such as “reconciliation” and “redress” constitutes one example of the performative, productive work of the culture of redress, that is, not just what it says but what it does, what it instantiates and entrenches: in short, its constitutive power. As a range of cultural, political, and pedagogical practices enacted by heterogeneous agents, the culture of redress shapes particular notions of history and the political, establishes what can count as a group injury and indeed what it is that can be injured, solidifies a sense of the “national state,” and potentially naturalizes government responses as well as the contingent identities of those groups forming themselves to make demands upon the state. The culture of redress does not simply amount to a dynamic of demand and response through which scores are settled, debts repaid, and apologies delivered; it effects a much wider epistemological restructuring, one that is not managed from any single vantage point or locus of control. Stressing the performative, contingent processes shaping the culture of redress is one way to begin, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak suggests, to “make unstable the presupposition that the reasonable righting of wrongs is inevitably the manifest destiny of groups – unevenly class-divided, embracing North and South – that remain poised to right them.”27 A range of discursive practices within Canada’s culture of redress have collectively shaped assumptions and established norms regarding what wrongs are eligible for righting and which subjects can mount a claim – and, conversely, what forms of grievance remain unsayable and which parties remain voiceless. At the same time, however, the culture of redress might also serve as the site wherein these norms are questioned, reconfigured, and disputed. To date, a range of different institutions and actors have participated in establishing these norms in their current formulation. For example, in preparation for the 2001 United Nations–sponsored “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” held in Durban, South Africa, the Canadian government commissioned a background paper by an advisory committee to the secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women that evaluated Canada’s record of redressing “past racial wrongs committed by the government.” That paper’s inventory of redress claims is a useful illustration of how the culture of redress involves the production of particular forms of knowledge – in this case, a knowledge produced for a part of the state bureaucracy about the state and the nature of its power. The paper presents a list of “Redress Claims for Past Racial Wrongs” that includes many of the cases previously mentioned, but the report distinguishes these claims from those on a parallel list, “Redress Claims for Wrongs Unrelated to Race.” These claims “unrelated to race” include the category of “health-related claims,” under which the authors classify the claims made by victims of forced sexual sterilization in the province of Alberta from 1928 to 1972, who were categorized as the “feeble-

Introduction

11

minded,” in the eugenic discourse of the first half of the twentieth century.28 A positivist, static, and ahistorical conception of race underwrites this distinction between race-based and health-based wrongs. For in order to separate from the category of “racial wrongs” sterilization under a eugenic policy to manage the moral and intellectual fitness of a population, the authors of this background paper must limit the state’s involvement in “race” to specifiable acts of sovereign power wielded against non-Anglo-Celtic groups: internment, immigration restrictions, denials of government benefits. The significance of the demarcation of outsiders or internal enemies is not to be diminished, but there are a number of important consequences that follow from such a circumscription of “racial wrong.” The first consequence is that the articulation of “race” with “health” within regimes of biopower is obscured. Anti-racism as a form of critique is thereby kept separate from the politicization of attempts to regulate bodies, behaviours, and populations through norms of “healthy” practices of sexuality, gender, and domesticity. This example of the work of classifications comes from a text addressed to bureaucrats, but it serves as a reminder of the risks inherent in taking back from the state and its circuits of knowledge-production definitions of historical wrongs. Indeed, our decision to limit Reconciling Canada to essays discussing redress claims made on the basis of racist and ethnic discrimination by the state risks reproducing, for the sake of coherence, the naturalization of distinctions and the compartmentalizations seen in the background paper written for the secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women in 2001.29 The essays in this collection seek to work against an uncritical deployment of received categories, however, by exploring the historical and contextual contingency, and the ideological and discursive provenance, of their own objects. Another consequence of the background paper’s delimitation of “racial wrong” is that it risks naturalizing a historically and geopolitically contingent, bureaucratic understanding of “race” as a property belonging to so-called visible minorities. This understanding seems to be written into the name of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF), the creation of which was mandated by the settlement agreement between the National Association of Japanese Canadians and the Government of Canada in 1988. Since the monetary compensation paid to individuals through that settlement was explicitly framed as an exception, not to be taken as a precedent by other redress campaigns, the establishment of the CRRF and the funding of its work to eliminate racism in Canadian society was, implicitly, a substitute for subsequent redress transactions.30 A foundation nominally devoted to “race relations” seemed to be the government’s attempt to ward off the possibility of further reparations payments by means of an essentialist euphemism. Even though the CRRF has functioned, in its actual practice, as more than simply an alibi for the state, its name speaks of a certain depoliticization. As Audrey Kobayashi has observed, the expression “race relations” describes a “correlation” between groups divided by “race” understood as a natural or biological category of human difference.31 Rather than perpetuating such a notion of “race,” the work of a foundation formed in response to the state’s acknowledgment of the Japanese Canadian experience of systematic persecution on the grounds of “race” might have seemed to be more appropriately focused on combating ongoing racial discrimination through the promotion of an understanding of “races” as “socially constructed expressions of inequality.”32 As Kobayashi contends, there is a world of difference between the “race relations” work of ameliorating attitudes and relationships, on the one hand, and anti-racism as the work of demonstrating and resisting how processes of racialization foster and sustain social inequality, on the other.

12

Introduction

Approaching the matter from a different set of perspectives and investments, criticisms of the CRRF by some members of Canada’s “white ethnicities” focused on the worry that the foundation’s “race relations” mandate would render illegitimate their claims to historical injuries based on racisms not organized by the current logic of “visibility.”33 The concern of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, for example, was not only that the creation of the CRRF would allow their redress claim to be brushed aside, along with the claims of other groups, but also that “race relations” would not encompass an understanding of Ukrainian Canadians’ historical experiences of subordination and marginalization through a Canadian whiteness defined in the terms of racially exclusive norms of British civility.34 At stake for Ukrainian and Italian Canadians, in their worry that the work of the CRRF would address only forms of persecution related to a presentist rhetoric of “visibility,” was the larger issue of what conditions were being set for the conceptualization of group injuries. This is a key question if, as Wendy Brown has asserted, our historically contingent cultural and political register for producing collective identities depends on a “logic of pain,” an investment in the recognition of a history of suffering attributed to a categorizable group.35 To be disqualified from claiming group suffering, following this logic, would be tantamount to losing the basis for conceiving of a collective identity in late modernity. At the same time, while the rubric of “race relations” might serve to entrench an understanding of racism’s objects as necessarily “visible,” the current turn to the common denominator of “historical injury” risks a relativization that sidesteps the ways in which Canadian “whiteness as an ideological-political category has superceded and subsumed different [ethnicities] among Europeans” in the second half of the twentieth century.36 Since 1988, the Canadian state has not been able to ward off demands for acknowledgment and redress of historical injuries, in spite of its funding of a foundation devoted to “race relations.” National reconciliation would seem to have emerged, then, as an important means of what Brown has called “social repair,” or ideological “webbing,” in the face of globalizing capital’s uprooting and atomizing effects.37 From one perspective, the growing prominence and genericism of “historical injury” as a basis for framing demands on the state speaks of a trend towards the homogenization and relativization of injustices. However, from another perspective, the state’s inconsistencies in its program of redress and its varying responses to different aggrieved parties have resulted in what might be perceived as a hierarchization of injuries, according more recognition to some groups than others, and, in the process, at times fomenting divisions between different marginalized constituencies. Such genericism also tends to consolidate a conceptualization of injury around minoritized groups identified in terms of ethnicity or “race” while internal differences are flattened in the process. What is unavoidably constrained in a book about redress is a more sustained discussion of those social relations of “race,” class, gender, and sexuality, historical and present, that are often not amenable to the culture of redress and its forms of case making. Their harms may be more diffuse and incalculable than precise injuries, and they may be more difficult to categorize in terms of dates, locations, perpetrators, or even named victims. The federal government’s fanfare over its reconciliatory gestures has served to distract attention from those grievances that have yet to be recognized in substantive ways as well as those wrongs that are ongoing. For instance, the federal government’s recent apology to Aboriginal peoples for residential schools has occluded broader consideration of the long history of colonial genocide and its other constitutive components such as the establish-

Introduction

13

ment of reservations, the expropriation of land and resources, the deliberate suppression and distortion of Indigenous languages, beliefs, and cultural practices, and the disruption of kinship networks, not to mention the present conditions of poverty, incarceration, and compromised health lived by many Aboriginal people in Canada. For other aggrieved communities, the complex division of liability across municipal, provincial, and national lines has thwarted claims for redress. Such has been the case for the Doukhobor community, who have sought reparations for the placement of their children in residential schools in British Columbia between 1953 and 1959.38 Similarly, African Canadian residents of Africville, a community within Halifax, struggled for many years to be compensated for the seizure and razing of their property in the name of urban modernization and “slum clearance.” Despite a recommendation for fiscal reparations from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2004, it was not until February 2010 that the Halifax Regional Municipality finally issued a formal public apology and compensatory settlement for Africville.39 Additionally, the frame of “official reconciliation” limits consideration of initiatives that exceed the purview of the state, such as the Qikiqtani Truth Commission (QTC), an “independently established and financed” forum led by the Qikiqtani Inuit Association to document and examine, through oral testimony and other forms of historical research, the experiences of Baffin region Inuit from 1950 to 1975. Among those topics investigated by the QTC are the killing of a substantial number of Inuit sled dogs by members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) during this period – killings done ostensibly in the interest of public health and safety, but at times done for expedience and without due process – that had a devastating impact on the sled dog population and on Inuit lifeways.40 The QTC responds to the RCMP’s own review of the sled dog killings, published as a final report in May 2006, that disputed Inuit claims of police misconduct, negligence, and intimidation.41 Thus, rather than following the state’s direction, the QTC seeks to establish Inuit leadership over the process of investigating grievances, “promot[ing] healing and forgiveness among those who suffered from historic wrongs,” and “repair[ing] relations between Inuit and governments.”42 The federal government’s selective adoption of reconciliation processes over the past few decades constitutes a retooling of that other mode of “social repair” dominant in Canada from the 1980s: official multiculturalism, with its emphasis on the value of cultural diversity and the sense of horizontal relationships between the superficially differentiated tiles of a national cultural mosaic. One of the distinguishing features of Canada’s official multiculturalism is its status as a largely state-initiated and state-promoted project to manage the meanings and forms of social difference.43 The rise of movements insisting that the state reckon with the injustices caused by its past policies does not have such a managerial origin; it is a phenomenon initially prompted by marginalized constituencies and increasingly claimed by the state – however inconsistently and unevenly – as a manifestation of a desire for closure, that is to say, as a form of official reconciliation. This state-appropriated reconciliation introduces a particular emphasis on history and the imperative of “moving on,”44 as well as a renewed emphasis on legalistic conceptions of injury that conceive of harm explicitly or implicitly in relation to liberal individuals and property. The stress is now on the relationship of tiles of the mosaic to their own painful pasts, with a view to healing any remaining wounds that work to divide or distance the constituency from a full identification with the national projects of constant improvement and innovation geared towards global competitiveness. The new emphasis on historical reckoning – at least in-

14

Introduction

sofar as it is harnessed by policy – thus seems to promote a dialectical transcendence of precisely those troubling contents of multicultural “diversity” and “difference” that are not amenable to folklorization or commodification. These troubling remainders were the focus of a sustained critique of official multiculturalism from the left in the 1990s, a critique well represented by Bannerji’s argument that the ideology of multiculturalism worked to obscure not only struggles “against the icons and regulations of an overall subordination and exploitation,” but also the demands for remediation of structured inequalities, as well as the critiques of racist violence and of the ethnicization of violence against women.45 Reframed within the rubric of reconciliation as demands for acknowledgment of particular historical injuries, these unruly “differences” become matters of apology and healing. They also become matters that can be referred to a specialized branch of the bureaucracy dealing with problems of social integration. Thus, one of the signs that official multiculturalism is being invested with the logic and imperatives of reconciliation-as-social-cohesion is the transfer of responsibility for multiculturalism from the Department of Canadian Heritage to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, where, since 2008, multiculturalism has fallen under that department’s objective of promoting “integration,” code for the selfreliant participation in the economy of individuals and communities.46 In one sense, then, the advent of reconciliation has allowed the “differences” thematized by official multiculturalism and formerly housed within Heritage to be referred to the branch of government tasked with fostering social integration and cohesion, or, in other words, with reconciliation’s normative teleology of overcoming divisions. This is not to suggest, however, that heritage, or the past valorized as a source of collective pride, has become irrelevant to the management of social inequalities in multicultural Canada. For at the same time, opportunities for heritage-construction have become one of the key currencies of reparations for historical injuries. As we have noted, the establishment of the CRRF in 1988 in an attempt to pre-empt further redress claims was criticized for what were seen to be its ineffectual “race relations” mandate and its exclusion of the concerns of historically wronged “white ethnicities.” Heritage-focused initiatives since 1988 suggest that these criticisms have been bundled by the state as demands for historical recognition. The translation of critique into demand is one of the strategies by which the logic of reconciliation territorializes itself, finding new grounds of dissidence to shape into specifiable historical wrongs calling for repentance and commemoration in the post-conflict present. A multiculturalism program initiative such as the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP) strategically interprets a range of marginalized constituencies’ redress movements as campaigns seeking a place in the national narrative of Canada, rather than concrete reparations for state-inflicted damages. The program hails particular, named groups as communities in pursuit of state recognition of isolated injuries and opportunities to renew dignity through public pedagogy promoting their “contributions to building this country.”47 The rhetoric of national contribution extends the discursive framing of the value of ethnic minorities in the Multiculturalism Act, which also declares the state’s commitment to recognizing the “historic contribution to Canadian society” of ethno-cultural groups. Importantly, however, the CHRP now makes recognition of the value of that contribution count as a state reparation for harm. In this exchange, dignity is a value restored precisely insofar as the group’s “contribution” can be shown to have been aligned with the nation-building narrative. Paradoxically, it is that very narrative that the culture of redress ostensibly reworks. But there are crucial differences between the hegemonic deployment of tropes of historiography,

Introduction

15

focusing on acts of narrative closure (“turning the page” or “closing a dark chapter”), and the myriad ways in which reconciliation’s logic can be occupied counter-hegemonically, to focus on disruption of the national narrative, its singularity of perspective, its teleological assumptions, and its undisputed righteousness. Theorizing “Culture” in the Culture of Redress Our collection’s theorization of a culture of redress carries both descriptive and disciplinary claims about what is fundamental to processes of redress and reconciliation and how these processes can be studied. On the day in September 1988 when the Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement was announced by the government, two members of Parliament read passages from a 1981 novel chronicling the internment and relocation experience, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. Fictional expression was thus used to substantiate claims about the reality of the suffering inflicted by the Canadian state on citizens. But it is not just this kind of direct appeal to the power of narrative, character, and metaphor that our emphasis on the culture of redress is meant to describe. By designating redress as a culture, we also mean to stress the fact that historical injuries are framed and redress claims made in language and discourse: claims are necessarily subject to the disciplining pressures of discourse, but at the same time they are acts of signification whose meanings can proliferate without respect for origins and intentions.48 A discursive approach to redress and reconciliation thus sees these processes as polyvalent and always unfinished, as constrained by discursive conventions but, at the same time, as processes that are sometimes unpredictable in their effects. Discursive rules, narrative conventions, tropes, and performance criteria are central to the pursuit of reparations, mediating the work of movements for redress and the ways in which their work is received. More than simply shaping the political terrain of reparations, though, culture is part of what is at stake in redress politics. Demands for restitution centre not just on financial reparations (the form of demand through which redress campaigns tend to address the question of material resources) but also on symbolic capital. Restitution is often conceived in terms of disestablishment of the narratives, epistemic authority, representational prerogatives, and normative identities that have legitimated inequitable and discriminatory political and social relationships. For example, demands for redress and gestures of reconciliation often involve the rewriting of the grand récits of national history and the provision of means of memorializing injustices. While state apologies may seek to strategically manage the “correction” of the historical record, a diverse range of cultural practices may also contribute to and intervene in such processes of rememoration. The essays by Lindy Ledohowski, Len Findlay, and Roy Miki in this collection examine the role that artistic production may play in performing alternative forms of “memory-work” that expose, disrupt, or recreate frames for remembering past injustices and making sense of history’s relation to the present. Without suggesting that artistic texts circulate in the same ways as state discourses or that they are always oppositional or resistant to power, Reconciling Canada seeks to explore how cultural production plays a role in shaping the discourses that structure our understanding of injuries, grief, and grievance. While the contributors to Reconciling Canada write from a variety of disciplines, spanning English and cultural studies, legal studies, political science, anthropology, and Indigenous studies, what they share is an interest in questions of knowledge frames and discursive regularities. A more traditionally social-scientific perspective on redress movements could

16

Introduction

contribute valuable insights into the shaping of specific movements, coalitions, and strategies, and their consequences “on the ground” – in institutions, the distribution of resources, and the formation of elites. The more discursively focussed approach demonstrated here specifies the contours and discursive mechanisms of the political terrain of redress in order to stress the contingency of the current understanding of politics as the pursuit of redress and/or reconciliation following injury. The implicit argument of this book – that these discursive elements coagulate into a general culture of redress – also offers a starting point for new kinds of questions about the relations between movements. Viewed discursively, these relations do not necessarily take the form of deliberate coalitions; rather, they may take the form of substitutions, differentiations, and exchanges, as injuries are framed and redress claims made within a circumscribed field of possibility. We recognize that the concept of “culture” is often uneasily articulated to the field of politics, as apparent in the “recognition versus redistribution” debates that have occurred in recent decades. As theorists from Charles Taylor to Nancy Fraser have observed, from the last third of the twentieth century on, struggles for group recognition, validation of identity, and equality of dignity have become a “paradigmatic form of political conflict.”49 For Fraser, in this process the question of group identity has come to “supplan[t] class interest as the chief medium of political mobilization.” “Cultural domination,” likewise, has taken the place of a former concern, “exploitation,” as “the fundamental injustice.”50 This critique of identity politics – extended to include the processes by which the state seizes such struggles for recognition in order to proffer modes of acknowledgment that remain culturalist or largely symbolic, thereby sidestepping socio-economic change – is a critique that has been made of official multiculturalism, and can certainly be made of official reconciliation. As the essays by Eva Mackey and Dale Turner in this collection observe, when restrictive notions of Aboriginal “culture” have been invoked in the context of recent state apologies and court decisions, the appeals to “culture” have seemed to operate as distractions from issues of sovereignty and land rights. Fraser’s call for a re-suturing of recognition and redistribution that would push for transformation of “the deep structures of both political economy and culture,” in ways that promote “coalition building” between groups representing class, gender, sexuality, “race,” and cultural interests, is worth heeding.51 Reconciling Canada reiterates such a call to think both the differences and convergences between reconciliation and redistribution. At the same time, we want to underscore that any assumed separation of “cultural domination” from “exploitation,” and the implicit hierarchy of these forms, with “cultural domination” standing in a pre-Althusserian relation of secondary superstructure to the real ground of exploitation, is not a useful approach to the culture of redress. Indeed, our insistence on the culture of redress, we hope, already indicates a refusal of this implicit positioning of the cultural and symbolic as secondary to the real work of politics. In the first place, to dismiss as “merely cultural” the forms of symbolic capital claimed as restitution by marginalized groups in redress transactions – dignity, respect, social validation – is to suggest that processes of social abjection have little to do with a society’s reproduction of itself, and to imagine that symbolic capital is not lived as a very material form of advantage.52 Groups that have long struggled for recognition of injustices, recognitions that would disrupt the dominant historical narrative, know only too well that the distribution of symbolic capital is at stake, and that this form of capital is not readily ceded. To subject the desire for dignity to a narrowly economistic evaluation is to read a complex entanglement of emotional relays,

Introduction

17

normative regulations, and structured inequalities with conceptual tools that marginalize the insights of structuralism and poststructuralism, affect theory, critical race theory, feminist and queer theory, not to mention the “economic anthropology” that has explained how the very “institution of the economic as a separate sphere is the consequence of an operation of abstraction initiated by capital.”53 A too-narrow understanding of culture also makes it difficult to account for the fact that sometimes “culture” itself is what is framed as the site of historical damage, as in the Aboriginal claim of cultural loss in the aftermath of colonial violence that deliberately targeted language and customs as means of transmitting intergenerational memory. Here, “culture” is understood to have a scope and a density that make it central to survival and to the capacity to lay claim to resources, including land. In the global forum, Aboriginal peoples have struggled to have European definitions of genocide, human rights, and selfdetermination expanded to cover experiences of cultural genocide, and to make international human rights and humanitarian law recognize Indigenous conceptions of culture as holistic and collective.54 The importance of maintaining breadth and complexity in our understanding of culture is also apparent when we consider the risks of making such a claim of cultural loss within the modern nation-state’s liberal legal framework of individual and property rights. How in this process might an incommensurable understanding of “culture,” as something very different from private property, be threatened anew by the colonizing force of European epistemologies? Several of the essays collected in Reconciling Canada pursue the question of the articulation of redress and reconciliation with globalizing capital and neoliberal forms of social reproduction. Today campaigns for redress and reconciliation have to be staged on a political terrain that has been reorganized by a quarter-century of restructuring: the terrain is not what it was in 1988, at the time of the Government of Canada’s settlement with the National Association of Japanese Canadians. As Janine Brodie has argued, in order for post–welfare state neoliberal policies to succeed in shifting concerns from the public to the so-called private sphere, these concerns have had to become “differently encoded, constructed, and regulated.” In Canada, as elsewhere in the Western world, a “restructuring discourse” has succeeded in “radically shrinking the realm of political negotiation,” not least through the “delegitimization of social citizenship claims.”55 Campaigns for redress and reconciliation can be said to be among those social movements which form “part of the complex matrix which is transformed during an era of restructuring.”56 It might be said that they accelerate and help to legitimize this process of transformation to the extent that their discourses may conform to, without questioning, the reorganized rules of engagement. For this reason, we have conceived of Reconciling Canada as an intervention that focuses on these rules of engagement, the disciplining discursive forms which make up the “culture of redress.” Here we invoke another valence of culture, to refer to the particular, interconnected set of assumptions and aspirations that run through projects of redress and reconciliation, making up a political culture with specificity and historical contingency. The “culture of redress” entails a specific form of justice seeking that interprets social relations in distinctive ways: with a historical orientation, highlighting intentionality, and with a view to pursuing the settlement of grievance in a form that involves an affective component such as the validation of grief. These are the elements of the “culture of redress” seen as a specific kind of political culture, within which it currently makes sense to pursue social justice and future equality.57

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Introduction

Re-articulating Redress Reconciling Canada takes up the critical project of analysing the points of affiliation and divergence between various redress movements in Canada over the past few decades, without relativizing or homogenizing diverse claims for reparations. In so doing, this book seeks to historicize and contextualize a multilayered culture of redress, a culture that “has a history,” in all the connotations of that phrase. Returning a sense of contingency to the moral and political imperatives of reconciliation and redress makes it possible to ask such questions as: Why have the state’s responses to minoritized constituencies recently taken the form of apologies? What does it mean that some struggles for recognition have been invested with a drive towards reconciliation? Why have many – but not all – marginalized groups come to prioritize statements of governmental atonement as a coveted form of acknowledgment? Translating such a critical project into the form of a published essay collection has resulted in many additional questions. In striving to promote a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis of the diverse redress movements that have emerged in Canada over the past few decades, the inevitable limits of what one book can do have haunted us at every step. The task of “representing” the diversity of redress cases in Canada is fraught by the implicit and yet impossible promise of comprehensiveness that overshadows the process. We are conscious that a discussion of many redress cases – such as the Acadian Great Upheaval, colonial Canada’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade and its systematic discrimination against Black Loyalists, or, indeed the “redress claims for wrongs unrelated to race” – are missing from the critical essays in the book, though we have attempted to represent some of them in the appendices. And yet the idea of covering our bases by trying to include all the redress movements or even of making all absences present in a comprehensive list in this introduction would itself be problematic. Any attempt to construct a semblance of completeness would be complicit in inscribing a bounded horizon to what redress looks like, playing into a teleology that seeks to right all wrongs, finally relegating them to the past, and thereby foreclosing the possibility of future wrongdoings as well as aspects of the past that have yet to be brought to public consciousness. In designing Reconciling Canada, we have also sought to guard against reproducing the dominant logic of multiculturalist pluralism by presenting a “mosaic” of redress cases shaped by an uncritical version of identity politics. The essays in this volume are not organized according to the question of what redress case they represent but, rather, in terms of thematic concerns such as the performativity of reconciliation or national-transnational relations. Each section of Reconciling Canada thus puts different redress movements into conversation, not primarily on the basis of the identity of the constituency examined, but in terms of the authors’ overarching critical engagements with particular valences of reconciliation and redress. Here we are partly inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theorization of hegemonic discursive formations and their attention to the tenuous connections that may form between parties with sometimes intersecting and sometimes conflicting investments.58 Mobilizing Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of “chains of equivalence” is one way to invite a robust, multidimensional debate regarding the possibilities and limits of alliances between and within various marginalized communities, themselves internally striated by differences of class, gender, and ideology. However, we also wish to highlight the ways in which redress movements are never discrete in the first place and indeed

Introduction

19

are mutually determining, formed through relations of analogy and differentiation, so that those “chains of equivalence” are already part of the discursive apparatus the authors are investigating here.59 We hope that critical study of the potential affiliations between redress campaigns might cut through the norms of unitary identity and competitive redress-claiming characterizing dominant redress politics. At the same time, affiliation should not have to mean identification: the comparative perspective this essay collection enables would prolong, rather than pre-empt, productive conflict and contestation between and among sites of redress-claiming – productive insofar as these processes keep the meanings of reconciliation and redress plural and open. The essays in Part One, “Settler Culture and the Terrain of Reconciliation,” attend to some of the striking ways in which redress and reconciliation have been taken up in Canada, where they are shaped by settler fantasies of innocence and entitlement, nationalist myths of postcolonialism and multicultural diversity, and the monopolization of the terrain of the political by neoliberal common sense. Matt James and Jennifer Henderson develop Part One’s emphasis on the terrain of reconciliation by stressing the ways in which reckoning with historical injustice is being framed according to neoliberal values of social cohesion, “heritage” commodification, and entrepreneurialism. James links new state initiatives such as the CHRP to wider transformations in the state’s management of minoritized group demands and its remoulding of a national brand. Henderson shows how the individualizing rhetoric of neoliberalism selects aspects of particular historical injuries and transforms them into tropes or currencies that can be exchanged between disparate redress movements. These exchanges risk assimilating redress campaigns to the same schemes of “progress” of which the injuries of the past were integral and justifiable components. Eva Mackey’s essay asks how state-sponsored reconciliatory gestures strive for ends quite different from the ones they proclaim. Rather than achieving a new reciprocity, gestures like the 2008 federal government apology to Aboriginal peoples may work to re-establish the moral prerogative of the dominant. In Mackey’s view, the 2008 apology configures a “cultural” injury that, by bracketing land, treaty, and sovereignty issues from historical consciousness, reproduces racializing and pathologizing stereotypes of Aboriginal life. The theme of exchange is picked up by Lily Cho’s essay, which opens a group of essays in Part Two, “Citizenship, Nationhood, Law,” with an exploration of redress as a form of transaction between a minoritized community and the nation-state. For Cho, who provides a sympathetic reading of the political idealism of the Chinese head tax redress movement’s investment in a vision of postcolonial citizenship, the redress transaction involves the affirmation – as well as the sacrifice – of this possibility of a redeemed citizenship. The demand for head tax redress revived an ideal of postcolonial citizenship that, in the 1940s, briefly flickered in parliamentary debates over the repeal of the Chinese head tax. Similarly to the way that Cho wonders whether that ideal of citizenship is what is given up once the Chinese Canadian community is officially “redressed,” Dale Turner’s piece suggests that a strong definition of reconciliation put forward in the 1996 report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples has been subjected to recoding and containment. However, the transition from Cho’s piece to Turner’s also highlights how “redress” and “reconciliation” are re-valued in relation to the differential claims made by diasporic groups and First Peoples. As Matt James has previously noted, diasporic constituencies’ redress movements often coalesce around a “project of citizenship inclusion,” whereas Aboriginal organizations are concerned with “assess[ing] the desirability of achieving … [national] inclusion”60 or, we

20

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would add, moving beyond a narrative of national belonging to reassert Indigenous sovereignty. For Turner, RCAP – arguably the first reconciliatory forum designed to investigate the relationship between First Peoples and the Canadian state – articulated a formulation of reconciliation that hinged upon affirming and upholding the sovereignty of Aboriginal nations. However, Turner contends that in the subsequent two decades, the mandate of the extra-legal forum of the TRC as well as recent legal interpretations of the constitution have worked to weaken RCAP’s strong and particularized conceptualization of what reconciliation might mean for Indigenous peoples. Both Dale Turner and James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson reject the flattened, sentimental terms through which the settler state jockeys for moral exoneration, seeking to rethink reconciliation as a concept with juridical and political teeth. In so doing, Turner and Henderson seize upon the language of “constitutional reconciliation” invoked by the Supreme Court in the Van der Peet decision to describe the process through which the Aboriginal and treaty rights enshrined in section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 must be “reconciled” with the authority of the Crown. Turner and Henderson mobilize the idea of “constitutional reconciliation” as a way of affirming Aboriginal sovereignty as the crucial starting point for grappling with the legacy of colonialism and instituting just relations between Aboriginal peoples and the state. Henderson’s essay describes what a constitutional reconciliation, fully cognizant of distinct epistemologies, legal traditions, and sui generis Aboriginal rights and sovereignty, would have to entail in order to prepare a solid foundation for broader social and political processes of reconciliation. Part Three of Reconciling Canada, “Testimony and Truth Telling,” turns from reconciliation and its implications for state power to a set of questions about the scenes of truth telling that form a key part of the culture of redress. The authors in this section explore the pedagogical, epistemological, and disciplinary conditions of possibility for what has emerged as the Canadian version of a truth commission that has been equipped with a mandate to renew the relationship between Euro-Canadians and Aboriginal peoples through the testimony of survivors of residential schooling. Roger Simon offers a caution about such a “testamentary based pedagogy”61 of public history, stressing that the transformative power of narratives should not be presupposed: a structure of listening that emphasizes affective identification may promote a form of self-congratulatory empathy in listeners that is not only de-coupled from responsibility for civic action, but also serves as a liberal-individualist alibi for clinging to unjustly accumulated privileges. For Simon, this danger calls for critical and creative attention to the technologies of representation shaping the public sphere. For Julia Emberley, who echoes Dale Turner and Sa’ke’j Henderson’s emphasis on Indigenous epistemologies, an “ethics of response” to colonial violence can be learned from narrative and interpretive protocols embedded in the storytelling epistemologies of Indigenous writers, scholars, and educators. Significantly, these protocols differ sharply from those naturalized by a popularized psychoanalytic narration of traumatic experience and its excavation through analysis. Adopting a different perspective on the foundations of Aboriginal testimony, Dian Million’s essay rounds out this section by exploring the institutionalization of trauma theory as a means of making sense of colonial violence. Situating trauma theory in a genealogy of social scientific attempts to know the condition of colonized Indigenous North Americans, she asks whether trauma theory perpetuates a certain violence through the establishment of Eurocentric intellectual and psychotherapeutic frameworks that discipline the terms through which it is possible to speak of Aboriginal peoples’ suffering and to imagine their futures.

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Part Four, “Grief and Grievance, Mourning and Memory,” explores the affective dimensions of injustice and redress while examining their relation to the political field and to the workings of power. Amber Dean’s essay investigates the processes through which the Canadian state and the mainstream media have constructed different performances of public mourning in relation to the Air India bombing, the Komagata Maru case, and the more than five hundred murdered and missing Aboriginal women across the country. Dean explores how the absence of public mourning, or the differences in scale and form of such events, might reveal the persistence of racial ideologies in Canada that render some losses more grievable, some national subjects more worthy of mourning, than others. This differential grieving and commemoration of certain tragedies, Dean contends, has itself generated new claims for redress, thereby complicating conceptualizations of injury and remediation. Lindy Ledohowski in turn examines how contemporary Ukrainian Canadian writers have come to focus upon the suffering of Ukrainian diasporic subjects in ways that overlap the tragedies experienced in the homeland, such as the Holodomor famine of 1932–3, with those experienced in Canada. In so doing, Ledohowski explores how such representations of suffering have become crucial to Ukrainian Canadian understandings of the relation between grief and grievance, in turn influencing the development of the First World War internment redress movement. Part Five, “Performing Redress,” explores the multiple layers of the concept of performance and political theatre in relation to Canada’s culture of redress. Theorizing the notion of performance beyond the space of the dramatic stage, Len Findlay’s essay traces the surprising connections between the work of Indigenous “legal warriors,” performance artists, and television producers. These particular figures, Findlay argues, all engage in the practice of “redress rehearsals,” a form of politicized and reiterative reworking of the concepts of social justice, redress, and reconciliation for Indigenous peoples in Canada. Further complicating the dimensions of performance and performativity in relation to the politics of redress, Anna Carastathis mobilizes Sara Ahmed’s theory of “nonperformative” speech acts – acts that fail to do what they say they do – that, in the process of their failure, actually enable discourse to “dissimulate, distract, and to disavow its real, lived effects.”62 Examining the rhetoric of Quebec’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, including its slippery use of the term “reconciliation” as though it were synonymous with social integration, Carastathis demonstrates how “reasonable accommodation” functions as a form of nonperformative speech that elides even as it perpetuates the systemic discrimination against minoritized cultural groups in the province. Part Six, “Redress and Transnationalism,” links the rise of reconciliation in Canada to the broader phenomenon of the “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness.” Roy Miki’s essay offers a groundbreaking reconsideration of the internment and reclassification of Japanese Canadians as “enemy aliens” during the Second World War, revealing how the state’s practices of alien-ating Japanese Canadians are uncannily articulated to and refracted against the Japanese state’s own exploitation of its Chinese and Korean citizens as labour for the wartime munitions industry. In so doing, Miki traces the transnational political and affective dimensions of suffering and solidarity, responsibility and redress. Pauline Wakeham explores Canada’s relation to both the “age of apology” and the “War on Terror” – two global phenomena that, she contends, are intimately entangled – through a reappraisal of the Maher Arar case. Analysing Stephen Harper’s apology to Arar and his family as an unstable

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supplement to the state of exception that has been used to justify extraordinary renditions, Wakeham demonstrates how the Canadian state has mobilized the rhetorical gesture of apology to exculpate the federal government from its ties to a transnational system of torture and human-rights abuses. In the process, Wakeham explores the relation between wrongs perpetrated against individual citizens and those against collectives in order to complicate official reconciliation’s normative construction of injury. Reconciling Canada also features appendices of primary source documents that have been crucial to the formation of Canada’s culture of redress. These materials are organized into subsections corresponding to a range of redress movements and cases, including injuries that have been acknowledged by the federal government over recent decades as well as cases of discrimination that have yet to be recognized via official state apologies. Once again, the appendices are haunted by the limits of “coverage” and the normative conception of what may count as an injury or grievance: due to space constraints, we chose to feature materials pertaining to well-known cases in order to assist in teaching and studying these grievances and apologies from a range of archival perspectives. With regard to the nature of the documents selected, the appendices feature a diverse assemblage of materials, ranging from historical legislation that implemented injustices, such as the Chinese head tax legislation, to early resistance documents from minoritized communities, to the full text of most of the Canadian government’s official apologies. The appendices are not offered as a comprehensive sourcebook for primary materials but, rather, a starting point for readers to critically re-examine the socio-historical contexts of state discrimination, to explore genealogies of resistance to government injustices, and to analyse the discursive frames through which injury and apology are constructed.

NOTES 1 The United Nations declared the subsequent year, 2010, as the “International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures” (as well as the “International Year for Biodiversity”). If, for the UN, “rapprochement” or “interreligious and intercultural dialogue” follows reconciliation in a teleological sequence, it may be important to ask what it means for the healing of divides to give way to dialogue governed by the norm of cohesion, and vice versa, what such dialogue can be when it is prefaced by a sense of historical overcoming. United Nations Observances, “Resolution 61/17: International Year of Reconciliation, 2009,” 23 January 2007, http://www.un.org/ga/ search/view_doc. asp?symbol=A/RES/61/17. United Nations Observances, “Resolution 62/90: Promotion of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, understanding and cooperation for peace,” 25 January 2008, http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/62/90. 2 Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (New York: Routledge, 2001), 31. 3 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “Righting Wrongs, Rewriting History?” Interventions 2, no. 2 (2000): 160. 4 Ibid. 5 Throughout this introduction, we use a range of terms to refer to Aboriginal peoples in Canada, preferring a proliferation of signifiers rather than a fixing of nomenclature as a way of signalling the possibilities and limits of each term. “Aboriginal” is the language employed by the state to refer collectively to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. We use this term with an

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6

7

8 9

10 11

12 13 14

15 16 17

23

awareness of the problematic ways it gathers heterogeneous peoples into one constituency for state recognition. We also deploy the term “Indigenous,” which is utilized in international human rights discourse (for example, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). Finally, we also at times use “First Peoples” as a synonym that highlights Indigenous peoples’ original occupancy of the land now called Canada. International Center for Transitional Justice, “Canada’s TRC: Special Challenges,” 2008, http://www.ictj.org/static/Factsheets/ICTJ_CanadaTRC Challenges_fs2008.pdf. Although the acronym “IRSTRC” was once the accepted shorthand for denoting this forum, the commission has recently decided to shorten its acronym to “TRC.” For a more detailed discussion of this lengthy process, see Jennifer Llewellyn, “Dealing with the Legacy of Native Residential School Abuse in Canada: Litigation, ADR, and Restorative Justice,” University of Toronto Law Journal 52, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 253–300. Although the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development changed its name in May 2011 to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, we have used the older title for the department when referring to its work prior to 2011. When discussing initiatives that occurred after the name change, we have used the current nomenclature. Mark Hume, “Ottawa ‘acting in bad faith’ by rushing claims, chiefs say,” Globe and Mail, 21 July 2011, A8. Audrey Kobayashi, “The Japanese-Canadian Redress Settlement and Its Implications for ‘Race Relations,’” Canadian Ethnic Studies 24, no. 1 (1992): 3–4. For a history of the formation of the NAJC in the post-war period and the association’s long-standing mobilization for redress, see Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, eds., Justice in Our Time (Vancouver: Talon, 1991), 58–61. Lily Cho, “Rereading Chinese Head Tax Racism: Redress, Stereotype, and Antiracist Critical Practice,” Essays on Canadian Writing 75 (2002): 62. Matt James, “The Permanent Emergency Compensation State: A ‘Postsocialist’ Tale of Political Dystopia,” in Critical Policy Studies, ed. M. Orsini and M. Smith (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006), 326. Ibid. See Andy Blicq, “The other shame: Do the more than 8,000 so-called enemy aliens interned during the First World War deserve an apology?” Winnipeg Free Press, 21 December 1984. For a more detailed discussion of the cases listed above, among others, see Matt James, “Do Campaigns for Historical Redress Erode the Canadian Welfare State?” in Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, ed. K. Banting and W. Kymlicka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 222–46; Matt James, “Wrestling with the Past: Apologies, Quasi-Apologies, and Non-Apologies in Canada,” in The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past, ed. M. Gibney et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 137–53; and Bradford W. Morse, “Indigenous Peoples of Canada and Their Efforts to Achieve True Reparations,” in Reparations for Indigenous Peoples: International and Comparative Perspectives, ed. F. Lenzerini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 271–316. Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Community Historical Recognition Program,” http:// www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/programs/ community.asp. James, “Wrestling,” 144. For a more detailed analysis of some of these policy shifts, see James, “Permanent-Emergency Compensation State,” 325–9.

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18 Begoña Aretxaga, “Maddening States,” Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (2003): 396. Summing up the complication of the division between the state and civil society in scholarship of the last twenty years that stresses the lack of clear boundaries around the state as a site or an institutional centre, Aretxaga writes that the state “is recognizable through its multiple effects” (398). 19 In describing the settler-state’s urgent project of nation building, we borrow from Tony Bennett, Graeme Turner, and Michael Volkerling, “Introduction: Post-Colonial Formations,” Culture and Policy 6, no. 1 (1994): 1–5, cited in Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 9. The phrase “civilizational barbarity” is taken from Rajan, “Righting Wrongs,” 160. 20 “Native groups demand apology for PM’s colonialism denial,” Ottawa Citizen, 30 September 2009, http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Native+groups+demand+apology+colonialism+ denial/2053210/story.html. 21 Elizabeth Furniss, The Burden of History: Colonialism and the Frontier Myth in a Rural Canadian Community (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999), 11. 22 Himani Bannerji, “On the Dark Side of the Nation: Politics of Multiculturalism and the State of ‘Canada,’” Journal of Canadian Studies 31, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 118, 109. 23 Here we are indebted to Len Findlay’s paper “The Long March to Recognition: Sa’ke’j Henderson, sui generis Citizenship, and the New/Old Jurisprudence,” presented at the TransCanada II: Literature, Institutions, Citizenship Conference at the University of Guelph, October 2007. 24 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 11 June 2008, p. 6855. 25 For critiques of the term “reconciliation,” see Roland Chrisjohn and Tanya Wasacase, “HalfTruths and Whole Lies: Rhetoric in the Apology and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” in Response, Responsibility, and Renewal: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey, ed. G. Younging, J. Dewar, and M. DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009), 219–29 and Taiaiake Alfred, “Restitution Is the Real Pathway to Justice for Indigenous Peoples,” in Response, Responsibility, and Renewal, 179–87. 26 At the Northern National Event for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, held from 28 June to 1 July 2011, TRC chair Murray Sinclair asked the churches and minister of Aboriginal affairs John Duncan to think seriously about what “reconciliation” means and to share their detailed understandings with the commission. In her speech during the closing ceremonies at this event, Commissioner Marie Wilson offered her own expansive conceptualization of “reconciliation,” arguing that among its many requirements for effecting social justice, gender justice for Indigenous women in Canada was key. 27 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Righting Wrongs,” South Atlantic Quarterly 103, nos. 2/3 (2004): 530. 28 The other category is “wrongful convictions.” Most of the “health-related claims” were directed at provincial governments in Canada. They are the claims made through litigations by victims of the drug thalidomide (approved by the Canadian government in the 1950s and 1960s), victims of tainted blood resulting from inadequate blood testing who contracted Hepatitis C and HIV, and victims of forced sterilization under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta from 1928 to 1972. Gerald L. Gall, May M. Cheng, and Keiko Miki, “Redress for Past Government Wrongs,” Advisory Committee to the Secretary of State (Multiculturalism) (Status of Women) on Canada’s preparations for the UN World Conference Against Racism, January 2001, http:// www.pch.gc.ca/progs/ multi/wcar/advisory/redress_e.cfm. 29 The circumscription is not just around the racialized targets of historical injuries. Reconciling

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30

31 32

33

34

35 36 37 38 39

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Canada’s parameters are also limited to redress cases in which the agent of the injury is the state, or at least, the state as one significant actor among several. This limitation means that the present book does not include discussion of a very significant cluster of demands for reparations and apologies related to sexual abuse in Catholic educational and foster care institutions. These claims erupted and were widely publicized as sexual abuse scandals in the late 1980s and early 1990s, popularized in texts like the National Film Board’s 1992 feature-length “docudrama” The Boys of St Vincent, based on events at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland. Posted on the CRRF website, a “Background Paper on the CRRF’s Policy on Redress and Reparations” observes that “it has generally been accepted that the federal government established the CRRF as part of the Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement instead of paying reparations to other groups seeking redress. To some extent this was seen as a preemptive strike against the settlement of further redress claims.” The paper continues by declaring the CRRF’s strategic support for the redress “agenda” in the context of the “moral and political divide between the Canadian Government and several discriminated communities.” http://www.crr.ca/content/ view/211/376/lang,english/#intro. Kobayashi, “The Japanese-Canadian Redress Settlement,” 7. Ibid., 8. It should be noted that in spite of her concerns about its name, Kobayashi celebrates the establishment of the CRRF as innovative and hopeful, and in fact mounts a particular argument in defence of its focus on racism specifically, rather than human rights more generally. See “Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology on Bill C-63, An Act to Establish the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, January 22, 1991,” Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, http://www.infoukes.com/history/internment/ booklet02/doc-103.html. On Canadian whiteness as the set of discursive practices related to British civility, see Daniel Coleman, White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 55. Bannerji, “On the Dark Side of the Nation,” 120. Brown, States of Injury, 17. In 2004, a statement of regret was made by the Ministry of the Attorney General of British Columbia. See appendix I.2. A formal apology has yet to be issued. Morse, “Indigenous Peoples of Canada,” 277. The terms of the Halifax Regional Municipality’s settlement were approved by the Africville Genealogy Society, one of the most influential and long-term lobby groups and the lead plaintiffs in a litigation suit for redress. The settlement included a total of $5 million in fiscal compensation and a conveyance of 2.5 additional acres of land for the revivification of Seaview Park (to be renamed “Africville”) as a heritage site commemorating the community. Halifax Regional Municipality, “Africville: Key Terms and Conditions of Settlement,” 23 February 2010, http://www.halifax.ca/Africville/ agreement.html. The local municipal government has had to shoulder the primary fiscal responsibility for this settlement, contributing $3 million, while the provincial government offered $1.5 million and the federal government provided only $250,000, thereby demonstrating how different levels of government may scale monetary reparations to reflect their perceived sense of involvement in a historical injury. The Qikiqtani Truth Commission, “Inuit Sled Dogs in the Baffin Region, 1905 to 1975,” http:// www.qtcommission.com/actions/GetPage.php? pageId=39.

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41 Royal Canadian Mounted Police, “Final Report: RCMP Review of Allegations Concerning Inuit Sled Dogs,” 30 May 2006, http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pubs/ccaps-spcca/sd-ct-final-eng .htm. 42 The Qikiqtani Truth Commission, http://www.qtcommission.com/. 43 The phrase “official multiculturalism” is Mackey’s. See Mackey, The House of Difference, 64–5. 44 See Pauline Wakeham, “The Cunning of Reconciliation: Reinventing White Civility in the ‘Age of Apology,’” in Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies: Nation-State, Indigeneity, Culture, ed. S. Kamboureli and R. Zacharias (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 209–33, for a fuller elaboration of this argument. 45 Bannerji, “On the Dark Side of the Nation,” 125. 46 “Promoting Integration” is the title of the 2007–8 Annual Report on the operation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. The report’s summary announces the new priorities for the multiculturalism program’s grants and contributions as the promotion of integration, addressing the problems of “youth-at-risk,” and fostering “intercultural understanding.” Citizenship and Immigration Canada, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/multi-report2008/ index .asp. 47 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Backgrounder: Projects Funded under Community Historical Recognition Program,” 1 January 2009, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/ backgrounders/2009/2009-01-23.asp. 48 As an illustration of the unpredictability of the chains of meaning set in motion within the culture of redress, we think of the key line cited from Kogawa’s novel on that day in Ottawa in 1988 – a redress-seeking character’s insistence on her national belonging, “I am Canadian,” in the face of the state’s determination to disregard that claim by Japanese Canadians. Quoted in a press statement by Gerry Weiner, the minister of state for multiculturalism and citizenship, to represent the politics of a redress campaign, the phrase’s subsequent life is an allegory of cooptation. “I Am Canadian” would later appear as the advertizing anthem of a national brewery, in a television campaign in which it was voiced by a lumberjack-shirt-wearing white Canadian “Joe,” who was supposed to represent the unmarked “average,” the normatively white, masculine subject position the ad campaign identified with beer consumption and anti-American Canadian patriotism. In the commercial taking up of the phrase, the defiant affect of Kogawa’s activist Japanese Canadian character’s insistence on her rightful claim to the protections of citizenship is transferred to the affirmation of “Joe’s” comfortably entitled citizenship and patriotism as “average.” When “Joe” is roused to proclaim the brewery’s logo, “I Am Canadian,” the phrase is put in the service of a stock trope of Canadian moral superiority, the differentiation of Canada from the United States. This example’s ability to speak of the dangers of banalization which accompany the circulation of demands for historical redress and their incorporation within state and corporate agendas does not depend on a direct appropriation of the phrase. Kogawa’s character was already making her point through an insistent citation of a phrase that was not supposed to belong to her. For the text of Molson Canada’s advertisement, see Canadian Literature in English, vol. 2, ed. L. Moss and C. Sugars (Toronto: Pearson, 2009), 702. The “I Am Canadian” campaign was launched in 1994. For Weiner’s press statement, see Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement, ed. R. Miki and C. Kobayashi (Vancouver: Talonbooks/Winnipeg: NAJC, 1991), 150. 49 Nancy Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age,” New Left Review 212 (1995): 68; Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in New

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50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57

58 59 60

61 62

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Contexts of Canadian Criticism, ed. A. Heble et al. (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1997), 98–131. Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition?” 68. Ibid., 93. “Merely cultural” borrows the title of Judith Butler’s essay, important to our thinking here, “Merely Cultural,” Social Text 52–3 (1997): 33–44. Ibid., 42. On these struggles, see Ana F. Vrdoljak, “Reparations for Cultural Loss,” in Reparations for Indigenous Peoples: International and Comparative Perspectives, ed. F. Lenzerini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 197–228. Janine Brodie, “New State Forms, New Political Spaces,” in States against Markets: The Limits of Globalization, ed. R. Boyer and D. Drache (London: Routledge, 1996), 387, 392. Ibid., 395. On the importance of intentions in the context of projects of reparative justice, see Meredith Gibbs, “Justice as Reconciliation and Restoring Mana in New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi Settlement Process,” Political Science 58, no. 2 (December 2006): 23. Laurent Berlant observes the emergence of “individual intentions” and the shift towards “one’s particular experiences” as “authentic evidence” of injustice as features of the political culture that served as a complement to the “compassionately conservative state” of the Bush era. Laurent Berlant, “Introduction: Compassion (and Withholding),” in Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion, ed. L. Berlant (New York: Routledge: 2004), 2. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (New York: Verso, 2001). See Butler, “Merely Cultural,” 37, as well as Ernesto Laclau and Judith Butler, “The Uses of Equality,” Diacritics 27, no. 1 (1997): 3–12. Matt James, “Being Stigmatized and Being Sorry: Past Injustices and Contemporary Citizenship,” in A Passion for Identity: Canadian Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. D. Taras and B. Rasporich (Scarborough, ON: Nelson, 2001), 56. Page 130, below. Page 238, below.

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1 Neoliberal Heritage Redress matt james

At a time when global financial regulation and the partial nationalization of industries are mainstream items of political discussion, using the word “neoliberal” in a chapter title suddenly feels anachronistic. Discussing the topic fifteen years after the appearance of pioneering works such as political scientist Stephen Gill’s “Disciplinary Neoliberalism” might seem superfluous in any event.1 Yet when it comes to the subject of this collection and chapter, Canadian redress politics and the broader arena of diversity politics in which it is situated, it remains illuminating to speak of neoliberalism in the present tense: or, at least, so this chapter will argue. The chapter proceeds as follows. Stressing neoliberalism’s concern to remake the conditions under which organized groups communicate with government and society, I outline how this concern has reshaped Canadian multiculturalism. Although astute criticisms of Canada’s multiculturalism policy abound, the policy’s importance for groups challenging the terms of belonging within the Canadian settler society ought equally to be noted; this role has made multiculturalism a particularly important target of neoliberal change in this country.2 While the profile of Canadian multiculturalism has diminished in recent years, the debates around coming to terms with historical injustice have not. In the remainder of the essay, I show how the characteristic tactics and tools of a neoliberalized multiculturalism have latterly been transported and applied to the newly important terrain of historical redress. The result is a template for taming the past’s transformative potential, which I call – referencing Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christina Gabriel’s account of multiculturalism’s 1990s-era neoliberalization under the newly created Canadian Heritage ministry – “neoliberal heritage redress.”3 Referring originally to late 1980s and early 1990s policies of trade liberalization, economic deregulation, and state retrenchment, “neoliberal” has become a general descriptor for the dominant ideological sensibilities and imperatives of the post-Keynesian globalization era. For reasons which will soon become apparent, students of social movements have charted neoliberalism’s impact in part by studying changes to the bureaucratic mechanisms and discursive processes through which government filters and considers the concerns of organized citizen groups. Relevant bureaucratic mechanisms include state agencies that consult and communicate with interested organizations, as well as programs that provide funding to advocacy groups. Pertinent discursive processes include the quasi-official symbols and languages that are used as frameworks for defining and treating public problems. Taken collectively, political scientists call these mechanisms and processes “systems of in-

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terest intermediation,” the overall means by which the concerns of organized social groups are conveyed to government.4 For citizen groups, interest intermediation mechanisms and processes offer prospective opportunities for influencing the state that go beyond the polar alternatives of lobbying officials on the one hand and demonstrating in the streets on the other. For government, interest intermediation represents both a prudential means of understanding the political views and reactions of organized groups and a disciplinary vehicle for shaping those views and reactions. It is important to understand this overall field of interest intermediation – the diverse bureaucratic mechanisms and discursive processes of state consultation and communication with advocacy groups – as a site of neoliberal change. Perhaps most famously, the strategic importance of interest intermediation was articulated in the 1975 inaugural report of the Trilateral Commission, an influential American free-market organization whose founders included the future head of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. Blaming an “excess of democracy” for what it called “government overload,” the commission argued that the state’s increased permeability to activist demands was undermining the principles of low taxation and limited state intervention.5 Accordingly, the Trilateral Commission proposed a new tactic for reviving what was then a largely moribund war against the welfare state: enhancing the state’s autonomy from unwelcome societal influences, most notably, equalityseeking groups. The thinking was simple: if activist influence had led to undesired reforms in areas such as social policy and civil rights, then those avenues of influence would have to be curtailed. As Canadian political scientists such as Jane Jenson and Susan Phillips and Miriam Smith have shown, in the 1990s, successive federal governments pursued precisely this neoliberal focus on curtailing activist influence by narrowing the channels of interest intermediation.6 The approach featured two main thrusts. First, changes to public policies and state funding regimes destroyed the relationships between the federal bureaucracy and progressive advocacy groups built starting in the Trudeau “just society” years.7 Second, authorities and their media allies used discourses valorizing the so-called ordinary Canadian, figured as a taxpayer and consumer, to delegitimize group experiences and identities as positive considerations in civic deliberation and debate. This neoliberalization of interest intermediation involved a corresponding set of changes to Canadian multiculturalism policy as well, which this chapter will soon discuss. For cultural theorists such as Jodi Melamed, the phrase “neoliberal multiculturalism” describes a set of dominant normative distinctions between globalizing cosmopolitanism and parochial traditionalism which polices the borders between legitimate and illegitimate diversity.8 The cosmopolitan trope was used by groups arguing for a multiculturalism policy as early as the 1960s, and, in the rather general sense of establishing discursive equivalences linking globalization, diversity, and prosperity, Canadian multiculturalism can be said to have been incipiently neoliberal all along. For example, Ukrainian and Polish Canadian organizations advocated official multiculturalism in the early 1960s by stressing that their upwardly mobile constituencies deserved recognition as global assets for government: once “penniless, uneducated, [and] unskilled,” their members were now “engineers, doctors … prominent … trusted and efficient world servants.” 9 Thus, as the Canadian Polish Congress put it at the parliamentary hearings that led to the October 1971 introduction of the multiculturalism policy, embracing multiculturalism would give Canada an “international advantage in business.”10

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Notwithstanding the cosmopolitan trope’s endurance, captured perfectly in Abu-Laban and Gabriel’s title Selling Diversity, the contemporary, state-driven neoliberalization of Canadian multiculturalism reflects a more distinctly domestic set of preoccupations.11 One factor suggesting a more fine-grained analysis is that of timing; long before Amsterdam’s 2004 van Gogh assassination and the Madrid and London bombings of 2004 and 2005 made anti-multiculturalism de rigueur in Europe, Canadian multiculturalism was being transformed in response to what political philosopher Will Kymlicka describes as a campaign of “apocalyptic scenarios” and “near hysteria.”12 As will soon be seen, this campaign and its outcome can be usefully understood as the application to the field of Canadian multiculturalism of the “excess of democracy” thesis first articulated by the Trilateral Commission. The notion of multiculturalism was certainly part of former prime minister Trudeau’s long-term campaign to deflect Québécois claims for national recognition and political reordering.13 Worse, framings of multiculturalism that present Canada monophonically as a “land of immigrants” finding “unity in diversity” efface the country’s ongoing nature as a project of settler colonialism resting on Indigenous dispossession.14 But other deployments are part of the record and need to be considered as well. In terms of this chapter’s more bounded and limited focus on the politics of immigrant integration and antiracism within the rest-of-Canada settler society, official multiculturalism discourse has served, to a not entirely insignificant extent, the causes of equality and inclusion. For example, ethnocultural-minority organizations capitalized on the policy in the early 1980s when they argued, to some effect, that Canadian multiculturalism would be exposed as a sham unless Ottawa strengthened the equality-rights provisions of the soon-to-be entrenched Charter of Rights.15 In the years immediately thereafter, similar invocations of multiculturalism led to the creation of a special House of Commons committee on the Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society, whose groundbreaking report, Equality Now!, passed recommendations that led not only to the creation of a stand-alone multiculturalism ministry, but to strengthened hate-crime laws, new employment-equity legislation, and the dismantling of the War Measures Act as well.16 The Equality Now! report also played a role in the Canadian politics of redress: it recommended Japanese Canadian internment reparation and induced Ottawa to provide funds to help the National Association of Japanese Canadians develop its claim.17 Key participant Roy Miki, while noting considerable community ambivalence about the appropriateness of pursuing redress under the multiculturalism framework, observes that many of his fellow internment redress activists shared the basic perspective on multiculturalism outlined above: that is, they “recognized the power of multiculturalism discourse in bringing to prominence the issue of redress for Japanese Canadians.”18 The point here is not to foment nostalgia for a multiculturalist golden age that never was. It is, instead, to argue that racialized and minoritized immigrant groups exploited the official emphasis on multiculturalism – a leading discourse of Canadian citizenship in the first decade of the Charter of Rights – as a tool of civic voice for historically excluded and oppressed people. This role was perhaps most apparent during the epic constitutional battles of the late 1980s and early 1990s, in which equality-seeking movements invoked the official commitment to multiculturalism in order to buttress their claims for inclusion and respect.19 Resenting the attention paid to considerations of diversity and pluralism in the constitutional debate, right-wing critics launched a counterattack, portraying multicul-

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turalism and its constituency of “politically correct special interest groups” as a menace to sound governance and national unity.20 And when the federal government decided during the mid-1990s deficit crisis to work more energetically towards neoliberalizing the Canadian welfare state, it brought precisely these concerns to bear on its reconsideration of the multiculturalism policy. That is, it sought to remake the channels of communication between organized groups and the state – Canada’s systems of interest intermediation – in ways that might marginalize the activist voices associated with the heightened prominence of recognition politics over the previous decade. Abu-Laban and Gabriel chart the ensuing neoliberalization of Canadian multiculturalism in Selling Diversity. In 1994, the former multiculturalism ministry was transformed into a low-profile unit subsumed under the new Department of Canadian Heritage. Subsequent budget cuts made an “always … meagrely supported” program into an “even leaner” one. 21 Core funding for ethnocultural organizations was replaced in 1996 by a regime of ad hoc program funding, which, by inducing groups to compete for one-off grants to provide particular designated services, both financially weakened organizations representing minoritized groups and subjected them to intensified levels of state discipline. At the same time, a former emphasis on social equality and antiracism – as signalled, for example, by the sheer existence of a government publication demanding Equality Now! – was overshadowed by new framings.22 Internationally, multiculturalism became Ottawa’s branding strategy for promoting Canadian business; domestically, its 1980s-era antiracist edge succumbed to an emphasis on “Canadian heritage” and “social cohesion.”23 A classic instance of what Miriam Smith calls neoliberalism’s “narrowing of the legitimate field of the political,” these changes expressed the Trilateral Commission’s “excess of democracy” manifesto as filtered through the constitutional frustrations of Canada’s state elites and activist right.24 At the most general level, transforming multiculturalism into a discourse of “cohesion” and “heritage” attenuated its former role as a quasiofficial language for promoting difference recognition in civic debates: a move signalled explicitly by multiculturalism’s bureaucratic subordination to the new Heritage ministry in 1993. Although the notion of subordinating multiculturalism to “heritage” may recall older criticisms of multiculturalism as a song-and-dance affair, it in fact represented a new and importantly different tactic.25 Rather than following the preoccupation of its 1970s-era predecessor with folkloric “ethnic heritages,” the 1990s approach stressed “Canadian heritage” in the singular to convey a newly aggressive stance towards the politics of difference. For their part, the programmatic changes to multiculturalism’s funding regime aimed to weaken activist groups while boosting the profiles of less-challenging entities oriented towards providing government-mandated services. Eliminating core funding in favour of one-off support for particular state-approved projects clearly reflected the neoliberal focus on offloading state responsibilities onto the so-called voluntary sector. But the underlying strategic vision was arguably more crucial: it aimed to enhance the state’s autonomy from progressive advocacy groups in the interest of engineering a deeper, long-term rightward shift in Canadian politics and society. Thus, like the discursive changes associated with the new heritage emphasis, the multiculturalism funding changes sought to constrain political forces that had formerly moved state policy in expansionist and egalitarian directions. In more recent years, the basic status of multiculturalism as an official diversity-promotion framework seems to have entered a new stage of doubt and decline. A senior federal official speculated to me under anonymity in 2006 that the policy’s continued existence

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reflected little more than inertial fear of the expected outcry attending any formal move to eliminate the program.26 The “selling diversity” pitch has certainly become a less useful Canadian branding strategy in countries where equating multiculturalism with terrorism promotion is now a commonplace position. Literary and cultural critic Pauline Wakeham offers a perceptive analysis situating what she calls Canada’s “culture of redress” in light of these developments. In particular, she suggests that an emergent emphasis on Canadian deeds of reconciliation and repair is beginning to address some of the international branding and domestic diversity management functions once shouldered by an increasingly “worn out” multiculturalism.27 The development has been rapid; until recently Ottawa’s position on redress was aptly described as a “non-policy” – a stance of refusal interrupted by the occasional grudging act of expediency.28 However, change became apparent in 2005 with the appearance of a new policy, which I call “neoliberal heritage redress.”29 Neoliberal heritage redress builds directly on the turn from antiracism to sanitized discourses of heritage and cohesion that Abu-Laban and Gabriel link to the 1990s neoliberalization of multiculturalism under the heritage ministry.30 Four years and two federal elections later, neoliberal heritage redress stands as a full-fledged and relatively settled policy for governing whatever Canadian historical injustices lie outside the purview of the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs.31 Analysing it more closely will help us to probe further the recalibration of multiculturalism and redress highlighted by Wakeham. In February 2005 the Paul Martin Liberal government announced the establishment of the Acknowledgment, Commemoration, and Education (ACE) Program within the multiculturalism directorate of the Department of Canadian Heritage.32 The program’s basic parameters and concerns became clearer in the succeeding months as three agreements-in-principle with redress-seeking groups were reached under the ACE framework.33 Although Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won the January 2006 federal election before the agreements were finalized, in the spring of that year Harper’s government introduced the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP), which retains many of the essential elements of the ACE program.34 Accordingly, unless otherwise specified, this chapter’s analysis of neoliberal heritage redress treats both initiatives jointly as a single redress policy. The durability of neoliberal heritage redress at a time of federal partisan realignment and tumult reflects an underlying Liberal-Conservative consensus on the policy, whose emergence I will now explain. Between the years 2002 and 2004, Conservative opposition immigration critic Inky Mark proposed several private member’s bills on redress.35 In an attempt to attract electoral support from minoritized communities, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper tapped the Mark bills as party policy in 2004, thus establishing a clear contrast with the no-redress policy maintained by the governing Liberals since 1994.36 After the 2004 federal election campaign reduced the former Liberal majority to a minority and saw ethnocultural-minority voters show a new openness to the Conservatives, Martin quickly abandoned the Liberals’ no-redress position.37 Announced in the February 2005 budget, the Martin government’s ACE program embraced the key outlines of the initial Inky Mark bills as championed by the opposition Conservatives. The basic concept behind the ACE program was in fact first broached in the late 1990s by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Responding to the Chrétien government’s insistence that offering apologies and compensation for historical injustices was backward-looking and divisive, Ukrainian Canadian

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redress activists formulated a new appeal. Dropping their earlier demands for apology and compensation for the First World War internment, they requested official “acknowledgment” and financial assistance for commemorative projects instead.38 Although it failed to sway Chrétien, the modified Ukrainian Canadian position shaped both the Inky Mark redress bills and the Conservatives’ subsequent 2004 pro-redress announcement. In the Ukrainian Canadian approach, the Conservatives saw a way of reaching minoritized voters in terms that might prove acceptable to the party’s right-wing base. For example, the party’s 2004 campaign platform emphasized the primarily hortatory and commemorative thrust of the new proposal by calling it “heritage redress.”39 Mark framed the point in the following terms: “I don’t agree that [people] should receive an apology or receive individual compensation … The purpose … is education, acknowledgement, recognition.”40 The eventual ACE program acronym conveyed the premise succinctly: “acknowledgment,” but not “apology”; “commemoration” and “education,” but never “compensation.” Thus, pioneered in part by the Ukrainian Canadian campaign, embraced by Inky Mark and the opposition Conservatives, and then adopted by the governing Martin Liberals after their near-defeat in 2004, neoliberal heritage redress was from the outset a deliberate and quite explicit departure from more activist and reparatory approaches. This departure shaped the debate at the fall 2005 parliamentary hearings of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which examined Mark’s bills on Ukrainian Canadian internment and Chinese head-tax redress as a prelude to their proposed implementation under the new ACE program framework. On the one hand, exhibiting levels of accord rare in a parliamentary system known for its intense government-versus-opposition dynamic, Liberal and Conservative committee members joined repeatedly to defend the commemorative or “heritage” emphasis of the program. As explained by a supportive Paul Grod of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, whose organization had just negotiated the first preliminary agreement to be reached under the ACE program, this emphasis meant “no compensation and no apology.”41 For their part, New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois MPs criticized the “no compensation, no apology” rule, which they saw as an unreasonable and deliberately imposed impediment to the redress claim of the Chinese Canadian National Council.42 The leading proponent of redress for Canada’s infamous “Chinese head tax” and “exclusion act” since 1984, the council had always insisted on an official apology and individual compensation for head-tax payers and their families.43 I will return to discuss the Chinese Canadian claim and its treatment under the ACE-CHRP framework later in the chapter. While the origins of the “no apology, no compensation” rule reflect in part the tactical decisions of the Ukrainian Canadian campaign, a closer look at the new redress programs also reveals the reliance of state policymakers on the strategic vision underlying Canada’s neoliberalized multiculturalism. In particular, the ACE and CHRP programs have followed the latter in using conditional project funding as a disciplinary tool for shaping advocacygroup behaviour. In the specific case of redress, conditional project funding makes the recipient group the junior entity in a sort of public-private partnership; funded organizations are those that have applied successfully to undertake particular “commemorative” and “educational” projects under terms dictated by the state.44 As will be seen below, this funding regime aims not only to discipline groups, but also to resituate Canadian redress politics on a sanitized field of official remembrance created to tame the past’s politically disruptive potential.

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Consider, for example, the ACE and CHRP program stipulation that only injustices qualifying as “wartime measures or immigration restrictions” are eligible for consideration.45 This stipulation continues the 1990s-era focus on marginalizing antiracism by striving pre-emptively to narrow the range of injustices of which Canadians are made aware. As the African Canadian Legal Clinic, which has focused on redress issues such as slavery, the destruction of Africville, and the mistreatment of the Black Loyalists, observed in 2005: “African Canadians are not even contemplated,” given the “wartime measures and immigration restrictions” provision.46 Indeed, the provision makes many other injustices ineligible for consideration, including, for instance, the long-term federal disfranchisement of Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Canadians.47 It also restricts Canada’s redress focus to a relatively small number of specific, temporally confined, and extraordinary acts: “wartime measures” are by their very nature exceptional and discrete, while group-based “immigration restrictions” were abolished in 1967.48 These stipulations are not merely proscriptive; they seek actively to construct popular understandings of injustice in ways congenial to the neoliberal project of remaking a public sphere devoid of critical dissent. Thus, to the extent that public understandings of Canadian injustice will be shaped by the commemorative projects that neoliberal heritage redress presents, we can predict that those understandings will centre around a pre-selected group of singular past government acts abstracted from any deeper consideration of the long-term structural and attitudinal racism that tends to give rise to historical wrongs in the first place. This approach contrasts strongly with that of the 1988 Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement, which, among other things, established an endowment that funds the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, whose ongoing activities include media work, a research and publications program, and training and workshop services – all premised on the challenge that Canada needs to make “more progress in addressing systemic and institutional racism.”49 The focus of neoliberal heritage redress on constructing a sanitized field of remembrance and memory is particularly evident in the ACE program requirement that participants carry out funded activities in ways consistent with “cohesion,” “Canadian identity,” and “crosscultural understanding.”50 As geographer Audrey Kobayashi suggests, emphasizing “crosscultural understanding” ignores the dominant society’s culpability and infers wrongly that the victims somehow contributed to the injustices themselves.51 For its part, the nature of the “cohesion” and “identity” stipulation can be gauged by consulting the official press releases outlining the agreements-in-principle with redress-seeking groups reached under the ACE program. Announcements dealing with the Ukrainian Canadian internment, Italian Canadian internment, and Chinese head tax, respectively, say virtually nothing about the injustices: they emphasize the “experiences and contributions” of the affected groups instead.52 Similarly, the press releases announcing the agreements were all titled under a common formula that defined each agreement’s purpose as that of highlighting the affected group’s “Contribution to Building Canada.” Framing internment, racist taxes, and categorical exclusion as “Contributions to Building Canada” constitutes a kind of Potemkin-village approach to injustice: it takes histories of racist wrongdoing and reinscribes them as signposts of national progress and triumph. Although the “cohesion and identity” stipulation has formally been dropped from the CHRP program, the program’s funding rules indicate that the broader purpose has not wavered. On the contrary: with decision-making powers on individual grants taken away from the non-partisan bureaucracy and given to the minister of citizenship and immigration,

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the stipulation is no longer necessary; the new CHRP rules ensure that decisions on who receives funding and how that funding will be used will reflect the Conservative government’s political and ideological predilections.53 In any event, the CHRP mission statement indicates that the Potemkin-village approach continues to guide policy: the statement describes the program’s overall purpose as that of “commemorat[ing] historical experiences” and group “contributions to building Canada.”54 Thus, establishing both a predetermined menu of past injustices eligible for recognition and an official account of the sort of framings in which recipients can engage, neoliberal heritage redress transforms Canadian histories of wrongdoing from potential tools of national self-criticism and introspection into paternalistic occasions for congratulating victim groups on their “contributions.” Beyond the substantive concerns outlined above, the form of neoliberal heritage redress deserves notice as a political strategy in its own right. As Wakeham’s observation of the policy’s “assembly-line operations” suggests, what now pass for Canadian acts of redress both emerge from and enact in their form a standardized bureaucratic routine of rule and procedure.55 As we have seen, this routine governs the events eligible for recognition, the activities on which monies can be spent, and even what redress recipients can do and say.56 In his analysis of the historical “normalization” strategies of the mainstream German right, sociologist Jeffrey Olick explains that this kind of routinization helps to remove the past from the arena of contemporary political conflict and debate.57 Subjecting the controversial past to a smoothly repetitive ritualization helps to turn historical injustices into the nonpartisan and unremarkable objects of consensual commemoration. The resultant onset of an official routine of predictable commemorative procedure thus helps to quell potentially unwieldy debates about past conduct and contemporary responsibility; the past becomes the requisite object of “correct” observance and nothing more.58 In this sense, then, the remembrance-by-template that characterizes neoliberal heritage redress seeks to anaesthetize memory rather than to enrich it. A distinctively Canadian aspect of the routinization of collective memory ought also to be noted.59 The new use of redress as a framework for recognizing group contributions suggests that redress policy has been given partial responsibility for one of the long-standing functions of official multiculturalism. Proclaimed originally in 1971 and carried forward in the 1988 Multiculturalism Act, this function is to “recognize … [the] historic contribution [of ethnocultural minority groups] to Canadian society.”60 The continuation of long-term multiculturalism objectives under a framework in which “multiculturalism” is itself taboo – the word appears only once in the myriad press releases associated with the ACE and CHRP programs – may shed light on some recent debates about the contemporary status of the multiculturalism concept. In a wide-ranging survey of multiculturalism’s global diffusion, Kymlicka points to the relative international durability of most of the formal policy initiatives associated with multiculturalism; he argues on this basis that the notion of a generalized “retreat from multiculturalism” tends to be exaggerated.61 While in many ways persuasive, Kymlicka’s analysis may underplay the importance of multiculturalism as a discourse used by minoritized groups to amplify their claims for equality and recognition in Canada since the 1960s. Used as a tool of civic challenge from its inception, and reframed for specifically antiracist purposes in the 1980s, multiculturalism’s evident retreat in official Canadian discourse and rhetoric is, from an activist standpoint, significant. Moreover, the analysis offered here suggests that the advent of neoliberal heritage redress constitutes a further instalment in

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this retreat; the new, and in many ways primary, focus of official redress on recognizing group contributions retains multiculturalism’s patronage aspect while abandoning multiculturalism discourse itself – a discourse that, however fitfully and unevenly, once helped to promote Canadian difference-recognition and equality claims.62 Whether neoliberal heritage redress achieves these aims remains a question for further research. The policy certainly seems to have rendered moot the concerns of its initial rightwing opponents, who reacted to the original 2005 ACE announcement by blending the “ungovernability” language of the Trilateral Commission with the doomsday scenarios of 1990s-era anti-multiculturalism. Characterizing redress politics as a field of endlessly escalating demands and intensifying conflict unsusceptible to rational containment, critics called the ACE program a “fund for the aggrieved” which would unleash a limitless increase in claims and promote incivility.63 The Globe and Mail’s normally even-toned Jeffrey Simpson typified this view: “As anyone who knows the victim industry could have predicted, once a government starts down this road of recognizing past injustices, there is no end in sight.”64 Although actual expenditures are difficult to gauge, it would appear that the total amount disbursed to groups under the CHRP and ACE programs will reach no more than $30 million, while the compensation under the separate 2006 Chinese head-tax redress agreement is expected to total roughly $800,000.65 Thus, the expenditures by national policy standards have been relatively small. Neither has there been any liberalization of the eligibility rules since the original ACE program’s inception. Indeed, contrary to the predictions of a “rush of claims” that would “run and run,” the general policy community of redress-seeking groups – the most prominent participants have been Chinese, Italian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Indo-Canadians – has remained unchanged since the Liberal government proclaimed its original no-redress policy in 1994.66 Thus, we can say that neoliberal heritage redress has largely succeeded in one of its crucial aims, if we characterize that aim as formulating an approach to redress that might eventually prove satisfactory to right-wing critics. The policy’s long-run success in neoliberalizing ethnocultural-minority interest intermediation remains an open question. It is nevertheless suggestive to consider the differential treatment of the Ukrainian and Chinese Canadian redress campaigns. The campaign to redress the Chinese head tax and “exclusion act,” led since the early 1980s by the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC), constitutes an expression of what I have called social movement multiculturalism.67 The campaign used its focus on the head tax to call attention to other injustices, particularly in contemporary immigration and refugee policy. It also helped to strengthen activist networks linking Chinese Canadians to labour, antiracist, and other progressive groups.68 The CCNC itself continues to participate in a wide range of social-justice campaigns.69 In their fight against the ACE program provision ruling out apologies and financial compensation for historical injustices, the CCNC and its allies won a significant victory in 2006 when the Conservative government apologized for the head tax and agreed to compensate living head-tax payers and the surviving spouses of deceased head-tax payers. However, the organization itself received no federal monies or any other sort of redress consideration. This was precisely the outcome sought by the policy’s original proponent, Inky Mark, whose private member’s bill on head-tax redress deliberately excluded the CCNC, an organization he derided as “an arm of the NDP across Canada.”70 Instead, Mark’s bill stipulated that commemorative and recognition activities be carried out by the National

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Congress of Chinese Canadians, a shadowy group founded in 1991 “to play down Chinese human rights abuses … and improve business relations,” and which had no history of antiracism activity and lacked even a website.71 Although the Liberal government and opposition Conservatives joined forces behind this plan, the December 2005 federal election campaign intervened. In ridings where Chinese Canadian voters had a significant prospect of influencing the outcome, the CCNC made an election issue out of the government’s no-compensation and no-apology approach. Brandishing the signatures of 4000 head-tax payers on a petition it had been compiling since 1984, the CCNC organized community events, embarrassed Liberal cabinet ministers on open-line radio shows, and mustered support from a broad coalition of progressive organizations.72 Seizing the electoral and public relations opportunity the controversy represented, opposition leader Stephen Harper reversed position in mid-campaign, promising that a Conservative government would indeed apologize for the head tax and pay individual compensation. Although Harper subsequently made good on these pledges and quietly shelved the plan to place the rival National Congress of Chinese Canadians in charge of the commemorative and educational fund, the CCNC itself was ignored; funds for head-tax redress activities have since gone almost entirely to local, non-activist groups, mainly history associations, arts groups, university programs, and media companies.73 By contrast, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) has been rewarded for pioneering and remaining true to the no-apology, no-compensation approach. In 2008 the Conservatives placed a $10 million endowment fund for projects relating to the First World War internment directly under the control of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, a funds-management entity historically linked to the UCC.74 The Conservatives also developed a $5 million National Historical Recognition Program, which focuses on erecting plaques and monuments at locations associated with “wartime measures and immigration restrictions.” This program appears to have been created almost entirely for the Ukrainian Canadian campaign; according to the government’s own information, the program “centerpiece … is the development of a major exhibit … to tell the national story of First World War internment operations.”75 This relatively generous treatment is significant. Even excepting the separate National Historical Recognition Program, the $10 million given the UCC is twice the amount earmarked for any other single redress issue under the CHRP. Furthermore, the other CHRP funds have been scattered among numerous small, typically local organizations, with the final funding decisions made by the minister of citizenship and immigration. But in the Ukrainian Canadian case, the full $10 million amount has been given directly to a UCC-affiliated group to disburse as it sees fit – a considerable source of prestige and influence given the funding instability that affects most ethnocultural-minority organizations, and indeed a complete departure from the typical insistence of neoliberal heritage redress on controlling the framings, utterances, and activities of project funding recipients. The UCC cannot be described as an exponent of social-movement multiculturalism. Although it has taken strong stands on the treatment of war-crimes suspects of Ukrainian origin and on Canadian relations with Ukraine, the organization has not participated in antiracist campaigns or cultivated links with labour or progressive groups more generally.76 Neither have Ukrainian Canadian redress advocates used their campaign as an opportunity to confront contemporary issues of inequality and disadvantage. Certainly, the discriminatory treatment of Ukrainian Canadians under the pretext of national security during the First World War bears obvious parallels to Ottawa’s current policy of disregarding the citi-

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zenship and human rights of Arab and Muslim Canadians accused of links to terrorism.77 Yet UCC and other community leaders have refrained from making such connections, even when specifically invited to by others.78 Thus, the case of the UCC shows that neoliberal heritage redress has been used to reward and boost the profile of a group whose conduct and activities do not challenge prevailing civic arrangements and power relations. Tellingly, the only other national-level minority organization to receive funds under the CHRP is B’nai Brith Canada, which recently awarded Prime Minister Stephen Harper its Presidential Gold Medal for Humanitarianism in recognition of his staunch defence of Israeli policy in the Middle East.79 Meanwhile, and in stark contrast, the case of the CCNC indicates that the policy has been used to punish one of Canada’s most visible and long-standing redress-seeking organizations, one committed to progressive activism and social-movement multiculturalism. A somewhat similar case should be noted, one involving the disrespectful treatment of a redress cause linked to contemporary issues of racism in immigration and refugee policy.80 In response to Indo-Canadian calls for an apology for the rejection and harsh mistreatment in 1914 of Indian migrants aboard the Komagata Maru, Prime Minister Harper delivered a quasi-apology in a way that conveyed what seems to be a deliberate public snub.81 Rejecting community requests for prior consultation about the apology’s possible details, and ignoring the statements of community leaders that a pre-emptive statement of regret unaccompanied by a formal parliamentary apology would be most unwelcome, Prime Minister Harper appeared at the August 2008 Mela Gadri Babian Da event in Surrey, BC, offering words of supposed apology that led angry attendees to take the stage afterwards in displeasure.82 The federal Privy Council Office, a central cabinet agency directly responsible to the prime minister, refuses to make available the contents of Harper’s public remarks, denying this author’s request under the Access to Information Act for a transcript.83 To say that official utterances and government funds have been used to exclude and punish activist groups while rewarding their more amenable counterparts is not necessarily to say that the actual individual projects funded under the CHRP are themselves worthless or insignificant. Grants to help recount the struggles of Chinese Canadian pioneers, to develop a teaching kit about the head tax for use in secondary schools, and to commemorate Canada’s wartime exclusion of Jewish refugees indicate that even neoliberal heritage redress can in various ways serve the goals of humility and awareness.84 The point is simply that the policy’s overriding purpose is to do otherwise. This chapter has argued that neoliberal heritage redress follows neoliberalized multiculturalism in building new interest intermediation processes that exclude critical voices and perspectives. It has also argued that the policy seeks partially to supplant multiculturalism discourse with a new system for recognizing group contributions. As we have seen, this system turns experiences of historical injustice into a kind of company-store currency, which groups are then expected to barter in return for grants and forms of acknowledgment whose acceptance requires in turn that they forsake more ambitiously reparative discourses and claims. The end product is a new, state-driven field of remembrance that aims to numb critical memory instead of fostering it. The public-private “partnership” project model; the vetting of proposals by the minister; the narrow range of eligible injustices; the sanitizing emphasis on cohesion and heritage; the mystification of oppression with a discourse of group “contributions”; and the pacifying routine of bureaucratized commemoration, with its grants competitions, agreements-in-principle, project announcements, and monument

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unveilings – these core features of neoliberal heritage redress strive primarily to discipline, narrow, and contain the reparation struggles of antiracist movements and groups. The possible, though of course never inevitable, result is the further marginalization of the sorts of voices and claims that helped to turn Canadian multiculturalism into an at least incipiently antiracist field in the first place.

NOTES 1 Stephen Gill, “Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism,” Millennium 24, no. 3 (1995): 399–423. The author wishes to thank the editors for their helpful criticism and suggestions, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding support, and Julia Bareman, Paul Dyck, Adam Molnar, and Mark Willson for research assistance. 2 For some of these criticisms, see Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Gender (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2000); Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); Gilles Paquet, “Multiculturalism as National Policy,” Journal of Cultural Economics 13 (1989): 17–34; Karl Peter, “The Myth of Multiculturalism and Other Political Fables,” in Ethnicity, Power, and Politics, ed. J. Dahlie and T. Fernando (Toronto: Methuen, 1981). 3 Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christina Gabriel, Selling Diversity: Immigration, Multiculturalism, Employment Equity, and Globalization (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002). 4 This discussion is indebted to Jane Jenson and Susan D. Phillips, “Redesigning the Canadian Citizenship Regime: Remaking the Institutions of Representation,” in Citizenship, Markets, and the State, ed. C. Crouch, K. Eder, and D. Tambini (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 5 See especially Samuel P. Huntington, “The United States,” in The Crisis of Democracy, ed. M. Crozier, S.P. Huntington, and J. Watanuki (New York: New York University Press, 1975). 6 Jenson and Phillips, “Redesigning”; Miriam Smith, A Civil Society? Collective Actors in Canadian Political Life (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005). 7 On these relationships, see Leslie A. Pal, Interests of State: The Politics of Language, Multiculturalism, and Feminism in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993). 8 Jodi Melamed, “The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Racial Liberalism to Neoliberal Multiculturalism,” Social Text 24, no. 4 (2006): 1–24. Also see Slavoj Žižek, “Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism,” New Left Review 225 (1997): 28–51. 9 Quoted in Matt James, Misrecognized Materialists: Social Movements in Canadian Constitutional Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 58–9. 10 Ibid., 75. 11 Abu-Laban and Gabriel, Selling Diversity. 12 Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4–5. On the European reaction, see Han Entzinger, “The Parallel Decline of Multiculturalism and the Welfare State in the Netherlands” and Peter A. Kraus and Karen Schönwälder, “Multiculturalism in Germany: Rhetoric, Scattered Experiments, and Future Chances,” both in Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, ed. K. Banting and W. Kymlicka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Neoliberal Heritage Redress 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

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28 29 30 31

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Paquet, “Multiculturalism.” Bannerji, Dark Side. James, Misrecognized Materialists, 79–82. House of Commons Special Committee on Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society, Equality Now! (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1984), 135–41. House of Commons Standing Committee on Multiculturalism, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, no. 9, 27 May 1986, 25. Roy Miki, Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004), 317. James, Misrecognized Materialists, 104–6. For examples of this reaction, see the essays in Rethinking the Constitution: Perspectives on Canadian Constitutional Reform, Interpretation, and Theory, ed. A.A. Peacock (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1996). Abu-Laban and Gabriel, Selling Diversity, 115. House Special Committee on Visible Minorities, Equality Now! Abu-Laban and Gabriel, Selling Diversity, chap. 4, “Multiculturalism and Nation-Building.” Miriam Smith, “Resisting and Reinforcing Neoliberalism: Lesbian and Gay Organizing at the Federal and Local Levels in Canada,” Policy and Politics 33, no. 1 (2005): 93. On these older criticisms, see Peter, “Myth of Multiculturalism.” As this person put it, while multiculturalism is now “basically off the radar screen,” political sensitivities mean that “you just can’t kill it.” S. Jones [pseud.], interview by Matt James, 11 August 2006, transcript, Ottawa, Ontario. Pauline Wakeham, “The Cunning of Reconciliation: Reinventing White Civility in the Age of Apology,” in Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies, ed. S. Kamboureli and R. Zacharias (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 209–33. Yasmeen Abu-Laban, “Political Science, Race, Ethnicity, and Public Policy,” in Critical Policy Studies, ed. M. Orsini and M. Smith (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 151. Matt James, “Do Campaigns for Historical Redress Erode the Canadian Welfare State?” in Multiculturalism and the Welfare State, ed. Banting and Kymlicka, 231–4. Abu-Laban and Gabriel, Selling Diversity, chap. 4, “Multiculturalism and Nation-Building.” Although developing the point is beyond the scope of this essay, the official Canadian frame for discussing the Indian residential schools policy shares an important similarity with neoliberal heritage redress: both downplay the details of Canadian wrongdoing by focusing euphemistically on the “experiences” of targeted groups instead. See Matt James, “Uncomfortable Comparisons: The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in International Context,” Les Ateliers de l éthique/The Ethics Forum 5:2 (2010): 23–35. See Joe Paraskevas, Tim Maumetz, and Peter O’Neil, “Budget draws wide-ranging fire,” Edmonton Journal, 25 February 2009, p. A5; also see Department of Canadian Heritage, News release, “Backgrounder: Acknowledgment, Commemoration, and Education (ACE) Program,” 24 August 2005, hard copy on file with author. The provisional agreements involved Ukrainian Canadians (First World War internment), Chinese Canadians (head tax and exclusion act), and Italian Canadians (Second World War internment). In 2008, the Conservatives also unveiled an ancillary measure, the National Historical Recognition Program, discussed later in this chapter. For information on the CHRP, see Citizenship and

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Matt James Immigration Canada, “Community Historical Recognition Program,” http://www.cic.gc.ca/ english/multiculturalism/programs/community.asp. For example, see House of Commons, 1st Sess., 38th Parl., 15 November 2004, Bill C-333, “An Act to recognize the injustices done to Chinese immigrants,” http://www.parl.gc.ca/PDF/38/1/ parlbus/chambus/house/bills/private/c-333_1.pdf. For technical reasons, the final version of Bill C-333 was formally sponsored by Mark’s Conservative colleague Bev Oda. For more information, see Inky Mark, MP, “Private Member’s Business,” http://www.inkymark.com/site/node/35. On the Liberals’ no-redress policy, see Matt James, “Redress Politics and Canadian Citizenship,” in The State of the Federation 1998: How Canadians Connect, ed. H. Lazar and T. McIntosh (Kingston: Queen’s University Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1999). See Andrew Cardozo, “Liberals can lead in the ethnic vote if they choose,” The Hill Times, 19 December 2005, p. 17. See Matt James, “Wrestling with the Past: Apologies, Quasi-Apologies, and Non-Apologies in Canada,” in The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past, ed. M. Gibney et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 144–5. See “New Conservative party of Canada supports redress,” Ukrainian Weekly, 18 April 2004, http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2004/160410.shtml. House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, Minutes of Evidence, 38th Parl., 1st Sess., 20 October 2005, http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx? DocId=2047725&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=38&Ses=1. Ibid. Ibid. The Chinese Canadian National Council’s campaign will be discussed later in this chapter. For more information, see James, “Redress Politics.” For example, see House of Commons, Bill C-333, “An Act to recognize.” More generally, see Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Community Historical Recognition Program, “Applicant’s Guide, 2009–2010,” http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/pub/chrp-guide-eng.pdf. Department of Canadian Heritage, “Table 13: Details on Transfer Payments Programs (TPPs) for the Department of Canadian Heritage,” http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/publctn/dpr/ctzn/ tpp_c_h-eng.cfm; and CHRP, “Applicant’s Guide.” African Canadian Legal Clinic, Chinese Canadian National Council, and National Anti-Racism Council of Canada, joint news release, 21 February 2005, “Communities reject flawed plan,” http://www.ccnc.ca/content/pr.php?entry=22. On disfranchisement, see Canada, Minister of Public Works and Government Services, A History of the Vote in Canada (Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services, 1997). Of course informal class and gender biases in the points-based immigration regime remain. See Abu-Laban and Gabriel, Selling Diversity, 47–54. Canadian Race Relations Foundation, “Welcome,” http://www.crr.ca/content/view/53/268/ lang,english/. Canadian Heritage, “Backgrounder.” Audrey Kobayashi, “The Japanese-Canadian Redress Settlement and Its Implications for ‘Race Relations,’” Canadian Ethnic Studies 24 (1992): 1–19. Although Kobayashi rightly criticizes the “race relations” paradigm implicit in the Canadian Race Relations Foundation name, the foundation’s relatively activist mandate and activities go far beyond anything allowed in the ACE and CHRP programs. Department of Canadian Heritage, News release, “Agreement-in-Principle to Highlight Ukraini-

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an Canadian Contribution to Building Canada,” 24 August 2005; ibid., “Agreement-in-Principle to Highlight Italian Canadians’ Contribution to Building Canada,” 12 November 2005; ibid., “Agreement-in-Principle to Highlight Chinese-Canadians’ Contribution to Building Canada,” 24 November 2005. Hard copies all on file with author. “The Minister will make all final funding decisions”: CHRP, “Applicant’s Guide,” 14. More recently, Ottawa has sought to dispel the appearance of politicization by appointing arm’s-length expert panels to advise the minister on funding decisions. However, continued politicization was apparent when Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney came under fire for appointing an advisory panel on Italian Canadian internment dominated by known opponents of Italian Canadian redress. See Canada News Wire, 23 March 2009, “The National Congress of Italian Canadians Responds to Minister Kenney’s Announcement Regarding the Community Historical Recognition Program: A Shameful Attempt to Divide and Conquer.” CHRP, “Applicant’s Guide,” 6. Wakeham, “Cunning of Reconciliation.” For a sense of the mechanics of redress politics in earlier times, see Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, eds., Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talon Books, 1991). Jeffrey K. Olick, “What Does It Mean to Normalize the Past? Official Memory in German Politics since 1989,” in States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection, ed. J.K. Olick (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). This focus, I have argued recently, also informs the basic mandate and design of the TRC. See James, “Uncomfortable Comparisons.” On collective memory, see Jeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2007). The Multiculturalism Policy of Canada (1988), reprinted in Kymlicka, Finding Our Way, 185. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Policies of Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 122–8. James, Misrecognized Materialists, 78–82. See “The trouble with the grievance fund,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), 25 February 2005, p. A14; “No money for past sins,” The Gazette (Montreal), 28 February 2005, p. A20; and Paul Samyn, “Ethnic groups want federal gov’t to right wrongs of the past,” Edmonton Journal, 19 July 2005, p. E10. On these themes as characteristic of anti-multiculturalism in Canada, see Kymlicka, Finding Our Way, chap. 1, “Setting the Record Straight”; and Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Tim Nieguth, “Reconsidering the Constitution, Minorities, and Politics in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 33, no. 3 (2000): 465–97. Jeffrey Simpson, “Who will pay for Canada’s victim industry?” Globe and Mail (Toronto), 17 December 2005, p. A31. The January 2006 defeat of the Liberals meant that no ACE program funds were spent. For the CHRP figures, see “Applicant’s Guide,” 5. There are roughly 400 living head-tax payers and surviving spouses of deceased head-tax payers who are eligible to receive $20,000 each. See Stephen Winter, “The Stakes of Inclusion: Chinese Canadian Head Tax Redress,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 41, no. 1 (2008): 119–41. Jack Aubry, “Warning to Tories over righting injustices: Rush of claims feared,” National Post, 4 June 2007, p. A6; “Money for grievances,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), 19 November 2005, p. A26. On the policy community of redress-seeking groups, see James, “Redress Politics.” James, “Campaigns for Historical Redress,” 222.

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68 Matt James, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Redress: The Case of the Chinese Head Tax,’” Canadian Journal of Political Science 37, no. 4 (2004): 883–902. 69 See Chinese Canadian National Council, “Advocacy,” http://www.ccnc.ca/sectionMain .php?section=Advocacy. 70 Quoted in Peter O’Neil, “No direct cash in head tax redress,” Vancouver Sun, 24 November 2005, p. B1. 71 Daphne Bramham, “Compensate Chinese immigrants fairly,” Vancouver Sun, 2 December 2005, p. B1; James, “Campaigns for Historical Redress,” 232. 72 See Eve Richards, “Descendants of head-tax payers say solution falls short,” Richmond News, 29 November 2005, p. 5; Melissa Leong, “PM defends education program,” National Post, 7 December 2005, p. A7; Peter O’Neil,“Harper reverses stand on Liberal redress for ‘racist’ head tax policy,” Vancouver Sun, 9 December 2005, p. A5; and Chinese Canadian National Council, News release, “Opposition Parties Pledge Support for Head Tax Redress,” 8 December 2005, http://www.ccnc.ca/content/pr.php?entry=39. 73 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Projects Funded to Date under the Community Historical Recognition Program,” http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/programs/communityprojects.asp. 74 Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association media release, “Establishment of a $10 Million Endowment,” http://www.uccla.ca/media.htm. On the foundation, see Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, “History,” http://www.shevchenkofoundation.com/shevshenkohistory.html. 75 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Historical Recognition Programs,” http://www.cic.gc.ca/ ENGLISH/information/faq/multiculturalism/index.asp#historical. 76 See Ukrainian Canadian Congress, “Important Issues,” http://www.ucc.ca/issues.htm; and Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, “Sources and Issues,” http://www.uccla.ca/ sources.htm. 77 On the internment operations, see Bohdan S. Kordan and Craig Mahovsky, A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and Ukrainian-Canadian Redress (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2004). On Canada’s “war on terror,” see Robert Diab, Guantanamo North: Terrorism and the Administration of Justice in Canada (Halifax: Fernwood, 2008). 78 For example, see the exchange between NDP MP Libby Davies and Andrew Hladysheksy of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko at House of Commons Standing Committee on Multiculturalism, Minutes. 79 See B’nai Brith Canada, 27 June 2008, “Prime Minister Stephen Harper Awarded B’nai Brith Presidential Gold Medal for Humanitarianism,” http://www.bnaibrith.ca/prdisplay.php?id=1350. 80 For an example of this linkage, see Gurpreet Singh, “Apologies: Remembering the Past to Serve the Future,” http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=780#more-780. 81 On the notion of quasi-apology, see James, “Wrestling with the Past.” 82 Kady O’Malley, “The Curse of the Komagata Maru: More on That Unfortunate Event in Surrey,” Maclean’s.ca, 6 August 2008, http://www2.macleans.ca/2008/08/06/the-curse-of-thekomagata-maru-more-on-that-unfortunate-event-in-surrey/. 83 The passage cited from the Access to Information Act to support denying the transcript request reads, “Certain information has been withheld from disclosure pursuant to subsection 19(1) (personal information), paragraph 21(1)(a) (advice or recommendations) and paragraph 21(1) (b) (consultations or deliberations) of the Act.” It is hard to see how a transcript of public remarks made by a prime minister while conducting public business fits these criteria. 84 See CHRP, “Projects Funded.”

2 The Apologizers’ Apology1 eva mackey

You know how to sorry, but not how not to sorry.2

On 11 June 2008, hundreds of Aboriginal people gathered at the federal parliament buildings of Canada in Ottawa. Many had come long distances to witness this important day. All across Canada, in community centres, university classrooms, gymnasiums, living rooms, and schools on reserves, Indigenous people also gathered to witness the prime minister of Canada apologize on behalf of Canadians for the Indian residential schools system. Many had waited decades for this day, never expecting it would arrive. The Toronto Star reported that the atmosphere among the many native families who had gathered on Parliament Hill was almost festive early in the afternoon, like a big family picnic. Old friends and family members reunited, pinched babies’ cheeks and shared cold drinks and ice cream. Music played in the background in the form of traditional drumming and chanting. But the crowd stilled and the mood turned solemn as the giant TV screen came to life and the Prime Minister began to speak.3

As Prime Minister Harper spoke, eleven Aboriginal guests sat before him in the House. Harper called the residential schools “a sad chapter in our history,” detailed Canada’s involvement in the residential school system and acknowledged in depth the harm the schools did to Aboriginal individuals, families, and communities. The words “we are sorry” were repeated many times.4 As a result of a last-minute decision, and for the first time in history, Aboriginal representatives were then permitted to address Parliament to respond to the apology. Phil Fontaine, then chief of the Assembly of First Nations, spoke while wearing full Ojibwa regalia and headdress. A survivor of sexual abuse in the residential school system, he said in part, “This day testifies to nothing less than the achievement of the impossible.” He continued, “The memories of residential schools sometimes cut like a knife at our souls. This day will help us to put that pain behind us. Brave survivors, through telling their stories, have stripped white supremacy of its legitimacy.”5 Had “white supremacy” actually been “stripped” of its legitimacy, as Fontaine said? Or would this apology mean that government-sponsored genocide would now be filed away in the archives as merely a “sad chapter” of the past that led, ultimately, to a supposedly unified Canada? What is an apology? What does it do? Specifically, what does apology

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do for the apologizers? How is it possible that a few highly symbolic words of regret and apology (even if well phrased, official, earnest, or truly remorseful) could be expected to erase or even begin to address over two hundred years of colonial violence? Certainly, the apology did not stand alone as an expression of regret. The government also established the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which includes a “Common Experience Payment; an Independent Assessment Process; Commemoration Activities; measures to support healing; and the establishment of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”6 Nevertheless, the apology itself is a central ritual in what is called the reconciliation process. As Harper said in the apology, “The Government recognizes that the absence of an apology has been an impediment to healing and reconciliation,” and that the programs and the apology are the “foundation of a new relationship between Aboriginal people and other Canadians, a relationship based on knowledge of our shared history, a respect for each other and a desire to move forward together with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us.”7 In this chapter, while I critique the apology and the reconciliation process, I do not wish to suggest that such processes should be abandoned. Certainly, apology and a reconciliation process are necessary and important in numerous ways.8 Nevertheless, it is necessary to examine the process critically with a view to how it may also reproduce and exacerbate particular forms of supremacy, silence, and subordination. It is, I suggest, necessary to examine the limits of such rituals in order to begin to conceptualize more appropriate models of decolonized relationships between settler nations and Indigenous peoples. Therefore, in this chapter I examine the limits, silences, and absences in the Harper apology and its coverage in the media. I argue that the apology was articulated in very particular ways that limit the definition of the wrongdoing or crime that was the subject of the apology and therefore also limit responsibility for it. The longer and more brutal history of colonial violence that preceded and paralleled the residential school system – potentially brought to the foreground through the apology process – was relegated and contained to a defined set of incidents and attitudes around residential schools. The apology, I suggest, reproduces colonial relational structures in powerful and subtle ways. Integrating a broader and more complex picture of colonial and national projects and relationships, especially around the material process of land theft and broken treaties, as many of the Aboriginal people who responded to the apology did, gestures towards how to develop a more genuine and responsible version of reconciliation. The Politics of Apology The Oxford English Dictionary defines “apologize” as follows: “To speak in, or serve as, justification, explanation, or palliation of a fault, failure …; to offer defensive arguments; to make excuses. Also in modern usage: To acknowledge and express regret for a fault without defence, by way of reparation to the feelings of the person affected.”9 Thus, an apology can be either an admission of fault without defence, or an excuse, explanation, or justification for a wrongdoing. Yet, as Letitia Hickson contends, apology is “essentially a diplomatic, or political, act; … a way in which one can secure one’s own interests by being sensitive to and responsive to the interests of another.”10 Apologizers, therefore, apologize out of their own interest, and this is why it is important to explore what apologizers receive

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by apologizing. From the outset, what perturbed me about the ceremony described above is that the act of apology demands so little from the apologizer and yet seems to require a lot from the recipient. How is it that those who apologize (in this case the Canadian government and, by proxy, the Canadian people) appear to emerge after the apology ritual washed clean and innocent, feeling redeemed, future-looking, and unified? That a few simple words can do so much can be understood, Nicholas Tavuchis suggests, by seeing apology as a “speech act.” He contends that in an apology “the helpless offender, in consideration for nothing more than a speech, asks for nothing less than the conversion of righteous indignation and betrayal into unconditional forgiveness and reunion.”11 The structure is perhaps akin to a Catholic confession: the words, and the action of speaking the words, enacting an immense transformation in the individual, and in power relations between parties. Apology, like confession, is a “ritual in which the expression alone, independently of its external consequences, produces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it: it exonerates, redeems and purifies him; it unburdens him of his wrongs, liberates him, and promises him salvation.”12 But precisely how does it do so? In part through a choreographed official ritual of regret, over two hundred years of colonial violence, momentarily brought to the foreground through the apology process, become contained in the past so that the nation may move forward into a unified future. MichelRolph Trouillot argues that apologies “necessarily create pastness,” a demarcation between the pre-apology past and the present in which the crime or transgression is absent. This acknowledgment effectively “creates or verifies a new temporal plane, a present oriented towards the future” by effectively marking racialized colonial and national wrongdoings as past, and sidestepping complex questions about how similar colonial structures may continue.13 The apology may be mobilized to contribute to Canada’s global mythology as a benevolent multicultural nation which treats its Native people well,14 or as Harper asserted in 2009, as a nation with “no history of colonialism.”15 Thus, the act of a representative of the federal government speaking a few words enables the imagined community of Canada to see itself as one step closer to expiating the racialized colonial encounters of the past. The simple act of apology, therefore, does a lot for the apologizer. The apologizer – in this case the government of Canada that speaks, implicitly, for European settlers and their descendants – receives a large dividend for what I see as a relatively meagre investment. How does this transformation occur, and what are its limits as a form of decolonization? Apologizable Acts: Culture Not Treaty Indigenous people seek remedies to a long list of injustices that goes far beyond residential school’s [sic] direct and collateral victims. The closing of the residential school door leads down a hallway lined with other doors most Indians know about. The partnership now involves walking down that hallway together.16

This quote defines residential schools as part of a much larger and more encompassing range of injustices. It is significant that out of all the interconnected wrongdoings of the Canadian state towards Aboriginal peoples, the establishment of residential schools became the focus of the apology and the process of reconciliation. As Tavuchis points out, before even being spoken, an apology entails the act of defining a particular action or set of actions as “apologizable.” There are many possible consequences that can follow a wrongdoing.

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It may be “punished, avenged, admonished, excused, ignored, denied, defined as venial,” or it may be defined as “outside the bounds of forgiveness altogether.”17 If we think of the possible responses to the official attempts at cultural genocide in Canada, through what processes did apology emerge as an adequate response? While it is important to stress that not all participants in the process perceived apology as an appropriate or adequate response, the state, the mainstream press, and numerous Aboriginal organizations such as the AFN clearly did. Jennifer Henderson’s paper in this volume suggests that one way to understand why, of all the possible claims for redress, apology for residential schools became dominant, is that groups pushing for reparation often develop surprisingly consistent focal points and mobilizing images of the wrongdoing. Particular images, such as the “deserving child,” recur because they are readable and manageable within prevailing ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism. This is because “from the point of view of the state – financial reparations for residential schooling can be individualized and contained in a way that land claims cannot.”18 By limiting the apology and the redress to residential schools, the official apology carved out a very small part of a much broader process of cultural genocide that was, as I stress below, deeply interconnected with the theft of land that was pivotal to building the nationstate. If, as Jennifer Henderson argues in this volume, residential schooling operates as a “synecdoche for colonialism,” I build on her point to suggest that this particular synecdoche transforms the broader material colonial processes into something containable and, in Tavuchis’s words, “apologizable,” precisely through vacating the pivotal role that land appropriation played in colonial processes. The erasure of links between residential schools and the larger land theft process allows the apology to be appropriated into the kind of unifying and future-looking discourse we see here because it does not require Canada or Canadians to account for the ways that intersecting processes of colonial theft of land and cultural genocide are the foundations of the modern nation-state, or to recognize that nonAboriginal Canadians are all contemporary beneficiaries of this process. Necessary Linkages: Land, Culture, Nation In my view, the broader process of cultural genocide (epitomized in residential schools) cannot be separated from the breaking of treaties and the usurping of Aboriginal territories that were the basis of settling, building, and populating the nation. These intertwined cultural and land appropriation processes were and are still the “illegitimate and immoral beginnings”19 of Canada. These intersecting cultural land-appropriation processes were flexible over time, and the changes reveal how national policies to destroy Aboriginal cultures increased in tandem with the shift from resource extraction to European settlement in the late 1700s and early 1800s. In earlier colonial times “Indians were considered separate and special peoples to be dealt with as friends and allies,”20 in part because they were absolutely necessary in the resource extraction (fur) economy, and later as military allies. Further, because this period of colonization was based on resource-extraction and not settlement, Europeans were not yet primarily concerned with appropriating vast tracts of land for agriculture. James Miller calls this early stage “cooperation” and the later stage “coercion.”21 The royal proclamation of 1763 instituted a treaty-making process between the British Crown and Indigenous nations. Yet, later, when the fur trade began to die out and settlement increased, the “official

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policy of the government was to do away with the Indian problem once and for all. The Indian Act would be the means to that end.”22 Yet even before the Indian Act of 1876, assimilation had already become policy. The 1857 “Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes” meant that assimilation through education and enfranchisement became official policy in the 1850s and 1860s. The 1869 “Indian Enfranchisement Act” further entrenched these policies that finally became embodied in the Indian Act of 1876.23 In short, a series of processes (including residential schools) combined cultural genocide and land appropriation as a means to open space for the nation with the intent of containing and assimilating Aboriginal peoples. These processes include the formation of reserves and the taking of land, the push to teach agricultural labour and Christianity to Aboriginal people,24 the implementation of the band system and the destruction of traditional forms of governance including the traditional authority of women,25 the formation of residential schools and thus the destruction of family and intergenerational relationships and knowledge of land,26 forced enfranchisement and the introduction of the scrip system for Métis people, the outlawing of ceremonies, and laws prohibiting land claims.27 My point here is that the processes of destroying Aboriginal cultures were simultaneous with and directed towards legitimating and enabling the persistent appropriation of land. Elsewhere, I explore this process in more detail as the expedient twinning of settler appropriation and entitlement: the successful appropriation of land depended upon settlers’ sense of superiority and entitlement to legally define Indigenous cultures as inferior.28 Most striking, as an extensive body of research shows, is how gendered this process was. As Bonita Lawrence demonstrates, women were differentially treated and affected by these policies as the reproducers of children and as important players in the reproduction of cultural knowledge. They were “legally” robbed of status, property rights, and traditional roles of authority in their communities. Separating them and removing status meant the reduction of numbers of status Indians who might at some point claim land. The removal of children to residential schools also destroyed traditional intergenerational family systems. As Lawrence points out, these family networks were essential for transferring cultural knowledge of specific territories and histories of appropriation.29 In other words, the highly gendered “legal” process of defining status and non-status Indians, in addition to the culturally destructive processes of residential schooling, were attempts to create a situation in which fewer Indians existed and/or had the status or knowledge through which they could someday claim land and treaty rights as Aboriginal peoples. One result of this process has been the development of official national culture that disregards the central role that treaties had in the legitimizing of Canada, fails to acknowledge all Canadians as treaty beneficiaries, and does not recognize the ongoing sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples. It is precisely this awareness and respect for treaty relationships that is missing in the apologies, but also more broadly in Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal relationships and, as James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson argues in this volume, in the Crown’s approach to constitutional reconciliation. Treaty Peoples and Forgetting The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples argues that settler Canadians and their governments need to be reminded that we are all “treaty peoples”:

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Eva Mackey From an Aboriginal treaty perspective, European rights in the Americas … did not derive legitimately from international law precepts such as the doctrine of discovery or from European political and legal traditions. Rather … such rights came about through treaties made with Aboriginal nations. In this view, the terms of the treaties define the rights and responsibilities of both parties. It is as a result of the treaties that Canadians have, over time, inherited the wealth generated by Aboriginal lands and resources ... Thus, although the term ‘treaty Indians’ is commonly … used to refer to members of Indian nations … Canadians … can equally be considered participants in the treaty process … as the contemporary beneficiaries of the treaties.30

For many Indigenous peoples, treaty was and is a sacred covenant made between sovereign nations in which they agree to ongoing relationships of respect, friendship, and peace,31 and thus recognition of the ongoing sovereignty and rights of Aboriginal nations. “Treaty,” seen in this way, potentially disrupts settler senses of an entitlement to land because seeing all of us as “treaty peoples” brings material and social aspects of colonial pasts into the present in a manner that recognizes the ongoing sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples and the ongoing treaty relationships in which the settler nation-state participates as a beneficiary of past land agreements, not as the assumed sovereign. However, the Crown saw, and continues to see, treaty in very different ways from Aboriginal peoples. Indian Superintendent Provencher, in 1873, wrote: ‘Treaties may be made with them simply with a view to the extinction of their rights, by agreeing to pay them a sum, and afterwards abandon them to themselves. On the other side, they may be instructed, civilized, and led to a mode of life more in conformity with the new position of this country, and accordingly make them good, industrious and useful citizens.’32 Thus, Canada and many Canadians “regard treaties as an extinguishment of rights, and acceptance of the supremacy of the crown, and a generous gift of land to the Indians so they might have land of their own.”33 As many scholars have pointed out, the underlying assumption of Canadian law regarding Aboriginal peoples’ sovereignty is that Crown sovereignty always trumps Aboriginal sovereignty.34 Significantly, the Canadian constitution has consistently been interpreted to mean that Aboriginal people have an inherent right to self-government as long as it can be reconciled with Crown sovereignty.35 This form of reconciliation assumes that the legal sovereignty of the state always supersedes Aboriginal rights, and implies that Indigenous people must reconcile themselves to inferiority. As Michael Asch puts it, “In the final analysis, Canada still rests its foundational legitimacy on the ideology and legal reasoning of English colonialism. The lynch pin of this ideology and legal regime is the firm conviction that the acquisition of sovereignty, legislative authority, and underlying title by the crown is unproblematic.”36 In other words, the nation-state’s legitimacy is based on the legal assumption, or as I call it, the “fantasy of entitlement,”37 that its sovereignty is necessarily superior, stronger, and deeper than any claims of Native people because underlying title – the real “bedrock” title – belongs to the Crown.38 This is so, even if such claims have not been proved, and even if Native people are not reconciled to this interpretation. I suggest that the state and many settler citizens see apology and reconciliation in the same way they see treaty. First, these interactions with Aboriginal peoples are strategic performances that delineate time in a manner expedient for symbolic nation building. Second, they construct Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal relationships in a manner that mirrors the con-

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stitution’s version of reconciliation, in which the Crown is supreme. Ultimately, similar to the ways in which treaty agreements (and thus relationships of mutuality and respect) have been silenced in assertions of superior Crown sovereignty (including in the constitution), apology is also an expedient arrangement in which relationships of mutuality are subsumed for the so-called greater good of the nation as a whole. Aboriginal views of treaty relationships and history must in this way be “reconciled” with the fantasy of the supremacy of the settler nation, as in the above constitutional view of sovereignty, which depends upon particular forms of entitlement and silencing. Ignoring Treaty/Making Deviant Culture Significantly, the words “land,” “territory,” or “treaty” simply do not appear in the text of the Harper apology. The focus is on the loss of culture, and the family and community problems that resulted for individual Aboriginal people and their families and communities. For example, The government now recognizes that … the Indian residential schools policy … has had a lasting and damaging impact on Aboriginal culture, heritage and language … The legacy of Indian residential schools has contributed to social problems that continue to exist in many communities today … We now recognize that, in separating children from their families, we undermined the ability of many to adequately parent their own children and sowed the seeds for generations to follow, and we apologize for having done this. Not only did you suffer these abuses as children, but as you became parents, you were powerless to protect your own children from suffering the same experience, and for this we are sorry.39

This set of statements – framed as an apology – certainly acknowledges responsibility for some of the direst consequences of residential schools. However, my point here is that, if these detrimental cultural effects are presented without the accompanying story of land and material relations, they may end up constructing Aboriginal families and communities as essentially problem-ridden and deviant based on psychological criteria and problematization. One of the characteristics of the rationales used to justify the removal of children from their families to residential schools (as well as the “sixties scoop” of Aboriginal children into white middle-class families), and away from their lands, was a set of colonial stereotypes about Aboriginal women, families, and communities. Aboriginal women had for years been represented as “morally deficient and sexually promiscuous,” and the communal living and extended family structures of Aboriginal communities were seen to promote “immorality and primitivity.” Aboriginal child-rearing practices were condemned, normative white middle-class nuclear-family forms were exalted, and residential schools were justified in the past as a means to “improve” Aboriginal children.40 Within the apology, however, present-day Aboriginal individuals, families, and communities are still painted as deviant because they have “social problems that continue to exist in many communities today.” Aboriginal “culture” the apology says, has been “damaged,” and Aboriginal parents lost the “ability … to adequately parent their own children.” Finally, Aboriginal parents are constructed as “powerless to protect” their children.41 While the apology blames the government and expresses regret, such regret is transformed as

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Aboriginal families, lifestyles, and entire communities are constructed as damaged and psychologically deviant today, their very beings characterized by destroyed cultures, languages, and traditions and the inability to raise children. As Dian Million explores in this volume, the hegemony of psychologizing discourses of trauma emerge from a “genealogy of conquest” that has defined Aboriginal people as essentially deviant. They are required, when participating in the Truth and Reconciliation process, to return to the site of trauma and “witness” and “tell” their individual trauma in order to receive compensation and to participate in individual and community “healing.” Thus, the apology and its parallel programs may reproduce specific dehumanizing discourses about Aboriginal families even as they are claimed to contribute to healing the actions that depended on those very ideas to legitimate them. Further, despite the intersection of material and cultural processes in colonial land appropriation and cultural colonization/genocide, the government’s wrongdoing here becomes framed as apologizable because it is constructed as profoundly cultural. According to the apology, the transgression or wrong was based on ignorance and misunderstanding of the value of Aboriginal cultures and was a result of a well-meaning sense of duty and responsibility to care for Aboriginal people. In addition, these violations of culture are seen as the result of wrongful attitudes, not the social and political processes of colonial violence. Of course, racism was and is partially about attitudes, but in this case, as I have been arguing, residential schools were part of a much larger structural, government-sponsored, racialized legal process of breaking treaties and appropriating land. By asserting that residential schools were mainly about destroying culture, and that they resulted from “attitudes” which now have “no place,” the apology minimizes the depth and extent of the wrongdoing by delinking it from material processes and placing it in the past, failing to implicate the state or settler subjects as beneficiaries of the policies, and constructs a blank slate of innocence for Canada’s future. Thus, instead of the apology accounting for Canada’s calculated expropriation of resources and the use of cultural genocidal practices as a means to hold on to those resources, the apology is framed as regret for a well-meaning set of acts that caused damage to culture and families, and that has ongoing psychological consequences, a framework that in effect continues to dehumanize Aboriginal people. That the apology was offered without the mention of treaties and land and structural/ historical issues has other repercussions. Within the official multicultural policy framework of Canada, in which all cultural groups other than the founding and First Nations are seen to be equal (and individual) in their difference,42 such an apology constructs Aboriginal people primarily as one of the many bearers of a distinct culture within a multicultural nation, rather than as sovereign nations with political and cultural rights. Within this kind of multicultural regime Aboriginal culture is seen as the primary characteristic of Aboriginal difference from mainstream normative culture. Without inclusion of the complex history of land and treaties, Aboriginal peoples are then slotted into the broader liberal multicultural ethos as though they were another cultural or “ethnic” group making demands for cultural respect and maintenance. As Woolford puts it, “The essentialized identity of the First Nation ‘other,’ … presents itself to the liberal mindset of the ordinary citizen as a relationship of special treatment whereby one group, based upon [its] ethnic identity, receives privileges that contradict accepted discourses of equal rights and responsibilities.”43 In this way as well, the apology mutes the particular historical and current status of First Nations as First Nations, as sovereign nations that make nation-to-nation agreements and treaties as equals.

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Apology, Acceptance, Forgiveness: Relational Dialogue or Colonial Logic? Earlier in this chapter I discussed how the significance of treaty relationships is constructed in very different ways by the state and by Indigenous scholars. I suggested that the state and many settler citizens see apology and reconciliation in the same way they see treaty. Whereas Indigenous views of treaty highlight ongoing relationships of respect and mutuality, I suggested that settler state treaty and apologies construct Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal relationships in a manner that rejects relationships of mutuality and respect because they mirror the constitution’s version of reconciliation in which Crown sovereignty is supreme. Here I keep notions of mutuality, reciprocity, relationality, and dialogue in mind as I explore the “dialogic relations” of the apology. If apology is not to be only a one way “speech act,” such as confession, then acceptance or non-acceptance of the apology is extremely important. When I imagine and remember heart-felt apologies I have given and received, usually the apologizer waits nervously to see if the apology is accepted so that he or she can reconnect with the person addressed by the apology. If the one receiving the apology does not accept it, or does not respond by opening and engaging in dialogue (speaking and listening), then the apology is not a complete interaction in which relationships are re-established and re-created. It has failed to create reconciliation. As John Hatch points out, “Reconciliation is, and must be, a dialogic process of coordination and negotiation among differing actors and social locations, a process of respecting and responding to the Other amid the shared project of relational healing.” Apologies are, or should be, part of an interactive dialogic exchange – a relationship of mutuality and respect – in the way that Indigenous people have described treaty relationships. Necessary to authentic dialogue is the ability to hear, respect, and respond to “the other” in the exchange, the ability to “remain open to being transformed by the encounter.” This requires that the apologizer not assume any particular response, and not seek to make the one receiving the apology conform to pre-scripted or “predetermined ends.”44 It is notable that Harper, as well as the mainstream media, appeared to predetermine that the apology would be accepted. What was most striking to me on the day of the apology was that the government, settler Canadians, and the mainstream press all appeared to expect that Aboriginal people would accept the apology and yet they did not require that Aboriginal people actually do so. They seemed to assume in advance that it would be accepted, and afterwards, that it had been accepted, as if the apology were simply a one-way communication that was not part of a dialogic exchange requiring a response. Prime Minister Harper, even before he voiced the apology, said that the apology and the other programs “are the foundation” of new relationships and futures. How it is possible that he would know what the foundation of a new relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadians is before the apology has even been made, and before he knows if Aboriginal people will even accept it? It indicates that the apologizer, representative of a state that has inherited the benefits of those policies, feels entitled not only to forgiveness, but also that he feels entitled to define and speak for Indigenous people before he even voices regret. One indication that actual acceptance of the apology by Aboriginal people was not seen as necessary is that the prime minister did not at first wish to allow Aboriginal leaders to respond to the apology in Parliament. The day before the apology Harper said he “would not alter Parliamentary tradition”45 by letting them in. The Aboriginal leaders were finally, at the last moment, invited to reply. Yet, the government and the press appeared either unconcerned about whether Aboriginal people would or would not accept the apology and offer

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forgiveness, or else they simply assumed that they would accept it. Thus, they appeared to see the apology as a sufficient act in and of itself, as something more akin to a confession, and not as part of a broader relational dialogue of enunciation and response. Demonstrating the same tight focus on the apology itself, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development website highlights the text of Harper’s apology, but nowhere supplies the texts or links to the responses of Aboriginal leaders.46 The mainstream press appeared consistent in its interpretation of the apology as an unqualified success. It presented Aboriginal people and their leaders as fundamentally happy with it. Headlines stated “Aboriginal leaders look to future after historic apology,” “Native leaders praise apology,” and “Aboriginal leaders hail historic apology. Harper’s apology signals ‘new dawn’ in Canada, Fontaine says.”47 What is interesting is that while none of the mainstream media coverage explicitly said the apology was “accepted,” almost all implied that it was. According to a Globe and Mail article: ‘Prime Minister Stephen Harper had yet to utter a single word of Canada’s apology to former Indian residential schools students when the cheering began. Native drumming and shouts turned into loud, simultaneous clapping … There were many smiles … On the grounds of Parliament Hill, the apology was well received by the couple of hundred people gathered to watch history on a giant video screen.’48 Glowing headlines, images, descriptions and selected quotations combined to present a successful and celebratory fait accompli. The media coverage did not do so simply by avoiding voiced critiques of the apology; it subtly delegitimized criticisms of it. For example, the Globe and Mail reported on the “dozens of people” gathered for a “letting-go ceremony” at the site of a former Nova Scotia residential school. The article quoted both positive and negative responses to the apology. However, it delegitimized critical responses by Gloria and Amy Maloney by saying that “the Maloneys’ harsh opinion stood in contrast to the reaction from the crowd of 500 who listened in silence and gave the prime minister a standing ovation when he finished speaking,”49 thus implying that such criticisms were not only somehow impolite but also the exception to an otherwise unified and gracious reception. If genuine reconciliation should be dialogic, the presumption of the government and the mainstream press that an actual response to the apology from Aboriginal people was not necessary indicates two related issues: first, the utterance of the apology was not intended to activate real dialogue. Here I mean the kinds of potentially unpredictable relationality and mutuality discussed in terms of Indigenous concepts of “treaty” earlier in this chapter. The presumption of acceptance also indicates that the Canadian government and the mainstream press still feel entitled to define and speak for Aboriginal people, even while voicing regret for earlier acts or misplaced attitudes of knowing what was “best” for them. Genuine dialogue did not occur, not because Aboriginal people were silent, but because the government ritual and the press did not constitute listening in a manner that recognized them as having significant and authoritative dialogical importance in the encounter. Can such an apology signify genuine reconciliation when it excludes dialogue? Hatch says that if reconciliation is not dialogic, “it is merely a transmutation of the colonial logic that constitutes a social order from the standpoint, and for the benefit, of the dominant social group.”50 In this case the lack of dialogue mimics the colonial logic of settler interpretations of Indigenous rights in the constitution that I discussed above, in which the legal, political, and social order of the settler nation depends upon the presumed entitlement of the settler state to appropriate land, define state sovereignty as superior, and define Aboriginal others always on its terms.

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Breaking Containment: Acknowledgment not Acceptance Responses by Aboriginal people, inside and outside of Parliament, tell a complex story. Five Aboriginal representatives addressed Parliament: Chief Phil Fontaine (national chief of the Assembly of First Nations), Mr Clement Chartier (president of the Métis National Council), Mary Simon (president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), Patrick Brazeau (national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples), and Beverly Jacobs (head of the Native Women’s Association of Canada). It is striking that in his speech Phil Fontaine never once says he accepts the apology. He describes it, “bears witness” to it, acknowledges it. He does not accept it. A close look at the other speeches reveals that not a single one of the five official speakers actually accepted the apology, although they did all acknowledge it or thank the prime minister for making it.51 While many people expressed relief and acceptance of the apology, many responses, in different ways, push at the boundaries of the apology to redefine, expand, and extend the way in which the apology, as given, worked to limit and contain the wrongdoing. Some, for example, define the terms on which they would accept the apology. Beverly Jacobs of the NWAC said, “We have given thanks to you for your apology. I have to also give you credit for standing up … so I do thank you for that. But in return, the Native Women’s Association wants respect.” This statement elicited loud applause and a standing ovation in Parliament. Jacobs continued, “What is it that this government is going to do in the future to help our people? What is going to be provided? That is my question. I know that is the question from all of us. That is what we would like to continue to work on, in partnership.”52 Many who watched the apology had serious criticisms. Others were simply waiting: they mistrusted the words and were waiting for action. Leaders were often not willing to speak for others – suggesting that it was necessary to anticipate and respect that there would be a wide range of responses. For example, Chief Lawrence Joseph of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations said that each person will feel differently about the apology: “I will ask, respectfully, the survivors to analyze … this apology as it relates to them.”53 Many Aboriginal people who commented on the apology pushed for action on issues beyond residential schools. Grand Chief Edward John, of the First Nations Summit, said that “the true test of Mr. Harper’s words will be his government’s actions to help our children have a better future than their parents and grandparents.”54 While the official apology, as discussed, expressed regret for the psychological damage inflicted on the children of survivors by their damaged parents, these kinds of statements work against such individualized views of psychological damage and healing, but assert that the government must actually take responsibility for assuring resources and better all-round futures for Aboriginal children and communities. Interim Grand Chief Gerald Antoine of the Dehcho First Nation, made the terms of reconciliation and recovery very clear, wrenching them out of the individualist frame and stressing treaty, sovereignty, and land: ‘When Canada recognizes that it is a state with delegated authority and not sovereign over Indigenous communities, then healing will begin. When Canada shares the wealth of Indigenous lands equitably with Indigenous communities, then the healing will begin.’55 Finally, the statement by the Quebec Native Women’s Association encompasses many of the aspects discussed above and, in addition, makes it absolutely clear that recognition of the apology does not in any sense mean acceptance of its terms. The statement says, “Quebec Native Women recognize the Prime Minister’s official apology … While the apology

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to Aboriginal peoples is long overdue it is contradicted by the oppressive policies of the Indian Act.” The statement in this way does not allow the past to be cordoned off, but places the apology in the context of the still-continuing oppression of the Indian Act. Further, it says the “heinous crimes … must be dealt with beyond mere apologies and monetary compensation,” defining neither apology nor financial reparation as sufficient. The statement of the QNWA then clarifies: “Apologies may be recognized but they are not necessarily accompanied by forgiveness.”56 Significantly, just as other responders to the apology mention land, the statement of the QNWA argues that land and material resources are essential for decolonization: ‘In order for Aboriginal communities to emerge from the negative impacts of colonization they must have access to their lands and resources; they must have the opportunities to build strong and healthy nations by taking to task the social and economic problems whose roots are firmly based in colonization.57 This assertion that decolonization requires access to lands and resources is distinct from Harper’s apology, in that he does not promise (or even mention) sharing land, resources, or decolonization, but instead proposes a “new relationship” based on attitudinal change: a “desire to move forward together” and “understanding that strong families, strong communities and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us.”58 Thus, instead of the material decolonization proposed here, the apology promises reformed understanding, for a “stronger Canada,” that is to say, in the interests of the Canadian nation-state. Finally, the QNWA statement turns the mirror back onto how the foundation of the settler nation of Canada depended upon broken agreements with Aboriginal people. Canada, it says, “established itself as a rich and prosperous country at the expense and blood of Aboriginal peoples. And while we may recognize the Government’s admission of guilt, the fact remains that many obstacles must be removed in order to give meaning to the spirit and intent of their apology.59 Thus, this and many of the other responses map out versions of the requirements for a more genuine apology as part of a broader process of reconciliation. They acknowledge but do not accept the apology as offered. Indirectly they request recognition that we are all “treaty peoples,” by reframing and re-expanding the definition of the wrongdoings to include land theft, treaty relations, and genocide. These critiques, I have suggested, received little attention in the mainstream press. From the outset the government assumed it was entitled to, and that it implicitly received, acceptance and forgiveness simply by speaking contrition. The mainstream press also participated in this fantasy of acceptance and entitlement, representing the sentiments of Aboriginal people without seriously engaging in a dialogue. Such approaches reproduce the very colonizing relational structures that were integral to the establishment of residential schools and the broader colonial project, in that settler society continues to assume the entitlement to define Aboriginal others as a means to legitimate the appropriation (or keeping) of Aboriginal land and resources. Concluding Thoughts Perhaps, as Phil Fontaine said in response to the apology, overt forms of “white supremacy” had been stripped of legitimacy, but my discussion of the apology has pinpointed the performance of other, more subtle, forms of supremacy that are still deeply embedded in

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the settler nation and its institutions. The performance of the Harper apology – a one-way speech act without genuine dialogue – reflects age-old and probably unconscious attitudes of entitlement that ultimately assume the right to subject Aboriginal peoples to the norms of the settler nation-state and its legitimatizing of land appropriation through the naturalization of settler sovereignty and superiority. How, then, might we imagine and build forms of reconciliation that account for some of the points addressed in this paper? Perhaps one requirement of the reconciliation process is to try to educate ourselves as settler peoples about how to actually listen to and engage the complex experiences and viewpoints of Aboriginal peoples. But is listening enough? Roger Simon, in this volume, discusses some of the limits of an unproblematic notion of “listening” as pedagogical approach. He and Dian Million demonstrate that the truth and reconciliation process tends to generate Aboriginal narratives of personal harm, trauma, and victimization. The ways in which non-Aboriginal people often hear such narratives can result in what Chakrabarty calls “wounds of misrecognition,” in which listeners disassociate and distance themselves.60 They may also see listening as an “affective transaction” in which one is required only to recognize and “feel for” the pain of the speaker.61 In other words, the listener does not have to account for the structural privileges that they may have gained as a result of being beneficiaries of the processes that helped create that pain. How might we develop a kind of listening that encourages a genuine “dialogic encounter”62 where speakers and listeners are continually implicated in the exchange? Perhaps one image that may be a small beginning is the concept proposed by RCAP that all of us are “treaty peoples.”63 The image is compelling because it may address many of the problems with apology discussed here in that it can construct reconciliation as more than a cultural and empathetic process, it can potentially implicate all involved in ongoing relationships as inheritors of the benefits and drawbacks of those treaties, and it may inspire a sense of responsibility to ensure fair and respectful negotiation of ongoing relationships of justice between peoples.

NOTES 1 I thank Jennifer Henderson, Samah Sabra, Julie Marcus, Mary Millen, Avril Bell, and Robyn Green for inspiring discussions and/or detailed comments at various stages. I also thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2 Chris Abani, GraceLand (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 159. 3 Linda Diebel, “Harper ‘sorry’ for native residential schools,” Toronto Star, 12 June 2008, http:// www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/441820. 4 Government of Canada, “House of Commons Debates, 39th Parliament, 2nd Session,” Edited Hansard 142, no. 110 (11 June 2008), http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication .aspx?DocId=3568890&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=2. 5 Ibid. 6 Backgrounder – Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rqpi/nwz/2008/20080425b_is-eng.asp. 7 Stephen Harper, “PM Offers Full Apology on Behalf of Canadians for the Indian Residential Schools System,” Office of the Prime Minister, 11 June 2008, http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/media .asp?id=2146.

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8 See Nayanika Mookeherjee et al., “The Ethics of Apology: A Set of Commentaries,” Critique of Anthropology 29, no. 3 (2009): 345. 9 Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd ed., s.v. “Apologize.” 10 Letitia Hickson, “The Social Context of Apology in Dispute Settlement: A Cross-Cultural Study,” Ethnology 25, no. 4 (1986): 290. 11 Nicholas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 35; emphasis added. 12 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 61–2. 13 “In short, apologies are premised on the assumption that the state of affairs to which they refer does not, or should not, obtain in the present … In claiming a past, they create pastness.” Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era,” Interventions 2, no. 2 (2000): 174. 14 Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). 15 David Ljunggren, “Every G20 nation wants to be Canada, Stephen Harper insists,” Reuters, 25 September 2009, http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Every%20nation%20wants% 20Canada%20Harper/2037877/story.html. 16 Michael Doxtater, “Spinning Word Games through the Apologia Canadiana,” Network of Environments for Aboriginal Research BC, http://www.nearbc.ca/documents/2008/spinning-wordgames.pdf. 17 Tavuchis, Mea Culpa, 20–1. 18 See Jennifer Henderson, this volume, on how the redress movement formed around residential schooling became dominant. 19 Bradford Morse, “Reconciliation Possible? Reparations Essential,” in From Truth to Reconciliation: Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools, ed. M.B. Castellano, L. Archibald, and M. DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 235; see also Fred Kelly, “Confession of a Born Again Pagan,” in From Truth to Reconciliation; Michael Asch, “From Terra Nullius to Affirmation: Reconciling Aboriginal Rights with the Canadian Constitution,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 17, no. 2 (2002); Bonita Lawrence, “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004); Eva Mackey, “Unsettled Expectations: Settler Coloniality, Land Rights and Decolonizing Strategies” (manuscript in preparation). 20 Kelly, “Confession,” 20. 21 James Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian–White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), see esp. part 1, “Cooperation” 23–101 and part 2, “Coercion” 101–74, specifically 119–21, 124, 138, 142–3. 22 Kelly, “Confession,” 20 (emphasis added). 23 Miller, Skyscrapers, 143–6, 198. 24 Ibid., 125–48, 174–97. 25 Ibid., 125–47; Lawrence, “Real” Indians. 26 Lawrence, “Real” Indians, 37–40, 106. 27 Miller, Skyscrapers: enfranchisement, 140–7, 198, 255, 281; scrip, 197–224; ceremonies, 260; land claims, 317. 28 Mackey, “Unsettled.” 29 See Lawrence, “Real” Indians. See also Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 37–9.

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30 Government of Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), vol. 1, Looking Forward, Looking Back (Ottawa: Canada Communication Group, 1996), 120. http:// caid.ca/RRCAP1.5.pdf (emphasis mine). 31 See especially Dale Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 45–56 for a powerful discussion of the complex theoretical knowledge contained within the Two-Row Wampum; and Mackey, “Unsettled.” 32 Quoted in Stan McKay, “Expanding the Dialogue on Truth and Rreconciliation – in a Good Way,” in Castellano, Archibald, and DeGagné, From Truth to Reconciliation,111. 33 Government of Canada, House of Commons, “Proceedings of the Special Committee on Indian Self Rule” (Ottawa: Hansard document, 1983), quoted in Gail Guthrie Valaskakis, Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), 77. 34 Michael Asch, “Aboriginal Self-Government and the Construction of Canadian Constitutional Identity,” Alberta Law Review 30 (1992): 465; Asch, “From Terra Nullius” 23–37; Michael Asch and Patrick Macklem, “Aboriginal Rights and Canadian Sovereignty: An Essay on R. v. Sparrow,” Alberta Law Review 29 (1991): 498–500; Borrows, Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 77–137, esp. 93–9. 35 Borrows, Recovering Canada, 77–137 (esp. 93–9). See also Turner’s discussion in this volume. 36 Michael Asch, “Calder and the Representation of Indigenous Society in Canadian Jurisprudence,” in Let Right Be Done: Aboriginal Title, the Calder Case, and the Future of Indigenous Rights, ed. H. Foster, H. Raven, and J. Webber (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 110. 37 Mackey, “Unsettled.” 38 Asch, “Aboriginal Self-Government”; Asch, “From Terra Nullius,” 23–39; Borrows, Recovering Canada, xii, 94. 39 Government of Canada, “House of Commons Debates” (emphasis added). 40 Thobani, Exalted, 123–6. 41 Government of Canada, “House of Commons Debates” (emphasis added). 42 Mackey, House, 63–70. 43 Andrew Woolford, “Negotiating Affirmative Repair: Symbolic Violence in the British Columbia Treaty Process,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 29, no. 1 (2004): 137. 44 John Hatch, “Beyond Apologia: Racial Reconciliation and Apologies for Slavery,” Western Journal of Communication 70, no. 3 (July 2006): 192. 45 Brodie Fenlon, “Canada apologises,” Globe and Mail, 11 June 2008, http://www .theglobeandmail.com/news/national/article690960.ece. 46 Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, “Statement of Apology,” http://www .aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644. 47 CBC News, “Aboriginal leaders look to future after historic apology,” 11 June 2008, http:// www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/11/apology-future.html; Juliette O’Neill and Tobin Dalrymple, “Native leaders praise apology,” National Post, 12 June 2008, http://www.nationalpost.com/ story.html?id=580621; Juliette O’Neill and Tobin Dalrymple, “Aboriginal leaders hail historic apology,” Vancouver Sun, 11 June 2008, http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/features/ apology/story.html?id=18133d91-b8aa-4fbe-956e-20298d79c1d5. 48 Bill Curry and Gloria Galloway, “We are sorry,” Globe and Mail, 12 June 2008, http://www .theglobeandmail.com/news/national/article690958.ece. 49 Fenlon, “Canada Apologizes.” 50 Hatch, “Beyond,” 189. 51 Government of Canada, “House of Commons Debates.”

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52 Ibid. 53 Fenlon, “Canada Apologizes.” 54 Grand Chief Edward John, quoted in Kiran Kemp, “Apology Reaction: Putting the Pain Behind Them,” CBC News, 11 June 2008, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/11/f-apology-reax .html. 55 Ibid. 56 Quebec Native Women’s Association (QNWA), “Statement by Quebec Native Women’s Association/Femmes Autochtones du Québec Re: Government of Canada’s Residential School Apology,” Mostly Water, 11 June 2008, http://mostlywater.org/natives_respond_canadian_ governments_apology. 57 Ibid. 58 Harper, “PM Offers Full Apology.” 59 Quebec Native Women’s Association, “Statement.” 60 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “History and the Politics of Misrecognition,” in Manifestos for History, ed. K. Jenkins, S. Morgan, and A. Munslow (New York: Routledge, 2007), 77–87. 61 See Roger Simon in this volume. 62 Jeffrey Nealon argues that “what Levinas calls his ethics ‘of responsibility, that is, of sociality’ offers us a way to rethink the response that the subject owes to the other in the dialogue of ‘sociality.’” Jeffery Nealon, Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 34. 63 In theory, New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi frames Pakeha–Maori relationships through the concept of treaty, although its success is the subject of fascinating debate and research. See Avril Bell, “Dilemmas of Settler Belonging: Roots, Routes and Redemption in New Zealand National Identity Claims,” Sociological Review 57, no. 1 (2009); Ani Mikaire, “Are We All New Zealanders Now? A Maori Response to the Päkehä Quest for Indigeneity,” Bruce Jessen Foundation, http://www.brucejesson.com/lecture2004.html.

3 The Camp, the School, and the Child: Discursive Exchanges and (Neo)liberal Axioms in the Culture of Redress1 jennifer henderson

Upon these two different efforts, upon that of the spectator to enter into the sentiments of the person principally concerned, and upon that of the person principally concerned, to bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with, are founded two different sets of virtues. The soft, the gentle, the amiable … are founded upon the one: the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require, take their origin from the other. Adam Smith2

This essay proceeds from a view of the culture of redress and reconciliation as part of the work of government conducted by the nation-state and its accessory institutions in the context of global capitalism, the ascendancy of neoliberalism’s hyper-individualizing and commodifying logics, and shifts in ‘progressive’ analyses of social relations, which disassociate harm from structured forms of inequality. One of the functions of the culture of redress3 in this context is to contribute to the affirmation of a post-ideological order, a historical end point beyond the conflicts and injustices of the past. In an era of ideological consensus about the properly “modest” state, an era in which legitimation takes the form of the state appearing to ‘give back’ what it once wrongly took away, the recognized wrongs of the past are often seen to be related, directly or indirectly, to the spectre of the bloated interventionist state that reached too far, constrained or coerced, and thereby violated individual integrity, or the sanctity of family bonds, or the potential for a group to flourish.4 The critique of the paternalistic welfare state is not the same as the demand for acknowledgment of the way that history sediments present inequalities, but the frequent absorption of the latter within the former tells us something about neoliberalism’s remarkable powers of co-optation, how it can enlist critique in the entrenchment of its own common sense. By situating redress movements within the context of neoliberalism, this chapter asks how movements for reparations, in their framing of historical wrongs, may be pressured to draw lines connecting the wrong of the past with the discredited assumptions of a bygone governing order, once and for all surpassed by the post-historical political rationality of neoliberalism. According to this new common sense, in our present a national population of entrepreneurial individuals and communities organizing themselves into the model of that entrepreneurial individual (accountable, self-sufficient, shrewdly economical, but

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caring)5 together pursue the goals of social cohesion, marketable innovation, and private philanthropy. While this agenda feels like enlightened common sense, as Janine Brodie has argued, the idea that “we are all equal [in opportunity] now” in Canada, and that equality of opportunity to compete in the market is the only real and legitimate form of equality, is in fact the result of two decades of struggles to advance a neoliberal rationality. The success of these struggles at present has largely displaced “practices of collective intervention, … social citizenship rights and the social safety net,” in short, the post-war political order in Canada in which claims on the state in the name of substantive equality and the removal of structured disadvantages were sayable.6 By asking how redress claims are articulated to the political rationality that increasingly renders unsayable those other kinds of political claims, I want to extend a critical observation that others have made about the culture of redress, and the historiographic tropes of “turning the page” and “closing a dark chapter” that the dominant, state-centred strand of its discourse invokes in gestures of acknowledgment and overcoming.7 The perspective on the culture of redress I am proposing here extends the criticism of those tropes and their pre-emptive grasping at closure into the question of just what kind of present and future the closing of the chapter is supposed to open onto. The closing of the chapter constructs a particular kind of national narrative, but it also works to circumscribe the social and political imaginary, to naturalize certain forms of agency, and to do these things precisely by rendering legible within the book of history only a few, very particular forms of “wrong.” These effects are not all that the culture of redress accomplishes. Neither is the culture of redress unitary in its origins. The state does not function as the coherent, intending author of discourses of redress; however, it can be the means of their enlistment into a strategy of government and, to that end, a site of their organization and disciplining. Crucial to this government of and through redress politics, I argue, is the process through which redress movements enter into discursive exchanges. This process of exchange and inter-animation is autonomized, or self-propelling, because it is only through this trading of tropes that redress movements can speak to each other and to the dominant political sayable, which they also, unwittingly, sustain. The diverse movements for reparations in Canada since the 1980s have their own sources of activist organizing and their own histories of entanglement with political and juridical processes; however, these decades have also borne witness to a coalescence and redundancy of rhetorical forms which point to the broader contours of a particular way of imagining political struggle that is losing its sense of particularity.8 To contribute to maintaining a sense of the contingency of redress politics, this essay compares two cases of claims making, the reparations movements formed around Aboriginal residential schooling and Ukrainian Canadian internment during the First World War, movements that are dissimilar but for the tropes and rhetorical norms which run across them.9 Precisely because they constitute an unlikely pairing for study – because they are inequivalent in many respects: in their scale, in their terrain, in their complex internal politics, in their relative stakes for a national narrative of progress through acknowledgment of past wrongs – the discursive regularities they share are striking.10 Set side-by-side, Aboriginal redress in relation to residential schooling and Ukrainian Canadian redress for wartime internment appear to trade in a common currency, specifically, in tropes of the carceral and the deserving child, tropes which condense key presuppositions of classical liberalism and neoliberalism, respectively.11

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Like monetary exchanges, discursive exchanges in the field of redress function to standardize – to convert incommensurabilities into a shared form. Money, or paper currency, formerly referred back to the value of gold as a grounding standard; in the field of redress politics, that grounding gold standard is the concept of the liberal individual. In other words, liberal individualism has come to function as the standardizing point of reference for value in the culture of redress; it is the capital to which the tropes of arbitrary confinement and deserving childhood – so obligatory, as I shall argue, in neoliberal framings of injustice as blocked opportunity – refer. The process of standardization that is fuelled by the trading of these tropes functions to limit how redress conceives of justice and injustice, and to restrict its conceptualization to the common sense of neoliberalism. A key presupposition of my analysis of discursive exchange relations, therefore, is that redress movements produce their meanings within a formation characterized by “hidden polemic[s],” by positions shaped by what precedes them, what they oppose, what they exist alongside of.12 By focusing on one exchange within a larger formation, this essay raises questions about the conditions of existence of discourses of redress, their means of circulation and validation. Liberal Case Making and the Carceral While both the Aboriginal and the Ukrainian Canadian cases demand acknowledgment of past state actions that contradict the Canadian nation’s constitutive myth of benevolence towards those “necessary ‘others’ who reflect back [its] self-image of tolerance,” they put the lie to different aspects of that national self-image.13 Compulsory residential schooling confronts the long history of Indigenizing nationalist discourses with practices aimed at the assimilation of Indigenous peoples, whereas the wartime internment of “enemy aliens” confronts the image of the multicultural mosaic with the vulnerable civil rights of an immigrant group beckoned to Canada to contribute to settlement. My comparison pairs a case emerging from the Canadian nation-state’s origins in the colonial expropriation of territory and genocidal policy making with a case that invokes, rather, a specifiable and temporally limited breach of international law. The “case”-ness of the Ukrainian Canadian movement for redress is thus more self-evident than that of First Nations, if “case” is taken to mean a legally-grounded argument that identifies a violation of the agreed framework of liberal-democratic rights, a breach that is an isolatable instance. The case for redress for Ukrainian Canadian internment is based on the claim that Canada’s interpretation of the 1907 Hague Conventions, the laws governing the treatment of prisoners in war, to which Canada was party during the First World War by virtue of its membership in the British empire, violated if not the letter of these laws, the liberal-democratic norms they were designed to embody.14 Making the case for Ukrainian Canadians, Bohdan Kordan and Craig Mahovsky have argued that the internment of civilians violated those values of “individual dignity, equality, and worth” that derive “from the simple fact of being human” and the principles of “justice, the rule of law, and the social contract” on which Canada’s “legal foundations and the community of nations were based.”15 It hardly needs to be said that Aboriginal peoples in Canada were not considered autonomous members of that liberaldemocratic “community of nations,” that Canada’s “legal foundations” were predicated on the dismissal of First Nations sovereignties, and that “the simple fact of being human” was

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considered doubtful in relation to a population that was framed as unprepared for the rights and responsibilities of the liberal individual. Residential schooling was a project fully continuous with the wider colonial project of dispossession and cultural genocide. The colonial project was much vaster than the institution of compulsory schooling designed to break kinship and cultural ties, but residential schooling nevertheless seems to have to stand, in our present, as a kind of synecdoche for that vaster project, one that can give the colonial enterprise in Canada something more like the form of a case. This synecdochal representation of colonial violence is partly the result of discursive pressures in a present political arena shaped by exchanges whose currency refers back to the liberal individual as a common, grounding supra-value. In this context, the synecdochal representation of colonial violence in the form of residential schooling, represented in terms of compulsory removal and detention, approximates the experiences of Aboriginal people to the experiences of groups subjected to wartime internment, by virtue of the schools’ purchase on confinement.16 A privileged figure of illiberal restraint violating the essential, negative liberty of the individual, confinement is also a close relative of captivity, its colonial cousin – a point whose irony, in this context, hardly needs to be signalled.17 Even in the case of the Ukrainian Canadian campaign for redress for wartime internment, where the focus on an experience of confinement might seem to be transparently and adequately reflective of historical reality, the campaign’s zeroing in on the wrong of arbitrary confinement was the result of a selection from a number of interrelated wrongs, including disenfranchisement in the 1917 War-time Elections Act, indiscriminate designation as “enemy aliens,” deportation, “economic exploitation, political marginalization, and social exclusion” reaching back before the advent of the First World War, and harassment of immigrant labour organizers for their communist and socialist sympathies.18 Not all forms of harm and not all subject positions are seen to be redressable in the culture of redress. The selective iconography of the internment camps has served a particular purpose for the Ukrainian Canadian campaign, a campaign catalysed not only by the success of the Japanese Canadian redress movement in the 1980s, but also by a contemporaneous federal investigation into the presence of Nazi war criminals in Canada, which was felt to threaten post-war Ukrainian immigrants with the “label of ‘Nazi collaborator.’”19 In this context, “barbed wire [made] a far more effective image than the ballot” as the crux of injury, as Swyripa has noted.20 Thus, it is important to recognize that in calling upon the trope of the carceral, the Ukrainian Canadian movement for redress, and not just the Aboriginal one, seizes a trope that is not immediate but comes to the foreground through a certain ideological necessity. That said, the problem with which the “case” of Aboriginal redress has to reckon, in order to be able to shape itself into a “case” at all, in the legal sense of that word,21 is that the constituency of Aboriginal peoples in whose name it speaks has not had access, historically, to the set of legal rights of the liberal individual, except in certain probationary, conditional, and potential forms. Part of the work of the synecdoche of residential schooling, then, may be to resolve the problem of that exteriority to individualism by drawing on the power of a trope of illiberal constraint. Making the residential school signify illiberal constraint, however, requires an elision or diminishment of the productive aspect of the colonial power institutionalized in the school. Compulsory residential schooling was the mechanism through which liberal individuals were to be made out of Aboriginal people,

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the mechanism through which, in the words of Duncan Campbell Scott, Aboriginal people could be made “to support themselves, and stand alone.”22 The exchangeability of the residential school and the internment camp allows a crucial difference to slip out of the picture: wartime internees were not detained in order to be remodelled as subjects. But framing the residential school as a commensurable experience of constraint permits access to claiming a kind of injury that is indefensible within liberal understandings of the human self, where that self bears above all a right to freedom from arbitrary constraint and interference.23 The culture of redress, as I have noted, renders legible within its closed book of history only a few, very particular forms of wrong. I am suggesting that this severe delimitation has to do with the invisible boundaries of liberal ideology, in both its classical and ‘neo’ variants. What is unspeakable within this liberal ideology, indeed what it would be disastrous for liberalism to acknowledge, is the harm enacted by positive power, that is to say, by a pedagogy of human ‘improvement.’24 There are many Aboriginal redress movements, making claims not just about residential schooling but also about land and resources, sovereignty, and the arbitrary regulation of Indian status.25 But the redress movement formed around residential schooling has arguably become dominant, partly through the work of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) under the leadership of Phil Fontaine over three terms as national chief since 1997. Through its 1994 report Breaking the Silence: An Interpretive Study of Residential School Impact and Healing as Illustrated by the Stories of First Nations Individuals, arguably the AFN’s key contribution to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples process from 1991–6, the AFN pressed the urgency of securing a redress settlement while residential school survivors are still living. The AFN also sought to de-stigmatize the experience of physical and sexual abuse through Fontaine’s public account of his own experience and its politicizing effect.26 But if redress for residential schooling has become the most publicized of Aboriginal movements for reparations, this is also because – from the point of view of the state – financial reparations for residential schooling can be individualized and contained in a way that land claims cannot. Residential schooling can operate as a synecdoche for colonialism, therefore. Within this substitution of a part for the whole, there is, as I have suggested, a further slippage, by means of which the very image of the school – the building itself, as a carceral space – is put forward as if that image could speak of the complex and profound ways in which residential schooling could produce the most devastating intergenerational consequences. Providing viewers with opportunities to confront the material evidence of the school structures themselves is a key element of the public pedagogy strategy of the websites of some Aboriginal organizations. The Legacy of Hope Foundation’s online exhibit, Where Are the Children?: Healing the Legacy of Residential Schools, features a residential school gallery which conducts viewers to archival photographs and audio testimony of residential school survivors by means of an interactive tour of the Mohawk Residential School of Brantford, Ontario, reconstructed in computer-generated illustrations of the school exterior, dorm rooms, and classrooms. The website of the Indian Residential Schools Unit of the AFN also focuses on the physical school structures as powerful material evidence of colonial policy’s implementation in concrete spaces. The site makes this evidence available through an interactive map of Canada which allows viewers to click on school locations opening up as archival black and white photographs of residential school exteriors.27 Insistence on the historical reality of the schools is crucial to securing reparations. Where such

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documentation of the existence of schools, or of students’ attendance at a school, is missing, what is sometimes most directly at stake is the legitimacy of individual applications for payments negotiated as part of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.28 But the redress movement’s emphasis on the iconography of the school buildings as sites of incarceration also serves, as I have been suggesting, to put the school in an exchange relation with the internment camps of other redress movements and with liberal conceptions of injury against the sovereign individual more generally. This collapsing of incommensurables has certain costs, especially when it comes to the kinds of reparations for residential schooling which can be naturalized as appropriate. The conceptualization of harm in terms of confinement has seemed to naturalize forms of reparation that might restore to individual Aboriginal subjects, particularly youth, the unquestioned benefits of unencumbered selfhood, as if the liberal concept of “economic man” were not the very ideal that drove the policy of compulsory assimilation for children from the 1920s.29 I am not speaking here of the payments to individuals negotiated as part of the 2006 settlement agreement, but rather of the government and corporate media follow-up to the June 2008 government apology, which has seemed to cohere around the promotion of a line of thinking nicely captured in the headline of one National Post story, “Real warriors hold jobs.”30 The logic of that story is in the process of being institutionalized through the new Federal Framework for Aboriginal Development, announced by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada in June 2009, which promises to modernize policy so as to construct an “opportunity-driven” approach that develops “Aboriginal entrepreneurship” and “Aboriginal human capital” through partnerships and investment schemes that will “increase the participation of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in the Canadian economy.”31 This new federal framework seems to pick up on a discourse about self-reliant Aboriginal “survivors” who have proved their capacity to rise above the need for government support, a discourse that is without a single point of origin. It arguably infuses the 1998 federal government report Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action, which responded to the final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, with the vision of a new relationship between the state and Aboriginal people based on principles of self-reliance and fiscal accountability.32 (See Dale Turner’s discussion of the objectives of this report in his essay in this collection.) But this discourse also cuts across CBC television news features (such as the one celebrating the lessons of self-discipline taught to Aboriginal youth in Vancouver’s downtown east side, by an Aboriginal corporate lawyer-turned-karate instructor)33 and is also in evidence in the creative economic proposal by the Native Women’s Association of Canada, submitted to a first ministers’ meeting in January 2009, which insists that economic development opportunities should “suppor[t], advanc[e], and fully integrat[e] Aboriginal women entrepreneurs into the Canadian economy” (even though the main thrust of the NWAC proposal is to demand that state investments address the “greater barriers and poorer outcomes” experienced by Aboriginal women as a group).34 But perhaps most striking in the immediate weeks and months following the federal apology, was a specific problematization in the mainstream print and television media of Aboriginal education, which was remarkable for its charting of modernization in terms of the implementation of programs designed to cultivate entrepreneurial capacities in Aboriginal youth.35 While this charting is sometimes framed in terms of the theme of Aboriginal communities taking charge of the education of their children, the way in which that theme is aligned as

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if automatically with the pedagogical objectives of instilling self-reliance and businessmindedness raises the question of how the legacy of residential school assimilation is being countered today. It is important to recall that the Department of Indian Affairs rationale for making residential schooling compulsory in 1920 was precisely to make the “Indian” “stand alone.” Insofar as this objective was accepted, it was progressive in 1920 to argue that Aboriginal people should be given “more advantage along the lines of education” – “more” in the sense of a longer period of compulsory schooling than white children, and “more” in the sense of a more “commercialized education,” providing marketable skills.36 My point is not that Aboriginal peoples should be held to some European fantasy of premodern or “indigenous” anti-capitalism.37 My point is rather to ask how this project of entrepreneurial self-elevation in the context of deregulated markets remembers the residential school, if not as another violation of the fundamental freedom of the individual by the misguided nanny state. In spite of the way that this problematization of Aboriginal education today marks itself as a rejection of the methods of the past, there is an important continuity to be registered here, between educational projects which purport to prepare subjects for full participation in Canadian life. I am trying to present something more useful than cynicism in relation to this hegemony of free-market, equal-opportunity decolonization, for there is creativity and strategy in a proposal like that of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. The outcome of this strategy of adopting and adapting the rhetoric of investment opportunities in order to resist ongoing gendered colonial subjugation cannot be known in advance. However, there is a larger question here about what it means for compensation for historical injustice to take the form of individual and community development programs, or for injured groups to assert a “right to development.”38 What does it mean when “development,” which might well be thought to be burdened by its associations with a Eurocentric mapping of progress, becomes a right to be claimed? The “right to development” that the post-apology Federal Framework for Aboriginal Development claims to recognize and act upon is the only kind of right that can be claimed within the context of a governing order in which legitimate equality demands must be framed as demands for equality of opportunity to compete. In this context, development is indissociable from a clearly articulated set of norms having to do with labour-market competencies and attitudes to work and success, health and education – in short with the now compulsory desire to have control over the “modulation of [one’s individual] capacities that has become the life’s work of each active citizen.”39 At stake here is the crucial difference between equality of opportunity or formal equality, on the one hand, and equality conceived more substantively in terms of redistributive measures ensuring equal standards of life and equal access to resources, on the other. Neoliberal Equality and the Deserving Child Since the mid-1980s, Brodie has observed, demands for substantive-equality “have been deprecated as [the] unrepresentative and self-interested” demands of “special interest groups.”40 During the same period, however, a new object of social policy has come to the fore, one that is more suited to neoliberalism’s hyper-individualizing mode of policy intervention: “the disembodied child, who [has come to] stan[d] virtually alone … as a deserving claims-maker on the state.”41 In an era when legitimate demands must be framed as demands for equal readiness to compete in the economy, and the deserving child (who

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cannot speak for him/herself) has replaced the constituency politicized around its experience of systemic discrimination, the figure of the child can also do a kind of supplementary work, investing demands for equality of opportunity with a missing affect, a missing charge of moral entitlement, one that arguably used to be carried, albeit with precarious legitimacy, in a previous political order, by members of those constituencies now known as “special interest groups.” Whereas the trope of the carceral condenses the classical liberal understanding of negative freedom and at least partly for this reason operates within redress discourses as the sign of arbitrary, abusive power, there is something about the figure of the child as it has come to circulate in the past several decades – as a condensation of a cluster of values having to do with entitlement, potentiality, and investment – that makes the child the point through which specifically neoliberal prerogatives can be introduced into redress discourses. The figure of the child is strikingly present in the discourses responding to the cultural genocide of Aboriginal peoples through compulsory schooling in both Canada and Australia, perhaps for obvious reasons, since the child in these cases was the pivot of those state interventions into the transmission of culture. But the child has also become prominent in the more recent representations of the Ukrainian Canadian movement for redress, where its status as the face of the movement is perhaps more surprising. As a matter of historical coincidence, the child in each of these movements can speak to the hyper-individualized, pre-social understanding of life chances and life outcomes that predominates in neoliberal societies. At the same time, there is more than a single explanation for the prominence of the child in redress-claiming after the 1980s. Obasan, Joy Kogawa’s novel of Japanese Canadian internment, centred on the perspective of a child protagonist, and was a pivotal vehicle of public education and persuasion in the first successful campaign for redress in Canada. From the late 1980s, then, the figure of the abused and traumatized child can be said to have been established as an important feature of redress discourse in Canada.42 The aura of innocence and vulnerability associated with the figure of the child is not new; however, the capacity of the child to provoke sentimental responses is joined today with the particular norms condensed in the historically contingent figure of the deserving child, an unmarked universal, unaffiliated with any social and ideological conflicts of the past, and poised to realize his or her potential as an individual. In this context, innocence and vulnerability only serve to invest these neoliberal norms of selfhood with a greater sense of incontestability. The “Indian child” was the explicit target of the residential school program’s coercive and often violent interventions. But in the language and iconography of the movement for reparations, the child is necessarily something different, a memorial to lost potentiality and at the same time, a sign of futurity, since the child is a figure of development, of an unfinished process. The marking of loss and disappearance is evident in the slogans of Where Are the Children? and Remembering the Children (the name of a tour of Canadian cities in support of the work of the TRC, organized by Aboriginal and church leaders in 2008).43 Prominent on the website of the Remembering the Children tour is the photographed face of a contemporary Aboriginal child set over an archival class picture of residential school children. The play of foreground and background in the collage seems to insist on what is due to the contemporary child who is the inheritor of the experiences of those historical children behind him. The aging survivors of residential schooling themselves are not pictured prominently on the site. It is the contemporary child, in other words, who is put forward as the deserving object of, and pivot for, reparatory work. The Where Are the Chil-

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dren? exhibit does invoke the adult survivors or adult offspring of survivors, through the words of Georges Erasmus – whose textual introduction to the online exhibit stresses their resilience as “people of courage [who] are the wealth of our nations” – and through the audio testimony of survivors, accessed as the viewer clicks through the rooms of the virtual Mohawk Residential School. The exhibit’s visual focus, though, as I have noted, is on buildings and children, and even Erasmus’s introductory text prepares viewers to encounter in the coming archival photographs “the face of a child whose identity is a number, whose culture is forbidden, and whose future is an institutional experiment.” While this privileging of lost and contemporary children over adult survivors in some of the iconography of Aboriginal redress deserves further attention, my stress here is on the work that the figure of the child accomplishes for redress claiming more generally, insofar as it provides access to a kind of unmarked and hence universalized form of selfhood that is rigorously individualized. This function of the child permits me to return to my comparative framework, and the question of exchange relations between otherwise distant redress campaigns. I have been arguing that one effect of the linkages between the residential school and the tropes of confinement and the child has been to make the demands of Aboriginal redress amenable to a neoliberalizing agenda. Another effect, however, has been the insertion of Aboriginal redress into a wider field of redress claims, where its tropes and its iconography are exposed to relations of substitution and borrowing. The figure of the child, like the image of an enclosure, has currency in this formation and hence is a node around which the “hidden polemics” between movements occur. It is not obvious what the child should have to do with the wartime internment of so-called surplus labourers who were seen to be affiliated with the Austro-Hungarian empire, but the figure of the child has recently become pivotal in the rhetoric and iconography of the Ukrainian Canadian movement for acknowledgment and reparations. This surprising visibility of the child says something about the nature of perceived public sentiment in relation to the child in Aboriginal redress. The child has seemed to convey currency to the Ukrainian Canadian movement for redress with increasing prominence in the last decade, during which time the kinds of evidence used to support the movement and to publicize its claims in the popular media appear to have begun shifting towards a more personal and sentimental emphasis on the experiences of child internees, from the more familiar images of Ukrainian Canadian men in internment camps, which drove the campaign from its inception in the mid-1980s. Although estimates of the numbers of women and children who were sent to the internment camps have formed part of the arguments made for redress from the very first brief submitted to the federal government in 1987, and have, indeed, been the object of some explicit disagreement among Ukrainian Canadian researchers,44 it is not until quite recently that the figure of the child has seemed to displace those images of labouring, incarcerated men – in the representations of Ukrainian North American and mainstream media. If Aboriginal redress claims have had to draw on the power of the trope of confinement, then, Ukrainian Canadian redress claims have, for their part, drawn on the power of the child abstracted from social relations (a figure which might seem to be transparently reflective of the claims of Aboriginal redress, but which, as I’ve suggested, functions to obscure other possible figurations of the deserving subject which are less viable in the current ideological order). The claims of the Ukrainian Canadian movement were initially framed in the mid-1980s as an explicit echo of the demands of the politicized sansei generation of Japanese Canadi-

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ans for reparations for displacement and internment during the Second World War, an echo that used the parallel experiences of internment in the two wars and the originary status of the First World War internments as leverage.45 The photographic records of the First World War internment camps, reproduced in some detail in the scholarly histories of the Ukrainian Canadian wartime experience published from the 1990s on, construct a visual iconography of large groups of men engaged in hard labour or lined up in front of barbedwire fences and camp dormitories.46 At the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, the “Interning Canadians” section of the For Crown and Country exhibit features the life-size model of an adult male Ukrainian Canadian internee hoeing soil in a glass case painted over with barbed wire. As Swyripa has observed, insofar as the redress movement needed to show that Ukrainian Canadians had been interned on the grounds of national origin, one of the effects of images of this “Ukrainian immigrant labourer” was to suture ideological rifts between segments of the Ukrainian Canadian community.47 The emphasis on coerced labour and incarceration in this iconography corresponded to the case made in position papers submitted to the federal government,48 which pressed the point that the Canadian state’s internment practice from 1914 to 1920 violated international conventions for the treatment of non-combatant prisoners of war. Not only did the Canadian practice of compelling interned civilians to labour on public and private projects “have no equivalent among other warring states,” Canada made deliberate use of the emergency security measure of internment as a means of social control.49 These men of Ukrainian national origin were racialized as “enemy aliens” in a popular nativist perspective that failed to distinguish between migrants and naturalized British subjects, and between Austro-Hungarian imperialism and the subject nationalities within its conquered territories. The Canadian state’s response to this campaign for recognition of a wrong and for financial compensation for confiscated property and coerced labour was to offer official acknowledgment, with the passing, in 2005, of the Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act. In 2008, ongoing demands for material compensation were addressed with an endowment for commemorative and educational projects made to the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Schevchenko. As Matt James notes in this volume, the endowment was made outside of the newly created financial and administrative framework of the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP); however, this federal program reflects aspects of the campaign for redress by Ukrainian Canadians.50 This program is the means by which the state now fields group-redress claims and funnels them through a process which has groups compete for funding for commemorative, “heritage”-making projects. The limitations on the forms of historical injury which can count as wrong within the CHRP are extreme: applications for funding are accepted only from those groups claiming injury through “historical wartime measures and immigration restrictions.” The CHRP does not speak of systemic discrimination or structured inequalities, not even in Canada’s past: it recognizes “incidents which, while legal at the time, are no longer consistent with Canadian values.”51 Thematizing isolated cases of injurious fencing in and fencing out, the program frames their effects in terms of impeded economic participation and social advancement, due to lingering stigmatization. Compensation for this limitation on the “right to development” takes the form of CHRP’s funding for public pedagogy projects that promise to rehabilitate a “community’s” dignity through the representation of its historical experiences and its “contributions to building Canada.”52 The national associations of Ukrainian Canadians and Italian Canadians, which have

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received different forms of official acknowledgment of “wartime measures,” have objected to the homogenizing nature of the CHRP. Neither, however, has criticized the program’s absorption of political criticism within a rhetoric of national contribution. There is much more to say about this government strategy of funding “national contributions” public pedagogy and its relation to a history of making sense of inequality as diversity in the policies of the Canadian state, with that diversity now being keyed to the values of innovation, marketability, and investment opportunity. Indeed, there is a sense in which the kind of diversity promoted by state programs of acknowledgment and commemoration like the CHRP is a diversity that is morally aligned not with anti-discrimination so much as the indiscrimination of capital in the face of commodifiable difference. In any case, what the criticisms of the CHRP by Ukrainian Canadian and Italian Canadian organizations seem to miss is the extent to which such a program incites, and patrols the limits of, what is essentially a neoliberal auto-critique, a critique of state actions that were wrong because illiberal and thereby – as current government press releases and acts of acknowledgment constantly reaffirm – contradict “our values today.” What a program like the CHRP does not permit access to is the crucial value of individualism, especially individualism as it is condensed, currently, in the figure of the child. In the discourse and iconography of the movement for redress for residential schooling, but also in the wider “intimate public sphere” of which that movement forms a part,53 the figure of the child seems to be the inescapable route through which harm becomes imaginable as deeply personal, and paradoxically universal in its sympathetic potential. In the context of the Ukrainian Canadian movement for redress, the figure of the child draws on that technology for generating sympathy, but the child also seems to resolve a problem related to the state’s dealing with Ukrainian Canadians as a group. This state strategy begins with the creation of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, an arm’s length organization that was to be funded to work to combat racist attitudes in Canadian society, as part of the state’s settlement with Japanese Canadians in 1988: the CRRF was positioned in the settlement agreement as the substitute for any further compensatory payments to redress-seeking groups. The Ukrainian Canadian movement for redress perceived itself to have limited access to the work of the CRRF, given the status of its constituency as one of Canada’s “white ethnicities,” but also given the particular ideological orientation of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association,54 which made the case for redress on the grounds of the state’s violation of the formal legal rights of Ukrainian Canadians in the First World War – a claim that stops short of thematizing the question of structured inequalities, which prevent access to the resources necessary to claim those universal rights, those “equal opportunities,” in the first place. Indeed, the preface to a key text of the Ukrainian campaign, a collection of primary documents related to the internments, Lubomyr Luciuk’s In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence (2001), expresses ressentiment about minority-group demands for affirmative action, and endorses the neoliberal dismantling of state agencies formed to support substantive-justice seeking.55 I shall return to the significance of this alignment of the Ukrainian Canadian redress campaign with neoliberal state restructuring in a moment, as clearly this alignment has implications for other movements participating in the discursive field of redress, including the Aboriginal one. While the CHRP would appear to be responsive to the claims of the Ukrainian Canadian campaign regarding a collective experience of confinement and forestalled opportunities, the program does not provide access to the currently narrow means for conceiving of the

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deserving subject through the figure of the child. Representations by and of the Ukrainian Canadian movement in the past decade have seemed to attempt to compensate for this deficiency. Thus, a monument like the “Interned Madonna” statue, which was erected at the site of the Spirit Lake internment camp in Quebec in 1999, and which substitutes for the image of the Ukrainian peasant labourer the bronze form of a mother with an infant in her arms and a small child at her side, does a kind of supplementary work for the movement.56 From the mid-1990s, and with increasing frequency to 2008, articles in the Ukrainian Weekly addressing the issue of internment move from the mention of women and children as being among the interned, to a more personal and sentimental emphasis on the stories of particular child internees. Mary Manko Haskett, who writes an editorial in 1993 as the last survivor of the camps, becomes the unofficial spokesperson for the Ukrainian Canadian campaign for acknowledgment and redress, and there is a seizing upon her story of internment at Spirit Lake as a six-year-old girl who watched her two-year-old sister, Nellie, die of pneumonia in the camp.57 “Flowers for Nellie,” a 2008 CBC radio documentary, picks up on this personification and follows Haskett’s daughter to the Spirit Lake site, to search in vain for the unmarked grave of the toddler.58 But perhaps most interestingly, in 2007 a new title appears in Scholastic Canada’s “Dear Canada” youth reader series, one of the sites through which the public pedagogy of the culture of redress is addressed to school children.59 Written, like all the texts in the Scholastic series, in the form of a fictionalized child’s diary, Prisoners in the Promised Land: The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk is loosely based upon Haskett’s childhood experiences at the Spirit Lake internment camp.60 In appendices, the book provides, in addition to the more conventional iconography of labouring men and temporary internment-camp dwellings, archival photographs of child internees, a photograph of Ukrainian child-immigrants arriving in Quebec from the Austro-Hungarian crown land of Galicia, standing at a train station in traditional dress, and – very importantly for the exchange relation this text works to configure – a photograph of tents occupied by members of the Pikogan First Nation.61 A caption underneath the latter photograph explains that the Pikogan were “situated near Spirit Lake internment camp.” The presence of this photograph in the appendix is supposed to document something more than an accidental proximity, however. It provides evidence for the text’s implicit argument that Ukrainian immigrants and First Nations shared a condition of unrecognized, marginalized cultural distinctiveness within a Canadian nation which had not yet embraced the values of multiculturalism. A pivotal moment in this narrative occurs when the folk-art value of the young Anya’s traditional embroidered dress becomes a point of identification with a woman of the Pikogan First Nation: Dear Diary, you are not going to believe this, but she was using small seed beads just like mine. Who would have thought that I could travel halfway around the world and up to this faraway part of Quebec only to find a stranger doing my own special craft? The floral design that she was creating reminded me of the beadwork and embroidery that we do on sheepskin vests. I feel like I have met a long-lost relative! … I held out my hand and she tipped the bag over. Many tiny beads, all different colours, fell into my hand. Just before she closed the bag up, a red Venetian glass bead fell out. It has a delicate etching of a bird in flight and it is the most beautiful bead I have ever seen. The woman chuckled with delight and then she placed her two grizzled hands over my fingers and closed them tight around the beads.62

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The girl’s spontaneous recognition of a kind of “relative” in the Pikogan woman on the basis of their shared craftwork is affirmed through the gift of a special token, the glass bead, whose “bird in flight” expresses a desire for freedom. The gift gives the immigrant child an affiliation with Indigeneity, but insofar as this affiliation with a Pikogan “relative” seems to be earned through the child’s experiences of marginalization, confinement, and compensatory attachment to culture as traditional craft, what is given back to the Pikogan woman in the exchange would seem to be her reframing as a member of an ethnocultural group, like the Ukrainian Canadians, determined to preserve her culture’s distinctiveness. The scene can be taken as a demonstration of how such exchanges in the discursive field of redress reposition incommensurables as equivalents. Although set in the past of the First World War, the scene projects onto this period the normative attachment to culture as the site of authenticity and the source of value within a multicultural nation, constructing Anya and the Pikogan woman alike as the bearers of those cultural differences that will shape the future mosaic. The hopefulness of the scene speaks to Anya’s future belonging in Canada, but her faith that internment will come to an end and that life will get better in Canada is conspicuously grounded in the recognition, bestowed by an Indigenous person, of the value of her culture. Whether the exchange can resonate so hopefully for the Pikogan woman is less certain. What will she be able to do with Anya’s recognition of her as a sister-embroiderer? The folding of Aboriginal claims within the language of ethnocultural difference and, more specifically, within the discourse of Canada’s belated acknowledgment of historic wrongs against ethnocultural groups and of those groups’ contributions to nation building, works to obscure Aboriginal peoples’ competing claims to sovereignty which threaten the very legitimacy of the Canadian nation-state.63 I have already argued that the part-for-whole relation in which residential schooling has been made to stand for the history of colonial dispossession is partly determined by the centrality of the carceral as a trope for violation of the sovereign liberal individual in Canada’s culture of redress. But the framing of Aboriginal “culture” as the defining feature of Aboriginal difference is another one of the consequences of the absorption of Aboriginal peoples’ demands and aspirations within schemes of “historical restitution” designed to address “historically disadvantaged minorities who are entitled to compensation because of [state] injustice.”64 As Dale Turner and Eva Mackey argue elsewhere in this volume, a Supreme Court decision that ties Aboriginal rights to cultural distinctiveness, and the highlighting of damage to culture in the Canadian government’s apology for residential schooling, both work to fold Aboriginal peoples into the discourse of official multiculturalism, as though they were an ethnic group demanding cultural recognition and maintenance, rather than a right to self-government stemming from their status as original occupants of the land.65 The validation of a “sanitized” Aboriginal culture within a regime of commodifying multiculturalism furthermore rationalizes the bifurcation of Aboriginal alterity in such a way that those “unsanitized” differences which might be less amenable to cultural commodification and to a regime of neoliberal selfhood can be pathologized.66 I do not wish to suggest that all acts of redress and apology inevitably lead to the reaffirmation of neoliberal assumptions. Neither do I wish to dismiss the importance of those only apparently immaterial goods, such as dignity or empathy, which are exchanged across the symbolic and affective registers of the culture of redress. What I have been arguing, instead, is that there are discursive and ideological constraints on the forms of expression through which it is possible to win dignity, or the sympathetic identification of others, and that these constraints are shaped by neoliberal political rationality. Here I am follow-

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ing Adam Smith, who was, among other things, a theorist of empathy or “fellow-feeling” among liberal subjects, and assumed a scarcity of this resource which, for him, seemed to be produced and circulated only by means of rigid constraints. Smith argued that empathy was only possible when certain proprieties were followed in the expression of suffering, requiring the sufferer to imagine his or her experience through the objectifying lens of what he called the indifferent or “impartial spectator,” a kind of “average, unsuffering person.”67 Sufferers had to modulate their feelings through an imaginary identification with the relative “coolness about [their] own fortune” that would be felt by such a spectator, who always held others’ accounts up to the standard of the liberal individual, and its embodiment of atomized, rational agency and responsibility.68 Normative forms of liberal selfhood have changed since Smith was writing his Theory of Moral Sentiments – notably, insofar as they currently draw on contradictory aspects of the child as a socially unmarked deserving subject, the “merely human,” the core of authentic selfhood, a figure of vulnerability and innocence, but also of developmental, entrepreneurial potential.69 The Pikogan woman in Prisoners in the Promised Land noticeably does not have access to some of the normative valences of selfhood on which her “relative,” the immigrant child, can draw. This is so even though, as I have been arguing, the child in Prisoners in the Promised Land comes to be the representative of interned Ukrainian Canadians and their redress-seeking descendants by means of an adaptation of the figure of the deserving Aboriginal child.

NOTES 1 Thanks to Keith Denny, Sheryl Hamilton, Jody Mason, and Pauline Wakeham for comments on drafts of this essay. Thanks are also due to David Mastey for research assistance. 2 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. K. Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 29. 3 My references to the “culture of redress” in this essay should be understood as referring to a culture that also comprises the theme of reconciliation. See the introduction to this volume. 4 On the “modest” modern state, see Jacques Rancière, Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 109. What is “given back” in redress settlements today is, unsurprisingly, not the same as what was taken away in the past, and indeed it could not be the same, since the loss is necessarily experienced and then retrospectively framed in contingent, and divergent, schemes of meaning and value. 5 On this sense of community, see Keith Denny, Social Capital and Health: A Critical History of a Concept (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008). 6 Janine Brodie, “We Are All Equal Now: Contemporary Gender Politics in Canada,” Feminist Theory 9, no. 2 (2008): 148–9. 7 Pauline Wakeham, “The Cunning of Reconciliation: Reinventing White Civility in Canada’s Contemporary Culture of Redress,” in Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies, ed. S. Kamboureli and R. Zacharias (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 209–33. 8 The transactional model of tort justice and progress understood in terms of capitalist economic development is at the core of this version of political struggle: historical truth is exposed through the airing of grievance; grievances are put to rest through compensation; social justice and the promise of equality are secured through free-market participation and pedagogies of

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individual development. On the liberal assumptions embedded in the Native title process in Australia and Maori claims and settlement processes in New Zealand, see Giselle Byrnes and David Ritter, “Antipodean Settler Societies and Their Complexities: The Waitangi Process in New Zealand and Native Title and the Stolen Generations in Australia,” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 46, no. 1 (February 2008): 54–78, esp. 64–7. The picture I am gesturing at also includes the channelling of the clarity and certainty of the moral outrage produced by the publicization of grief towards privatized forms of political participation, such as empathetic spectatorship. See Lauren Berlant, “The Epistemology of State Emotion,” in Dissent in Dangerous Times, ed. A. Sarat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 46–78. Franca Iacovetta and Roberto Perin have also discussed redress campaigns comparatively, focusing on instances of “elite-initiated” lobbying. See “Italians and Wartime Internment” in Enemies Within: Italians and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, ed. F. Iacovetta et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 13. Recently, the Canadian state has offered the movements formed around Aboriginal residential schooling and Ukrainian Canadian wartime internment resolutions of sorts. The signing of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in May 2006 was followed by the government apology in June 2008. In November 2005, the government passed Bill C-331, An Act to acknowledge that persons of Ukrainian origin were interned in Canada during the First World War and to provide for recognition of this event. In 2008, an endowment of $10,000,000 was allocated to commemorative and educational projects related to First World War internments. Neoliberalism is a cohabitation of classical liberal principles and the “revolutionary impulses” of post-1970s market-centred political-economic policy, but my argument suggests that elements distinguishing the classical from the ‘neo’ can come to the fore in different movements, for example, the unencumbered, sovereign, “autological” self of Enlightenment liberal theory versus neoliberalism’s emphasis on the entrepreneurial self that is closely tied to ideas of developmental potential associated with the child. On the “revolutionary impulses” of neoliberalism, see David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1. On the “autological subject” see Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 4, 8, 183–8. Bahktin, quoted in Barbara Godard, “Deterritorializing Strategies: M. NourbeSe Philip as Caucasianist Ethnographer,” in Canadian Literature at the Crossroads of Language and Culture, ed. S. Kamboureli (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2008), 169. Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 2. See Bohdan Kordan and Craig Mahovsky, A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and Ukrainian-Canadian Redress (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), a monograph that expands the brief on redress written by these authors and submitted to the Government of Canada in 1999 on behalf of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, ix. Ibid., 29, 32. Of course, many of the families of Aboriginal children who were removed to residential schools were already, themselves, subject to confinement through the reserve system. Dian Million’s essay in this collection demonstrates another way of reading the centrality of the child in the Assembly of First Nations’ pursuit of residential schools recognition and compensation, as she traces the emergence of the frameworks of sexual and physical childhood abuse and post-

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Jennifer Henderson traumatic stress disorder. My focus here is on the entrepreneurial valences of neoliberalized recovery from historical harm, but Million’s genealogy of trauma is a crucial missing piece. Child abuse in our time is understood as the most morally reprehensible violation of the person. It is not surprising, then, that before the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, while cultural loss was an injury that was regularly invoked in lawsuits over residential schooling, the only cases that were successfully settled were those centring on sexual abuse, where that abuse had been proved, already, in a criminal trial. See Jennifer J. Lewellyn, “Dealing with the Legacy of Native Residential School Abuse in Canada: Litigation, ADR, and Restorative Justice,” University of Toronto Law Journal 52, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 262. On the interdependence of the concepts of civilization and captivity in early liberal social theory, see Anna Neill, “Civilization and the Rights of Woman: Liberty and Captivity in the Work of Mary Wollstonecraft,” Women’s Writing 8, no.1 (2001): 99–118. Frances Swyripa, “The Politics of Redress: The Contemporary Ukrainian-Canadian Campaign,” in Enemies Within, ed. Iacovetta et al., 357. Ibid., 361. Ibid., 363. She writes: “The underlying message [of the campaign for redress] was that before Canada accused a broad section of its Ukrainian citizens of war crimes …, it should examine its own actions carried out in the name of freedom and democracy.” The emphasis on internment in the redress campaign of the Civil Liberties Commission, formed in 1985, also needs to be seen in the context of a rift between post–Second World War Ukrainian immigrants, many of whom came to Ontario as displaced persons, and the earlier generations of pre-1914 immigrants who settled in the prairies. The historical distinction is reinforced by an ideological division between Ukrainian nationalist and pro-Communist groups, a split reactivated by a redress campaign driven by the elite representation of Ontario-based, post–Second World War immigrants unsympathetic to the leftist ideology of the older constituent organizations of Ukrainian Canadians. See ibid., 361–3. OED, “‘case,’ noun 1.6. Law. ‘The state of facts juridically considered’ (J.). a. A cause or suit brought into court for decision. b. A statement of the facts of any matter sub judice, drawn up for the consideration of a higher court.” But another connotation of “case,” as in the social work “case” and “case file,” also may be in play (with a terrible irony) in some representations of the damage of residential schooling. Thanks to Sheryl Hamilton for this observation. On the pathologization of family as the legacy of residential schooling in the 2008 state apology, see Eva Mackey in this volume. PAC, Indian Affairs, RG 10, vol. 6810, file 470-2-3, pt. 7, Minutes from 1920 meeting of parliamentary committee to consider Bill 14. The bill contained provisions making residential schooling and enfranchisement (of individual Aboriginal men holding land on reserves) compulsory. Scott’s words defend the general recourse to compulsion in the policy: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that this country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone.” See appendix A.2. For the theorization of freedom in the liberal philosophical tradition, see Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) and John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. David B. and G. Kateb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). The language of the AFN’s 2005 class-action suit against the Government of Canada, launched as a parallel legal process to the negotiations with the federal government towards compensation for abuses in residential schools, cited the “irreparable harm and damage” to First Nations’

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“culture, language, way of life, family, community and social structures.” See “AFN Chief Files Class Action Claim against the Government of Canada for Residential Schools Policy,” http:// www.afn.ca/article.asp?id=1632. There is a gap between the trope of the carceral I have been describing and this more expansive language of “irreparable harm” in the legal suit. In liberal case law, however, harm must be to an individual person (or a representative individual person) or to property; by implication, the harm of residential schooling must be reduced to abuse to individuals or destruction of culture conceived as property. The school is the isolatable site of and mechanism for inflicting these kinds of harm. As I have been arguing, the strategic focus on the school also brings with it an emphasis on enclosure and constraint. Part of the purchase of this emphasis may also be an implicit parallel with cases of wrongful conviction. Internment has been explicitly identified with wrongful imprisonment in at least one state paper. See Working Group on Issues Development (Gerald L. Gall, May M. Cheng, Keiko Miki),“Redress for Past Wrongs,” Issue Position Paper for Advisory Committee to the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women on Canada’s preparations for the 2001 United Nations World Conference on Racism, http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/multi/wcar/advisory/redress_e.cfm. Of redress claims based on “racial wrongs visited on racial minorities in Canada,” the authors note that the “effects of imprisonment are similar to internment with respect to wrong suffered” (2). On sovereignty, see the essay by Dale Turner in this volume. As Eva Mackey notes in her essay, many Aboriginal people who provided commentary on the state apology in 2008 “pushed for action on issues beyond residential schools” (p. 57). There is also a lawsuit in process against the federal government demanding reparations for the suffering of Aboriginal survivors of compulsory day schooling. Interestingly, the statement of claim emphasizes the government’s failure to protect children from experiences of physical and sexual abuse, not irreparable harm to culture. Chinta Puxley, “Aboriginal day-school survivors sue for $15B,” Globe and Mail, 6 August 2009. Phil Fontaine is named as the representative plaintiff for two of the four classes of survivors (“First Nations” and “Survivor”) in the class-action lawsuit launched against the Government of Canada for “the residential schools legacy” in August 2005. See “History of Residential Schools,” http://www.afn.ca/residentialschools/history.html. The schools’ sinister grandiosity seems to have been evaluated, in the moment of their construction, as more important to preserve for posterity than the names and the fates of students attending the schools. The schools’ architecture was a matter of pride for a bureaucrat like Duncan Campbell Scott and seemed to speak of the generosity of the state when Scott distributed photographs of schools to the 1920 parliamentary committee. See appendix A.2. See Edward G. Sadowski/The Shingwauk Archive, Preliminary Report on the Investigation into Missing School Files for the Shingwauk Indian Residential School, November 2006, at http:// www.shingwauk.auc.ca/AlumniNews/IRS_PDF_Documents/REPORT_%20MissingFiles_ ShingwaukIRS_04Nov06_vFinal.pdf. The report is the result of an investigation into school records. It finds that “there was a general federal government policy to destroy many government files and … a very high level of records destruction activity that occurred between 1936 and 1956” (3). On “economic man” as a specific form of social subjectivity and a “correlate” of liberal government, see Graham Burchell, “Civil Society and ‘the System of Natural Liberty,’” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. G. Burchell et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 119–50.

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30 Kevin Libin, 20 February 2008, http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/ rethinkingthereserve/index.html. The article, the first in a series, “Rethinking the Reserve,” positions First Nations subjects and communities as ripe for a neoliberal revolution that would conflate “self-government” with a post-welfare statist “reawakening of ancient aboriginal ideals of self-sufficiency.” 31 Indian and Northern Affairs Canada press release, 29 June 2009, http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ ecd/ffaed-eng.asp. 32 Government of Canada, Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan (Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1998). 33 “Karate class for kids,” Duncan McCue, CBC Television, “The National,” 17 October 2008, www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/healtheducation/karate_class_for_kids.html. In the same genre, see also “Despite social and economic challenges, the Innu of Labrador are now poised to become an economic powerhouse,” Darrow MacIntyre, 13 April 2009, www.cbc.ca/national/blog/ video/aboriginal_issues/innu_dawn.html. 34 Native Women’s Association of Canada, “Aboriginal Solutions toward Stimulating Canada’s Economy,” NWAC, 15 January 2009. http://www.nwac-hq.org/en/index.html. 35 See, for example, Roy MacGregor, “Schooled in the business of hope,” Globe and Mail, 14 June 2008, p. A1. 36 The demand for “more education” on these grounds is made by a Mr Hill, a member of the Six Nations who participated in the proceedings of the committee considering Bill 14. See PAC, RG 10, vol. 6810, file 136862-6, 48-19. 37 I thank James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson for the reminder that early trade relations between Europeans and Aboriginal peoples in North America could be seen as having depended on the ingenuity and entrepreneurialism of the latter. But as Henderson also pointed out, the current emphasis on entrepreneurial education for Aboriginal youth obscures the racially monopolistic nature of Canadian capitalism. 38 The “right to development” as one form that reparations might take is noted by Michael Freedman, “Historical Injustice and Liberal Political Theory,” in The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past, ed. M. Gibney et al. (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2008), 51. 39 Nikolas Rose, “The Neurochemical Self and Its Anomalies,” in Risk and Morality, ed. R.V. Ericson and A. Doyle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 431. 40 Brodie, “We Are All Equal Now,” 149. Her article focuses in particular on gender equality demands. 41 Ibid., 154. Also Jennifer Henderson, “‘The Years before Five™’: Discourse and Pedagogy of Neoliberal Childhood,” paper presented at Canadian Association for Cultural Studies conference, Edmonton, Alberta, 21 October 2005. 42 Passages from Obasan were read out by two members of Parliament on the day that the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement was announced in September 1988: see Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi’s Justice in Our Time (Vancouver: Talonbooks / Winnipeg: NAJC, 1991), 148, 150. 43 See http://www.rememberingthechildren.ca and http://www.wherearethechildren.ca/en/ahf/ html. The Legacy of Hope Foundation is an organization established by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation in July of 2000 to conduct public pedagogy around the legacy of residential schools. 44 See Swyripa, “The Politics of Redress,” 363–5 and Orest Martynowich, “Re: Internment of Ukrainian Canadians,” The Ukrainian Weekly, 9 April 1988: “No one knows how many of the

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5,954 [interned] Austro-Hungarians were Ukrainians because a complete list of internees has not been compiled … These male internees were accompanied by 81 women and 156 children (of all nationalities) who accompanied the men voluntarily and who were provided with quarters and food in two of the 19 internment camps.” See Lubomyr Luciuk, A Time for Atonement: National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians 1914–1920 (Kingston: Limestone Press, 1988). The names of Lubomyr Luciuk (director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association) and Bohdan Kordan recur most frequently among this group of authors. See Luciuk, In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence: Canada’s First National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians, 1914–1920 (Kingston, ON: Kashtan Press, 2001); Without Just Cause: Canada’s First National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians, 1914–1920 (Kingston, ON: Kashtan Press, 2006); Luciuk and Borys Sydoruk, In My Charge: The Canadian Internment Camp Photographs of Sergeant William Buck (Kingston, ON: Kashtan Press, 1997); Bohdan Kordan and Peter Melnycky, eds, In the Shadow of the Rockies: Diary of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp, 1915–1917 (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies/ University of Alberta, 1991); Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War: Internment in Canada during the Great War (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); Kordan and Craig Mahovsky, A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and Ukrainian-Canadian Redress (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004). Swyripa, “The Politics of Redress,” 362. The Ukrainian Canadian campaign, as Iacovetta and Perin observe, has been driven by the ambitions of a “white” ethnic elite in the sphere of national politics, and has been riven by left-right ideological divisions (Enemies Within, 13). In this context, it has not made sense for the redress movement to emphasize, instead of ethnic identity, the way in which internment was inflected by fluctuations in the Canadian labour market, as well as by perceptions of Ukrainian workers as leftist labour organizers subscribing to socialist and communist ideas. Reparations for persecution for reasons of leftist affiliation is not sayable in the culture of redress. On the relations between internment, labour politics, and nativism, see Donald Avery, Dangerous Foreigners: European Immigrant Workers and Labour Radicalism in Canada, 1896–1932 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979). Thanks to Jody Mason and Dean Irvine for their reflections on this question. The first submission was by Lubomyr Luciuk in 1987, on behalf of the Civil Liberties Commission of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, A Time for Atonement; the second, “The Ukrainian Canadian Case for Acknowledgement and Redress,” again a submission by the UCC, was made in October 1988, following the Japanese Canadian settlement, and delivered to the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Citizenship. See Swyripa, “The Politics of Redress,” 363–4. Kordan and Mahovsky, A Bare and Impolitic Right, 22. This program was created in 2008 by the Stephen Harper government on the model of a similar program created by the previous (Liberal) government, and is run by the Integration Program Management Branch of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. See the Applicants’ Guide to the CHRP at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/multi-chrp-guide/section-01 .asp#s1_1 (accessed July 2, 2009). CHRP description at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/programs/community.asp. Interestingly, Bill-C331, introduced in 2001 and passed in 2005, already constrained the “measures that may be taken to recognize the internment” of Ukrainian Canadians in a way that prefigured the constraints of the CHRP. Measures would be restricted to public pedagogy about the consequences of intolerance and discrimination, the importance of the Canadian Charter of

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60 61 62 63

Jennifer Henderson Rights and Freedoms, the fact of the internment camps, and “the contribution made by persons of Ukrainian origin to the development of Canada” (2 and 3.a). Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 4. The UCCLA is a breakaway organization of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress whose members charged the UCC with attempting to disband its own Civil Liberties Commission in 1993. See Swyripa, “The Politics of Redress,” 362. In fact, the preface to Lubomyr Luciuk’s In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence, written by Ian Hunter (a professor of law who identifies himself as having been retained by the UCCLA in 1999 to prepare a case based on the Canadian Charter of Rights), offers a specific denunciation of the Court Challenges Program, which rejected the UCCLA’s application for funding to bring its case forward, apparently on the grounds that the UCCLA expressed its arguments in terms of formal equality. “The translation of this particular bit of Orwellian newspeak,” Hunter writes, “is that the Panel promotes an agenda of substantive equality (an Alice-in-Wonderland term summed up in the notion of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity)” (ii). He goes on to praise the opinion of “Professor Ian Brodie, a political scientist who has intensively studied the Court Challenges program, [and] has concluded that the Panel generally funds those groups with which it has an ideological affinity and refuses those groups with which it does not” (ii). Ian Brodie served as the chief of staff of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose Conservative government in 2006 abolished the Court Challenges Program established to subsidize Charter challenges. There is an argument to be made that the Court Challenges Program is precisely the kind of state program that the CHRP and its precedent under the Liberal government of Paul Martin, the Acknowledgement, Commemoration and Education program (ACEP), are designed to substitute for, insofar as these programs to commemorate group contributions to Canadian society offer proof that governments are addressing the concerns of minorities. A photograph of the monument appears in Luciuk, A Time for Atonement, 121. Editorial, The Ukrainian Weekly, 30 January 1994, 11. Haskett died on 14 July 2007. The Ukrainian Weekly is a New Jersey–based newspaper published by the Ukrainian National Association. Before the foregrounding of the child in the Ukrainian Canadian redress movement, the figure of the Ukrainian Canadian girl already enjoyed a prominent place in Ukrainian Canadian literary fiction. See Swyripa’s Wedded to the Cause: Ukrainian-Canadian Women and Ethnic Identity, 1891–1991 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). Thanks to Lindy Ledohowski for this reference. At http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008/200807/20080701.html. Many CHRP-funded projects include, as part of their plan, the production of new educational materials for elementary and high school students, which demonstrates the way opportunities to revise the historical narrative of Canada that is communicated to future generations is seen as a means of redressing state-inflicted injuries. Scholastic’s series of fictionalized historical child diaries, though, is produced independently of CHRP and its redress transactions. Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, Prisoners in the Promised Land: The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk (Toronto: Scholastic, 2007). Ibid., 225, 226, 222, 299. Ibid, 158–9. Thanks to an anonymous reader of the manuscript for this insight about what it is that is obscured by the contributory rhetoric when it comes to First Nations.

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64 Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand (Dunedin, NZ: Otago University Press, 2005), 271. 65 See pp. 54 above and 106 below. 66 I draw this point from Emma Koval, who is discussing the partitioning of “sanitized alterity and unsanitized alterity,” or “Indigenous ‘culture’ and Indigenous ‘pathology,’” in the context of postcolonial Australia. Emma Koval, “The Politics of the Gap: Indigenous Australians, Liberal Multiculturalism, and the End of the Self-Determination Era,” American Anthropologist 110, no. 3 (2008): 338–48. 67 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 31; David Marshall, “Adam Smith and the Theatricality of Moral Sentiments,” Critical Inquiry 10, no.4 (June 1984): 597. 68 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 27. 69 Jacques Rancière argues that in our era the “eligible party” for human rights, rights which are “no longer experienced as political capacities,” is the “wordless victim, the ultimate figure of the one excluded from the logos … [the] merely human,” a figure I see exemplified in certain representations of the child as victim. Rancière, Dis-agreement, 126.

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4 Redress Revisited: Citizenship and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax lily cho

Addressing the House of Commons on 2 May 1947, only months after the passing of the Canadian Citizenship Act and just before the passing of a bill that would repeal the Chinese Immigration Act, William Irvine, a CCF member of Parliament for the Cariboo constituency in British Columbia, made a case for connecting the issue of Chinese immigration with that of Canadian citizenship: While I have every sympathy for those of Chinese origin who may have suffered discrimination in Canada, and which discrimination at least in part is now being removed by the bill before us, my chief reason is not to speak in the interests of such citizens merely, but to speak in our own interest, in the interests of Canada. When we permit discrimination against one section of our citizenry we are doing harm to ourselves, far more harm than we are doing to the group against which we discriminate. And so, it is because of the good name of Canada, because of the freedom for which our country stands, [… and] because we want to guard against any infringement of our own accepted principles of freedom[,] that I am going to insist, as far as I can, on the complete removal of discrimination against any class of Canadian citizens.1

Irvine’s statement highlights the ways in which Chineseness in Canada tested the very meaning of Canadian citizenship. His emphasis upon discrimination and the necessity of righting a wrong not merely in the interests of those who had been wronged, but also in the interest of those who have been guilty of being discriminatory, and thus of sullying the very tenets of Canadian citizenship, structured Chinese immigrants as both other and yet still, problematically, members of the national polity. With the exception of those who qualified as merchants, diplomats, foreign students, or those granted admission under “special circumstances” by the minister of immigration, the Chinese Immigration Act (1923–47), also referred to as the Chinese “Exclusion Act,” prohibited Chinese immigration to Canada. Before the virtual ban on Chinese immigration imposed in 1923, a series of legislative initiatives beginning in 1885 implemented a prohibitive “head tax” upon all Chinese persons attempting to enter Canada. While the Canadian government originally enticed men from China to come to Canada as labourers for the construction of the national railroad system, once the railroads were complete, the government sought to prevent the men’s families from joining them through the imposition of the head tax. Together, the head tax and the subsequent ban on Chinese immigration constituted a policy of blatant racist discrimination against Chinese persons for more than sixty years. Only months after the inauguration of Canadian citizenship itself, the hypocrisy of blatantly unequal citizenship for Chinese

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immigrants enshrined in Canadian law through the Chinese Immigration Act became all too apparent and ushered in a sustained debate on the relationship between immigration, race, and citizenship. The language of these debates uncovers the particular place Chineseness holds in the construction of citizenship in Canada. This chapter will explore the connection between Chineseness and ideals of Canadian citizenship by comparing the debates on the Chinese head tax and exclusion legislation during the late 1940s with those surrounding the subsequent redress movement seeking reparations for these discriminatory immigration policies. In so doing, I want to draw attention to the centrality of citizenship to the Chinese Canadian campaign for redress. As a concept, and as an ideal, citizenship anchors redress as a project not only for one specific community within a nation, but also as a project that is for the good of the nation as a whole. In turning to the near conjunction of the repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act with the inauguration of Canadian citizenship itself, I also want to highlight the problematic role of race for conceptions of Canadian citizenship. From the outset, as I will show, Canadian parliamentarians and legislators struggled with the place of racialized others as citizens. Where the debates on repeal uncover the unresolved place of race in Canadian citizenship, the debates on redress recover and alternatively reimagine citizenship’s potential as a ground for challenging histories of racism. Even though redress campaigns have been accused of being backward-looking or focused upon past wrongs, I am struck by the commitment of the Chinese head-tax redress campaign, a campaign which began in 1984 and continues to the present day, to particular futures: futures without racism, futures which acknowledge and redress the wrongs of the past, futures in which minoritized communities continue to work in solidarity. As David Scott notes, in the context of postcolonialism and revolution, “the expectation of – or longing for – particular futures helps to shape the kind of problem the past is constructed as for the present.”2 I suggest that the ways in which the expectation of and the longing for a future in which there exists a more perfect citizenship – a model of citizenship that rigorously protects the ideals of equality and social justice in political practice – shapes Chinese headtax redress as a potential route to not only redress historical wrongs committed against the Chinese Canadian community, but also to address the histories of racism within Canadian citizenship itself. In this paper, I want to interrogate the shape of the future as formed in part by the past of head-tax redress. By exploring the varying ideals of citizenship emerging in parliamentary debates and the redress movement, I contend that the ideal of citizenship put forward by the redress movement functions as a trenchant reminder of Canada’s postcolonial identifications, as well as the necessity of sustaining and extending those identifications, invoked in the debates leading up to the passage of the Citizenship Act of Canada – the legislation that replaced the imperial legal status of Canadian residents as subjects of the British Crown with the creation of the category of Canadian citizenship. While the incipient discourse of postcoloniality that emerged in the late 1940s and 1950s in Canada was preoccupied with settler Canadian’s perceived sense of marginalization from the imperial metropole, returning to that moment might provide ways of seizing hold of postcolonial aspirations for more substantive antiracist political change in the present and future. Righting Wrongs, Repairing National Ideals? I write this essay in the wake of the Canadian government’s 2006 apology. Despite the outstanding issue of redress payments to descendants of head-tax payers, the federal statement

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of contrition, as well as the ex gratia symbolic payments of $20,000 to each living head-tax payer, or their spouses, is largely seen as a victory. One year after Prime Minister Harper’s apology, the Ontario legislature passed legislation to declare 22 June to be Chinese Canadian Head Tax Redress Day. Similarly, Mayor Sam Sullivan of Vancouver announced 22 June would thenceforth be marked for the city as Chinese Head Tax Redress Day. Citizenship ceremonies where new citizens are officially welcomed to Canada were held around the country with a specific recognition of the anniversary of the apology and the contributions of Chinese immigrants. At least at the level of symbolic redress and achieving recognition of a past injustice, the prime minister’s formal apology and the events spinning out from it would seem like a victory. And yet, I venture to suggest that there is some hollowness in this victory. It is not the intention of this essay to assess the relative success of the head-tax redress movement. I make note of a certain hollowness because most advocates for head-tax redress would point out that the struggle for full redress continues so long as descendants of deceased head-tax payers remain without compensation. This ongoing struggle puts under pressure the idea of what victory is supposed to look like. As Roy Miki’s reflections on the success of the Japanese Canadian redress movement suggest, there are losses incurred even in victory. In the case of Japanese Canadian redress, it is the very identity of this community that must be given up. Miki proposes, “Japanese Canadians were themselves formed by the call for redress. They shaped their unredressed identity out of the racialized national boundaries that had disenfranchised them since the issue first arrived in Canada, and that led to their incarceration during the war as the ‘enemy’ within.”3 In achieving redress, Japanese Canadians, Miki argues, gave up that identity: “While [Japanese Canadians] enjoyed the euphoria of their achievement, the nation, represented by the prime minister and the House of Commons, was symbolically redeemed by its acceptance of redress. In this interchange, the ‘Japanese Canadian’ identity that was constituted by a history of injustices at the hands of the nation was given up as a gift to the nation and therefore ceased to exist in the conditions of its desire for a resolved future.’4 Miki thus highlights an important aspect of redress – the reciprocity and exchange whereby the group that has suffered gives back to the nation a more ideal version of itself. In giving up a Japanese Canadian identity that had been constituted out of a history of injustice, Japanese Canadians “also gave the gift of redress to a nation … The receivers had become the givers.”5 Miki’s observation of the reciprocity of redress between the minoritized community and the nation suggests the complexity of victory for redress movements. Redress does not only repair or compensate for losses suffered by one particular community: its logic relies upon the idea that compensating one particular community will restore and, indeed, redress, the losses suffered by the greater whole. As Miki’s reflections reveal, redress is not only about the wronged subject, but also about the damage sustained by the object of redress: the ideals of citizenship. The logic of William Irvine’s 1947 statement about the collective harm endured by Canadians when a particular group suffers discrimination is strategically echoed by the logic of the head-tax redress movement’s turn to legal challenges and the promises of Canadian law. In 1983, Dak Leon Mack walked into the Vancouver-East office of his local MP, Margaret Mitchell, with his head-tax certificate in hand and asked for his money back. This request launched the head-tax redress campaign in Canada. The campaign centred on the work of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC), but extended out towards Chinese community groups across Canada and especially the Association of Chinese Cana-

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dians for Equality and Solidarity, based in Vancouver, under the leadership of its national director, Sid Tan. Joseph Wong, the founding president of the CCNC, helmed the Toronto chapter of the CCNC. When their calls for redress failed to resonate with the government, the CCNC turned towards a legal resolution. In December 2000, Mack, as well as a widow and a son of a head-tax payer, launched a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government – what became known as the Mack v. Canada (Attorney General) case. They argued that the government had been “unjustly enriched by the Chinese Head Tax.”6 They also argued that the head tax was in violation of international human rights and that the tax was a violation of the section 15 equality provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms due to the government’s discriminatory response to the redress claim.7 The Ontario Superior Court and, subsequently, the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed with the government that the action should be dismissed without trial. In 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada also concurred with the lower court’s decisions. That same year, Dak Leon Mack, the main plaintiff in the case, passed away. As Mayo Moran and David Dyzenhaus note, Chinese Canadians took the promise of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms seriously and sought legal remedy for the wrongs of the past as a way of “embarrassing the government into action.”8 Avvy Go, cocounsel in the Mack case, notes the explicit hypocrisy of the head-tax legislation in a short essay published a year before the prime minister’s apology: “It is an outstanding wrong that speaks to the struggle of Chinese Canadians for their recognition as full and equal citizens in a country that takes pride in its humanitarian traditions, yet continues discriminatory practices against minorities.”9 Extending the idea of embarrassing the state into action, Go even muses that it might “be a simple matter of mathematics: the longer we wait, the fewer the head tax payers and widows who remain alive, hence the smaller the amount that needs to be paid. If that indeed is the tactic of the government, then it is obviously working … Eventually there will be no one left to compensate.”10 Go’s accusations suggest both the practical urgency of the redress movement’s claims, and the ways in which the failure of the government to act constitutes a continual degradation of the ideals of citizenship. Thus, the head-tax redress movement took the idea of equal citizenship as a sincere promise and sought to illuminate how harm against one group of citizens constitutes a harm against all citizens. The Limits of Chineseness in Parliamentary Debates While the parliamentary debates of 1946 and 1947 revealed fears that the Chinese “Exclusion Act” would jeopardize Canada’s international reputation, these debates also noted the relationship between redress and citizenship more broadly. It was James Allison Glen, a Liberal member of Parliament for the riding of Marquette in Manitoba, who understood the Chinese Immigration Act to be more than just a problem for Canada’s image abroad. Extending the issue of national reputation to the problem of rights, Glen argued that the legislation was a violation of citizenship rights. He declared: I would be much more concerned and feel much more anxiety if this bill [to repeal the Chinese Immigration Act] did not pass, because then it could be said with justice – and in my judgment the accusation would be unanswerable – that by refusing to give Canadian citizens of Chinese origin the right to have their wives and children live with them in Canada, we had violated the

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[United Nations] charter and denied those citizens what has been and should be considered as an inalienable right to live with family.11

In connecting the problem of discrimination with citizenship rights, Glen brought the discussion back to the very ideals of the debates on the Citizenship Act which had unfolded only months earlier and, in so doing, revealed how the Chinese Immigration Act tested those ideals. In the midst of the debates on Bill no. 7, what would eventually become the Citizenship Act of Canada, a young John Diefenbaker rose in the house to offer a vision of Canadian citizenship. On 2 April 1946, he stated: “All my life I have hoped for this day. I believe it means much to this country and to our future. Canada to me means more than the ownership of acres; it means a citizenship which maintains in this part of North America the highest heritage of British peoples everywhere in the world. It means to Canadians, without regard to racial origin, freedom and tolerance and liberty.”12 While Diefenbaker’s liberal vision captures a familiar and generalized idea of what citizenship in Canada aims to be, the overt Anglo-centrism of his appeal to the “highest heritage of British peoples everywhere in the world” reveals a fault line in the debates on citizenship in the House of Commons leading up to the passing of the Citizenship Act. On the one hand, he outlines an ethno-cultural specificity to Canadian citizenship that is bound to Britishness. On the other, he upholds the notion of Canadian citizenship as defined by a disregard for “racial origin.” Daniel Coleman outlines precisely the workings of this logic whereby a specifically British form of government enables a supposed tolerance for racial otherness. He argues, “Britishness was believed to represent a unique achievement of liberty and equality while … retaining a respect for a traditional monarchial (and therefore divinely appointed) order.”13 This “truer civility” served to differentiate Canada’s domesticated Britishness from that of the United States particularly in matters of race, with its proponents pointing to examples such as “Canada’s more humane dealings with Native peoples in comparison to the United States, the early rejection of slavery in John Grave Simcoe’s abolition of slavery … in 1793, and Canada’s use of civil rather than racist rationalizations for immigration policies.”14 Diefenbaker’s speech encapsulates this belief in the civilizing power of Britishness as the ethno-cultural underpinning for racial tolerance. There are actually two ideals of citizenship that emerge from these debates, and Diefenbaker’s vision can be read as a mediation of the two. These ideals emerge with stark clarity in a lengthy exchange between T.L. Church, the Conservative member of Parliament representing the constituency of Broadview in Ontario, and Roch Pinard, the Liberal member of Parliament for Chambly-Rouville in Quebec. During the debates which occurred on the occasion of the second reading of Bill no. 7 on 5 April 1946, Church all but declared the natural home of citizenship to be that of empire and not, significantly, nation: The bill states that people born in Canada, or people from Great Britain already in Canada, shall be known as Canadians. I never knew that to be questioned before. I am a Canadian and also a British subject; they are both the same, and we need no bill like this to make them so. To be able to say, “I am a British subject,” means something, because if you were a British subject on the high seas and produced a British passport, it guaranteed a safe journey to your journey’s end. British supremacy on the high seas saved the world in four centuries – those of Philip of Spain,

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For Church, citizenship without empire borders on the meaningless. Rather than unifying the nation, Church warns that the bill “is separatis in excelsis. It will cause widespread disunity and resentment.”16 To tear Canada away from empire, according to Church, is to risk the devolution of the nation. As Carl Berger observes of the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth century Canadian political movement for unity with Britain, “imperialism was one form of Canadian nationalism.”17 According to this paradoxical logic, advocates such as Church argued that membership in the British empire was the best way to promote the development of Canada as a nation. Against this vision of citizenship as an extension of empire, in a striking moment of postcolonial identification, albeit a postcoloniality understood within the specificities of Franco-Canadian identities under British rule, Roch Pinard, the Liberal member of Parliament for Chambly-Rouville in Quebec, offers another vision of Canadian citizenship which could be understood as an unambiguous rejection of empire and imperial attachments. Responding to Church, Pinard declared: “After more than three centuries of toil, effort and struggle, our country wishes now to break, one after another, all her ties, to proclaim her faith and confidence in herself and in her future … Canada left many years ago the humiliating valley of colonialism; she has marched slowly but with firm determination in the thorny path of the conquest of her liberties. With the help of all her people, she has now reached the gates of the City.”18 Pinard’s declarations can be understood within the specifics of a francophone experience of being made subject to British imperialism, but it can also be read more widely as an engagement with the possibility of postcolonial citizenship – a citizenship that could be said, and here I am borrowing from Dipesh Chakrabarty, to “provincialize” empire. In Church’s references to the possibilities of peril on the high seas, he suggests that citizenship within British empire matters most when one is not at home, and in moments of danger. Church looks to citizenship as a form of protection from the unknown abroad. In contrast, Pinard looks upon a Canadian citizenship distinct from the British metropole as protection from the known perils of the insularity of empire. Pinard looks to Canadian citizenship as a form of freedom from British rule even as he obfuscates the colonization of Indigenous nations by which this “conquest” of liberty is enabled. Nonetheless, for Pinard, Canadian citizenship consolidates liberation. I want to retrieve this moment before the inception of the Canadian citizen because it offers two distinct visions of citizenship. On the one hand, there is citizenship as imperial membership and, on the other, there is citizenship as postcolonial liberation. Where Diefenbaker offered a disregard for racial origin as a promise of Canadian citizenship that would nevertheless still be distinctly British, Pinard rejects British influence as that which is bound to the “humiliations” of colonialism. In this specific context of the inception of the Canadian citizen, citizenship has been reoriented away from empire, away from exclusion, and towards the promises of postcoloniality. This vision of Canada differs from the cultural nationalism of the mid-twentieth century and the project of official multiculturalism in the decades that followed in terms of its explicit understanding of citizenship as specifically anti-imperialist. While the 1949–51 Massey Report was, as Laura Moss and Cynthia Sugars observe, part of a government agenda of “cultural nationalism”19 – of developing a distinctive Canadian national identity

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through the promotion of culture and the arts – the Massey Report’s focus on “American cultural annexation”20 still avoids deploying the language of empire and colonialism in relation to citizenship itself. That is, the cultural nationalism of the mid-twentieth century was positioned against the threat of cultural imperialism from the United States, but it was not nearly as concerned with the legacy of British imperialism embedded within Canadian citizenship. The difference between the twentieth-century cultural nationalism emerging from the Massey Report and Pinard’s postcolonial citizenship lies in the focus of the latter upon considering Britain as an imperialist force in Canada. While cultural nationalism focused on the imperializing incursions of US mass culture, it did not situate British imperialism as something to be guarded against. Indeed, as Coleman’s illustration of the way in which Britishness offered a “truer civility” than that of the United States, Canadian cultural nationalism was not impelled by anti-imperialist sentiment towards Britain. Arguably, cultural nationalism embraced Canada’s connection to Britain as a way of articulating cultural difference from the United States. In contrast, Pinard’s call for liberation focuses squarely on the history of British imperialism in Canada. The promise Pinard’s statement gestures towards shares something with the promises and hopes of decolonization movements occurring around the globe during the mid-twentieth century. In parliamentary debates of the time, there is an awareness of events unfolding in other parts of the British Empire and beyond. Church noted, “It is strange that some of those outside this house who are supporting this bill seem to favour a republic in Canada similar to what South Africa and Eire want.”21 In addition to the events unfolding in South Africa and Ireland at the time, 1947, as scholars of postcolonialism know well, marked the culmination of the decolonization movement in India. However, despite the seeming progressiveness of Pinard’s postcolonial identifications, the debates in the House of Commons in 1947 reveal how those identifications left uninterrogated the status of white-settler authority. Despite a vote for national sovereignty, and thus against imperial identifications, the question of the place of the racialized other persists throughout the debates. As many members of the House suggested, the ideal Canadian citizen is white. During a debate that unfolded over a previous reading of the bill to repeal the Chinese Immigration Act, the Liberal member of Parliament for Comox-Alberni in British Columbia, Mr John Gibson, stated on 11 February 1947: I believe that we should treat the Chinese with the greatest tolerance, generosity and understanding, but I would warn every hon. member that we have a solemn responsibility toward the generations that come after us to see that we keep this Canada white. I do not say that in any derogatory way, because I believe that a man with a yellow skin or a black skin is just as good as I am in every respect. But we have a responsibility to Canada that we must undertake and stand up for. The early pioneers in this country, the French who are so proud of their race, and our English and Scottish ancestors endured all the hardships of those early days and helped to create this great country, and I think we owe it to them to make sure that future generations in this country will be predominantly white and predominantly British.22

Gibson’s statement is striking not only because it seeks to transform “pioneering” into a form of white autochthony,23 but also because it anxiously appends Britishness to that whiteness. He subsumes French difference under the larger category of whiteness such that it becomes comparable to Englishness and Scottishness. For Gibson, whiteness in and of

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itself would not sufficiently demarcate the predominant ethnicity and cultural affiliation of Canada’s future generations. His statement also marks a clear distinction between the human and the Canadian citizen. As Giorgio Agamben and Susan Maslan have noted, contemporary forms of citizenship, drawing heavily from the model of citizenship developed by the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, must come to terms with the division between the figure of the human and that of the citizen at the heart of the declaration.24 The 1789 Declaration does not take for granted that they are one and the same. Indeed, the declaration goes out of its way to differentiate man from citizen. This differentiation is not an accident of redundancy but a clear statement on the dispensability of humanity to citizenship. For Maslan, citizenship can be “anti-human” and to forget that the figure of the citizen is not necessarily the figure of man risks mistaking citizenship as unquestionably beneficent. That citizenship is not simply conferred upon those who are recognized as human may seem obvious given that humanity is not a guarantee of access to the rights and privileges of belonging to a particular nation-state. What is less obvious is the racism this distinction mediates. As Maslan observes, the gap between man and citizen emerges with particular force in the context of race: “Asians and Africans, both favorite French examples of oppressed peoples, would be recognized by the Declaration not as citizens of France, of course, but rather in their capacity as men – a title which confers upon them a body of rights that must be acknowledged and recognized by all other human beings.”25 Thus, the French could recognize the humanity of Asians and Africans, sympathize with them, embrace their capacity to feel and to reason. But they need not grant them citizenship. That this division should be so neatly and unambiguously reiterated by a member of Parliament in Canada more than a century and a half later speaks to the persistence of anti-humanist foundations for contemporary citizenship. It is a division that points broadly to the forms of exclusion and discrimination that gird citizenship, and a division that highlights race specifically as one of the key cruxes of that exclusion and discrimination. Canadian citizenship continues to carry this unresolved legacy of explicit exclusion. The nuances and complexities of thinking about settler colonialism in Canada illuminates the doubled ambiguity of Pinard’s passionate claims for freedom and Diefenbaker’s contradictory desire to embrace British heritage even as he wants to argue for a citizenship that would be blind to race. As Alan Lawson recognizes of settler colonialism in terms of what he and Stephen Slemon have called the “Second-World,” “Second-World cultural space … is colonizing and colonized, both doubly inscribed and doubly absent.”26 Stephen Slemon notes the potential power of this doubleness in settler colonial writing: But what perhaps marks the genuine difference in the contestatory activity of Second- and Third-World post-colonial writing … is that the illusion of a stable self/other, here/there binary has never been available to Second-World writers, and that as a result the sites of figural contestation between oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized, have been taken inward and internalized in Second-World post-colonial practice …The Second-World writer, the SecondWorld text, that is, have always been complicit in colonialism’s territorial appropriation of land, and voice, and agency, and this has been their inescapable condition even at those moments when they have promulgated their most strident and most spectacular figures of post-colonial resistance.27

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While Slemon discusses the particularity of settler colonial literary production, his argument also gestures towards the overarching socio-political dynamics that render a settler nation at once invested in the legacy of the imperial metropole and yet resentfully marginalized from it. Slemon’s recognition of the instability of the boundaries between colonizer and colonized in the Second World, moreover, elucidates how the inception of Canadian citizenship took the shape of both an attempt at liberation from, and a complicity with, colonialism. The long, extended conversation in Canada about the place of racial otherness, and Chineseness specifically – from the first head-tax legislation in 1885 to the on-going struggle for full redress today – reveals the ways in which Canadian citizenship remains caught between empire and postcoloniality. Redress and the Transformation of Canadian Citizenship Despite the vital difference between Canada’s fledgling and compromised identification with settler postcoloniality in 1947 and outright decolonization by subjugated Indigenous populations unfolding elsewhere, I want to hang on to Pinard’s statement as the flawed and uneasy place from which to base a sense of Canadian citizenship which can embrace rather than cover over the fault line of British specificity and racial disregard outlined in Diefenbaker’s statement. Further, I suggest that the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century Chinese Canadian redress movement recalls and also revises this 1947 moment of the postcolonial possibilities of Canadian citizenship. For example, the resistance encapsulated in the Chinese head-tax movement’s call for reparative justice is an attempt to engage in a broader politics of citizenship. It situates citizenship as a problem of postcolonial futures. When Avvy Go observes that the head-tax redress movement “honours truth and justice, while challenging our society to continuously and collectively confront the mistakes it has made so as to help ensure a better future for all of us,”28 more than fifty years after the citizenship debates, she echoes the language and logic of these earlier debates. In this recapitulation of the idealism of citizenship, a harm that has been inflicted upon one minority community damages the community as a whole. Redress, once again, is as much about those who have suffered injustice as it is about repairing the integrity of Canadian citizenship itself. The reparation of Canadian citizenship imagined by the Chinese Canadian redress movement, however, is not an uncritical one; rather, it is strategic, mobilizing the idealism of citizenship to force an engagement with its problems in practice. Thereby, the Chinese Canadian redress movement also moves beyond the blindnesses embedded in Pinard’s moments of insight by extending the postcolonial identifications invoked by Pinard into a more rigorous recognition of the range of colonial injustices that have been committed in the name of creating Canada and the profoundly uneven forms of subjugation to empire that have been shaped by the complex layers of race, class, and gender. Matt James notes that the Chinese head-tax redress movement uses “its stock of symbolic capital to promote [broader forms of] progressive social change” for the Canadian citizenry as a whole.29 He points out that “the Chinese Canadian National Council has consistently urged that, aside from compensating head-tax payers and their immediate descendants, any redress paid by the federal government should be dedicated to establishing anti-racism chairs in Canadian universities, to enhancing the work of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and to funding community anti-racism projects.”30

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James further notes that the movement used the media attention from their claims to highlight the connections between discriminatory practices of the past and those of the present such as the $975 landing fee imposed upon new immigrants by the 1995 changes to Canada’s immigration policy.31 In a statement made to the Standing Committee on Finance in February 2005, Christine Li, a member of the national executive of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC), opened by noting that the “CCNC has always been supportive of other social justice organizations in their advocacy for positive change – progressive tax policies, university child care, increased funding for health and education, new funding for affordable housing, and strengthened commitment to international development.32 By connecting its claims to those of other communities, and by insisting upon a relation between past and present discrimination, the Chinese head-tax redress further refines Pinard’s hope that Canadian citizenship would be a crucial step towards liberation from oppression. The movement for Chinese head-tax redress demands an understanding of Canadian citizenship that remains alive to the many intersecting histories of discrimination, exclusion, and imperialist oppression that the nation perpetually forgets. By situating one oppression in relation to others rather than emphasizing the particularity of the wrongs of the head tax, the redress movement does not cling to the past. Instead, it looks forward precisely by looking back. Postcolonial futures allow for a recognition of the way in which the expectation of particular futures shapes the past as a problem for the present. Returning then to the seeming hollowness of the victory that could be derived from Prime Minister Harper’s 2006 apology to Chinese Canadians, I suggest that it may seem less hollow cast in the light of a successful continuation of a long-standing struggle to keep alive a recognition of the problematic and deeply uneasy nature of Canadian citizenship. As the debates in the period immediately before and immediately following the passage of the Citizenship Act of Canada demonstrate, Canadian citizenship was never easy, never unambiguously happy or positive. The campaign for Chinese head-tax redress uses the call for Canada to live up to a version of its better self as a springboard for a deeper engagement with the postcolonial ideals of Canadian citizenship. As James contends, the movement does not seek to “sanitize the present” by “bartering redemption for the state and majority society in return for a satisfactory settlement.”33 Chinese head-tax redress cannot function as the conscience of Canadian citizenship. Rather, it calls upon Canadian citizenship to return again and again to difficulties in its foundations. I would like to close by way of a brief examination of Prime Minister Harper’s apology in the context of revisiting the postcolonial potentialities embedded within Canadian citizenship. One of the most striking problems with the phrasing of the apology lies in its insistence upon the past as past. “No country is perfect. Like all countries,” the prime minister acknowledges in his apology, “Canada has made mistakes in its past, and we realize that.”34 A few lines later, he reinforces more vigorously the distinction between the contemporary nation and the one that had originally passed this racist legislation: “And even though the head tax – a product of a profoundly different time – lies far in our past, we feel compelled to right this historic wrong for the simple reason that it is the decent thing to do, a characteristic to be found at the core of the Canadian soul.”35 In its turn to a national soul, and its reassertion of the difference between Canada then and now, the speech is almost defensive in its insistence upon the past as past. The past, however, has ways of migrating into the present. It does not stay put. The prime minister’s attempt to draw a distinct boundary between a racist past and a

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somewhat less shameless present is as futile an exercise as that of locating a perfectly stainless instance of Canadian citizenship to which redress might enable a return. Introducing yet another specious division, Prime Minister Harper further divides Canadians from their system of justice: “And while Canadian courts have ruled that the head tax, and immigration prohibition, were legally authorized, we fully accept the moral responsibility to acknowledge these shameful polices of our past.”36 He then goes on to observe that “Canadians, however, are a good and just people, acting when we’ve committed wrong.”37 In reinforcing the technical legality of the head tax, the prime minister’s claim to accepting moral responsibility establishes a division between morality and justice. It begs the question of the instances when the Canadian justice system could be immoral. In this strange logic where the past does not occupy the present, and moral rightness can be divorced from justice, the prime minister’s apology is most striking for its insistence upon divisions. A statement that is ostensibly about healing old fractures across a national community, the apology insists upon the insolubility of divisions that are neither as solid nor as defensible as they may seem. Prime Minister Harper offers the apology as a step towards fuller citizenship for Chinese Canadians: “We also recognize that our failure to truly acknowledge these historical injustices has led many in the community from seeing themselves as fully Canadian.” To be seen – either by oneself or by others – as “fully Canadian” cannot be divorced from access to full citizenship. Given its insistence upon division, upon a present stripped of the past and a morality without justice, this attempt at a “true acknowledgment” seems all too partial. The symbolic payments that have been made to former Chinese head-tax payers and their spouses have been made ex gratia. Within the technicality of the law, these are payments that explicitly mark the refusal of liability on the part of the government and the people of Canada. Literally, they are payments made out of kindness or grace. However, it is clear that the Chinese head-tax movement, together with other redress and social-justice movements in Canada, have opened up the possibility of a state of grace for citizenship in Canada. In drawing Canadian citizenship out of the insularity of empire, and into the promise of its postcolonial identifications, the redress movement navigates the delicate line between victory and loss. It holds true to a vision of Canadian citizenship where morality need not be separated from justice and where the present need not be isolated from the past.

NOTES 1 Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr Irvine, MP, 2 May 1947, p. 2705. 2 David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 31. 3 Roy Miki, Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004), 323. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 325. 6 Chinese Canadian National Council, “Redress for Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act – Backgrounder,” September 2003. http://www.ccnc.ca/sectionEntry.php?entryID=10&type =Advocacy. 7 Ibid.

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8 David Dyzenhaus and Mayo Moran, “Mack v. Attorney General of Canada: Equality, History, and Reparation,” in Calling Power to Account: Law, Reparations, and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Case, ed. D. Dyzenhaus and M. Moran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 18. 9 Avvy Go, “Litigating Injustice,” in Calling Power to Account, ed. Dyzenhaus and Moran, 20–1. 10 Ibid., 22–3. 11 Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr James Allen Glen, MP, 2 May 1947, pp. 2783–4. 12 Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr Diefenbaker, MP, 2 April 1946, p. 514. 13 Daniel Coleman, White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 20. 14 Ibid., 20–1. 15 Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr Church, MP, 5 April 1946, p. 600. 16 Ibid. 17 Carl Berger, Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism 1867–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 259. 18 Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr Pinard, MP, 5 April 1946, p. 607. 19 Laura Moss and Cynthia Sugars, “Introduction,” in Canadian Literature: Texts and Contexts, Volume II, ed. L. Moss and C. Sugars (Toronto: Pearson Longman, 2009), 12. 20 Laura Moss and Cynthia Sugars, “The Massey Report,” in Canadian Literature, ed. Moss and Sugars, 205. 21 Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr Church, MP, 5 April 1946, p. 600. 22 Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr Gibson, MP, 11 February 1947, p. 323. 23 These debates also revealed a deep anxiety about race and citizenship through the language of naturalization. For example, on 5 April 1946, MP Howard Charles Green (Vancouver South) discussed the problem of “natural-born Canadian citizens”: “They are given very broad rights and perhaps that is the proper thing to do, but it seems to me that there has not been sufficient thought given to the question of what is to be done with the natural-born Canadian who has transferred his loyalty to another country. We are granting extensive rights to natural-born Canadians and yet there are natural-born Canadians who do not deserve those rights.” Canada, House of Commons Debates, Mr Howard Charles Green, MP, 5 April 1946, p. 615. He makes direct reference to the Japanese in the subsequent paragraph and he gives the example of a Canadian-born Japanese man who was a “chief torturer of our own troops in Hong Kong.” He goes on to say, “The bill merely says that if a person born in Canada has become an alien, then he is no longer entitled to the rights of a natural-born Canadian. But there is no definition of how he becomes an alien.” 24 See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), and Susan Maslan, “The Anti-Human: Man and Citizen before the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,” South Atlantic Quarterly 103, nos. 2/3 (2004): 360. 25 Maslan, “The Anti-Human,” 360. 26 Alan Lawson, “Postcolonial Theory and the ‘Settler’ Subject,” in Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism, ed. C. Sugars (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2004), 160. 27 Stephen Slemon, “Unsettling Empire: Resistance Theory for the Second-World,” World Literatures Written in English 30, no.2 (1990): 38. 28 Go, “Litigating Injustice,” 23.

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29 Matt James, “Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: The Case of the ‘Chinese Head Tax,’” Canadian Journal of Political Science 37, no. 4 (2004): 896. 30 Ibid., 896–7. 31 Ibid., 897. 32 Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Finance, Evidence, 4 November 2005, 38th Parliament, 1st Session, 2005–6 (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services, 2006). 33 James, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Redress,” 898. 34 Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, “Prime Minster Harper Offers Full Apology for the Chinese Head Tax,” Office of the Prime Minister, 22 June 2006, http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/ media.asp?id=1219. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.

5 On the Idea of Reconciliation in Contemporary Aboriginal Politics dale turner

State apologies and visions of reconciliation have become a central issue in contemporary Indigenous politics in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada. The prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, offered a formal apology in parliament to Aboriginal peoples for what has come to be known as “The Stolen Generation.”1 Many Aboriginal rights advocates in Australia view this apology as an important step towards what has been up until now an unsuccessful and ineffective attempt at reconciliation.2 In New Zealand, the Waitangi Tribunal was created in 1975 to investigate Maori claims of discrimination and then a decade later was extended to cover Maori claims of historical injustice.3 In the United States, Senator Brownback of Kansas successfully lobbied to amend a Defense Appropriations Act to add a section with an apology to American Indians for historical injustices.4 The idea of reconciliation is also alive and well in Canadian Aboriginal politics. In July 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in parliament to Aboriginal peoples for the mistreatment of Aboriginal school children in government-sanctioned residential schools.5 For many, the formal apology represents an important step towards renewing the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples on a more just foundation; however, for others, the apology has muddied the political waters by doing little to address the constitutional and political roadblocks that define Aboriginal politics in Canada. At first glance, the government’s implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)6 demonstrates a willingness to settle past injustices and, more importantly, move the relationship forward on a clean(er) moral slate. The purpose of this chapter is to show that the TRC in fact fails to incorporate the inherent right of Aboriginal self-government into its mandate, which means that the government’s idea of reconciliation does not place Aboriginal nationhood at the centre of renewing the legal and political relationship. The TRC’s idea of reconciliation focuses on resolving historical injustices in order to heal “unhealthy” Aboriginal communities, whereas the idea of renewal, especially as it has been understood since the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), is explicitly a political project: reconciliation attempts to heal Aboriginal peoples and communities; renewal attempts to implement the nation-to-nation political relationship.7 My discussion will proceed in two parts. The first part focuses on the meaning and content of section 35(1) of the Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, which states that “[t]he existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.”8 I examine s. 35(1) as it is interpreted, first, by the Royal Commission

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on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) and, second, in contemporary constitutional law. RCAP’s vision of a just renewed relationship argues that s. 35(1) protects the Aboriginal inherent right of self-government. This interpretation of s. 35(1) is central to RCAP’s renewed political vision because the inherent right of self-government legitimates the nation-to-nation relationship. For RCAP, s. 35(1) rights are not bestowed upon Aboriginal peoples by the state; rather, Aboriginal rights are inherent because they flow out of Aboriginal nationhood, and therefore ought to play a central role in the current legal and political relationship. In contemporary constitutional law in Canada, the Van der Peet decision, handed down by the Supreme Court in 1996 (the same year as RCAP’s final report), was groundbreaking.9 Aboriginal rights, as constitutional rights, came into existence in 1982; however, it was not until the Van der Peet decision that we began to see a substantive theory of Aboriginal rights. Van der Peet defines s. 35(1) as a form of reconciliation: … the aboriginal rights recognized and affirmed by s. 35(1) are best understood as, first, the means by which the Constitution recognizes the fact that prior to the arrival of Europeans in North America the land was already occupied by distinctive aboriginal societies, and as, second, the means by which that prior occupation is reconciled with the assertion of Crown sovereignty over Canadian territory. The content of Aboriginal rights must be directed at fulfilling both of these purposes …10

For the Supreme Court, this period of “prior occupation” is characterized by the “laws and customs of Aboriginal peoples.” However, there are two problems with Van der Peet’s way of understanding the meaning of s. 35(1). First, its interpretation of s. 35(1) fails to appreciate the richness of Aboriginal interpretations of their laws and customs. Second, the court fails to recognize that Aboriginal understandings of their laws and customs should stand on their own in Canadian courts. Van der Peet demands that Aboriginal explanations (arguments) be articulated in the language of Canadian common law, that is to say, recoded into Euro-Canadian jurisprudence. I will show that RCAP, in contrast, attempts to integrate Aboriginal interpretations of their laws and customs into its vision of a renewed legal and political relationship. The second part of this chapter focuses on the idea of reconciliation in the context of the TRC. The TRC will listen to Aboriginal narratives and explanations of the past (perhaps articulated in Aboriginal languages), but ultimately the commission’s findings and recommendations must be articulated in a language that is useful to the parties to the settlement agreement.11 I claim that the TRC’s work is, by necessity, a political activity, and therefore it must also consider the problems of interpretation and translatability associated with the competing interpretations of s. 35(1). I argue that for the TRC to be useful as a means of healing the nation-to-nation relationship, it must also affirm the inherent Aboriginal right of self-government. The first part of the chapter shows that clarifying the meaning of s. 35(1) is central to contemporary constitutional law, and therefore it remains contentious in contemporary Aboriginal politics. The second part shows that the TRC cannot hope for reconciliation without incorporating the politics associated with interpreting the meaning and content of s. 35(1). In other words, the TRC’s mandate glosses over the messy language and politics of constitutional interpretation, and therefore fails to adopt a richer understanding of reconciliation.

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Part 1: On the Meaning of Section 35(1) RCAP’s Vision of a Renewed Relationship The late 1980s and 1990s was a volatile time for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The infamous “Oka Crisis” in the summer of 1990 brought Aboriginal politics to the forefront of Canadian and international politics. The town of Oka, Quebec, a small community just off the island of Montreal, sought to expand a nine-hole golf course into an eighteen-hole course. The Mohawk people of Kahnesatake claimed that the expanded golf course would infringe upon their homeland. The town of Oka insisted the land belonged to the town. This difference of opinion led to a conflict that lasted the entire summer of 1990 and to a series of events which included the Mohawk of Kahnawake blocking the Mercier bridge (one of the main traffic arteries onto the island of Montreal), the Quebec government calling in the army to remove the blockade, local townspeople violently confronting Mohawks, and Mohawk warriors confronting the army and the Sûreté du Québec (the provincial police force). The issue of the golf-course expansion was never fully resolved as the federal government purchased the land from the province and now holds it in trust for the Mohawk.12 Canada’s international reputation as a defender of human rights came under fire, especially when several local residents of the nearby town of Chateauguay were captured on video pelting rocks at automobiles filled mostly with Mohawk women and elderly people as they crossed the Mercier Bridge.13 The political climate in Canada shifted and Aboriginal issues became more visible in mainstream Canadian media. The federal government’s response to the events at Oka was to implement the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1991, the Canadian state’s first major post-1982 initiative at reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples. The commission’s extensive mandate examined Aboriginal health, education, governance, the north, the Métis, urban issues, and Elders. It had the power to subpoena and its final report tabled 435 policy recommendations in Parliament. Aboriginal peoples met the creation of the commission with a great deal of optimism and they played a large role in shaping its structure, personnel, and agenda.14 The life of the commission was broadly divided into two phases. The first consisted of four rounds of hearings in addition to a comprehensive research agenda.15 This phase lasted for approximately two years and generated an archive of over 20,000 pages. The second phase involved reconciling the massive amount of information and research gathered from the first phase with contemporary Aboriginal policy making in Canada. RCAP’s problems began when the commissioners had to shift their focus from listening to Aboriginal peoples and gathering information guided by RCAP’s extensive research agenda to evaluating Aboriginal public policy. The commissioners were profoundly affected by what they heard from Aboriginal peoples.16 Their final report laid out a vision of a renewed relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples that was to be guided by the principles of mutual recognition, reciprocity, responsibility, and sharing.17 These principles, or touchstones, arose out of a renewed historical understanding of the early treaty relationship. A just renewal of the political relationship would require that Canadians come to terms with the colonial past and participate in the reconfiguration of Aboriginal peoples’ place in Canadian society.18 In order to articulate this vision, in the second phase the commission was to perform a detailed analysis of Aboriginal policymaking in Canada. Aboriginal peoples had participated directly during the listening phase of the commission’s life, but the Aboriginal voice

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mattered less when it was time to analyse and ultimately make legal and political recommendations about renewing the existing relationship. The predicament the commissioners faced in writing the final report reflected an on-going problem in the historical relationship: how to reconcile Aboriginal with Western European ways of knowing the world in the context of the legal and political discourses of the state. Making sense of what these different ways of knowing mean and how they are related to each other was a problem throughout the life of RCAP, and it continues to be one of the pressing problems in the contemporary relationship.19 Aside from the problems associated with reconciling Indigenous and non-Indigenous world views, the commissioners faced a more practical dilemma, that of articulating a workable vision of the nation-to-nation relationship. The final report defended the Aboriginal inherent right of self-government and argued that s. 35(1) protects it. RCAP’s renewed political vision, guided by the four principles noted above, was grounded in four claims: 1 2 3 4

Aboriginal peoples possess the right of self-determination. Aboriginal communities constitute nations. Aboriginal nations possess the right of self-government. The right of self-government is protected by section 35 of the constitution.

The governance chapter in volume 2 begins with the claim that every human being possesses the “inherent freedom to discover who and what he or she is.”20 This leads to a working definition of sovereignty: “Sovereignty is the natural right of all human beings to define, sustain and perpetuate their identities as individuals, communities and nations.”21 In terms of peoples, then, sovereignty “finds its natural expression in the principle of selfdetermination” and self-government “flows from the principle of self-determination.”22 This understanding of sovereignty, rooted in the principles of self-determination and selfgovernment, is, of course, in line with Western European understandings of the term from at least the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The sovereign represents authority; that is, sovereignty accords the state the right to exclude outsiders, to create borders, and to exercise legitimate political authority. RCAP’s political vision of Canada is informed by this Western European understanding of power; at the same time, RCAP does not tie sovereignty narrowly and exclusively to the sanctity of the nation-state. For RCAP, Aboriginal nationhood is a normative term that is indispensible for understanding the nature of the nation-to-nation political relationship. In this respect RCAP can be said to go further than the courts have done since 1982 in defining the Aboriginal right of self-government as a section 35 right, that is to say, as a right that reconciles Canadian state sovereignty with pre-contact Aboriginal laws and customs. The courts have avoided making concrete decisions about the nature of Aboriginal self-government and instead have focused on expounding the nature of Aboriginal title – a right to the land itself – as a constitutional right. Aboriginal title is characterized in law as a right to the land itself, its legitimacy tied to Aboriginal peoples’ mere occupation of territory and not to the fundamental recognition of Aboriginal nationhood. RCAP states that the inherent right of self-government, within Canada, stems from the original status of Aboriginal peoples as independent and sovereign nations in the territories they occupied. This status was recognized and recast in the numerous treaties, alliances and other relations maintained with the incoming French and British Crowns. This

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extensive practice gave rise to a body of intersocietal customary law that was common to the parties and eventually became part of the law of Canada.23

As I shall demonstrate below, since the creation of section 35 the Supreme Court has interpreted “intersocietal customary law” in ways that ignore the “independent and sovereign” nationhood of Aboriginal peoples. In contrast, in volume 2 of its final report, RCAP drives home this status of Aboriginal nations: Aboriginal peoples are the descendants of the historical nations of Canada, the first to occupy the land as sovereign peoples and the original stewards of its resources. It is unimaginable that, in their own homelands, Aboriginal peoples should ever be denied Aboriginal and treaty rights that are central to their existence as peoples. This broader approach [one that embraces Aboriginal nationhood] reinforces the conclusion that the inherent right of self-government still exists for all Aboriginal peoples in Canada and that this right exists notwithstanding the terms of legislation passed before 1982.24

Unfortunately, denying Aboriginal peoples their treaty rights and their claims to nationhood has been central to the Canadian legal and political relationship. The Supreme Court’s understanding of intersocietal law is articulated in the language of Canadian common law. For the Supreme Court, s. 35(1) is the means of incorporating the laws and customs of Aboriginal peoples into Canadian common law; however, for Aboriginal leaders, this interpretation subsumes the inherent right in a way that ignores the “inherent-ness” of Aboriginal nationhood. RCAP’s vision of a renewed relationship begins with the recommendation that “Aboriginal nations have to be reconstituted.”25 A few pages later, the report states: “A crucial first component of the renewed relationship will be nation rebuilding and nation recognition. All our recommendations for governance, treaty processes, and lands and resources are based on the nation as the basic political unit of Aboriginal peoples.”26 Renewal, though, depends on a renewed understanding of the historical relationship between Aboriginal nations and the Canadian state. The principles of mutual recognition, reciprocity, responsibility, and sharing arise out of a political and historical investigation of the relationship. This means that understanding the contemporary legal and political relationship requires a richer understanding of how colonialism has disempowered Aboriginal nations. RCAP’s vision of justice demands that the relationship be renewed according to the principles that guided the early treaty relationship. As I stated earlier, the four principles – mutual recognition, reciprocity, responsibility, and sharing – are central to the commission’s justification of the four claims about the nature of the political relationship. The commission’s vision of a just relationship requires that Aboriginal voices shape the normative discourses used in the contemporary legal and political discourses of rights, sovereignty, and nationhood. Aboriginal peoples explain their ways of knowing and, rightfully, these explanations need to find their way into contemporary discussions of their rights, sovereignty, and nationhood – a process that involves reconciling Aboriginal ways of knowing with the contemporary legal and political discourses of the state. Intersocietal customary law, then, does not become part of Canadian law. Intersocietal customary law represents the fusion of Aboriginal and Western European legal horizons. The legitimacy of Canadian state sovereignty is grounded in this intersocietal customary law, which, in turn, is grounded in Aboriginal nationhood.

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Aboriginal oral testimonies are used throughout the commission’s final report to support its legal and political arguments. But the commission also realizes that oral testimonies have intrinsic value. Oral testimonies have normative value on their own, which means that they play a significant role in generating Aboriginal peoples’ understandings of Aboriginal rights, self-government, and nationhood. The form of reconciliation between Aboriginal laws and customs and Canadian law should be what evolves into the intersocietal legal system that RCAP claims defines the Canadian state. One of the central points of RCAP’s work was that all Canadians must recognize that Aboriginal world views create legitimate legal and political systems, and therefore the Canadian state consists of three orders of government: federal, provincial, and Aboriginal. The commission’s task was daunting, but its final report attempted to shift Canadian attitudes about Aboriginal peoples’ place in Canadian society. The final report was released in November of 1996 and the federal government promptly shelved it. The Liberal government’s first formal response to the report was to release its own report in January 1998 called Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan. The plan begins: “Gathering Strength is an action plan designed to renew the relationship with the Aboriginal people of Canada. This plan builds on the principles of mutual respect, mutual recognition, mutual responsibility and sharing which were identified in the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.” The government report outlined a renewed relationship “that expresses a vision of a shared future for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people” and outlined four objectives for immediate action: • Renewing the Partnerships speaks to bringing about meaningful and lasting change in our relationships with Aboriginal people; • Strengthening Aboriginal Governance is about supporting Aboriginal people in their efforts to create effective and accountable governments, affirming treaty relationships, and negotiating fair solutions to Aboriginal land claims; • Developing a New Fiscal Relationship means arriving at financial arrangements with Aboriginal governments and organizations which are stable, predictable, and accountable and will help foster self-reliance; and • Supporting Strong Communities, People and Economies focuses on improving health and public safety, investing in people, and strengthening Aboriginal economic development.27 Unfortunately, the federal government failed to act on most of RCAP’s recommendations and the objectives of the Gathering Strength report.28 However, the government did offer a “Statement of Reconciliation,” delivered by then Minister of Aboriginal Affairs Jane Stewart, regretting “past actions that resulted in weakening the identity of Aboriginal peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures, and outlawing spiritual practices.”29 It also established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF), a non-profit private corporation with a $350 million “healing fund” to implement “community-based Aboriginal directed healing initiatives.”30 The “Statement of Reconciliation” and AHF that came out of the Gathering Strength report led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Act, the formation of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and, finally, the formal apology regarding the policy of Indian Residential Schooling and its destructive legacies delivered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008. These actions are certainly

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important for improving the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples, but they do little to reconfigure the legal and political relationship, and especially embed the right of self-government in section 35(1). Reconciliation and Section 35(1) in Constitutional Law As I have observed, s. 35(1) rights are defined as the reconciliation of Aboriginal laws and customs, which predate the formation of the Canadian state, with the Crown’s unilateral assertion of sovereignty. The Van der Peet decision specifies that what s. 35(1) does is provide the constitutional framework through which the fact that Aboriginals lived on the land in distinctive societies, with their own practices, traditions and cultures, is acknowledged and reconciled with the Crown. The substantive rights that fall within the provision must be defined in light of this purpose; the Aboriginal rights recognized and affirmed by s. 35(1) must be directed towards reconciliation of the pre-existence of Aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown.31

Research and reflection on the meaning and content of s. 35 has a short twenty-six-year history. It takes years for any case to get to the Supreme Court, and thus for any case that might interpret or reconfigure the meaning and content of s. 35(1) rights to produce concrete effects. This means that one Supreme Court decision can cause an enormous amount of damage in Aboriginal communities. What makes a single Supreme Court case even more dangerous is that the court may be using a misguided understanding of s. 35(1). I believe that Van der Peet’s 1996 interpretation of s. 35(1) propelled Aboriginal rights discourse in a decidedly anti-RCAP direction. RCAP embraced the nation-to-nation relationship and the inherent right of Aboriginal self-government, while Van der Peet characterizes Aboriginal rights as, ultimately, a form of cultural right. The problem with characterizing Aboriginal rights solely as a form of cultural right is that their source lies in the distinctiveness of Aboriginal cultural practices. Post–Van der Peet Aboriginal rights, then, are inherently connected to the “distinctiveness” of Aboriginal cultures. The decision states: “[T]he following test should be used to identify whether an applicant has established an aboriginal right protected by s. 35(1): in order to be an aboriginal right an activity must be an element of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the distinctive culture of the aboriginal group claiming the right.”32 There are two problems with this approach to characterizing the meaning and content of Aboriginal rights. First, there are problems associating Aboriginal rights with the discourse of culture. The Supreme Court, in its Van der Peet decision, embraces a view of Aboriginal cultures that fails to allow them to evolve beyond seeing them as frozen in time before contact with European cultures.33 The second problem is with using Aboriginal oral histories as evidence in a court of law. The problems with the frozen rights approach run deeper than merely “freezing” Aboriginal rights in a pre-contact context. The rights that flow out of Aboriginal “distinctive practices” are associated with precisely the kinds of practices the residential schools were designed to eradicate. Decimating Aboriginal hunting, fishing, and spiritual practices makes the “killing the Indian to save the child” goal much easier to realize. An asymmetry arises when the government, on the one hand, apologizes for the past forced assimilation

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of Indian schoolchildren in residential schools, while on the other hand demanding that Aboriginal peoples, in the present, associate their rights with the very cultural practices that government policies have attempted to destroy. Aboriginal peoples are now forced to justify their rights within a cordoned off pre-contact era that has little relevance to contemporary Aboriginal life. More importantly, government policies, such as the residential schools – implemented to wipe out Aboriginal traditional cultural practices – have deeply affected the quality of life in Aboriginal communities. Regarding the problem of using Aboriginal oral histories as evidence, with Van der Peet Canadian courts must incorporate Aboriginal perspectives into their interpretations of the meaning and content of s. 35(1) rights. However, the decision adds an important qualification: It must also be recognized, however, that that perspective must be framed in terms cognizable to the Canadian legal and constitutional structure. As had already been noted, one of the fundamental purposes of s. 35(1) is the reconciliation of the pre-existence of distinctive Aboriginal societies with the assertion of Crown sovereignty. Courts adjudicating Aboriginal rights claims must, therefore, be sensitive to the Aboriginal perspective, but they must also be aware that Aboriginal rights exist within the general legal system of Canada … The definition of an Aboriginal right must, if it is truly to reconcile the prior occupation of Canadian territory by Aboriginal peoples with the assertion of Crown sovereignty over that territory, take into account the Aboriginal perspective, yet do so in terms cognizable to the non-Aboriginal legal system.34

This imperative to translate into the terms of a “non-Aboriginal” system was reinforced in the Delgamuukw decision, which followed a year later. The Delgamuukw case involved the Git’xan and Wet’Suwet’en people of British Columbia, who claimed that they still owned their homelands, that they never consented to cede these homelands to the federal government, and especially not to the province of British Columbia. Van der Peet may have created the legal space for Aboriginal oral traditions to be recognized as legitimate sources of knowledge; however, in Delgamuukw the Supreme Court, once again, constrained Aboriginal voices. The court stated that “although the doctrine of Aboriginal rights is a common law doctrine, Aboriginal rights are truly sui generis, and demand a unique approach to the treatment of evidence which accords due weight to the perspective of Aboriginal peoples. However, that accommodation must be done in a manner which does not strain ‘the Canadian legal and constitutional structure’ (at para. 49).”35 So, Aboriginal ways of knowing the world, embedded in their oral traditions, are being recognized as legitimate sources of evidence; however, in order for oral histories to matter in court they need to be articulated in the language of the common law, without “straining” Canada’s “legal and constitutional structure.” The Git’xan and Wet’suwet’en justified the ownership of their homelands by offering a sacred song and ceremony as evidence. As the Delgamuukw decision reports, At trial the appellant’s claim was based on their historical use and “ownership” of one or more of the territories … The Gitksan Houses have an “adaawk” which is a collection of sacred oral tradition about their ancestors, histories and territories. The Wet’Suwet’en each have a “kungax” which is a spiritual song or dance or performance which ties them to their land. Both of these were entered as evidence on behalf of the appellants … The most significant evidence

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of spiritual connection between the Houses and their territory was a feast hall. This is where the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en people tell and retell their stories and identify their territories to remind themselves of the sacred connection that they have with their lands. The feast has a ceremonial purpose but it is also used for making important decisions.36

To recall, Delgamuukw, following Van der Peet, accepts Aboriginal oral histories as evidence by expounding on the idea that Aboriginal rights are sui generis in nature. The problem is that the reconciliation of Aboriginal laws and customs with the assertion of Crown sovereignty is set up in such a way that Aboriginal understandings and explanations are trumped by the unquestioned authority of the Canadian state. S. 35(1) rights, as we have seen, are defined as the reconciliation between Aboriginal systems of law and the unilateral assertion of Canadian sovereignty; however, this assertion of sovereignty, embedded in its “Canadian and legal constitutional structure,” has shown itself time and time again to be hostile to Aboriginal understandings of nationhood. Aboriginal ways of knowing – their philosophies – simply do not measure up to the Western European philosophical tradition. The kungax and adaawk are central to Aboriginal explanations of ownership because of their spiritual importance. These spiritual relationships cannot be explained away or captured in a theory; rather, songs like the kungax show that Aboriginal peoples’ ways of relating to the world have moral and political significance. How we make sense of these explanations within Aboriginal philosophies is one problem; how we ought to use them in a court of law is quite a different matter. The onus has been on Aboriginal peoples to find explanations that can be subsumed within a system of law that gains its legitimacy with the creation of the Canadian state. Contemporary Aboriginal politics have not moved past the colonial constraints of Van der Peet, which force Aboriginal peoples to articulate the meaning and content of their world views in the language of Western European law. The political relationship has moved in a constitutional direction that does not have to give serious consideration to Aboriginal peoples’ laws and customs – their ways of knowing and being in the world – since these can be bracketed inasmuch as they “strain the Canadian legal and constitutional structure.” Reconciliation, at least where an understanding of reconciliation involves the participation and consent of Aboriginal peoples, is not possible as long as Aboriginal legal and political thought remains marginalized in the normative conversations about the meaning and content of s. 35(1). The main problem with interpreting s. 35(1) of the constitution is not interpreting the meaning of the descriptors applied to Aboriginal rights – “existing,” “recognized and affirmed”; it is how we ought to reconcile Aboriginal ways of knowing with a legal and political context that is premised on the supremacy of Crown sovereignty. RCAP’s vision of a renewed relationship is significantly different from these 1996 and 1997 Supreme Court decisions in that it represents an attempt to change the attitudes of those in power to reconsider the unilateral assumption that leaves Crown sovereignty unquestioned. The question remains, is s. 35(1) flexible enough to allow for a form of reconciliation that is in line with RCAP’s vision of a just renewed legal and political relationship? This is not a trivial question and I do not believe the meaning of the question is fully understood in contemporary Aboriginal politics. Contemporary Aboriginal rights discourse is guided by the “integral to a distinctive culture test,” which hooks Aboriginal rights onto their cultural practices. In contrast, the inherent view of Aboriginal rights begins from the position that

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Aboriginal peoples constitute nations. Aboriginal rights, then, flow out of their nationhood, and s. 35(1) needs to move beyond viewing Aboriginal rights as an acknowledgment of cultural survival to embrace the political significance of cultural distinctiveness. Aboriginal peoples remain committed to finding ways of participating in the Canadian legal and political relationship while defending the integrity of Aboriginal philosophies. Part 2: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission The mandate of the TRC begins with the following preface: There is an emerging and compelling desire to put the events of the past behind us so that we can work towards a stronger and healthier future. The truth telling and reconciliation process as part of an overall holistic and comprehensive response to the Indian Residential School legacy is a sincere indication and acknowledgement of the injustices and harms experienced by Aboriginal people and the need for continued healing. This is a profound commitment to establishing new relationships embedded in mutual recognition and respect that will forge a brighter future. The truth of our common experiences will help set our spirits free and pave the way to reconciliation.37

The TRC’s mandate is similar to RCAP’s in one important respect. This commission will generate an enormous archive consisting almost entirely of Aboriginal testimony. Unlike RCAP’s mandate, which was much more comprehensive, the renewed relationship focuses on healing past injustices in order to “work towards a stronger and healthier future.”38 The last sentence of the preface is quite telling: “The truth of our common experiences will help set our spirits free and pave the way to reconciliation.” This language reveals a very different approach to the idea of reconciliation than we see in RCAP’s mandate. For the TRC, there is no explicit need for a heavily politicized public inquiry, one that may, for example, involve subpoenaing individuals and making them accountable for their actions. RCAP possessed the power to subpoena, which made its mandate explicitly political. The TRC’s mandate focuses on the historical injustice of the residential schools, and coming to terms with their devastating effects on Aboriginal peoples, but its purpose is to heal Aboriginal communities, which in turn is seen to represent an important step towards the reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. Reconciliation is, in the mandate of the TRC, also intimately connected to the idea of truth. Truth arises out of the commission’s generated archive and it “shall set us free.” There are serious philosophical problems with this account of truth, not to mention the legal problems associated with survivors’ desire to name perpetrators, a naming that the TRC’s terms of reference will forbid.39 In other words, the narratives told by those who testify to the TRC are not guarantees of truth; rather, their telling is to function as a necessary step towards healing past injustices and moving the relationship forward. Of course, healing is important for renewing the relationship, but how past injustices are resolved matters. The TRC’s mandate can be interpreted in two ways. The first is the “so that we never again speak of the subject” approach. What is being heard, laid out before us, is used to level a historical playing field in order to entrench a post-reconciliation political relationship grounded in Van der Peet understandings of s. 35(1). That is to say, after the airing of truths (without exercise of subpoena and without the public naming of perpetrators of

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abuse), Aboriginal rights (interpreted as rights to assert cultural distinctiveness) are to be unquestionably subsumed under the supremacy of state sovereignty. Historical injustices, but also ongoing legal and political injustices related to constraining interpretations of s. 35(1) and the shelving of RCAP’s recognition of an inherent right of self-government, are dissolved by the federal government’s post–Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement commitment to renewing the relationship in a “forward looking” way. In addition to the “sincere” commitment to heal past acts of violence against Aboriginal children, the 2007 IRSSA has determined individual cash settlements according to a formula.40 What matters for the federal government is that the issue be resolved once and for all. Aboriginal peoples get to tell their stories, and in the process, the government wipes the moral slate clean by compensating survivors. Truth telling and compensation, taken together, “work towards a stronger and healthier future.” The form of reconciliation in this approach does not focus on the legal and political dimensions of the relationship – in fact, these are not mentioned at all in the TRC’s mandate. However, there is another way to look at the TRC’s mandate. The commission’s proposed archive not only has the potential to be an educational tool, it can also play an important role in the ongoing process that legitimizes Aboriginal ways of understanding the world. Aboriginal narratives not only reveal what happened to Aboriginal peoples from their own perspective, but reveal how these narratives are understood by Aboriginal peoples themselves. In other words, these narratives are of philosophical and political value, and therefore they ought to participate in ongoing dialogues over the meaning of Aboriginal rights, sovereignty, and nationhood. Aboriginal intellectuals and leaders are responsible for making sure that what is being listened to is used to support or legitimize Aboriginal ways of thinking about the world. It is their job to make sure that Aboriginal accounts of the past are not trivialized, misused, or ignored. Reconciliation, as an ongoing process, is not only about healing past wounds in order to move the relationship forward, it is also about asserting and defending the integrity of Aboriginal nations. Reconciliation, if it is to become a reality, is necessarily political, and the political relationship, for better or worse, is guided by the meaning and content of section 35. The meaning and content of s. 35(1) rights need to work with richer accounts of Aboriginal ways of thinking about the world, as they evolved from “before contact” to the present (which, of course, includes the period of residential schooling), while loosening the powerful grip that state sovereignty has on how we understand the nature of the legal and political relationship. If the relationship is to be reconciled, according to the TRC’s mandate, “based on mutual understanding and respect,” then what the commission listens to, and archives, ought to include the Aboriginal ways of knowing the world proffered in the Van der Peet and Delgamuukw cases, and expounded in the voluminous archive of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Put simply, reconciliation must empower Aboriginal nations, and this empowerment necessarily involves opening the question of the sanctity of the Canadian state’s unilateral assertion of sovereignty. Aboriginal policy in Canada currently works on the unquestioned assumption that state sovereignty is non-negotiable. The mistake is to think that questioning the legitimacy of the unilateral assertion of state sovereignty is to question the legitimacy of the Canadian state. What I believe most Aboriginal peoples are demanding is that, by necessity, our political vision of Canada must include Aboriginal understandings of their laws and customs. These understandings, though, must stand on their

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own in the Canadian legal and political relationship. How to make them do so remains our most pressing problem in contemporary Canadian politics. I’ve briefly discussed three contexts from which we can understand the idea of reconciliation in contemporary Aboriginal politics. The first form of reconciliation, embraced by RCAP, required that many Canadians change their attitudes about the place and political status that Aboriginal peoples have in Canada. The TRC can play an important role in shifting mainstream attitudes about Aboriginal peoples, but not at the expense of ignoring the fact that Aboriginal nations create a third order of government in Canada. The second form of reconciliation focuses on the definition of s. 35(1) of the Canadian Constitution Act, which characterizes Aboriginal rights as the reconciliation of Aboriginal customs and systems of law, which predate the formation of the Canadian state, with the unilateral assertion of Crown sovereignty. Aboriginal peoples’ inherent right of self-government is up for rigorous interpretation, while Canadian sovereignty remains unquestioned and in no need of justification. Further, Aboriginal peoples must explain themselves using a normative language that is not rooted in their own philosophical traditions. Aboriginal peoples argue that the source of their rights flows out of their status as nations. The Van der Peet decision does not allow for Aboriginal nationhood, as it is defended in RCAP’s final report, to play a central role in defining the meaning and content of s. 35(1) rights. This means that Aboriginal peoples will continue to resist a legal and political process that forces Aboriginal nationhood to the margins of the political relationship. Finally, there is the meaning of reconciliation in the TRC. Once again, the federal government has created a commission that will listen to Aboriginal peoples, although in a less political context than RCAP. It is by no means clear how the enormous archive being collected by the TRC will be made to impact the existing social, legal, and political reality of contemporary Aboriginal politics in Canada. I have tried to show that the TRC should not lose sight of RCAP’s vision of the basis for a renewed relationship and current debates over the meaning and content of s. 35(1). The TRC’s exercise in listening should reveal that Aboriginal ways of knowing the world are not only central to healing past injustices, they must also play a role in asserting and defending the integrity of Aboriginal nationhood.

NOTES 1 A video of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology, tabled in Parliament on 13 February 2009, can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3TZOGpG6cM. 2 For example, “Reconciliation Australia” is a non-profit organization dedicated to “promoting the reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians for the wellbeing of the nation.” See http://www.reconciliation.org.au/. 3 The Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the Pakeha, or European newcomers, and Maori people in 1840. The Waitangi Tribunal is charged with investigating and settling claims in a manner that upholds the principles of the original treaty. For a comprehensive resource on the Treaty of Waitangi see http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/category/tid/133. 4 The “Native American Apology Resolution” was signed into law by President Barack Obama on 19 December 2009. The resolution was not delivered publicly, but rather included as a section of the 2010 Defense Appropriations Act, H.R. 3326, Public Law 111-118, through an amendment introduced in the Senate. The text of the resolution “apologizes on behalf of the

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Dale Turner people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States” and “urges” the president to provide official acknowledgment. “President Obama Signs Native American Apology Resolution,” http://nativevotewa.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/president-obama-signs-nativeamerican-apology-resolution/. For a video and text of Prime Minister Harper’s apology see http://www.cbc.ca/news/ background/truth-reconciliation/. Herein referred to as the “TRC.” The TRC was created out of the government’s formal response to the final report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, tabled in parliament in November of 1996. Article 7 of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Act (8 May 2006) established what was then referred to as the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For the commission’s mandate see schedule “N” of the IRSSA, available online at http://www.trc-cvr.ca/overview.html. The mandate builds upon the “Statement of Reconciliation” that was outlined in the federal government’s Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan (published 7 January 1998). The TRC’s official website can be viewed at http:// www.trc-cvr.ca/index_e.html. The official website for the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement can be viewed at http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Ottawa, ON: Canada Communications Group, 1996). Herein referred to as the “final report.” Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada, s. 35(1), Part II of the Constitution Act, 1982 being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982, (U.K.), 1982, c.11. R. v Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507. Ibid., para. 43. The parties to the agreement are the federal government, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and Inuit representatives, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church of Canada, the United Church of Canada, and Roman Catholic entities. See the Settlement Agreement at http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca. For an account of the Oka Crisis see Craig MacLaine, This Land Is Our Land: The Mohawk Revolt at Oka (Maxville, ON: Optimum Publishing International, 1990); Geoffrey York and Loreen Pindera, The People of the Pines: The Warriors and the Legacy of Oka (Toronto: Little, Brown & Co., 1991); and Rick Hornung, One Nation Under the Gun (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992). For documentaries on the Oka Crisis see Alanis Obamsawin, 270 Years of Resistance (National Film Board of Canada, 2008) and Alec G. MacLeod, Acts of Defiance (NFB, 1992). The commission, requested by then former chief justice of the Supreme Court Brian Dickson, was subsequently implemented by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1991. For RCAP’s terms of reference see the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, “Looking Forward, Looking Back,” appendix A (Ottawa: Canada Communications Group, 1996); available online at http:// www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071124130522/http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/ rcap/sg/sga1_e.html. For a summary of the commission’s recommendations see volume 5 of the 4000-page final report, available online at http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ap/rrc-eng.asp. George Erasmus stated in the address to launch the final report, “We criss-crossed the country, often working in three separate teams. By the end of 1993, we had visited 96 communities, held 178 days of hearings, heard briefs from 2,067 people and accumulated more than 76,000 pages of testimony.” From “Address for the launch of the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,” available at http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ap/pubs/spch/spch-eng.asp.

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16 There were seven commissioners: the two co-chairs, George Erasmus and the Honourable René Dussault, and the Honourable Bertha Wilson, J. Peter Meekison, Viola Marie Robinson, Paul Chartrand, and Mary J. Sillett. 17 The principles of the renewed relationship are found in the final report, vol. 1. chap. 16; RCAP’s discussion of Aboriginal governance is found in vol. 2, chap. 3. 18 Final report, chap. 16, “Principles of a Renewed Relationship”; accessed at http://www.aincinac.gc.ca/ap/rrc-eng.asp. 19 See Sa’ke’j Henderson’s and Julia Emberley’s essays in this volume. 20 Final report, vol. 2, 108. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Final report, vol. 2, 166. 24 Ibid., 203. 25 Final report, vol. 5, 2. 26 Ibid., 5. 27 Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan (Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1998), 1–2. 28 The AFN released a study evaluating the government’s response to RCAP’s recommendations and to its own Gathering Strength report. The report states: “The federal response to RCAP was, by the Canadian Government’s own admission, limited in scope to a narrow range of recommendations although it included a statement of reconciliation. Moreover, a lack of political will and commitment has not enabled Gathering Strength to be sustained or effectively implemented across the Government of Canada. The First Nations Action Plan proposed under Gathering Strength has never been pursued after changes in political leadership.” See Assembly of First Nations, The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples at 10 Years: A Report Card (Ottawa: Government Services Canada, 2006). 29 “Canada’s Statement of Reconciliation,” in Gregory Younging, Jonathan Dewar, and Mike DeGagné, eds., Response, Responsibility, and Renewal: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009), 358. The statement of reconciliation is also available online at http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rqpi/apo/js_spea-eng.asp. 30 See “What Is the Aboriginal Healing Foundation” at http://www.ahf.ca/faqs. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s website is found at http://www.ahf.ca/about-us. 31 Van der Peet, para. 31. 32 Ibid., para. 46 (emphasis added). 33 For an excellent critique of the frozen-rights approach to characterizing Aboriginal rights see John Borrows, “Frozen Rights in Canada: Constitutional Interpretation and the Trickster,” American Indian Law Review 22, no.1 (1997): 37–64. 34 Van der Peet, para. 49 (emphasis added). 35 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010, para. 82. 36 Ibid., para. 13–14. The issue was not resolved. In ordering a new trial, the court ruled that, at the lower court, oral traditions were used to justify ownership, while at the Supreme Court the plaintiffs sought recognition of Aboriginal title. 37 The mandate of the TRC is found in schedule “N” of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Act. 38 For example, “Appendix C” in volume 5 of the final report begins: “The mandate conferred on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples on 26 August 1991 was extremely broad – possibly the broadest in the history of Canadian royal commissions. We were asked to look

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at virtually every aspect of the lives of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada – their history, health and education; their aspirations for self-government and relations with Canadian governments; their land claims, treaties, economies and cultures; their living conditions in the North as well as in cities; their relationship with the justice system; the state of their languages; their spiritual well-being and, more generally, their situation in Canada relative to that of non-Aboriginal Canadians.” Accessed at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ webarchives/20071211052457/http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/ska5c_e.html# Appendix C: How We Fulfilled Our Mandate. 39 Not only does the TRC not have the power to subpoena, commissioners are forbidden to name perpetrators unless their identity has already been made public. 40 For the complex assessment criteria used to determine a survivor’s amount of compensation, see schedule D of the IRSSA. Accessed at http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/english_index .html.

6 Incomprehensible Canada james (sa’ke’j) youngblood henderson

This essay focuses on the unique constitutional responsibilities derived from the decolonization of Canada from the United Kingdom in the Canada Act, 1982 that revised the prior colonial constitution acts and its discourses, in particular section 35(1), which restores the original Aboriginal and treaty orders as part of the supreme law of Canada.1 This constitutional “decolonization” led to the development of a process of judicial implementation of a reconciliation of the various parts of the patriated constitutional order under constitutional supremacy. The process of constitutional supremacy and convergences gave birth to a particular mandatory conceptualization of “reconciliation” – a juridical conceptualization that hinges upon the symbiotic reading of Canadian constitutional law with the Aboriginal and treaty rights ensured therein. Rather than rendering the concept of reconciliation as vague and amorphous as a national hug (as it tends to be in forms such as conflict resolution or state apologies for past wrongs), constitutional reconciliation grounds the process of reconciliation between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state in the juridical recognition of Aboriginal and treaty rights. Constitutional reconciliation, therefore, is the highest, most cognitively and politically complicated task of constitutional law. It is an ongoing constitutional process that involves converging different overlapping constitutional regimes with distinct epistemologies and legal traditions, to establish an enduring postcolonial constitutional relationship between the Aboriginal peoples and the divided Crown of the federal and provincial governments that corrects past wrongs. This essay argues that the concept of constitutional reconciliation – literally, the reconciling of Canadian law with the Aboriginal and treaty rights entrenched within it – is an integral starting point for the overarching political, social, cultural, and economic processes of reconciliation between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state. A critical focus upon the specificities of constitutional reconciliation makes apparent the particular conditions of Aboriginal grievances and Aboriginal rights to land and selfdetermination within Canada’s broader culture of redress. As the essay by Lily Cho in this volume suggests, while many redress movements formed by diasporic communities view access to the full rights and promises of Canadian citizenship as a reparative goal, Aboriginal reconciliation entails the acknowledgment of what I have elsewhere described as “sui generis and treaty citizenship” – a distinctive form of imperial alliance that recognizes Indigenous peoples’ autonomy and prevents their incorporation into a colonial national schema. Put succinctly, “sui generis and treaty citizenship” affirms that Canadian citizenship is not a gift or even a reparative gesture to be bestowed upon Aboriginal peoples by

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the state; instead, Canadian citizenship is the product of Aboriginal peoples’ conditional permission, through historical treaty processes, to the British sovereign to provide for settlements.2 Viewed from this perspective, the rise of a “culture of redress” in Canada is but another symptom of the failure of the legal system in the British traditions to police Crown actions and to protect others in the past. Seen as an expression of the failure of the very legal system that is now involved in redressing injuries, the “culture of redress” is a circular phenomenon. From the perspective of Aboriginal peoples, furthermore, constitutional reconciliation between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples does not sit alongside other instances of historic injustice experienced by diasporic constituencies in a general “culture of redress.” Rather, this constitutional reconciliation is a decolonizing conflict with the various past and present laws and policies of the settler state, and the individuals and communities, including diasporic ones, that constitute Canada and form the electorate of its governments (those who are considered innocent third parties by the court). Constitutional reconciliation offers one potential mechanism for upholding the distinctiveness of Aboriginal and treaty rights as a precondition for future renewed relations between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian nation-state. For these reasons, constitutional reconciliation is a term that needs to circulate beyond the discourse of legal experts and become part of a critical lexicon for colonial redress. When colonies transition from oppressive regimes to postcolonial states, they face myriad challenges. As an anxious public and impatient Aboriginal peoples look on, the postcolonial constitutional order’s greatest challenge is the displacement of the familiar colonial values, creating new forms of governance, redefining the balance of public power and rights, both collective and individual, for the order to take root. These are daunting tasks. In confronting the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples and parliamentary supremacy,3 the Supreme Court of Canada’s (hereafter referred to as the court) contemporary judicial decisions have developed exceptional doctrines of constitutional convergence of power and rights, thereby invalidating legislation inconsistent with the constitution texts. These court decisions have thus provided a way of policing the activities of government by the doctrine of honour of the Crown – namely, the Crown’s need to justify any infringements on the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples. These judicial decisions have also had an impact upon constitutional negotiations and reconciliation processes that occur outside of the courts. For many Canadians, especially the elected politicians and bureaucrats, these judicial discourses derived from constitutional interpretation have transformed the comfortable, colonial construction of Canada that dominates the political, legal, and public understanding into a view of an “incomprehensible” Canada – a Canada in which Eurocentric epistemologies and juridical doctrines no longer hold unquestioned authority. While this “incomprehensibility” has caused panic for the Crown (or, the symbolic locus of state power), this incomprehensibility also holds the potential to radically transform the ways that Aboriginal and settler cultures interact and begin to reconcile – or to converge without assimilating one to the other – their knowledge systems and philosophical traditions. Since 1982, through a series of cases that have sought to test out the provisions for aboriginal and treaty rights in the patriated constitution, the court has developed the doctrines of constitutional reconciliation and honour of the Crown as it grasped the purposes of constitutional reform and supremacy. In attempting to implement the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples and ensure the effective enjoyment, development, and deployment of their rights, the courts have superimposed a distinctive theory of honourable government

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and a unique approach to interactive, dialogical governance that displaces ordinary parliamentary governmental and legislative processes. These doctrines generate a distinct theory of empowered constitutional federalism with Aboriginal peoples – a theory designed to break down the colonial barrier to Aboriginal achievement and to facilitate collective and individual self-transformation and self-determination. Constitutional Supremacy and Convergence Since patriation of the constitution from the United Kingdom in 1982, the many and various constitutional provisions have become the supreme law of Canada, the highest law of the nation to which all other provincial and federal laws must conform. Constitutional supremacy is transformative law. It has required the courts and Crown to not only redress and reform the colonial constitutional order of provincial federalism but also implement the sui generis and distinct Aboriginal order and the imperial treaty federalism – or the recognition of nation-to-nation relations between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown that was entrenched within historical treaties – within the new constitutional order. Constitutional supremacy creates destabilizing and interpretative principles of “constitutional bricolage,” practices that emphasize constitutional compromise, contingency, and borrowing.4 Its governing purpose is to decolonize the colonial regime and ensure that the constitutional system is capable of securing the effective enjoyment of the rights and powers of Aboriginal peoples by fundamental self-revision and reconciliation. In short, the goal of constitutional supremacy is to prevent constitutional reform from becoming or remaining a charade, concealing subjugation under the appearance of coordination. Constitutional supremacy regulates vertical and horizontal conflicts. In vertical conflicts, every federal or provincial law must be consistent with the provisions of the constitution; in the case of any inconsistency, the particular federal or provincial legislation is of no force or effect.5 The courts are the guardians of constitutional supremacy, working to ensure that all other laws are in accordance with constitutional principles.6 They safeguard constitutional rights, collectively and individually, against governmental powers, which were, before 1982, sheltered under the colonial regime by the doctrine of parliamentary or legislative supremacy. The court has stated that the legislature’s new responsibility in constitutional supremacy is to enact legislation that embodies appropriate safeguards to comply with the constitutional requirements of the Charter and the distinctive rights of Aboriginal peoples.7 The courts will not interpretatively fill in the details that will render legislative lacunae constitutional. They will not read in or down to make any law consistent with the provisions of the constitution.8 Legislation and the routine operations of politics that violate constitutional supremacy will be invalidated and held of no legal force. Constitutional supremacy is maintained in horizontal conflicts, or conflicts between the various parts of the constitutional acts that form the constitution of Canada, by the doctrine of constitutional convergence of rights and powers. Justice McLachlin has articulated the controlling doctrine of constitutional convergence:9 “It is a basic rule … that one part of the Constitution cannot be abrogated or diminished by another part of the Constitution.”10 This doctrine requires the courts to generate a “symbiosis” of the different parts of constitutional orders. A “symbiotic” convergence requires every person and institution to read the distinct parts of the new patriated constitution drafted at different times in an interdependent and mutually beneficial relationship with great sensitivity, subtlety, and complexity. In

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applying the convergence test, the court generated the doctrine that while all are part of the supreme law, none is absolute over the other parts.11 The court has declared that the rights of Aboriginal peoples exist within a matrix of other powers and rights of the constitution. It does not view the relationship between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples as adversarial symbiosis, which is disadvantageous or destructive, but rather as trust-like.12 Often, this synthesis has generated in the resistant Eurocentric public both the concept of intractable Aboriginal issues and the incomprehensible nature of Canada. In other words, a Eurocentric conception of Canada has been rendered incomprehensible by the doctrine of constitutional convergence that places treaty and Aboriginal rights as equal and unassimilable partners to the laws of Canada. Applying the Convergence Doctrine in Case Law: The Road to “Constitutional Reconciliation” Applying a symbiotic analysis of the convergence doctrine of the rights of Aboriginal peoples with the powers of the Crown has proved to be a difficult judicial task in practice. An example of the articulation of the convergence doctrine is found in Delgamuukw (1997), where the court read together s. 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 186713 with Aboriginal rights in s. 35(1) to illustrate the absence of constitutional authority in a province to extinguish Aboriginal title:14 [T]he Court has held that s.91(24) protects a “core” of Indianness from provincial intrusion, through the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity. […] That core […] encompasses Aboriginal rights, including the rights that are recognized and affirmed by s. 35(1). Laws which purport to extinguish those rights therefore touch the core of Indianness which lies at the heart of s. 91(24), and are beyond the legislative competence of the provinces to enact. The core of Indianness encompasses the whole range of Aboriginal rights that are protected by s. 35(1). Those rights include rights in relation to land; that part of the core derives from s. 91(24)’s reference to “Lands reserved for the Indians.” But those rights also encompass practices, customs and traditions which are not tied to land as well; that part of the core can be traced to federal jurisdiction over “Indians.”15

While the symbiotic analysis of the court reads Aboriginal rights into federal power against provincial power, it fails to comprehend that Aboriginal rights are expressly vested in Aboriginal peoples in s. 35 rather than assigned to the federal parliament. The court has used the concept of constitutional reconciliation of Crown power and duty with the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples in strange and contradictory ways. Since the constitutional purpose of recognizing and affirming the rights of Aboriginal people in the constitution was to guarantee and to protect the enjoyment of these collective rights, initially in Sparrow (1990) the court considered the “best” way to protect Aboriginal rights and to constrain the Crown’s power was to require the federal Crown to reconcile its power to legislate regarding Aboriginal peoples with its duty to respect the constitutionally protected distinct rights of those same peoples. The court’s proposed remedy for past abuses of legislative and regulatory power consequently forced the Crown to justify any legislative measure or action that infringes on the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples.16 This concept of constitutional reconciliation, which was actually a manifestation of

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the doctrine of convergence, permits the Crown to regulate the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples by subordinating them to the needs of Canadians.17 In its later version of reconciliation, however, the court simultaneously attempted to protect and promote these rights by placing on the Crown the burden of honourable action.18 This amorphous approach raised the difficult and ironic issue in constitutional supremacy of whether the honour of the Crown can be allowed to erode the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples. Faced with the complexity of the convergence analysis and infringement test, the court generated an alternative concept of constitutional reconciliation: political negotiations between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples leading to constitutional reconciliation. To resolve these inconsistent concepts of Crown power and duty, in Van der Peet (1996) the court generated a theory of constitutional reconciliation between the distinctive pre-existing sovereignty and rights of Aboriginal societies and the numinous Crown in Canada.19 This generated a trans-systemic legal synthesis, which was full of twists and turns and became complicated. The case decisively transformed Canadian legal thought from issues centred on the Eurocentric being or individual self to a trans-systemic symbiosis of divided sovereignty and distinct collective legal traditions under the authority of the honour of the Crown. Beginning in Delgamuukw (1998), the court conceptualized constitutional reconciliation as a political negotiation process between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples, distinct from convergence in litigation.20 It stated: “Ultimately, it is through negotiated settlements, with good faith and give and take on all sides, reinforced by the judgments of this Court, that we will achieve […] a basic purpose of s. 35(1) – ‘the reconciliation of the pre-existence of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown.’”21 In this constitutional process of a “recovering Canada,”22 the Crown and Aboriginal peoples work out the symbiotic details of creating a comprehensible and honourable Canada.23 No consensus exists between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples as to what constitutional reconciliation entails or the meaning that is assumed by the judiciary. This is a critical problem in the constitutional transformation of Canada. Understanding what the court means by constitutional reconciliation is necessary both to identify the short- and longterm goals of these negotiated settlements and to recognize whether or when the goals have been achieved. The limits of the court’s interpretation of the concept of constitutional reconciliation in case law demonstrates that a more radical transformation is needed. What constitutional reconciliation necessitates is nothing less than a turbulent and innovative approach of comprehending the constitutional rights of the Aboriginal other, which has not been developed in Eurocentric thought24 or in any postcolonial legal systems. It requires the parties not to conceptualize their relationship from the comfort of Eurocentrism’s familiar world views. It requires a departure from the institutional and legal status quo for the constitutional perspective. Such a departure from entrenched ways of being and knowing hinges upon the displacement of layers of prejudice. In particular, situating and resolving the agency of the Aboriginal other as the first principle in constitutional reflection at the centre of reconciliation has few precedents in Eurocentric legal or philosophical thought and has resulted in few, if any, discussions in the constitutional or political negotiations. Constitutional reconciliation has displaced the familiar Eurocentric concept of Crown sovereignty over individuals, who live in mutual longing and jeopardy, with a threatening awareness that other things (like nature and society) and other people exist beyond the individualized self’s control. This predicament generates not only unlimited mutual fears

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of the other, including the distrust that all forms of governance, exchange, and community situations and encounters will be used to entrench the exercise of another’s power over the self, but also the complementary experience of unlimited mutual desires representing self-incompleteness mediated by reason. In the past, treaties, engagements, and negotiation with Aboriginal peoples have threatened the Eurocentric concept of the individual self – the socially constructed consciousness of being the centre of the world, which involves the presupposition that any alternative to standing at the centre constitutes subjection. This consciousness is dramatically revealed in modern legal discourses concerning individual and collective rights, where individual rights are prized and collective rights questioned or ignored.25 Constitutional reconciliation as conceptualized by the court raises an eternal question of the proper relationship of a self with the other, from both the Aboriginal peoples’ and the Crown’s perspectives, beyond Crown sovereignty and the past “austerity of tabulated legalism” of federal and provincial power.26 In the past, the dominant theory of British and Canadian law was that it emanated from the mystical but unicentric sovereignty of the Crown.27 In British consciousness of law and order, the Crown is viewed as the source of all power, law, and delegated rights. However, when the imperial Crown attempted to expand its power to foreign countries, it initially had to stretch beyond its self-centeredness and to draw upon its imperial power to recognize the singularity of other sovereigns. Re-reading Treaties as Recognitions of Aboriginal Sovereignty The hundreds of First Nation treaties in North America and elsewhere in the British Empire are a reflection of the integral part of the imperial Crown’s imagination of sovereign others and a process of transnational reconciliation, the negotiation of treaties with the Aboriginal nations.28 In the constitutional framework of the imperial Crown and now under the patriated constitutional framework, First Nation treaties (1630–1923) are the best examples of the imperial Crown’s recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty in North America – that is, as an empirical fact, a constitutional construct, and the core of Indianness.29 As the court stated in Haida Nation (2004): “Treaties serve to reconcile pre-existing Aboriginal sovereignty with assumed Crown sovereignty, and to define Aboriginal rights guaranteed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.”30 The court has stated that these imperial treaties reflect an imperial narrative of shared sovereignty that affirmed Aboriginal sovereignty. They provide a foundation for a treaty-ordered trans-systemic society. The court has affirmed Aboriginal sovereignty as the pre-existing and continuing Aboriginal legal traditions central to Aboriginal and treaty rights. These legal traditions exist as independent sources of sui generis constitutional rights and powers, which are distinct from legislative powers.31 In the court’s interpretation of the patriated constitutional order, the imperial treaties with First Nations make manifest that all legitimate Crown power in Canada is derived from Aboriginal sovereignty. This concept ironically flips the unicentric theory of sovereignty in British imperialism to a derivative and delegated power from Aboriginal sovereigns under the treaties. This strategic reading of the treaties by the court decolonizes British imperialism and colonialism. The shared sovereignty of the treaties acknowledged Aboriginal sovereignty and constituted the source of the constitutional foundation for the settler’s path from imperial authority to self-rule, including the colonial conventions of responsible government and parliamentary sovereignty.32 The imperial treaties have never

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been consolidated with each other or with other imperial legislative acts creating colonization in Canada,33 but in the Constitution Act, 1982 were united by the constitutional supremacy. Constitutional reconciliation with unresolved Aboriginal rights is different from treaty rights. In the context of Aboriginal rights, including Aboriginal tenure and title, no historical reconciliation has occurred; instead, unauthorized settlement appropriated Indigenous lands. The process of constitutional reconciliation requires a prime conciliation, which reflects a deeper shift in consciousness and a cognitive ambidexterity. The hysterical Crown seeking to preserve colonial privileges has not exhibited this shift or ambidexterity in constitutional litigation.34 The Crown’s position in constitutional litigation amounts to a de facto preference for the worshipful acceptance of established conventions and practices developed in the colonial era. Left to its own sensibilities and purposes, nothing is more convincing to the Crown than what exists. This is high-order fatalism in a time of constitutional change. The Crown argues that convergence and reconciliation are too stern in their demands, too uncertain in their promise, and too devastating to the colonial privileges of the status quo (mostly to the concept of white superiority). The Crown contends that the transformative process of affirming Aboriginal and treaty rights that attends constitutional reconciliation is too forbidding to provide even the pretense of any hope of success. The court has continuously rejected these Crown arguments against implementing the patriated constitutional order. It has stressed that constitutional supremacy overrides the status quo and its conventions. It has noted that the Crown’s awareness of these difficulties involved in constitutional reconciliation, however, is the first step in the constitutional reconciliation project itself. The court has held that constitutional supremacy affirms the collective or individual power to change the quality of the worlds of belief and organization that have been made in the racist and colonial era. Constitutional supremacy deprives the Crown of any coherent theory for rejecting the implementation of and reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples’ rights. It requires a deeper concept of Canada than the familiar notions of provincial federalism that unite the constitutional diversities into a national government, which builds on the colonial experience of federal and provincial sovereignty rather than the explicit constitutional theory of Aboriginal sovereignty or treaty federalism contained in the treaties established between the Aboriginal nations and the imperial Crown.35 In other words, the constitutional shift matters; it requires a reconvivencia – a period of getting used to constitutionally living with each other, the restoration of treaty relationship, conciliation with Aboriginal rights, the rebuilding of respect and trust, and the overcoming of constitutional and racial animosity. The deadbeat, dishonourable, and confused Crown may strive to avoid the shift and protect its colonial power and privileges, resisting or refusing to acknowledge the constitutional rights of Aboriginal people as a unique third order of constitutional governance, denying the continuity of Aboriginal sovereignty that has never been surrendered, avoiding the need to decolonize existing conventions, legislation, and privileges, and resisting or refusing to implement the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples. In the past these conflicting premises have led to distrust, mistrust, resentment, and stagnation in policy frameworks and negotiations with Aboriginal peoples. Such conflicts generate a certain cognitive paralysis, perceived unbridgeable gaps, and abeyance in the Crown bureaucracies. These energies of abeyance by the Crown are now focused on trying to demonstrate the incomprehensibility of the constitutional transformation. However, the Crown will have

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to eventually lose this self-protective claim of “incomprehensibility” and realize that the trans-systemic negotiation process of imbricated reconciliations with Aboriginal peoples is constitutionally required and inevitable. It will have to agree to an honourable, just, and fair framework, which will have to overcome the existing incomprehensible premises of the British legal tradition and Eurocentric scholarship. Constitutional reconciliation can only be accomplished by a transformation of the existing diabolical system into a future system of dialogical governance.36 Challenges Ahead: Reconciling Crown and Aboriginal Sovereignty When Aboriginal peoples and the Crown begin to formulate a view of constitutional reconciliation they will inevitably be forced to take a stand on reconciling the assumed Crown sovereignty with Aboriginal sovereignty. This presents at least two challenges. Though these macro and micro issues are irreducible to each other, they turn out to be connected. One problem concerns the macro relation with cognitive contextuality: the habitual settings of our action – the routinized collective institutions and preconceptions, and the fundamental methods and conceptions employed in the investigation of nature – that nonAboriginals regularly take for granted. This is the pull of cognitive gravity in Canadian society. Neither the Crown nor Aboriginal peoples act, associate, think, or argue in a neutral space, free of presuppositions. They both move within a structure of assumptions and arrangements that constitutional supremacy rejects. Each is a reflection of their legal traditions and practices. The convergence of these legal traditions and structures looms large in constitutional reconciliation. The other challenge is the symbiotic and honourable convergence of these distinct constitutional powers on a micro, or case-by-case, basis. At times, the Aboriginal peoples and the Crown have shared the insight that the cognitive and institutional contexts are never so confining as to eliminate the constitutionally protected activities and insights that might subvert them. There is always more in our legal consciousness than there is in our traditions. Therefore, human imagination and action can create a vision of discontinuous change by structured dialogues and discussion of the future of Canada, made possible by the inability of our routines or traditions to exhaust our consciousness. Transforming the challenges of conceptuality and convergence into a just and fair reconciliation process cannot fully emerge until the Crown displaces the colonial conviction of parliamentary sovereignty in relation to the constitutional rights of Aboriginal peoples. These constitutional rights displace the idea that legislation, rather than constitutional provisions, is at the centre of the Canadian constitution, a belief that each federal and provincial institution gives up only slowly, reluctantly, and imperfectly. The Crown must begin to comprehend itself in the terms of the concepts of constitutional supremacy, honour of the Crown, and constitutional reconciliation. At this point, it is clearer what constitutional reconciliation is not than what it will become. Constitutional reconciliation requires more than an ex post facto assessment of the constitutionality of legislative action or the Crown’s justified interest based on some contrived superiority. Such subsequent assessment and validation is seriously at odds with the purpose of constitutional convergence and reconciliation, which is to protect Aboriginal peoples’ rights from constitutional and legislative intrusions. Constitutional negotiations can provide an opportunity to assess and converge conflicting interest into intergovernmental agreements or accords.

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In addition, constitutional reconciliation would seem to be much more than a process for balancing constitutional, legal, and intellectual traditions and bringing together peoples of equal worth. It requires displacement and decolonization of colonial values and institutions. This process remains an incomprehensible task for the Crown and its Eurocentric deontological structure and consequentialist agenda. The reconciliation process does not have to resolve the pain and trauma of the past and present, but it should be a way to get beyond the Eurocentric thought and method to heal the agonizing generations of Aboriginal peoples from the experience of genocide, assimilation, and the forced education system that effected the mass destruction of our heritage, knowledge, and traditions. The constitutional purpose of convergence and reconciliation is to develop a narrative of the future that centres Aboriginal peoples at the core of the patriated Canadian nation. This requires a reformation of Canadian law, morals, values, scholarship, and memory. Neither the Crown nor the Aboriginal peoples have equitably shared the past few centuries, but in a constitutional reconciliation they can share a just future. Constitutional reconciliation requires getting beyond the present Eurocentric incomprehensible and intractable challenges that haunt the Crown and public to comprehending Aboriginal cosmologies, sensibilities, and legal traditions. In confronting these challenges, Aboriginal peoples will have to rely on their legal traditions, values, and constitutional rights to rebuild their sovereignty, territories, knowledge, and heritage in Canada.37 Under relentless questioning by Aboriginal peoples, the Crown will have to understand that its colonial privileges, conventions, and institutions cannot be the controlling source of the future of Canada. Indeed, the Crown has to understand the need for displacing its dishonourable colonial legal baggage and otherness that generates its incomprehensible vision of a patriated Canada. It will be a complex and difficult process of developing transformative institutions and public dialogues for constitutional reconciliation, but nonetheless another irresistible movement of national imagination towards justice and impartial knowledge. Constitutional reconciliation therefore establishes a vital and required model for broader forms of social, political, and economic reconciliation between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown within patriated Canada.38 This model hinges political action and mutual negotiation on complex issues rather than assimilative gestures of supposed reconciliation that seek to re-embed Aboriginal peoples within the bounds of an ostensibly repentant and yet ultimately controlling settler state. Constitutional reconciliation, moreover, points to the limits of the current hegemonic culture of redress in Canada that continues to define notions of injury, rights, and reparations in terms of Eurocentric philosophical and legal traditions, positing instead a mandatory constitutional reconciliatory process in which both the understandings of wrongs and the consensual methods of making right are radically transcultural and trans-systemic.

NOTES 1 Section 35, Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), c. 11. It reads: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.” 2 James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson, “Sui Generis and Treaty Citizenship,” Citizenship Studies 6, no. 4 (2002): 419.

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3 See generally Sir Edward Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England. Or, A Commentarie upon Littleton (London: Printed for the Societie of Stationers, 1628), 109b–10a (“Parliament is the highest and most honourable and absolute Court of Justice in England,” and its “jurisdiction” is “so transcendent” that it can make and repeal laws on any subject matter and its honour and justice cannot be doubted). 4 “Bricolage” is a concept coined by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 17–36, meaning “borrowing from what is readily at hand.” For constitutional scholar Mark Tushnet, the idea of “constitutional bricolage” reflects the tendency to displace emphasis on constitutional unity in favour of constitutional compromise, contingency, and borrowing. See M. Tushnet, “The Possibilities of Comparative Constitutional Law,” Yale Law Journal 108, no. 6 (1999): 1286, and D. Schneiderman, “Exchanging Constitutions: Constitutional Bricolage in Canada,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 40 (2002): 401. 5 Section 52(1), Constitution Act, 1982. Hunter v. Southam Inc., [1984] 2 S.C.R. 145 [hereafter Hunter] at para. 1; Reference by the Governor General in Council Concerning Certain Questions Relating to the Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 S.C.R. 217 [hereafter Quebec Secession Reference], para. 72. 6 Hunter, para. 44. See Patrick Macklem, Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). 7 Hunter. 8 Ibid. 9 New Brunswick Broadcasting Co. v. Nova Scotia (Speaker of the House of Assembly), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 319. 10 Ibid., 373, 390. 11 R. v. Sparrow, [1990] 1 S.C.R. 1075 [hereafter Sparrow], 1109. 12 Sparrow, 1107–8. The court has held that the phrase “recognized and affirmed” in s. 35(1) creates a constitutional fiduciary obligation that affirms that throughout Canadian history the Crown was a trustee or fiduciary for First Nations by history, treaties, and legislation rather than an adversary to or oppressor of them. 13 Section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867 (U.K), 30 and 31 Vict., c. 3 reads: “It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters not coming within the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces; and for greater Certainty, but not so as to restrict the Generality of the foregoing Terms of this Section, it is hereby declared that (notwithstanding anything in this Act) the exclusive Legislative Authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to all Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say, … Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians.” 14 Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. 15 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010, paras. 177–8. 16 Sparrow, 1113–20. 17 R. v. Gladstone, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 723, para. 73 and Delgamuukw, para. 165. See James Youngblood Henderson, First Nations Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights: Defining the Just Society (Saskatoon: Native Law Centre, 2006) for an analysis of these attempts at a definition of aboriginal rights. 18 The need to create just settlements for Aboriginals through good-faith negotiations, and to

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protect Aboriginal interests through consultation and accommodation before final claims are resolved, was recognized in Haida Nation v. British Columbia (Minister of Forests), [2004] 3 S.C.R. 511 [hereafter Haida Nation] at para. 20; and in Mikisew Cree First Nation v. Canada (Minister of Canadian Heritage) [2005] 3 S.C.R. 388 [hereafter Mikisew Nation]. R. v. Van der Peet, [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507 [hereafter Van der Peet], para. 42; Haida Nation. Chief Justice Lamer began the judicial retreat in Delgamuukw at para. 186: “[T]his litigation has been both long and expensive, not only in economic but in human terms as well. By ordering a new trial, I do not necessarily encourage the parties to proceed to litigation and to settle their dispute through the courts. As was said in Sparrow, p. 1105, s. 35(1) ‘provides a solid constitutional base upon which subsequent negotiations can take place.’ Those negotiations should also include other aboriginal nations which have a stake in the territory claimed. Moreover, the Crown is under a moral, if not a legal, duty to enter into and conduct those negotiations in good faith. Ultimately, it is through negotiated settlements, with good faith and give and take on all sides, reinforced by the judgments of this Court, that we will achieve what I stated in Van der Peet, supra, at para. 31, to be a basic purpose of s. 35(1) – ‘the reconciliation of the pre-existence of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown.’” Ibid. John Borrows, Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). Haida Nation, paras. 14–20 and 25; Van der Peet, para. 43; Gladstone, para. 73; and Delgamuukw, paras. 81, 141, and 186. In human science, philosophical attempts to converge the self and other have been seen as intractable or a paradox; see Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969). The court has attempted convergence of Aboriginal rights with Canadian law by a sui generis analysis in Sparrow, at 1110–12, and Van der Peet, at paras. 17–20; as an “intersocietal” law, which is neither Aboriginal nor Canadian, Van der Peet, at paras. 42 and 49, quoting Brian Slattery. See also Borrows, Recovering Canada, 8, 10–13. It has also attempted convergence or translation of a distinct Aboriginal perspective from the Eurocentric traditions into British and Canadian common law: R. v. Marshall; R. v. Bernard, [2005] 2 S.C.R. 220. Compare the translations of the majority judgment of Marshall-Bernard, ibid., at paras. 48–51 (McLachlin, C.J.C.) to the translations of dissent judgment at para. 103 (LeBel and Fish, JJ.). Dwight G. Newman, “Collective Interests and Collective Rights,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 49 (2004): 127 and Community and Collective Rights (St John’s College, PhD thesis [Law], 2005 [unpublished]). Minister of Home Affairs v. Fisher, [1980] A.C. 319. For the mystical nature of the Crown, see F.W. Maitland, The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures, repr. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 418. (“There is one term against which I wish to warn you, and that term is ‘the crown.’ You will certainly read that the crown does this and that the crown does that. As a matter of fact we know that the crown does nothing but lie in the Tower of London to be gazed at by sight-seers. No, the crown is a cover for ignorance; it saves us from asking difficult questions … I do not deny that it is a convenient term, and you may have to use it; but I do say that you should never be content with it. If you are told that the crown has this power or that power, do not be content until you know who legally has the power”). James Youngblood Henderson, Treaty Rights in the Constitution of Canada (Scarborough, ON:

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James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson Thomson Carswell, 2007); Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Henderson, Treaty Rights. Haida Nation, para. 20. This view was expounded in J. Austin, Lectures of Jurisprudence (London: John Murray, 1861–3). The “Genius of the British Constitution,” proclaimed by Lt. Gov. J.G. Simcoe (Upper Canada) to Lord Dorchester, 9 March 1795, in E.A. Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe, With Allied Documents Relating to His Administration of the Government of Upper Canada, vol. 3 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1925), 321–2. See Austin, Lectures, lecture II, “The Sovereignty of Parliament”; lecture V, “The Rule of Law: Its Nature”; and lecture VIII, “The Connection between the Law of the Constitution and the Conventions of the Constitution.” See also T.R.S. Allan, Constitutional Justice: A Liberal Theory of the Rule of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3, 271; William Roger Louis, “Introduction,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 7; J. Vernon, “Narrating the Constitution: The Discourse of ‘the Real’ and the Fantasies of Nineteenth-Century Constitutional History,” and A.P. Thornton, “The Shaping of Imperial History,” in Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England’s Long Nineteenth Century, ed. J. Vernon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 204, 612; A. Carty, “English Constitutional Law from a Postmodernist Perspective,” in Dangerous Supplements: Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence, ed. P. Fitzpatrick (London: Pluto Press, 1991), 182; J.W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Quebec Secession Reference, para. 49. Imperial treaties with the First Nations were concealed by the abeyances of the British principle of the national sovereignty or supremacy of the Crown-in-Parliament, derived from the aggregate electorate of individual subjects or citizens. For example, see the hysterical response of the Crown, governments, and the public to the Court’s decision in R. v. Marshall, [1999] 3 S.C.R. 456 [hereafter Marshall] on commercial fishing under a 1760 treaty: Leonard I. Rotman, “‘My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels’: Smoking Out the Message in R. v. Marshall,” Saskatchewan Law Review 63 (2000): 617, and Parker Barrs Donham’s articles reprinted in R.B. Anderson and R.M. Bone, eds., Natural Resources and Aboriginal People in Canada: Readings, Cases and Commentary (Concord, ON: Captus Press, 2003), 365–73. Quebec Secession Reference. James Youngblood Henderson, “Dialogical Governance: A Mechanism of Constitutional Governance,” Saskatchewan Law Review 72 (2009): 29–73. A powerful model based on Anishinabe teachings and value is presented in John Borrows’s writings, especially his research paper for the National Centre for First Nations Governance, “Seven Generations, Seven Teachings: Ending the Indian Act” (May 2008), http://www. fngovernance.org/research/john_borrows.pdf, 9–32. See also Jaime Battiste, “Understanding the Progression of Mi’kmaw Law,” Dalhousie Law Journal 31 (2008): 311. One model is the Constitutional Conferences, s. 37 of Constitution Act, 1982; another model is the multilateral dialogues and processes that led up to the Charlottetown Accord (1993).

7 Towards a Hopeful Practice of Worrying: The Problematics of Listening and the Educative Responsibilities of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission1 roger i. simon

It is the day after Canada Day, 2009. Yesterday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the nation that we are “a tolerant, generous, resolute people living in safe, healthy communities blessed by an abundance of natural resources, making a positive difference in the world.”2 It is not without a substantial degree of irony that Canada Day 2009 also marks a new beginning for Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), reconstituted with new commissioners after a year of delays fostered by internal problems that led to the early resignations of the original three appointed members. This means that unlike much published scholarship on various methods and accomplishments of truth commissions constituted in countries around the world, my interest here is fully anticipatory. In this respect I am addressing the potential possibilities and challenges faced by the new TRC commissioners (and members of the commission’s secretariat) just at the moment they are beginning their work. Likely, what I have to say may be construed by some as overly pessimistic. On the contrary, I have no desire to play the role of a censuring cynic. Rather, this text should be read as a form of worrying-in-public. It is intended as a hopeful practice that might help bring forward a Canada that would recognize that the structured inequalities and legacy of violence initiated by its colonial past has yet to be resolved in a way that could enable us to become a truly just society. Reading over the official mandate of Canada’s TRC, it is obvious that the commission’s task is a complex undertaking with multiple purposes. However, in these remarks I will give priority to a specific objective, the commission’s responsibility to “promote awareness and public education of Canadians about the IRS system and its impacts.”3 What I am particularly concerned with here is the commission’s aspiration to contribute to the rebuilding and renewing of relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. As with truth commissions in other countries, to do this the commission will no doubt have to engage in the pedagogical practice of public history. Thus, what I intend to worry about for a while are the possible forms this public history might take, the possible public pedagogies these forms embody, and some of the concerns I have about these possibilities. In discussing these issues, I very much want to raise the question of what this public history should aspire to. What notions of learning about and from the history and consequences of Indian residential school policies and practices might the commission attempt to engender?4 While I will return to the important distinction between learning about and from history, first I need to lay out some presuppositions. I’m starting with the presumption that the work of the commission will include bringing into a public sphere the experiences of the

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violence and violation to which a specific group of people have been subjected. As well, I am assuming that the public history initiated by the commission will place at its centre the consequences of this subjection, that which is expressed through personal and communal narratives of pain, suffering, and loss of family, friends, and cultural traditions. These will be stories of loss and abuse perpetrated not simply by specific individuals associated with the residential school system but by government policies of assimilation that justified and put that system into place. The worthy pedagogical idea inherent in such a form of public history is that the authority and moral weight of the commission will lead Canadians not only to become more aware of past policies and events excluded from the dominant narratives of Canadian history, but also to undertake an active, ethical engagement with this past, one that might forge new covenantal relations of solidarity with Indigenous communities in a collective struggle for a more hopeful future for all. The TRC hearings will no doubt assist the commission, in its mandate, to “create as complete an historical record as possible of the IRS system and legacy.” Clearly, the hope of the commission is that seeking, naming, and publically circulating this “truth” will help in rebuilding relationships among (in the words of the mandate) “Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians” in ways that will foster an ethics of responsibility in which condolence, regret, and reparation will underwrite the possibility of more just, historically informed, social and political bonds. Yet my concern remains as to how one might undertake a public history responsive to such aspirations. In this age of testimony, there is a recognizable familiarity in regard to commission reports, journalistic accounts, and museum exhibitions that give priority to personal narratives in order to illustrate specific forms of violence and their consequences. One such particularly pertinent example is Bringing Them Home, the 1996 final report of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), a national commission of inquiry into the policies, effects, and legacy of the separation of Indigenous children from their families and communities. This report strived to educate nonAboriginal Australians about the policies and practices of removing Aboriginal children from their families and to show the harm done by these policies. While it told the story of a government policy whose purposes were assimilation and attempted cultural genocide, the central pedagogical presumption as to how the report might best educate Australians about the fact and consequence of past government policies lay within excerpts of testimony by survivors of separation. While these testimonies were framed as evidence and interpreted by the report as examples of the various ill effects of separation, it was the potential emotional power of the personal stories included that seem to have provoked a highly charged public response. Pedagogically speaking, there is a Canadian equivalent to this form of public history, the highly informative, Internet-based, digital learning resource Where Are the Children: Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools, an educational project of the Legacy of Hope Foundation.5 Much of the pedagogical power of the history presented on this website rests in its mobilization of video clips of residential school survivors speaking of their experiences. However, contra the taken-for-granted effectiveness of a testamentary- based pedagogy, there are numerous scholars who have raised questions about the assumptions and consequences of this mode of public history.6 Such questioning asks us to think twice about the tendency to give stories of heartfelt pain and suffering a transformative power, as if, as Rachel Baum puts it, “listening to the story is itself enough, as if it does not take hard work – political work as well as emotional – to create a world in which we can truly say

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that ‘never again’ will such violence and violation be tolerated.”7 Whether in regard to the experience of Jews subjected to a murderous Nazi regime, those in South Africa who experienced the violence of apartheid, or the Indigenous peoples of Guatemala who suffered the systematic violence perpetrated by a military junta, in the myriad texts, films, television programs, and museum exhibitions which have conveyed aspects of these singular events, it is often assumed that the best way to make such histories meaningful to their potential audiences is to provide opportunities to hear first-hand narration of personal experiences of suffering and struggle, death and resilience. Beyond juridical implications, a common assumption behind such a practice is that moral conclusions leading to ‘civic virtue’ are inherent in such stories, particularly so when the narratives are expressively told.8 Indeed, this idea was quite explicitly stated in the Bringing Them Home report. Presenting a historical framing of government policies and their justification together with Aboriginal stories of separation, loss, and what Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,”9 the report asked that “the whole community listen with an open heart and mind to the stories of what happened in the past and, having listened and understood, commit itself to reconciliation.”10 This request assumes that, if attended to, such narratives elicit a form of natural empathy and critical historical judgment that can lead not only to an understanding of the lives of Indigenous peoples, but also to a restorative project within which widely diverse people work together to fulfil the requirements for a more just future. Practices of public history that address systemic violence often structure particular ways of listening to the stories of those caught up in such histories. Given this, what then does it mean to listen with “an open heart and mind?” and is this listening affected in any way by the form of public history one chooses to undertake? Can it be assumed that when speaking from the heart about one’s own pain, one’s story will be understood in a way that is respectful of the singularity of one’s narrative and affectively sensed as an opening to new thought about a different collective future? While this last question is not simply rhetorical, I do worry that its answer is “no.” Here’s why. Problems in Listening to the Stories of the Suffering of Others To be specific as to why we need to worry about the mode by which the commission will carry out its educational mandate, I will briefly consider several interrelated problems that are likely encountered when non-Aboriginal Canadians begin listening to the stories of former students of Indian residential schools. Certainly when personal histories are intensified by affect, what is heard in these stories can be channelled in a range of ways that are not always positive. For example, when non-Aboriginal Canadians are presented with stories of victimization – particularly through the public circulation of selected excerpts of conversations with IRS survivors wherein specific personal or social problems are noted in order to illustrate systemic effects of residential schooling – listeners often will reduce the persona of that person to one whose life has been over-determined by a history not of one’s own making. In other words, this person is experienced as a “victim” deserving of “pity.” Clearly, it is not pity that people will be seeking when testifying before the commission. However, there is present in contemporary society a historically specific, socially organized mode of regarding the pain of others that has the potential to deny a person a subjectivity that is self-constituting. This is particularly troubling in the context I am discussing here as it seems to edge towards a replay or reinstituting of colonial power relations. This has

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been noted in regard to the previously mentioned Bringing Them Home report. The emotive force of this document engaged readers through the figure of the child as victim, most specifically through the trope of the “stolen child.” However, as Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith have pointed out, such framing locked those who testified before the HREOC “into a child-centered identity, collapsing a full life history into a singular event” of colonial oppression.11 This problem can be rephrased in different terms. Rendering the people who come forward to speak to the commission as victims living a damaged life beyond repair risks inflicting what Dipesh Chakrabarty argues are the wounds of mis-recognition.12 In such mis-recognition there is the danger that inter-generational Aboriginal life will be reduced to images of a problem-ridden, broken existence serving to confirm stereotypes offered as explanations for the marginalization of native populations within Canadian society (see Mackey’s essay in this volume). Furthermore, this mis-recognition risks reducing the political to the therapeutic so that restorative justice is defined solely within support for personal healing from the wounds of colonialism.13 Of course, current efforts made to support such healing are vitally important, but they cannot be allowed to cancel political questions concerning aboriginal treaty rights as well as those specified under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.14 Additionally, efforts in support of healing cannot be allowed to cancel the critical pedagogical possibilities inherent in stories to be told before the commission. In this regard, also at risk in a public history that relies on personal stories of former residential school students is the commission’s aspiration to help Canadians recognize the “unique experiences” of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis former residential school students. Indeed, it is the singularity of “all former IRS students” that is threatened if each story is heard as a narrative of victimhood and not of victimization. Heard as a narrative of victimization, each story related by former residential school students unfolds the specific and various circumstances through which the violence of colonialism operated. On such terms, we have an opportunity to learn how the subjection to residential schooling was lived differently by different people while coming to terms with how the logic of forced assimilation operated in specific instances. Heard as a narrative of victimhood, the singular story becomes a reiteration of previous stories that have reduced Aboriginal peoples to victims of policies of assimilation with the intent of cultural genocide. On such terms, all residential school stories start to sound the same and therefore interchangeable, leading to diminishing interest in listening and learning because there is essentially nothing different that might be said, no further questions to be asked, and nothing new to learn. In this context, the testimonies given are no longer of equal value for the practice of public history. Rather they become differentially valued, not as to their truth value, but in regard to their service as coherent, high-interest, emotive stories best suited to media broadcasts or other modes of public distribution. In these circumstances, the circulation of stories of pain and loss turns into a spectacle that configures moments of anguish and suffering into a historical thematic in which the accounts collected by the commission lose their specificity and historical grounding and, even more crucially, lose their transitive force, diminishing the possibility of the repair needed for a more just future.15 Hearing the stories of former residential school students as narratives of victimhood also increases the likelihood of a dissociative splitting off in which listening accords no need to take on a sense of responsibility for a social future that would include those whose stories one is listening to.16 In this moment, what is forgotten is that victimhood is a posi-

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tion in a power relation in which one might be implicated. On quite different terms, the act of acknowledging victimhood is reduced to an affective transaction in which one both recognizes and “feels for” the pain of others, a situation in which there is no need to ask difficult questions that might implicate one’s psychic, social, and economic investments in the conditions and institutions responsible for the genesis and prolongation of that pain. This is a problem that stems from an over-reliance on pathos.17 A public memory of residential schooling that heavily relies on pathos to achieve its effect risks diverting attention away from the nexus of government and institutional policies and practices that enacted and subsequently implemented residential school legislation. Such a diversion not only constitutes a form of historical amnesia but deflects important questions as to what of the “progressivist thought” and scientific racism that established the residential school system remain operative today.18 I am treading controversial ground here. The evocation of pathos in public histories has a tendency to inoculate specific remembrance practices against critique as to what pedagogies they enact and what interests they serve. Yet at times, unsettling questions need to be asked. Thus, in regard to the consequences of the over-reliance on pathos in the representation of legacies of residential schooling, I particularly want to emphasize the problems associated with what has widely been acknowledged as the “too bad, so sad” syndrome. One implication of this syndrome is that it feeds the commodification of stories of suffering. Essentially this means that when non-Aboriginal Canadians express sorrow and sympathy as a response to the anguished testimony of former residential school students, they also confirm their “own humanitarian character”19 and consequently end up feeling good about feeling bad. While ethical questions can certainly be raised as to the impropriety of appropriating stories of another’s pain, this is not the heart of the problem. When the “too bad, so sad” syndrome defines a response to stories of suffering, injury is recognized, but there is a “splitting off” of any responsibility for the injury or the injured. This splitting off then creates the conditions that enable a justified refusal to give up any of the structural privileges accumulated over the last 250 years. In other words, this “splitting off” is complicit with the argument that the redress of past injustice is tantamount to offering unjust advantages to one “special interest group,” a practice that would be in violation of the liberal rhetoric of individual rights and equality. It is also complicit with attempts to negate the affirmation of Aboriginal sovereignty as constituted in pre-existing and continuing Aboriginal legal traditions central to Aboriginal and treaty rights (see S. Henderson’s essay in this volume). What these problems underscore is that when stories of survivance circulate in public domains beyond the immediate contexts of their telling, how they are received may be in tension with the restorative, immediate environment in which they are told.20 If storytellers offering personal narratives fail to receive affirmation or legitimation for their stories, the danger is they become further entrapped in oppressive power relations which shortcircuit a process of social and psychological repair. This raises the question of when might the storytelling that meets the educational needs of non-Aboriginal Canadians come in conflict with Indigenous healing practices and modes of storytelling central to Aboriginal communities? There is an irrecusable dilemma here. The desire that storytelling meet the conditions that might enhance the education of Canadians carries the implicit possibility of colonizing Indigenous pedagogical practices. On the one hand, the commission’s mandate is to “acknowledge Residential school experiences, impacts and consequences” and “provide a holistic, culturally appropriate, and safe setting for former students, their families

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and communities, to come forward to the Commission.” In this regard, the commission has the obligation to serve as witness to this “coming forward.” Its responsibilities are to be present and hear the enactment of the truth inherent in the telling of residential school experiences and, subsequently, to vouch for the integrity of this event as a moment of truth telling and to ensure that Indigenous communities know of this event. On the other hand, the commission’s mandate also includes a responsibility to provide for the “public education of Canadians about the IRS system and its impacts.” To do this well, the commission must take into account that Canadians will not come upon the narratives collected by the TRC as empty vessels. Whether they encounter and attend to these narratives in print, on television, or radio, or perhaps on the Internet or at a museum exhibition, they will have a sense of what to expect and possibly a sense of what they are expected to feel. At the very least, they will come to these stories knowing that they are entering into a scene of victimization. This is not to say that Canadians are knowledgeable about the residential school system or the larger pattern of discriminatory policies that helped enact the colonization of Aboriginal peoples. Likely they will experience many of the details as shocking and shameful. However, it is the interplay between what we do know (or think we know) and what we don’t know or don’t want to know, and what we desire of and for ourselves and accept as our responsibilities, that will shape how non-Aboriginal Canadians listen to/read survivor accounts and hence what we learn in the process. While non-Aboriginal Canadians may feel sorrow and sympathy for another’s pain and shame, as well as hatred or disgust for perpetrators, many will still be confused as to what they are supposed to do with the stories and consequent feelings engendered by testimonies gathered by the commission. Furthermore, how people respond to testimony relating various experiences in Indian residential schools is complicated not only by presumptions of national identity, but also by a disparate series of differential relationships to the legacies of North American colonialism and racism. Such concerns need to be considered in any public history sensitive to its pedagogical aspirations. At stake here are not only affective investments and identifications anchored in conventional notions of Canadian moral superiority in regard to its difference from the United States, but much more importantly, those related to an extremely complex web of cultural identities which include memories of past injustices that still live on very much in the present. Examples of such memories are narratives of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry, the enslavement of West Africans in North America, the Soviet-induced famine in the Ukraine, the subordination of China to European hegemony, and the British conquest of Quebec in 1759. These are just a few of the powerful narratives that animate the dynamics of our “Canadian mosaic.” In 1933, in an attempt to explain the failures of democratic socialism and concomitant attraction of the German people to Nazi ideologies and policies, Ernst Bloch wrote: “Not all people exist in the same Now. They do so only externally, by virtue of the fact that they may all be seen today. But that does not mean that they are living at the same time with others. Rather, they carry earlier things with them … [that] contradict the Now in a very peculiar way, awry, from the rear.”21 The presence and emotional resonance of historical narratives such as those referred to above is evidence that the diverse peoples living in Canada do indeed live in a range of different temporalities that often “contradict the Now.” It would be a serious mistake to assume that Aboriginal peoples live within a temporally more expansive consciousness than non-Aboriginal Canadians, who are, at times, characterized as primarily concerned only with the immediacy of personal existence. Any public pedagogy concerning the TRC that fails to recognize

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the relevance of Bloch’s thought for contemporary Canadian society risks a degree of superficiality. As the commission thinks through what it will mean to “promote awareness and public education of Canadians about the IRS system and its impacts,” questions of “remembrance pedagogy”22 clearly deserve some attention. Rethinking Public History and the Indian Residential School System So how might we begin to rethink the practice of public history to begin to anticipate and account for some of the problems I’ve considered above? Perhaps we should start by revisiting what it is we want from those moments when various diverse non-Aboriginal publics begin to listen to stories gathered by the TRC and subsequently excerpted, contextualized, and circulated in various ways via the media and other cultural institutions. There are some who think that the educative practices desired require a public history structured by a pedagogy of outrage. That is, in engaging the history of residential schools we are to feel the horror and shame of a particular moment in history and consequently become publically enraged and provoked to express our indignation. Of course, as a public emotion, outrage can be incredibly important in mobilizing against the arrogance of power that institutes insult and injustice. Indeed, outrage is important in articulating a collective demand that situations of injustice stop and that restitution be made. However, the weakness in a pedagogy of outrage, particularly in relation to a pedagogy of remembrance associated with the Indian residential school system, is that it allows non-Aboriginal Canadians to sit outside of relations of injustice: to observe, judge, and condemn these relations but without considering or taking responsibility for one’s implication in their reproduction. In this respect, something more than feelings of outrage is needed. One idea for public education about the IRS and its effects is that this event should become part of the Canadian history curriculum in schools across the country. After all, the argument goes, any possibility of a reconciled future between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians lies with youth. Moreover, placing a history of the residential schools in the public school curriculum is seen as one step towards the repair of a national memory that has little knowledge or understanding of the state policies regarding residential schools and the consequences of these policies across generations of Indigenous peoples. In other words, the schools are seen as the primary vehicle for changing our national narrative. But in reality, this desire for a place for the IRS story in the school curriculum is likely to be more a matter of symbolic optics than social transformation. Unless the history of residential schools was taught as one component of the larger narrative of the colonization and attempted cultural genocide23 of Aboriginal peoples, the force of this history would be greatly muted and too easily confined to a now surpassed era.24 Much like the recent government apology for the IRS system, it would likely become another form of government recognition whose purpose was the recuperation of the liberal state (see Mackey’s essay in this volume). While such practices of recognition are indeed politically quite important, what such practices cannot do in and of themselves is address questions of the serious learning that requires people to come to grips with their responsibilities if not for, at least to the legacy of residential schooling.25 In other words, reconciliation lies not singularly in the transformation of a national narrative, but in the challenges of transforming a sense of civic responsibility and renewing relations of trust. In raising this question, I am putting on the agenda a concern regarding the way specific practices of remembering violation

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and violence may or may not de-couple the relationship between guilt and responsibility and the possible consequences of this for a project of reconciliation.26 Thus, when civic responsibility is understood as dependent on feelings of guilt, responsibility is circumscribed if guilt is split off from the present and attributed to past institutional policies and the people responsible for them. In such circumstances, those in the present view the colonial practices of the past as not their fault or deed, and hence they bear no responsibility for its consequences. Obviously this formulation of guilt bears serious limitations if our interest is in a form of public history that might enhance civic responsibility. Clearly needed is a much more extended discussion of the problem of the genesis of responsibility and the implications of such for a pedagogy of public history, a discussion precluded here by the space limitations of this chapter. If we are interested in provoking non-Aboriginal Canadians to come to grips with their responsibilities to the legacy of residential schooling, then thought needs to be given not only to what public education about the IRS entails but, as well, the different forms such learning might take. Thus, in my view, serious learning that might provoke a consideration of our responsibilities to the legacy of residential schooling would require asking nonAboriginal Canadians to work out where we ‘fit in’ to Aboriginal history, not just where Aboriginal history fits into the history of Canada.27 This returns me to an idea I signalled at the beginning of this paper, the importance of not only learning about the IRS system but the hard work of learning from this history. Different from just becoming aware of the fact and consequences of residential schooling, as Deborah Britzman notes, “learning from an event or experience is of a different order, that of insight,” implying that it is a process that asks something intimate from the learner.28 While Britzman importantly emphasizes interrogating one’s implication in making attachments to various histories in order to better understand what makes meaning fractured, broken, and lost, what I want to emphasize here is that this intimacy in learning implies the possibility of a transformative relationship with what comes outside the self – in this case, “the terrible gift”29 of the testimonies offered by former residential school students in testifying to their experiences in the system. Beyond public history as a matter of how the past might be accurately known and its significance assessed, there is the possibility that the work of the commission might stage an encounter with history as a force of inhabitation, a sense of dwelling with the past that instigates an altered way of living with and learning from images and stories that engage not only one’s identities and distinctions, but as well one’s sense of their responsibilities and rights. One concrete version of what this might entail would be a process of reflecting on the experiences of listening to the stories told to the TRC and retelling these stories, not to co-opt them in the service of the self, but interweaving them with one’s own life stories. The potential in this pedagogy is that who I am (as someone always in the process of becoming) is bound up with how it is I will respond to the address of another whose experiences cannot be reduced to versions of my own. In this way, it may be possible to both acknowledge and begin to alter the particularities and anxieties associated with one’s own subject position and its place in the ongoing historical power relations that always already construct a social relationship with those speaking before the commission. In this sense, the insight won in the struggle to learn from history can offer a new foundation for rethinking the significance of a history of violation and violence beyond the idealizations of empathy, identification, and facile notions of solidarity that simply promote settler state citizenship.30 Thus what I am asking for is an effort to work out a practice of public history that, in enacting the circu-

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lation of stories told to the TRC, would help support a reflexive, ethical response wherein who I am is conditioned by my response to, and for, the other, the other who speaks not for me (that is, not to and for my self-interested concerns), but nevertheless to me. Such a response can open a form of learning that impels us into a confrontation and “reckoning” not only with stories of the past but also with ourselves as we are (historically, existentially, ethically) in the present.31 As Paulette Regan has written, “knowing our history (and its injustices) is not simply about the intellectual and interpretive study of the past – the factual or forensic truth through which we gain knowledge about our sociopolitical world.”32 Rather, for Regan, history, within the context of Indigenous–Canadian relations, must “be a critical pedagogical practice – an experiential tool we use to engage in deep dialogue about historical injustices.” When such a practice is enacted, “reconciliation is not a goal but a place of encounter where all participants gather the courage to face our shared history honestly without minimizing the very real damage that has been done, even as we learn new decolonizing ways of working together that shift power and perception.”33 If one agrees with this agenda, I suggest that the K–12 school system is not the first place to look for curriculum innovation.34 Rather, we must identify other spaces where Canadians of all ages can participate in the responsibilities of reconciliation. Am I asking too much? I don’t think so. For sure, Canadian society has a severe lack of spaces where people might take the time necessary for serious thought and conversation. Yet given its mandate for public education about the residential school system, surely the commission will want to ask the cultural institutions of this country to, together with it, think deeply as to how the work of the commission will not only come to fruition in the public sphere, but require transformations in the very substance of this public sphere. This transformation will mean a movement away from constituting the public sphere as a space for the dissemination of what a media elite deem to be “high interest” personal narratives. Rather, it means constituting this sphere as a plural, “trans-systemic” space (S. Henderson, this volume) wherein the stories told to the commission will help illuminate the differing conceptions of what is at stake in the re-articulation of Aboriginal–Canadian relationships. Furthermore, this public sphere will facilitate encounters among people holding such differing conceptions. These encounters will not be easy, yet they are urgently needed opportunities wherein such differences can be confronted and worked through to the point where it is possible to constitute the new relationships necessary for rebuilding more just social and political bonds. That new relationships might yet be possible requires a consideration of how we can begin the work necessary for this transformation of the public sphere. Of course, the TRC’s mandate of public education will be addressed through the circulation of the commission’s final report, the holding of press conferences, the initiation of commemorative events, and the deposit of the records of the commission in a permanent research centre. But the core work of public education will require the commission to have an ongoing relation with contemporary technologies of representation: print journalism and literature, radio, television, film, Internet sites, exhibitions, theatre, and the arts.35 With a sense of what might be included in a desired public pedagogy, the commission could convene a TRC “Media and Culture Circle” through which Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal cultural workers36 would be invited to discuss various possible projects and methods for conveying aspects of the commission’s work and its subsequent findings. The movement of testimonies into corporate-controlled media risks appropriating survivor stories within representational practices that, intentionally or not, limit the possibilities of the work of

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reconciliation. The overarching goal of such a Media and Culture Circle (MCC) would be to limit this risk. At issue in the discussions of the MCC would be how particular circuits of distribution affect the way stories are framed, presented, and reinterpreted as well as how they structure the expectations of their audiences. In this context, the MCC would consider ways in which existing distribution networks could be opened up for the circulation of new productions seeking a public presence.37 But beyond this, the work of the MCC would be to provoke and support cultural workers in (re)considering their own practices in light of the pedagogical complexities of the public history the commission is intending to initiate. Substantively, this would be a conversation about the aesthetics and politics of the possible pedagogies of public histories of residential schooling. Such conversations might entail considerations of how particular testimonies are appropriated for various educational purposes, perhaps asking how specific representational practices might work against rendering the stories told to the commission as something other than portrayals of victimhood. In this regard, we might learn from critical discussions of innovative pedagogical initiatives taken by the cultural sector in other countries, initiatives that have attempted to convey something of the substance of the collected testimonies of truth commissions that have addressed various forms of past injustice.38 Such considerations might spark conversations that would explore various modes of representation besides those offered by the conventional forms of history writing often encountered in texts and documentaries, a form in which third-person narration results in a formulaic processing of testimony. Conjointly, discussion might be raised about how to present the stories gathered by the TRC that usher listeners into an exchange in which they realize that “residential school survival narratives cannot be so readily confined to the past”39 and that the continuing legacy of colonial violence means that the “event” of the existence of Indian residential schools is not over. Of interest here would be a consideration of how Canadians engaging representations of IRS history might find themselves confronted with narratives that provoke new ways of enacting civic responsibility and articulating an understanding of what such a responsibility means for a future Canada that might yet realize the name of a just society. As mentioned above, worth discussing at the very least would be cultural practices that might encourage a de-coupling of guilt and responsibility so that the rejection of guilt does not produce the rejection of responsibility and so that government apology does not dissolve either the responsibility or agency of non-Aboriginal Canadians. Why Worry? Why Now? I have been doing a great deal of worrying in this text and for some readers this is perhaps beginning to sound too unhopeful. Yet my commitment here has been to hope. In her recent book Where the Pavement Ends, Marie Wadden has suggested that the five years concurrent with the work of the commission will be crucial for raising public awareness about the damage done to Aboriginal society by the 1920 legislation that required First Nations parents to surrender their children to residential schools.40 What is at stake here, though, is not just some vague, sad cognizance that something terrible happened in the past. At stake is the possibility that the work of the TRC can inform a practice of public memory that instigates the formation of a new public, one committed to supporting the work that needs to be done in order to further just policies and practices regarding issues that matter dearly

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to Aboriginal communities: those not just of land claims and land use, but as well those relating to health, education, housing, and water. In this context, the work of the commission will offer to all of us living together above the forty-ninth parallel the opportunity to consider what might transform Canada into a post-colonial society. This will be an opportunity to consider anew the on-going responsibilities that accrue to us when we realize that remembering Canada’s history means remembering we are all treaty people and that treaty relationships are fundamentally abiding, living covenants. In the summer of 2008, when I began a first draft of this paper, Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty announced a cabinet shuffle wherein he appointed a new minster for the Ontario Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs. During a CBC radio news report on this change in ministers, one topic of conversation among journalists was whether Brad Duguid should consider his appointment as Aboriginal affairs minster as a demotion, since Aboriginal Affairs was considered a government ministry of minor importance. That such discourse is a mode of taken-for-granted discussion is symptomatic of the challenges that face us. It is not just a question of what political parties have the most progressive policies; it is the very possibility we might define our communal existence as rooted within a set of social relations in which as many people as possible participate in the repair of the on-going consequences of a historic injustice. There remains the question as to whether the TRC can mobilize more than an affective response from its non-Aboriginal public.41 Will it be possible for the response to the commission’s work to move through and beyond an apologetic acknowledgment that racism has been integral to Canada’s history in order to address the requirements of active support for substantial political transformation, one in which we might claim a collective, compassionate humanity for ourselves and our communities? For this to be possible, I think it will take a good deal more thoughtful worrying about the problematics of listening, reconciliation, and the educative responsibilities of the TRC.

NOTES 1 In addition to Pauline Wakeham and Jennifer Henderson, who offered many helpful suggestions for the revision of this manuscript, I would also like to acknowledge the insightful comments of Lynne Davis, George Dei, and Aparna Mishra Tarc. 2 Terri Saunders, “Red & white revelry: Harper, GG praise our national ‘treasure trove.’” Sun Media, Winnipeg Sun, 2 July 2, 2009, http://new.winnipegsun.com/news/ canada/2009/07/02/9997691-sun.html. 3 The full mandate of the Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission is available at http://www.trc-cvr.ca. All subsequent references to the mandate in this essay are to the above website. 4 Shoshana Felman, “Psychoanalysis and Education: Teaching the Terminable and Interminable,” Yale French Studies 63, no. 1 (1982): 21–44; Deborah Britzman, Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998); Sharon Todd, Learning from the Other: Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). 5 The Legacy of Hope Foundation’s digital learning resource Where Are the Children is available at http://www.wherearethechildren.ca/en/home.html. 6 See, for example, Rachel Baum, “‘What I have learned to feel’”: The Pedagogical Emotions

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Roger I. Simon of Holocaust Education,” College Literature 23, no. 3 (1996): 44–57; and Megan Boler, “The Risks of Empathy: Interrogating Multiculturalism’s Gaze,” in Feeling Power: Emotions and Education (New York: Routledge, 1999), 155–74. Baum, “‘What I have learned to feel,’” 50. Paul Muldoon, “Thinking Responsibility Differently: Reconciliation and the Tragedy of Colonisation,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 26, no. 3 (2005): 237–54. Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); G. Vizenor, ed., Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009). Sir Ronald Wilson, Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Canberra: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997), 9. Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith, “Indigenous Human Rights in Australia: Who Speaks for the Stolen Generations?” in Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition, ed. K. Shaffer and S. Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 111. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “History and the Politics of Recognition” in Manifestos for Historians, ed. K. Jenkins, A. Munslow, and S. Gordon (New York: Routledge, 2008). Michael Humphrey, “Reconciliation and the Therapeutic State,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 26, no. 3 (2005): 203–20. The text of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples may be found at http:// www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html. Roger I. Simon, Mario Di Paolantonio, and Mark Clamen, “Remembrance as Praxis and the Ethics of the Inter-Human,” Culture Machine no. 4 (2002), http://www.culturemachine.net/ index.php/cm/article/view/272/257. Achille Mbembe, “Passages to Freedom: The Politics of Racial Reconciliation in South Africa,” Public Culture 20, no.1 (2008): 5–18. Suggesting there is a problem in the over-reliance on pathos as a means to kindle an awareness of past injustice and a public concern in regard to its enduring legacies is not meant to suggest that public history turn away from practices that provoke affect. Rather, it leaves open the question of what practices might most helpfully frame the relation between affect and thought. For an important introduction to these issues, see Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Vision, and Contemporary Art (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). For example, it is worth giving some thought to contemporary justifications offered for the policies and practices of the removal of Indigenous children from their families by child welfare agencies. It is estimated there are currently three times as many Aboriginal children living in foster care than were in residential school at any one time. See Cindy Blackstock, “Residential Schools: Did They Really Close or Just Morph into Child Welfare?” Indigenous Law Journal 6, no.1 (2007): 71–8. Sherene Razack, “Stealing the Pain of Others: Reflections on Canadian Humanitarian Responses,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 29, no. 4 (2007): 376. Roger I. Simon, “The Touch of the Past: The Pedagogical Significance of a Transactional Sphere of Public Memory” in R.I. Simon, The Touch of the Past: Remembrance, Learning and Ethics (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 87–103. Ernst Bloch, “Nonsynchronism and Dialectics,” New German Critique 11 (1977): 22. Roger I. Simon, Sharon Rosenberg, Claudia Eppert, eds., Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical Trauma (Latham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

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23 Woolford makes an important argument that the designation of “cultural genocide” is too qualified and imprecise for understanding Canadian Aboriginal experiences of colonialism. He argues that rereading and opening certain components of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide through an engagement with Canadian Aboriginal experiences and understandings of group identity, destruction, and intent provides a clearer path to discerning the nature of genocide in Canada. See Andrew Woolford, “Ontological Destruction: Genocide and Canadian Aboriginal Peoples,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 4, no. 1 (2009): 81–97. 24 While starting a discussion of the history of residential schools holds the potential for rethinking the national narrative of Canada so as to explicitly place it within the frame of colonialism, even more radically it also holds the potential to reframe the legitimacy of Crown power in Canada as derived from Aboriginal sovereigns under the terms of treaties (see S. Henderson, this volume). 25 For an argument regarding the importance of group apology as “an opportunity to re-imagine identity, not to change the past, but to change the way groups and their members stand in relation to it” and that “intergroup relations can still be amended for those who live in the shadows of past injustices,” see Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn, “Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative,” in Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation, ed. E. Barkan and A. Karn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 3–30. 26 See, for example, Madoka Futamura, “Individual and Collective Guilt: Post-War Japan and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal,” European Review 14, no. 4 (2006): 471–83. 27 Rosanne Kennedy and Jan Tikka Wilson, “Constructing Shared Histories: Stolen Generation Testimony, Narrative Therapy and Address” in World Memory: Personal Trajectories in Global Time, ed. J. Bennett and R. Kennedy (New York: Palgrave 2003), 119–40. 28 Britzman, Lost Subjects, Contested Objects, 117. 29 Jennifer Bonnell and Roger I. Simon, “Difficult Exhibitions and Intimate Encounters,” Museum and Society 5, no. 2 (2007), http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/m&s/Issue%2014/bonnellsimon.pdf. 30 Damien Short, “Reconciliation and the Problem of Internal Colonialism,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 26, no. 3 (2005): 267–82. 31 Roger I. Simon and Claudia Eppert, “Remembering Obligation: Witnessing Testimonies of Historical Trauma,” in Simon, The Touch of the Past, 50–64. 32 Paulette Regan, “An Apology Feast in Hazelton: Indian Residential Schools, Reconciliation, and Making Space for Indigenous Legal Traditions,” in Indigenous Legal Traditions, ed. Law Commission of Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 65. 33 Ibid., 42. 34 I am not arguing against the inclusion of the history of residential schooling in public school curriculum, but am suggesting that it is a mistake to think that schools can solve the problem of public education about the IRS system and its effects. There is much to be said in this regard. The issues here concern both the need to attend to the form and substance of a pedagogy of “post-contact” Canadian history as well as the institutional realities that will determine the amount of textbook space and teaching time that can/will be devoted to the topic of Indian residential schools. 35 For those interested in an example of the way a broad discursive coalition of educators and those working in various aspects of the cultural sector might challenge hegemonic historical narratives, it would be worth examining the public pedagogy of the 1992 “counter-commemoration” movement that contested the celebration of Columbus’s landing on Aboriginal land in

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Roger I. Simon 1492. See Roger I. Simon, “The Pedagogy of Remembrance and the Counter-Commemoration of the Columbus Quincentenary,” in Simon, The Touch of the Past, 14–31. My reference to “cultural workers” includes not only print and television journalists but writers working in various genres, people working in the visual and performing arts, those producing film and video for both broadcast and independent circulation, museum curators and interpretive centre planners, and people working in various aspects of new technologies such as website design. The problem of public access to the increasing number of cultural productions addressing the experience of First Nations and Inuit peoples forced into residential schools is an acute problem for the pedagogical agenda of the TRC. Examples of recent films that deserve Canada-wide distribution and public presence include Duane Gastant’ Aucoin’s My Own Private Lower Post (2008) and Armand Ruffo’s A Windigo Tale (2009). For example, Philip Noyce’s Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence was critically acclaimed for its power to move audiences and educate them about the experience of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families. While it has been widely adapted as a teaching tool, “its appeal to the emotions and potential to universalize and commodify ‘Stolen Generation’ experiences triggers suspicion and invites debate about the politics of reception”; Schaffer and Smith, Human Rights and Narrated Lives, 97. See also Tony Birch, “This Is a True Story: Rabbit Proof Fence, Mr. Devil, and the Desire to Forget,” Cultural Studies Review 8, no. 1 (2002): 117–29; Tony Hughes-D’Aeth, “Which Rabbit Proof Fence?: Empathy, Assimilation, Hollywood,” Australian Humanities Review 27 (2002), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/ Issue-September-2002/hughesdaeth.html; Emily Potter and Kay Schaffer, “Rabbit Proof Fence, Relational Ecologies, and the Commodification of Indigenous Experience,” Australian Humanities Review 31–2, (2004), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-April-2004/ schaffer.html. See also Rosanne Kennedy, “The Affective Work of Stolen Generations Testimony: From the Archives to the Classroom,” Biography 27 (2004): 48–77, as well as Kennedy’s “Subversive Witnessing: Mediating Indigenous Testimony in Australian Cultural and Legal Institutions” in Women Studies Quarterly 36, nos. 1–2 (2008): 58–75. Sam McKegney, Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Community after Residential School (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2007), 7. Marie Wadden, Where the Pavement Ends (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2008), 5. Deena Rymhs, “Appropriating Guilt: Reconciliation in an Aboriginal Canadian Context,” English Studies in Canada 32, no. 1 (March 2006): 105–23.

8 Epistemic Heterogeneity: Indigenous Storytelling, Testimonial Practices, and the Question of Violence in Indian Residential Schools1 julia emberley

The power of a story is shown through stories about a story. Jo-ann Archibald/Q’um Q’um Xiiem, Indigenous Storywork

In this essay, I argue that an epistemic shift is occurring in the production, reception, and comprehension of Indigenous testimonial discourses that document the trauma of colonial and Canadian national violence. What is notable in this epistemic shift is how testimonial narratives of pain and suffering recounted by Indigenous peoples and resulting from colonial and national institutional and representational violences are being situated in relation to Indigenous storytelling epistemologies. The significance of repositioning testimony as coextensive with Indigenous storytelling epistemologies is intended to resist the drive towards a unified theoretical approach to testimony as well as to draw attention to the multiplicity of people who make up the modern nation and from whose histories emerge specific and timely discourses of resistance and response. One of the effects of introducing this epistemic shift into testimonial and trauma studies is the recognition that the autobiographical genre available in mainstream literary traditions is not the only form in which to communicate the experiential knowledge of residential schooling as an institutional site of colonial violence. Testimonial discourse is normally composed of autobiographical accounts of individual experiences of traumatic events. Such discourse is effective precisely because the testimonies make use of the underlying representational authority of an individual self whose testimony may be used to grant the protection and security of individual rights, for example. The cultural construction of the “self” in an Indigenous epistemological framework, however, may place more value on the individual’s relationship to community or kinship filiations and affiliations. This does not mean that questions of individual rights and citizenship are irrelevant or valueless but, rather, that the speaking subject is accountable to and implicated in a set of kinship and community relations beyond the individual self. Thus, one important aspect of this epistemic shift involves the recognition of a speaking subject that is situated in a field of multiple subjugated and non-subjugated interdependencies. In other words, the Indigenous testimonial subject is neither fully subjugated nor silenced by colonial power, nor able to heroically surpass the realities of colonial subjugation, at least individually. In addition, and because the speaking subject is constituted within an Indigenous epistemological framework, he/she/they speak from multiple sites of knowing and are, consequently, in a position or positioned to, resist

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and reconfigure the polymorphous techniques of colonial power. Thus, the introduction of Indigenous epistemologies into testimonial studies makes possible heterogeneous strategies for social and political change. From the perspective of a field of Western epistemology and its critical or alternative epistemic interventions, what this means is the field of epistemology has not necessarily or simply become more inclusive. Rather, the possibilities and limits of epistemological approaches become more readily apparent and the field of epistemology itself becomes imbued with a critical energy and agency. My intention, then, is to bring about an epistemic encounter between psychoanalytically informed testimonial studies and Indigenous storytelling epistemology in an effort to delimit how the figure of “silence” is valued by both testimonial and storytelling epistemologies, though for differing reasons. Due to the fact that “testimony” will be gathered for the recently established Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an approach to testimonial discourse that takes into account Indigenous storytelling epistemology might be important for recognizing the heterogeneity of testimonial practices and the multiple possibilities they hold for healing and social change. Of the many strategies deployed by the Canadian government towards disassembling the matrices of kinship affiliation and Indigenous community values perhaps none were as effective as the alliances established between the religious missions and the federal government’s residential school policy. By 1920, amendments to the Indian Act mandated compulsory school attendance of Indian children. Indigenous children were taken, often by force, to residential schools located in unfamiliar sites far away from their lands, their mothers and educators, their kinship affiliations and communities. Sometimes the web of connections could stretch far enough that the children would attempt to follow them back home. If caught, however, they would be severely punished; sometimes the threads that bind were irrevocably damaged and severed, leaving the children in a social space that was profoundly disorienting and confusing. In Victims of Benevolence: Discipline and Death at the Williams Lake Indian Residential School, 1891–1920, Elizabeth Furniss recounts the deaths of two boys: “In February 1902, when he was eight years old, Duncan [Sticks] once again ran away from the school. He was outside, working under the supervision of a teacher, when he and eight other boys ran off. The others were caught, but Duncan disappeared into the woods. His body was found the next day by a local rancher. Duncan had died by the roadside thirteen kilometers from the school.”2 There is also the story of a young boy named Augustine Allan from Canin Lake: “Augustine committed suicide while at the residential school in the summer of 1920. He and eight other boys had made a suicide pact and had gathered together to eat poisonous water hemlock. Augustine died, but the other eight survived.”3 These incidents provide graphic testimony as to the violence that existed within residential schools and the limited options for resistance available to the children. Such passages also demonstrate the evidentiary value placed on testimonial discourse. The TRC was implemented to address such events as these and other documented acts of cruelty and suffering administered within the schools on a regular basis. On the Meaning(s) of “Colonial Violence” The TRC was established on the basis of recommendations made in the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) to hold an inquiry into the schools, although the

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form that such an inquiry could take was not intended to be limited to only a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples itself gathered testimonial evidence through public hearings from 1991 to 1996 on the residential schools and other government policies affecting Indigenous peoples in Canada. Residential schools were viewed by the commissioners as one of the most significant government policy initiatives to have detrimental effects on Indigenous peoples. The authors of the report state: “Our research and hearings indicate that a full investigation into Canada’s residential school system, in the form of a public inquiry established under Part I of the Public Inquiries Act, is necessary to bring to light and begin to heal the grievous harms suffered by countless Aboriginal children, families and communities as a result of the residential school system.”4 In his testimony, collected by this commission, Phil Fontaine, then grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, calls for disclosure of the residential school experience: “And, of course, because they [the Canadian government and churches] are not prepared to apologize, we are unable to get the government to engage with us in the process that will allow our people to talk about their experiences, to disclose their experiences, and to allow our people to begin a healing process. Because in a process of healing, the first and most important step is disclosure. So, there must be a process that will allow all of those people, the many, many, many people that attended residential schools, to allow them to begin to talk about their experiences, so that they can begin to heal.”5 In making its case for a public inquiry into residential schools, the report emphasizes that such an inquiry represents “an appropriate social and institutional forum to enable Aboriginal people to do what we and others before us have suggested is necessary: to stand in dignity, voice their sorrow and anger, and be listened to with respect.”6 As Phil Fontaine argues, the reality of colonial violence must be disclosed, recognized, and accounted for: “As well, we feel that it’s really very important, as a matter of fact, critical to this whole process that, whatever transpired, whatever transpired, be recorded and it become a part of the public record, so that what happened to our people in residential schools, what was done to our people, will never be lost, will always be part of our memory, and it will always be there for people to see what was done to our people.”7 This means the establishment and operation of a national Aboriginal archive and library to house records concerning residential schools that would provide for researching and analysing “the nature and effects of residential school polices on Indigenous peoples.”8 Of central importance to documenting the “nature and effects” of residential school policies is the question of what constitutes “violence.” What counts as a violent act is not only the subject of legal and legislative inquiries, it also concerns the historical, social, and cultural construction of the meanings of violence and the political and economic values attributed to those meanings. All these questions will have to be addressed in order to make it possible to recognize and respond to violence that is physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual. One way to document and gain knowledge about the meaning of violence in the context of residential schooling has been through the production of testimonies such as the following account in which Eleanor Brass recalls her observation that the worst atrocities happened during the winter when the children were quarantined to prevent sickness. No parents were allowed to visit. On one occasion, however, her father came by just as his niece had been punished for attempting to run away. Her hands and arms had been beaten so they looked like boxing gloves, and her ankles were shackled together. Walter Dieter’s face became deathly pale when he saw the child, and he took the steps in a few leaps, burst into the

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principal’s office, grabbed him by the scruff of this neck and dragged him downstairs. Though the shackles were removed immediately nothing else came of the incident.9

As this brief excerpt shows, the memory of such traumatic events creates a text that not only contains information about the vulnerability of children but underscores the problem of recognizing how violence is constituted within a given institutional context. There are many avenues open to obtaining justice in the question of residential school violence. The fields of education, jurisprudence, and governmental policy, for instance, have been at the centre in the pursuit of knowledge about the schools as well as in bringing about changes in the public domain to the sanctioned ignorance about the violence in the residential schools that is so pervasive throughout mainstream Canadian society. I would like to propose another field of study for investigating the history of Indian residential schools that explores not just the facticity of its violence but extends the discussion to include the very meaning of what constitutes violence and its effects. This would mean shifting the epistemic focus from documenting the impact of the Indian residential schools system in which testimony is gathered as evidentiary material that supports already existing knowledge of the facts, to studying how Indigenous cultural practitioners, such as writers, artists, performers, and film-makers are re-presenting the question of residential school violence within the epistemological framework of Indigenous storytelling. As an alternative to the rationalist project of epistemic containment achieved through the incitement to testify, in legal and non-legal contexts, Indigenous storytelling epistemologies allow for the intervention of different frameworks of knowing that can undermine the injunction to turn cruelty and violence, especially towards children, into a discourse to be easily re-consumed and re-fetishized within, for example, the pornographic languages of subjugation. Knowledge and Violence in the Residential Schools The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement was implemented in order to address the burgeoning numbers of legal cases before the courts demanding compensation for the detrimental effects attributed to what is called the “common experience” of residential schools and, especially, the “sexual or physical abuses or other abuses that caused serious psychological effects,” as stated on the settlement poster.10 The knowledge of these various forms of abuse has been available for some time now. Over the past three decades testimonial research on residential schools has taken place through interviews, recordings, and publications. The education scholar Celia Haig-Brown was one of the first to produce an extensive study of residential schools in British Columbia. In Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (1988), she analysed the history of and resistance to residential schooling among the Secwepemc, also known as Shuswap. Basil Johnston, a member of the Ojibwa nation and a former student of the residential school experience, wrote an autobiographical account of his experience at the Garnier residential school in Indian School Days,11 while Agnes Grant gathered the stories of women survivors of residential schools, including Eleanor Brass and Rita Joe, among others, in Finding My Talk. Along with Johnston’s writings and the material collected by Grant, another notable text is Morningstar Mercredi’s Morningstar: A Warrior’s Spirit, in which she documents her experience of the intergenerational effects of residential schools by providing a personal account of its effects on her grandmother’s, mother’s, and her own life journey.12 In

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recording these histories, these writers and educators engaged in specific methodological techniques, cultural protocols, and ethical questions in order to bring to light a traumatic and painful history of cultural genocide.13 The phrase often associated with this instrumental design to “assimilate” Indigenous peoples through such processes as the residential school was “to kill the Indian in [the child], in order to save the man,” a phrase attributed to Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt of the US Army, who created the prototype of an Indian school based on the model of a prison for “pacified” Indians. He established the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1878 with backing from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.14 As with the Indian residential schools in Canada, “students” were trained for industrial purposes, with the emphasis on agriculture and trades instruction for boys and domestic training for girls, sufficient to equip a servant class. As many of the writers mentioned above testify, there was little emphasis on academic instruction. It is perhaps, then, not surprising that Indigenous scholars in the field of education have been at the forefront of changing the educational system to meet the needs of Indigenous children and to create curriculum and institutional forms that are flexible enough to incorporate Indigenous approaches to knowledge. Jo-ann Archibald/Q’um Q’um Xiiem, a member of the Stó:lõ Nation, for instance, has spearheaded a focus upon Indigenous storytelling and epistemologies in the context of her academic work as a social scientist and as an Indigenous scholar. Her work, as I argue below, provides the possibility for the kind of epistemological encounter I imagine which could address what it means to testify to the colonial and national institutionalization of the various forms of violence that existed within residential schools. In the following section I am particularly interested in how the concept of “silence” appears in the psychoanalytical testimonial studies of Dori Laub and in Jo-ann Archibald’s discussion of Indigenous frameworks of knowledge. The concept of silence in these disparate sites of knowledge production is not without significance for distinguishing the use of testimonial discourses. For instance, is “breaking the silence” advocated for the purposes of disclosure perceived as a public good meant to yield certain effects of transnational healing across Canadian and Indigenous jurisdictions? Or does its usefulness lie, not as a means to an end, but as a space of learning, witnessing, and communication in and of itself? In Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit, Archibald assembles a multilayered approach to Indigenous storytelling practices that includes recounting her experience with Western epistemologies in the field of education, learning about the principles and protocols involved in Indigenous storytelling practices, and negotiating the complex and challenging process of bringing Indigenous knowledges and storytelling practices into dialogue with Western methods of knowledge acquisition. With reference to the latter, she is especially indebted to those methodologies in the social sciences that have provided her with ways of gathering information on Indigenous pedagogical practices. The effect of this multilayered approach is to demonstrate the teaching capacities of storytelling while simultaneously producing knowledge about the significance and value of Indigenous storytelling as a way of learning and knowing. In response to the “theorizing dilemma” of falling into some of the “misguided approaches of Western literary theory,” Archibald seeks to avoid this “new act of colonization” by finding the theory embedded in the stories rather than applying, for example, a Western theoretical approach to a site of Indigenous knowledge.15 Echoing the words of Kimberley Blaeser, she writes: “We must first ‘know the stories of our people’ and then ‘make our own story too’ … We must ‘be aware of the

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ways they [Western literary theorists] change the story we already know’ for only with that awareness can we protect the integrity of the Native American Story.”16 For a non-Aboriginal scholar such as myself, educated in the Western literary tradition, the ethico-epistemic challenge lies in the dual process of unlearning the institutional, epistemic, and representational violences of colonization and learning from Indigenous storytelling about the interwoven fabric of reciprocity, respect, balance, and responsibility that informs an Indigenous approach to reading stories. What one learns is important, of course. Just as important, however, is how one learns. In her commentary on testimonial practices, Paula Gunn Allen writes that “bearing witness is one solution, but it is singularly tearing, for witnessing genocide – as with conversation – requires that someone listen and comprehend.”17 It is this combined activity of listening and comprehending that I want to expand upon in Jo-ann Archibald’s notion of Indigenous “storywork.” “Silence” as Process and Product For Archibald, Indigenous storywork demands a high level of interactive exchange between storyteller and listener. The participatory aspects of Indigenous storywork are also emphasized by Willie Blackwater, who, in documented testimony, writes about storytelling in the following terms: “If I did something wrong, my grandfather would tell me a long story, and I had to figure out for myself its meaning and what it told me about what I had done.”18 The importance of the participatory listener who must enter into the process of meaning making is also underscored by James (Sa’ke’j) Henderson when he notes that the “key rule is that the listener must accept that regardless of what information he or she may have requested, it is an Elder or Storykeeper that determines the best way to tell a story or convey the teaching the story contains.”19 The Western reader is likely to view such a situation as implicitly hierarchical in that the Elder is situated in a more powerful position as the keeper of knowledge over the listener. But this view decontextualizes the overall situatedness of the storytelling encounter as one in which the storytelling and receiving dynamic is more like a gift exchange than that which takes places in the marketplace of commodification, dispossession, and appropriation – a point to which I will return. One of the aspects of Archibald’s text that is especially relevant to research in testimonial studies is her attention to the concept of silence as she uses it to shape a particular set of connections between story, storyteller, and listener. Archibald emphasizes the gaps that open up between researchers and Elders in learning about Indigenous storywork. For example, the silence that lies between the question and the response, or the lack of a response, may indicate that proper protocols have not been followed. In other cases, the question may be answered with a story and the questioner is left wondering about the significance of the story he or she has been told. In her initial research discussions with the Coqualeetza Elders’ Group, Archibald experienced “long silences” after asking questions.20 She writes that at first she was uncomfortable with the silence and began to question herself as to why this was the response she was getting. What she learned was that “these silences were important because the Elders were thinking about the questions and preferred not to speak until they were sure about their answers. Silence is respectful and can create good thinking. They would answer with stories of personal, family, and community experience. Sometimes, a question was not answered when it was asked because the Elders needed time to reawaken their memories and ensure that what they said was the truth as they knew it.”21

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Thus, these gaps, these silences, serve several purposes. They open up space for the ethical insertion of cultural protocols such as respect and reciprocity or for thinking through what information or knowledge is required to answer a question. This silence also contains a process whereby meaning unfolds in the intertextual relations between listening and learning. The active relationship between storyteller, listener, and story gives meaning to Jo-ann Archibald’s conception of “Indigenous storywork,” an interactive process that brings people and story together to accomplish the work of comprehension.22 In other words, learning to learn requires a mutually beneficial and reciprocal work ethic. Testimony, as it has been practised in Western legal and non-legal institutions, and Indigenous storytelling have more in common than one might expect, precisely because both ways of knowing hold the unexpected as part of a genuine desire to reach out beyond the known. In her work on testimony in the field of Holocaust studies, Shoshana Felman observes that constitutive to testimony is a particular experience of discovery. Not only can the teaching and learning about testimony yield to an understanding of its pervasiveness as in “how it is implicated – sometimes unexpectedly – in almost every kind of writing,” but also its uncanny attributes, whereby “the more we look closely at texts, the more they show us that, unwittingly, we do not even know what testimony is and that, in any case, it is not simply what we thought we knew it was.”23 The defamiliarizing aspects of testimonial practices are, indeed, part of a process in which listening and learning are transformed into knowledge, but just what that knowledge is is not always evident. In her understanding of how meaning is made through storytelling, Archibald cites the following detailed explanation by the Elder Wapaskwan: There is a “surface” story: the text, and the things one has to know about the performance of it for others. The stories are metaphoric, but there are several levels of metaphor involved. The text, combined with the performance, contains a “key” or a “clue” to unlock the metaphor. When a hearer has that story, and knows the narrative sequence of it, there is another story contained within that story, like a completely different embedded or implicit text. The trick is this: that the implicit or embedded text, itself, contains clues, directions – better yet, specifications – for the interpretation of an implicit text embedded in it … A hearer isn’t meant to understand the story on all levels, immediately. It is as if it unfolds.24

As with the description of meaning making in storytelling practices, the passage itself contains a clue to its comprehension. That clue is embedded in its metaphorical use of the action of “unfolding.” The story unfolds its meaning which suggests multiple layers of meaning, as in the unfolding of fabric, as well as a temporal dimension to such a process; that meaning unfolds over time. This spatio-temporal aspect to constructing the meaning of story also puts into play a matrix of knowledge production. Of significance here is that meaning making via the social kinship of storyteller and listener is part of a communal activity. This does not mean that the individual story is collapsed into a larger whole. On the contrary, stories are part of a collective repository of knowledge that is more like a web of interconnected threads than a striated space demarcated by fixed lines. Within this web of meaning, spaces are constructed and provisionally framed by nodes of interconnection. Those spaces, I want to suggest, are the silences that unfold in the production of meaning in Indigenous storywork. In other words, we are not dealing here with empty spaces, or empty silences; nor are we in a fully bracketed spatial enclosure, because the space of silence is

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constituted by the corners of its intersecting threads, threads that, importantly, continue to extend beyond the frame, and can thus shift and transform over time. This website is always under construction and always pregnant with silence. As in life, writes Paula Gunn Allen, Indigenous cultural production “embodies the principle of kinship, rendering the beautiful in terms of connectedness of elements in harmonious, balanced, respectful proportion of each and any to all-in-All.”25 Given the readerly-writerly relationship elaborated by Archibald, I would like to suggest that the production of residential school testimony through governmental, legal, and scholarly practices (such as the RCAP and the TRC) is not entirely disconnected from the cultural production of Indigenous storytelling. There is, in other words, an intertextual kinship of signification at work between them. Generative Kinship in Meaning and Life Aboriginality and motherhood share an interrelated history in that the knowledges of Indigenous societies, the cultural production of generating life and meaning, when they are not being idealized for poetic or political reasons in the West, are very much part of the knowledge of everyday life, its practices, and social and political actions. In the West, however, the essentializing of the female reproductive body, invented in the nineteenthand early-twentieth-century discourses of hysteria, for example, positioned women and motherhood outside the episteme. The derealization of Aboriginal and generative ways of knowing occurred through the biopolitical disciplinary actions of scientific knowledge formations such as psychoanalysis. The rendering of Indigenous and generative bodies as part of a biological ground zero on which to assemble the cultures of civilization crushed specific Indigenous knowledges of the generative production of life and meaning into unrecognizable or disfigured fragments, precisely by constructing another epistemic edifice on top of them. While some may argue that an archaeology of knowledge is required to dig up the remains of these other ways of knowing, such knowledges have not hardened into historic or prehistoric remains. Rather, I think, they have continued to flow through the historical record and into the present. On the generative kinship production of life and meaning, Paula Gunn Allen emphasizes its already existing “mixedness” and the hybridity of genres and “races, classes, and genders.” Contrary to the Western literary tradition, which she asserts is “deeply purist” and promotes “intellectual apartheid,” the Native literary tradition, according to Allen, opens up a non-conflictual mode of communication that incorporates “the mixing of levels of diction, like the mixing of spiritual beliefs and attitudes.”26 Allen argues that colonization buttressed the rigidity of impermeable classificatory boundaries supported by institutional, psychological, and social barriers “designed to prevent mixtures from occurring.”27 Political conquest, she continues, necessarily involves intellectual conquest: educational institutions in this century have prevented people from studying the great works of minority cultures in light of critical structures that could illuminate and clarify those materials in their own contexts. The literatures and arts of non-Western peoples have thus remained obscure to people educated in Western intellectual modes. Moreover, non-Western literature and art appear quaint, primitive, confused, and unworthy of serious critical attention largely because they are presented that way.28

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Constitutive of this notion of mixedness that Allen emphasizes is the possible intertwining of Western and Indigenous storytelling traditions in such a way that elements of Western literary traditions become embedded in Native storytelling traditions and elements of the oral traditions become embedded in the Western literary traditions. The idea, according to Allen, “is to choose elements from each in ways that enrich both.”29 Intervening in the mixedness of Western and non-Western literary and theoretical traditions are the multiple critical discourses in Western scholarship. I want to mobilize and complicate such a critical perspective by examining the centrality of psychoanalytical critique in testimonial studies and its limits for comprehending testimony in colonial and postcolonial contexts. In his commentary on the emergence of testimony in the late twentieth century, Elie Wiesel wrote that “if the Greeks invented tragedy, the Romans the epistle and the Renaissance the sonnet, our generation invented a new literature, that of testimony.”30 I believe, however, that Indigenous storytelling, which has been in existence as long as, if not longer than the Greek or Roman traditions, already invented a model for making, reading, and responding to testimonial practices. In the present and future, we are, therefore, not only witnessing the storying of postcolonial violence through contemporary testimonial practices as in the case of the testimony collected for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and the TRC, we are also witnessing the regeneration of Indigenous storytelling as part of a heterogeneity of epistemological practices. Importantly, this heterogeneity of epistemologies does not operate on a principle of exclusion. In other words, it does not prevent coexistence, conjunction, or connection, even in the face of disparate terms that remain disparate, such as that of “silence.” With all due respect to Wiesel’s positive assertion of the significance of testimony in our time, it is still the case that, at best, testimony is perceived to be a minority or supplementary discourse. Often testimony is merely incorporated as “raw material” and the basis for the production of better, more ethical, or richer literary, psychoanalytical, and historical discourses, cited in footnotes, for example, but rarely cited in full within the main text. In this way, testimony and Indigenous storytelling share a common problem: the lack of recognition and comprehension of such discourses in their own contexts and the production of methods in which to understand the already vital dynamics of testimonial and Indigenous storytelling practices. The unique relationship between silence and respect that Jo-ann Archibald brings to bear on Indigenous storywork is also evident in Dori Laub’s psychoanalytical encounter with Holocaust testimony. Laub is a practising psychoanalyst and co-founder of the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale. In his essay “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” Laub defines silence as an absence of coherent meaning and, thus, as a place in which the psychoanalyst can enable the witness of the traumatic event in the co-production of testimony.31 In Laub’s words, The listener must know all this and more. He or she must listen to and hear the silence, speaking mutely both in silence and in speech, both from behind and from within the speech. He or she must recognize, acknowledge and address that silence, even if this simply means respect – and knowing how to wait. The listener to trauma needs to know all this, so as to be a guide and an explorer, a companion in a journey onto an uncharted land, a journey the survivor cannot traverse or return from alone.32

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In order to become an enabler of testimony, the listener, asserts Laub, helps to “break the silence.”33 The silence that Laub addresses here is a silence induced by trauma, a silence that is ultimately damaging to the victim of trauma because its primary condition is that of exile, a self-imposed exile that Laub likens unto the experience of being stuck at “home,” a place of comfort and security. It is the listener’s job, then, according to Laub, to unbind the witness from her or his silence, to take her out of the comfort zone of the home and throw her out into the world, as it were – but this throwing of the individual into the world is not done by “the listener” in order to abandon her there but, rather, to assist her to become, in Freudian psychoanalytical terms, the Oedipal mother in the born-again rhetoric of a psychoanalytical rebirth: “The emergence of the narrative which is being listened to – and heard – is, therefore, the process and the place wherein the cognizance, the ‘knowing’ of the event is given birth to. The listener, therefore, is party to creation of knowledge de novo.”34 The Latinate modification of “new” recalls, somewhat ironically, an old world tradition of Eurocentric authority, which, in the context of postcolonial testimonial discourses appears anachronistic. To hear the comforting silence of the disengagement of the subject in relation to the world is also to “respect,” in Laub’s words, the amount of time it may take for the witness to “break the silence” and begin the process of reconstructing traumatic memory. This respect is constitutive to Laub’s ethics of engagement. As I intend to show, however, the ethics of engagement in Laub’s psychoanalytical framework differs from the ethics of engagement in Indigenous storytelling practices. These differences are, in part, the effect of methodological approaches. On the one hand, Archibald’s understanding of silence underscores a processional dimension in which a meaningful response unfolds over time and in relation to specifically contextualized needs. Laub, on the other hand, formulates the silence of a traumatic repression of pain and suffering in which exists the meaning-fragments of an event that the listener, or the psychoanalyst, will help to unearth and reconstruct. I would venture to say that Laub’s methodological approach is archaeological, while Archibald’s is transversal, in the sense that meaning is produced through a continuous movement across a spatio-temporal and multidimensional matrix of interconnections, what I also call assemblages.35 Archibald and Laub’s ethics of engagement also differ, however, in relation to economic and political contexts. On the question of the “ownership” of testimony or the story, Archibald outlines several types of storytelling practices and the protocols of “ownership” attached to them. There are four principal types of Indigenous storytelling: the sacred, the historical, those dealing with cultural traditions, and life experiences and testimonials. It is the latter category that usefully explains the type of Indigenous storytelling addressed here. Importantly, these different types of stories do not simply designate sub-genre classifications but refer to the context, content, and conditions of the production of story. One of those conditions involves the question of ownership. In the West, the ownership of stories, as in the emergence of the commodification of the novel in the nineteenth century, tied authorship to capitalist ideas of the individual author and private property rights. In Indigenous storytelling the question of ownership devolves to who has responsibility for knowing, learning, telling, and handing over stories to the next generation. “Ownership” can be conferred on the individual but also the family, the clan, or the public domain. The seasons, for example, are said to “own” stories in the sense that stories belong to certain seasons, which underscores the social kinship between the human and the natural world.

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From the perspective of its economic context, the story circulates on the basis of reciprocity or reciprocal exchange – and not through the agency of commodification or exchange value – and it is this reciprocity that determines the relations between listener and storyteller or “witness,” as in Beth Brant’s use of this term.36 This concept of reciprocity belongs to a different mode of cultural and economic production. In other words, Indigenous storytelling is not a stable commodity in the production of any “surplus value.” Although the “gift” itself is a product, Indigenous storytelling does not produce products that are commodified as the end result. They are circulated for other purposes and belong to what is generally recognized as a “gift economy.” Juxtaposing the reciprocal relations that lie in the space between storyteller and listener with Laub’s desire to fill the silence of trauma with the narrative production of testimony, I find that Laub’s ideal listener resides in the figure of the psychoanalyst and occupies a position of “co-ownership” in the testimonial encounter. He writes, for example: “By extension, the listener to trauma comes to be a participant and a co-owner of the traumatic event: through his very listening, he comes to partially experience trauma in himself … The listener … by definition partakes of the struggle of the victim with the memories and residues of his or her traumatic past. The listener has to feel the victim’s victories, defeats and silences, know them from within, so that they can assume the form of testimony.”37 The relationship between listener and witness is like that of “man and wife”: here the listener is marked by the masculine pronoun, whereas the witness enjoys the possibility of being gendered the same or differently, a “whatever” in the mode of a supplementary indifference. In this patriarchal configuration of sexual difference, the economy of exchange is one in which the words of the feminine other are taken up by the masculine listener/psychoanalyst and configured into testimony. As a result, the listener comes to own the story, to be a “co-owner” but, in reality, to command its narrative production. This commandeering position belies the mutual production of the meaning of testimonial narrative that Laub adumbrates, and, guided by the protective measures of the qualified listener, extends a benevolent face to the authority of the psychoanalytical regulation of a subject’s memory and memorializing capabilities. By contrast, in a gift economy or economy of reciprocity, stories are offered up as part of the generative kinship of life and meaning making that require an extension of affiliations beyond the individual to the community. Because storytelling practices are bound to economic practices of exchange, the question of ownership is itself overdetermined by the relationship of the individual to the community and the relationship of an individual’s story to a community of stories that make up the collective dimension of the meaning of life experience. Make no mistake, there is “exchange” in the gift economy, but one that goes between individual, story, and community where the medium of exchange is the story and it is the telling of and the listening to the story that solidifies relations of responsibility and reciprocity between individual and community. I want to return to Laub’s metaphor of the psychoanalyst as the Christopher Columbus of psychic discovery that occurs in the following passage, already cited above: “The listener to trauma needs to know all this, so as to be a guide and an explorer, a companion in a journey onto an uncharted land, a journey the survivor cannot traverse or return from alone.”38 This metaphorical slippage on Laub’s part in recounting the psychoanalytist–analysand relationship puts into play the paternalistic side of colonial imperialism. It is important to recognize that the so-called modern use of institutional regulatory power and the management of the mind over the body were intended to be non-coercive replacements for

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the physical violence of territorial expropriation and conquest through war. Psychoanalysis was, of course, key to the implementation of this more cost-effective and non-coercive mode of human regulation, used as it was to mediate relations between the public and the private and the colony and the empire, along the lines of the Oedipal bourgeois family.39 Decolonizing the mind – and heart, body, and spirit – is a process that requires critical reconsideration of current testimonial practices and learning from Indigenous storywork in order to comprehend the meaning of epistemic, physical, psychological, and representational violence experienced in the Indian residential schools. To decolonize these various forms of violence in the residential schools and other aspects of colonial legislation and institutionalization that set out to dismantle the generative kinship between life and meaning requires many things on the part of those who are responsible for allowing this violence to take place. It requires a public acknowledgment that violence has occurred, it requires the opening of avenues to document the nature of such violence and its past and generational effects, it requires the implementation of ways of healing, and it requires a response from the political and religious institutions that consented to the conditions that allowed the violence to occur. Some of these measures may be said to have already begun, such as that of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s official apology on 8 June 2008 as well as the apologies offered by some religious denominations.40 According to the section “Our Mandate,” included in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s official website, all of these actions must come into play if “reconciliation” is to unfold.41 Achieving this would also involve, I would suggest, that the testimony gathered by the TRC is viewed not only as a body of work that can fill a silence in the record of historical truth, but also as a process that allows the conditions for respect and responsiveness to emerge; in other words, to let silence become the provisional framework around which to listen to residential school testimonies. Although such listening will be different for different people, for a non-Indigenous scholar such as myself, this means not imposing too quickly the methodological approaches that exist within Western epistemologies, but instead remaining open to hearing the incommensurabilities in Indigenous testimonies that can act as a clue to their comprehension. The testimony collected by the TRC may also serve as a medium of exchange in consolidating relations of reciprocity between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian nation. In order for that to happen, however, testimony must be viewed in an intertextual relation to Indigenous epistemologies and not, as in the psychoanalytical framework, as a supplementary discourse present to support the authority of institutionalized care. In the colonial past, Indigenous peoples had to exchange their cultural knowledge for entry into the mercantile and commodity markets of an imperialist economy; in the more recent postcolonial building of the nation, they have had to disavow their knowledge in order to be unwillingly assimilated into a potential class of agricultural and domestic labourers. With the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the danger exists that the testimony of Indigenous peoples is being collected under a new regime of veridiction intended to confirm the truth of an Indigenous subjectivity within the bounds of national statehood – a further twist to the assimilationist agenda, whereby “Indians” too can become citizens of the nation. I mentioned earlier the position of a speaking subject within a non-subjugated ontology. What the intervention of storytelling epistemologies can do is shift the emphasis from the discourses of victimization to discourses in which there is neither hero nor victim, but a process of becoming and learning. The practice of Indigenous storytelling opens up new possibilities

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for reciprocity and exchange that do not necessarily conform to the cultural logic of political redress, wherein “reconciliation” obviates the transversal exchange of disparate, and yet heterogeneous, knowledges. Perhaps the telling of and listening to Indigenous storytelling practices can offer up a new era of recognition in which the disclosure of the colonial violence of residential schooling can become a simultaneous moment of comprehension for non-Indigenous peoples and of healing for Indigenous peoples. And one last story. Achieving a balance of reciprocity in the exchanges of knowledges is not an easy project. Jo-ann Archibald chooses to demonstrate the difficulties of such a journey through the story of “Coyote’s Eyes.” Adapted by Terry Tafoya, the story is about how Coyote lost his eyes while trying to impress the Humans with a trick, after being given specific instructions by Rabbit on how to lose one’s eyes and retrieve them. Blinded and feeling terribly sorry for himself, Mouse and Buffalo take pity on him and give him each an eye. What Coyote ends up with are a set of mismatched eyes. Mouse’s eye “was so small it only let in a tiny amount of light. It was like looking at the world through a little hole.”42 By contrast, Buffalo’s eye was so large “that it let in so much light, Coyote was nearly blinded by the glare … Everything looked twice as large as it ordinarily did.”43 Archibald returns to the story of “Coyote’s Eyes” throughout her text, each time adapting it to her experience of gaining Indigenous storytelling knowledge. For instance, in a later chapter, she considers what happens when the respect for “a sacred kind of knowledge was broken … A clue to Coyote’s problem is to find out how to respect certain types of Indigenous knowledge and to teach/ learn it in a culturally appropriate way.”44 Later she refers to the story again to examine the question of transformation in the process of decolonization: “Maybe the rabbit who has the responsibility to pass on cultural knowledge in the story ‘Coyote’s Eyes’ … shows us what can happen if we don’t critically engage in a decolonization or transformative-action process.”45 And lastly, with reference to the question of justice in Aboriginal cultures and the Canadian court system, Archibald compares their different views to “the two different eyes in the story ‘Coyote’s Eyes.’”46 “Coyote’s Eyes” is rich in its presentation of the inequalities that can exist in seemingly similar sites of material reality. What also makes the story compelling is that it has no “tidy conclusion.”47 While the TRC engages in a process of transforming a history of cruelty and injustice into the knowledge of colonial Canadian nation building, readers and learners from multiple backgrounds will, nevertheless, follow the stories, tracking the different views from here and elsewhere. The story is also a reminder that a heterogeneity of epistemic approaches is no guarantee of their equal standing. History teaches us that in the competition to establish the scientific episteme of the European Enlightenment, Indigenous epistemologies were relegated to being outside the episteme. The intellectual project, then, is to reintroduce the Indigenous episteme and, wherever possible, to intervene in mainstream knowledge systems so as to disrupt their possessive and self-serving claims to truth and authority.

NOTES 1 This paper was presented at the Curating Difficult Knowledges Conference, Montreal, Quebec, in April 2009 and the TransCanada 3 conference in Sackville, Nova Scotia, in July 2009. I am

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Julia Emberley grateful for the feedback I received at these public venues. I would also like to thank my research assistant for 2007–8, Allison Hargreaves, for her research into Indian residential schools in Canada for this project. I am also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the funding that made this research possible. Elizabeth Furniss, Victims of Benevolence: Discipline and Death at the Williams Lake Indian Residential School, 1891–1920 (Williams Lake, BC: Caribou Tribal Council, 1992), 14. Ibid., 14. Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), 5 vols. (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1996), vol. 1: 383. Philip Fontaine, Grand Chief, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, p. 167 from Public Hearings Round I–IV: Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Round II: Winnipeg, Man. 92-04-22. In For Seven Generations: An Information Legacy of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [CD-ROM]. Ottawa: Libraxus, 1997 (emphasis added). Canada, Report, 1: 383–4 Fontaine, in For Seven Generations. Ibid. Agnes Grant, Finding My Talk: How Fourteen Native Women Reclaimed Their Lives after Residential School (Calgary: Fifth House, 2004), 9. This poster can be seen on the Aboriginal Healing Foundation website: http/www.ahf.ca/. Basil Johnston, Indian School Days (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1988). See Morningstar Mercredi, Morningstar: A Warrior’s Spirit (Regina, SK: Coteau Books, 2006). Specific to the production of testimony on residential schools is the construction of childhood memory. In discussing childhood and Indigenous storytelling my intention is not to conflate them and thus reduce Indigenous culture to an ideological infantilism. I have discussed elsewhere, in depth, the problem of infantilization and Indigenous societies and the pervasive use in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, for example, of “Aboriginality” as an origin story in the modern text of Europe’s so-called primitive past. Julia Emberley, Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal: Cultural Practices and Decolonization in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). I have taken up the questions of how Indigenous storytelling informs the cultural construction of the child as a political subject and the re-membering and re-imagining of childhood elsewhere. See also Emberley, “A Child Is Testifying: Testimony, Transnationalism, and the Cultural Construction of Childhood,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45, no. 4 (2009): 379–90. John Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1999). Jo-ann Archibald, Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 16. Quoted ibid., 16. Paula Gunn Allen, “Introduction,” in Spider Woman’s Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women, ed. P.G. Allen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 156. Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey, Stolen from Our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Aboriginal Communities (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997), 65–6. James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson, First Nations Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights:

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Defining the Just Society (Saskatoon: Native Law Centre, University of Saskatchewan, 2006), 158. Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 88. Ibid., 89. James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson, Presentation at TransCanada 3 Conference, Sackville, New Brunswick, July 2009. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1992), 7. Quoted in Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 84. Allen, “Introduction,” 9. Ibid., 2, 3. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 3. Elie Wiesel, “The Holocaust as a Literary Inspiration,” in Dimensions of the Holocaust (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1977), 8, quoted in Felman and Laub, Testimony, 5–6. Felman and Laub, Testimony. Ibid., 58–9 (emphasis added). Interestingly, “breaking the silence” was the title of the first conference held as part of the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The title of the conference, held at the Université de Montréal, 26 and 27 September 2008, was “Breaking the Silence: International Conference on the Indian Residential Schools Commission of Canada.” The conference details are explained as follows: “This bilingual public event is a joint initiative of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the Centre for research on Ethics of the University of Montreal (CRÉUM) and the Centre on Values and Ethics (COVE) of Carleton University, that will help to support the work of the Commission.” See http://www.creum .umontreal.ca/spip.php?article900. Felman and Laub, Testimony, 57 (italics added with the exception of de novo). Further to my use of the concept of assemblage see Emberley, Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal, 93–4 and Emberley, “Epistemic Encounters: Indigenous Cosmopolitan Hospitality, Marxist Anthropology, Deconstruction, and Doris Pilkington’s Rabbit-Proof Fence,” English Studies in Canada 34.4 (December 2008): 147–70, esp. 148–9n1. Beth Brant’s essay “Writing as Witness” characterizes “witnessing” as an act of historical remembering that leads to renewal. Remembering for Brant involves a vision that “is not just a perception of what is possible, it is a window to the knowledges of what has happened and what is happening … Witness to what has been and what is to be. Knowing what has transpired and dreaming of what will come. Listening to the stories brought to us by other beings. Renewing ourselves in the midst of chaos.” Beth Brant, Writing as Witness: Essay and Talk (Toronto: Women’s Press, 1994), 72, 74. Felman and Laub, Testimony, 57–8. Ibid., 59 (emphasis added). See Emberley, Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal, esp. 95–116. “Justice and Reconciliation,” Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission, http://www/trc-cvr/ca/overview.html. “Our Mandate,” Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ibid.

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Julia Emberley Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 9. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 77 (ellipses included). Ibid., 90. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 77.

9 Trauma, Power, and the Therapeutic: Speaking Psychotherapeutic Narratives in an Era of Indigenous Human Rights dian million

If every age has its symptoms, ours appears to be the age of trauma. Naming a wide spectrum of responses to psychic and physical events often with little in common beyond the label, trauma has become a portmanteau that covers a multitude of disparate injuries. Stories that would seem to belong to different orders of experience enjoy troubling intimacies. But whatever their origins, the effects of historical trauma have a tenacious hold on the popular imagination. Nancy K. Miller and Jason Kougaw1

Our Sto:lo life was stolen away. Our children were removed by priests, social workers and police to residential schools, foster care and jail. My own family was at the eye of the hurricane, and we are only now beginning to regain our bearings. All over North America, the experiences of other First Nations families parallel my famil[y’s] trials and triumphs. Ernie Crey2

In a 2008 news article, “Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission raises controversy,” Adrian Humphreys asks her readers to contemplate how “Canada will take its historical place alongside such tarnished regimes as South Africa, Chile, El Salvador and Sierra Leone.”3 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is part of a successful 2006 class-action suit by Canadian Aboriginal peoples for their intergenerational abuse in residential schools.4 The 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement provided payments to individual victims and funds for healing initiatives in Aboriginal communities, and made provisions for future commemoration and memorial programs. Sixty million dollars was earmarked for the TRC alone to stage a forum where residential school survivors, their families, and all those Canadians who feel the necessity will speak their truth. The goal is reconciliation between Canada and Aboriginal peoples, whose relationship was characterized in a 1996 Royal Commission report as “a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Canada.”5 As part of a larger program of reparative initiatives, the TRC has some resemblance to the efforts to rewrite history made by earlier commissions in Argentina (one-time payment to victims) and Chile and Guatemala to rewrite history (commemoration and memorial programs).6 Such commissions are a product of our age, an age of human rights and televised global violence. They present perhaps our human desires for a just peace in what appears to be an increasingly brutal world. Canada may be the first of the Western nation-states to utilize

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this process that varies in form and outcome. As a country that has almost no standing national army, and a world-wide reputation as a defender of human rights Canada seems incongruous in the company of the regimes that have hosted such commissions since the early 1970s. As Priscilla Hayner writes, such commissions may “counter what psychologist Yael Danieli calls a conspiracy of silence.”7 It is a contemporary logic that peace is rarely accomplished by silencing victims of state and civic violence. If the experience of a victim or group of victims is not given voice, the experience returns, expressed through continuing discord. This logic is known simply as trauma and if, as Arthur Kleinman says in the epigraph with which I introduce this essay, ours “appears to be the age of trauma,” I agree, and ask why this is so. Canadian Aboriginal peoples as subjects of colonial violence are thickly ensconced in the discourse of trauma, particularly now as subjects of the process of “truth and reconciliation.” Truth commissions often operate in the hope that when victims of national violence tell their stories a new story will emerge, a reconciled national history. But, as Hayner notes, “truth commissions are not interested in long term therapy, they are a one-time chance to tell a story, usually to a stranger whom [those who testify] will likely never see again.”8 Perhaps, for Canadian Aboriginal peoples, the TRC is a onetime chance to speak their truth, but as I will suggest here, witnessing one’s truth to power is a convoluted process that articulates highly proscribed roles and subject positions. My task here is not to comment on whether any actual “justice” for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples can be achieved by their embrace of a truth and reconciliation process. I offer a particular genealogical assessment of the Canadian Aboriginal subject as it has been produced in colonial social-deviance literatures and Aboriginal narratives in the last halfcentury. These changing discourses both form and inform how Canada and Canadian Aboriginal peoples came to think about the nature of colonial “damage,” and its possible redress. The narratives I analyse in this essay range from moral arguments for “Indian” integration to theories explicating educational and social divergence to Aboriginally produced reports explicating the particular damage that sexual abuse became to survivors of the Indian residential schools. I evoke literatures that roughly cover three eras: the late 1960s to the early 1970s, the 1970s to the 1980s, and from the 1980s to the present. After the Second World War, Canadian and American sociology’s anomic Indian deviant (the counter to a normative white subject) was transformed by an emerging criminology discourse into a victim, before settling into its current position as a subject of historical trauma, a definition informed by international human-rights movements and the rise of second-wave feminism and Indigenism.9 These changing discourses opened the way to an Aboriginal embrace of the concept of historical trauma to represent colonialism’s damages today. To revisit this language evolution allows us to ask how the subject position of victim informs thought about Indigenous peoples in political discourses now. The processes that we call colonialism are historically contingent, multiple, and related logics of power. To examine carefully the languages inherent in our current conversation on reparations is thus to examine these logics. The colonization of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples was accomplished in a way which particularly debilitated individuals by destroying their ability to construct Indigenous–Indigenous relationships and (self-)esteem. Even if we recognize the broad tactical spectrum of colonization, from economic disenfranchisement to confinement on reserves and their effects on Indigenous autonomy, Indigenous peoples often describe our effective colonization in terms of the social dismemberment of our families.10 That dissection occurred in its most condensed form through the establishment of the residential schools. But Aboriginal

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peoples did not automatically or immediately put residential schools into a primary role in the narrative of their social dismemberment. The residential schools were a common experience across four generations of First Nations, primarily “status Indians.” Analyses of the residential school experience became a site of contestation where Aboriginal peoples articulated and acted, informed by and informing many other emerging discourses in Canada, including those of the rights of women, minorities, and victims. The residential school experience is a discursive territory in Canada where Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal peoples contest and work out their historical colonial agonies. Canadian Indigenous peoples are currently entering a reparations process informed by trauma theory, a set of assumptions and a language that also informs international humanrights programs for addressing social justice. I argue that any present reparations logic illuminates power relations in our times rather than illustrating any freedom from them. Aboriginal peoples articulate themselves in the languages, narratives, and discourses in play. In Canada, Aboriginal peoples have articulated their responses, position, and actions in widespread interpretations of Indigenous healing. For many residential school survivors and their representatives in Aboriginal organizations, healing is a counter-narrative to victimization and is seen as a pathway to sovereignty in an emancipation narrative. As Aboriginal peoples have entered the discursive field of trauma they have re-articulated some of its terms. In their own narratives, their victimization (i.e., colonization) would end with their self-governance, a self-governance that they reflexively understand as being reliant upon a return from personal and communal colonial fragmentation. The subjects of Indigenous sovereignty are reconstituted nations, individuals, families, and communities. For this work, for the healing, many people have begun to look to Indigenism as an international discourse and as a language that opposes the colonial fragmentation of persons, families, and communities. Indigenism seeks lateral moves outside the colonial Aboriginal subject to articulate a healing that reconstitutes Indigenous identity without depending on the ephemeral chase for state recognition to practise one’s culture.11 I write here on the way that scholars, Aboriginal and otherwise, speak about Aboriginal selves, families, and communities, but this does not mean that I think about our human suffering, both personal and collective, abstractly, or in a way that is unconnected to those places and lands that are the heart of what it means to be Indigenous. I do not. Rather, my intention is to consider how, in the process of speaking our Indigenous experiences, we seek and choose language that allows us to best understand, and express the personal consequences of, still-present social forces in our lives. Trauma metaphors help to link feelings and experiences to those beyond individual selves, to larger edifices of meaning enabling action. My intention is also to say that like all human experiences, our suffering already resides in a network of relationships that denotes the kind of colonial relationships that we live with and that I seek to name. As Kleinman, Das, and Lock have argued: Social suffering has social use. Historical memories of suffering – e.g., slavery, the destruction of Aboriginal communities, wars, genocide imperialistic oppression – have present uses … to resistance. Collective suffering is also a core component of the global political economy … Political and professional processes powerfully shape the responses to types of social suffering. These processes involve both authorized and contested appropriations of collective suffering … A central activity … is medicalization for its advantages in regulating persons, their bodies, and networks.12

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If we live in a time where our suffering, its representation, and the “treatments” for it are part of the larger power relations, and in part have become “medicalized,” how is this so? The present chapter is a genealogical exegesis of colonial narratives where I explicate the discourses of trauma, of victimization, and the accompanying desires for healing and justice represented by Aboriginal peoples’ witness to their residential school abuse. The “Indian Problem,” Anomie, and Its Discontents In a post–Second World War environment in which Western nation-states were forced to be conscious of their own racialized and marginalized subjects, the “Indian” became a subject of intensely conflicted public and private emotion in Canada. Canadians were not solely driven by a sense of altruism when they became worried about their “Indian problem” in the 1950s and 1960s. Aboriginal peoples lived segregated and completely controlled under a tight colonial Indian Act bureaucracy, impoverished and suffering from a variety of social ills that were attributed to the condition of “anomie,” commonly referred to as “The Indian Problem.” The “Indian Problem” began to be seen as a political detriment in a changing world as a new emphasis on state responsibility towards minority and marginalized peoples became institutionalized in an international frame of judicial articulation: The UN Charter, 1945, the Genocide Convention, 1948, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 created a language that “ignited both the colonial revolutions abroad and the civil rights revolution at home.”13 It was a world reordering itself. International decolonization movements emboldened a new generation of Aboriginal thought and activism. A persistent and accumulative Aboriginal resistance undermined public confidence in residential schools. Indian education became a focal point for social change, for imagining any new relations between the colonized and the colonizer in Canada. In 1965 Alberta Regional School Superintendent G.K. Gooderham speculated on the prospects of the task Canadians had set themselves. He spoke about educational integration as part of something larger which could neither be controlled nor staved off: We have every reason to be deeply concerned about the problem of integration; we have no right to fail in its solution … If we are to make a prognosis about Indian education, we must endeavor to estimate what Canadians will allow. Why has there been so much more interest and concern about Indian people? It is not the latest fad, nor is it a sudden growth in or spread of altruism. World race problems have forced Canadians to examine the situation at home … All coloured people have spoken more emphatically, and the white race must mend its ways or prepare for trouble … We cannot afford to have the world look into Canada to find one group crowded into ghettos, ostracized from society, limited, in many instances, in their citizenship and legal rights.14

While Gooderham was aware that Canadian Aboriginal peoples lived in wretched conditions at the time he wrote, he was also aware that Canadians would not make changes beneficial to Indians based on sympathy alone. Gooderham’s worry was about social unrest and his nation’s international reputation, the latter perhaps denoting a new human-rights awareness. Gooderham did not seem to see any Aboriginal agency in the social change that would be necessary; it was a change that would be fuelled and tempered by “what they will allow,” the degree to which white Canadians like himself might imagine the relationship differently.

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By the 1960s white Canadian educators knew that solving their “Indian problem” would mean something more than just physically mixing Indian and white bodies in provincial schoolrooms. Their goal would be to integrate the now profoundly pauperized, profaned, and racialized Canadian Indian into a then still predominately white Canadian society.15 Canadian Aboriginal peoples were virtually segregated from other Canadians, if not just by their physical location on reserves in rural areas, then by a deep-seated social distancing that was neither hidden nor apologetic. Ample rationalization for this social distance could be found in texts across disciplines and in “common sense.” This comfortable “knowledge” denoting the nature of the “Indian,” enabled Diamond Jenness, a renowned Canadian anthropologist, to republish with modest revision his 1963 sixth edition of The Indians of Canada. Changed very little from its 1932 edition, The Indians of Canada informed readers that Indians were “helplessly … tossed at the mercy of the tide, unable to gain a secure foothold.”16 In Jenness’s evaluation, Indian history was synonymous with Nature, and Nature had run its course for Natives, who were not inventive, socially productive, or adaptive. Their anticipated demise was always around the corner and had no human agent. The Indians had drowned. Jenness’s metaphor likens Euro-Canadian civilization to a deluge, another force of nature that cannot be resisted.17 During that time Canadian sociologists acknowledged the seemingly depraved contemporary Indian condition, and presented and represented it as anomie – a term coined by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1908 to signify individual disintegration in a moral vacuum, in the context of the decline in social cohesion in rapidly industrializing societies. The connotations of anomie came to pervade and structure broader social thought regarding the Indian. In educational-reform texts such as Richard King’s The School at Mopass (1967) or Henry Zentner’s sociological essay, “Reservation Social Structure and Anomie: A Case Study” (1973), Canadian Indians are characterized by a damaged identity perceived as anomic. Zentner observed Canadian Indians and Indians living in the United States as “essentially similar.” In his example, an anonymous “Reservation Society” manifests “characteristically high rates of child neglect, alcoholism, minor crime, truancy, illegitimacy, divorce, marital and occupational maladjustments, accidents, and other forms of dependency, when compared with ecologically similar Non-Indian communities … On these as well as other grounds the society in purview exhibits an advanced state of anomie.”18 Zentner offered no definition of anomie, apparently because it was a concept with such wide acceptance. The concept stood in as shorthand for ways in which the social suffering of “Reservation Societies” made them deviant from the larger North American social norm. Aboriginal communities were “Pre-Neolithic Ethic” societies whose cultural differences handicapped individuals’ performance in modern industrial nations.19 Richard King also assumed that the Canadian Indian objects of his study were anomic, without reference or explanation: “Little of his traditional society remains to provide him with identity, and all but impenetrable barriers keep him from realizing a satisfactory identity with the dominant culture.”20 Where Zentner saw “pre-neolithic,” King saw no culture at all. Anomie thus became the discourse within Canada that allowed an analysis of Indian malady without attributing it to Indian policy, failed attempts at assimilation, economic isolation, and residential schooling. Both King and Zentner give accounts of anomie in Indian communities which are consistent with Durkheim’s anomie, “a state of social disorganization brought on by the lack of, or insufficiency of, social and moral rules,” or anomic suicide, “the [s]elf-destructive behavior arising from a social setting that lacks sufficient

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sociomoral rules to constrain actors by integrating them into the collective whole.”21 Indian societies were in chaos; integration into the dominant society would be difficult. Sociologist Robert King Merton’s 1938 “Social Structure and Anomie” had proposed anomie as the condition of peoples who, while promised liberal equality, found themselves thwarted by the lack of institutionalized procedures for seeking these goals.22 Indians were perceived as individuals unable to go forward or back. Thus, the goal of integration into a “collective whole” (Western society) in these texts confronts many seemingly insurmountable barriers. Aboriginal societies were thought to be, at worst, non-existent or, at best, maladaptive, as they no longer produced healthy individuals. Anomie rationalized a chicken and egg conundrum. But, as it was conceived in Canada and the United States, anomie underwent a slight shift in the 1970s. While Swiss psychiatrist Wolfgang Jilek used the concept of anomic depression to characterize certain emotional symptoms that he believed he observed among the Coast Salish in the late 1960s, he also saw worth in Salish-produced social solutions.23 In his version of anomie Jilek used Merton’s “cultural chaos or anomie” to refer to a “disassociation between culturally defined aspirations and socially structured means.” To Jilek, the Salish he observed in western British Columbia and Washington state in the 1960s and early 1970s lived peripherally and usually without means of social mobility at the edge of white society. Jilek’s medical anthropological project was to prove that the state of mind that the Salish described as “spirit illness” corresponded to his definition of anomic depression, and that their winter dancing ceremonials were their own effective therapeutic model. Pamela Amoss, a cultural anthropologist of the period, was also involved in studying the winter dancing but disagreed with Jilek. Amoss agreed that cultural “revitalization” was occurring in places that only a few years before had been judged as “acculturated,” but was more interested in pursuing why this reversal against the trend of assimilation was taking place.24 Jilek was not interested in any larger social significance in this revitalization; his concern was with presenting it as an Indigenous therapeutic model. Amoss agreed with Jilek in viewing Nooksack culture (or the Salish cultural network) as a mental and emotional bastion for self-esteem against the overwhelming disdain whites held for them. But, she disagreed that it was therapy, holding to the Nooksack interpretation that winter dancing was their spirituality. This kind of conversation between Amoss and Jilek made sense in a new interpretive frame that was not clear to either anthropologist: the rising positioning of culture as a therapeutic tool. It was Wolfgang Jilek’s view that held in the social sciences and in therapeutic knowledges. Meanwhile, Aboriginal political and social revitalization increased as Canada moved into the late 1970s and 1980s. The kind of integration that had been pictured in Canada in the 1960s did not occur. Instead, Indigenous peoples came to be seen as victims of a crime, colonization, that had had an agent, Canada. Canada’s Indians re-articulated their identities as First Nations and began to negotiate self-determining nationhood as their goal. They joined other Indigenous peoples worldwide in defining a new political arena at the level of the United Nations, creating Indigenism as a movement and a language for their increased activity. Within Indigenism Aboriginal peoples in Canada saw their own cultures as holistic resources that could potentially alleviate and reverse colonial dispersion. Increasingly too, however, Western medical anthropologists (like Jilek), sociologists, and therapists framed the revitalization of Canadian Aboriginal cultures as therapeutic.

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Anomie, Shame, and Victimhood The narratives that defined Canada’s normatively gendered, raced, and classed subject/citizen had in turn defined and policed its nemesis, Indian, to a position of profanity, isolated and numbed with shame. The shame that generations of Canadian Aboriginal peoples have come to articulate in their residential school witnessing is an emotional knowledge that accompanies their social positioning as profaned persons in a highly segregated society. But if shame is considered a deeply personal and subjective emotion, can it be articulated, nevertheless, as a public issue? I suggest that this subjective knowledge first had to become projected onto a physical site, the residential schools, and onto a tangible representative experience understood as abuse. Shame thereby could be reframed as an operative that silenced the abuses, physical and psychological, which had characterized the residential school experience, an experience that would now finally have a name and a voice. In 1987 Canadian criminologist Kurt Griffiths and his colleagues J. ColinYerbury and Linda Weafer assessed that the Indian was a victim of neocolonialism. In Canadian Natives: Victims of Socio-Structural Deprivation, Griffiths proffered the view that Indians suffered from an intense deprivation of social status and self-esteem; that their “poverty” was in direct proportion to their lack of access to “strategic resources” (education, employment, housing, and general welfare) in an ongoing condition of virtually total dominance. Canada’s Indian Act represented a paternalistic, overarching, almost medieval caste structure, bureaucratic and incapable of imagining Indian self-governance.25 Griffiths therefore saw reason to extend the concept of victim to Indians following an emergent social-justice rationale to include in this category “certain groups within society that are more prone to accidents and crime as consequences of their structural position.”26 Griffiths and his colleagues followed in the footsteps of Tufts University political scientist Robert Elias, whose 1986 Politics of Victimization: Victims, Victimology, and Human Rights suggested that victimology move from its close alliance with the field of criminology into a much more expansive field, to cover victims of political oppression.27 Victim was a qualitative conceptual shift from anomie. Unlike earlier anomic causal accounts, victimologists named a perpetrator. Anomie pointed to an individual’s dissonance as part of her membership in a disintegrating society, and focused on the individual’s deviance. In mainstream North American sociology, social disintegration was seen as a “natural process,” and thus there was no specific blame to be allocated for Indian decline. Victimology, in contrast, named a victim and a perpetrator, in terms that came into being as the field was defined. Thus by 1983, Griffiths and company could suggest the Indians were victims of Canada’s socio-structural system and its efforts to assimilate and acculturate them. Victimology was heavily critiqued, particularly by radical feminist social-justice activists throughout the 1980s. Victimologists highlighted the harm to those who were injured or were the subjects of violent crime in order to secure justice, but the idea of who was a victim was often reductive. Radical feminist activists after 1980 extended the concept of those who suffered harm to the victims of acts that were not usually thought of as crimes, that is, incest, spousal abuse, spousal rape, and child abuse, effectively creating a new crime category, domestic abuse. These were abuses occurring in “private,” at home, within marriage, the experiences of mostly women and children in domestic or custodial domains. In earlier generations domestic behaviours “behind closed doors” were thought of as sins

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though not always crimes. Successful grassroots campaigns led by women resulted in new laws in both Canada and the United States that criminalized sex abuse and incest, offering the injured some hope of compensation.28 After the 1984 Bagley report revealed widespread child abuse across Canada, the nation revised its Criminal Code in 1988 to reflect the heightened awareness. With the passage of new sexual-abuse codes, a door opened in Canada on a deeply silenced epidemic in Indian communities: incest. In 1988 Christine A. Courtois, a clinical psychologist now well known for treating the post-traumatic effects of incest/child sexual abuse and other types of complex trauma, wrote Healing the Incest Wound. Tony Marten, Brenda Daily, and Maggie Hodgsen’s The Spirit Weeps: Characteristics and Dynamics of Incest and Child Sexual Abuse with a Native Perspective appeared in the same year elucidating heretofore unspeakable experiences in Canadian Aboriginal communities.29 As leaders in the Aboriginal alcohol recovery movement, Martens, Daily, and Hodgsen offered specific insight into an Aboriginal experience that was being recounted in newly empowered Indigenous justice systems and therapeutic programs. In these environments, a cause of unspeakable shame could be named as sexual abuse and be heard. Aboriginal peoples began to name their family atrocities using language connected to social-justice movements informed by victimology’s demand for redress, and also by their own Indigenous sense of what justice and healing meant.30 But the victims of sexual abuse could just as often be seen as psychological subjects implicated in the emerging idea of trauma.31 In 1981 Courtois, along with Judith Sprei, “decided that the most accurate diagnosis for incest response was post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),” a move that was “controversial” considering that the PTSD diagnosis at that time was closely associated with veterans of the Vietnam War.32 Courtois situated her work as part of an emerging field built on the “unprecedented societal acknowledgement” in the 1980s of “all forms of child sexual abuse including incest”; she attributed the change to the rise of the women’s movement, and to a growing recognition of the family as a site of power and violence.33 In agreement, psychologist Judith Herman’s introduction to her work on survivors of sexual abuse as trauma declared, “This book owes its existence to the women’s liberation movement.”34 Aboriginal victims’ painful experiences far exceeded any one diagnosis; however, incest had been politicized in a larger discourse about domestic abuse, and thus offered a suitable forum to articulate the multiple, once silenced outcomes of colonialism. By 1990 Maggie Hodgsen, one of the co-authors of The Spirit Weeps, had written Impact of residential schools and other root causes of poor mental health (suicide, family violence, alcohol & drug abuse) for Edmonton’s Nechi Institute on Alcohol and Drug Treatment. Hodgsen’s work gave a precursory frame for the forthcoming testimonies both in and out of court that emerged after Oka and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). Colonization resulted in trauma in a new solidified narrative in Indian Country. Trauma, Historical Trauma, and Healing Trauma has a huge literature genealogically related to European philosophy through Freud’s melancholia. In the logic of melancholia there is longing, and irresolution in loss. The subject of melancholia is haunted.35 Trauma begins with violence and according to its medicalized narrative logic, that violence is followed by repression, release, and resolution.36 A victim’s repressed memories of the experience need to be expressed or released in order for there to be resolution. Psychological research with and by Jewish Holocaust

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survivors transformed ideas about memory, victims, and redress at an international level as this research entered publication in the 1980s. In the United States, where trauma had been articulated originally through the study of PTSD in Vietnam War veterans, the discussion evolved from accounts concerning trauma in returning individuals into a growing international discourse on healing nations traumatized by national civil discord and violence.37 The nationally televised events at Oka, Quebec, came close to being perceived as a Canadian national trauma in 1990. Canadians saw Mohawk communities attempt to defend their traditional burial grounds when the town of Oka seized Mohawk grounds to expand a golf course. After a stand-off with local police, the Canadian military was brought in in a manner reminiscent of the 1973 US stand-off with the Lakota in Wounded Knee, South Dakota. In “The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada,” Laurence Kirmeyer, Caroline Tait, and Cori Simpson note that, with Oka, “Canadians witnessed overt acts of racism and violence against Aboriginal people and had to confront a complacent self-image as a nation of tolerance.” They watched “the mob aggression of townspeople against women, children, and Elders from Kahnawake during the Oka crisis.”38 The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was formed shortly thereafter, and its wide-ranging recommendations offered the long-term plan of which the TRC is now a partial outcome. In 1996 the Royal Commission declared: “We believe firmly that the time has come to resolve a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Canada: that while we assume the role of defender of human rights in the international community, we retain, in our conception of Canada’s origins and make-up, the remnants of colonial attitudes of cultural superiority that do violence to the Aboriginal peoples to whom they are directed.”39 While it may seem problematic to transfer a notion of trauma that is useful at the individual level into a concept describing an event at the level of national public consciousness – Canada’s loss of a “complacent selfimage” – from the point of view of many Aboriginal people, trauma has a logic beyond its narrowly medicalized one that can be mobilized and adapted. For them, trauma is a logic whose time has come and it is especially relevant to understanding the “cultural trauma [that] occurs when members of a collective feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leave[s] indelible marks on their group consciousness.40 Aboriginal peoples take advantage of but also articulate beyond the medicalized logic of trauma. Certainly they had entered into the prior discursive moments that I visited here on anomie and victimhood. Arguments in Harold Cardinal’s 1969 Unjust Society (a reply to Canadian Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Jean Chrétien’s 1969 “White Paper”), Howard Adam’s 1975 Prisons of Grass, and countless authors after 1980, along with growing Aboriginal activism, had opened more venues for discourse: Aboriginal peoples’ voices, as I have argued extensively elsewhere, did not come into the discussion of their abuse unmediated.41 The powerful collective voices of Aboriginal peoples, empowered within prior articulations of victims, justice, abuse, and trauma, participated in the discursive logics they engaged. Any time a residential school survivor came to tell his or her story for the record in an individual trial against a perpetrator, or witnessed for an RCAP hearing, s/he entered a highly disciplined arena designed to form narrative in a particular way. Even before those testimonies and sites there were social venues, clinics, treatment centres, mental hospitals, and therapeutic groups where a narrative formed that enabled Canada to tell on itself, to open the “wound” of its repressed history, its violence towards Aboriginal societies, with the particularly powerful narrative that is trauma. Inside the metaphorical and allegorical world of trauma, the wound returns until it is resolved.

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The colonial acts committed against Aboriginal people are Canada’s “secret” and the secret returns through the mechanism of the trauma narrative. Breaking the Silence: An Interpretive Study of Residential School Impact and Healing as Illustrated by the Stories of First Nations Individuals was released by the Assembly of First Nations in 1994 as the crest of the residential school abuse testimonies swept into the Canadian media from the RCAP proceedings. I use it here as an example of the trauma narrative as it was then used by a national Aboriginal organization. It also illustrates how Aboriginal people interpreted trauma and moved it into discussion with Indigenous discourses and logics of healing. By 1994 the emergence of unprecedented amounts of Aboriginal witness in sexual-abuse trials and residential school memoirs prompted the AFN, the largest of the national Aboriginal organizations in Canada, to take leadership. Offering an analysis of the experience that could be readily read, understood, and made available to Aboriginal citizens was the AFN’s primary mission. It was mostly the work of two Alberta psychologists, Wilma Spearchief, a member of the Blood Nation, and Louise Million. The AFN research team drew from research written by Aboriginals, including Roslyn Ing’s “The Effects of Residential Schools on Native Child-Rearing Practices,” and texts authorized by the community research which formed part of their literature, as in the case of Haig-Brown’s 1988 Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School.42 Breaking the Silence made it explicit that the story of residential schooling was a story of Aboriginal peoples, and that their own interpretive frame would be the frame from which they would tell the story: “Truth is built and rebuilt over time through the stories we tell, individually and together in community, about our experience of a particular event such as residential schools.”43 The researchers describe their presentation as tribal, quoting Paula Gunn Allen saying that “traditional tribal narratives possess a circular structure, incorporating event within event, piling meaning upon meaning, until the accretion results in a story.”44 Thus, the report begins with the history of assimilation, segregation, and integration. This is followed by the testimony of individuals, introduced as wounded, who tell their childhood stories of being lost, lonely, silenced, and trying to find ways to cope. Million and Spearchief present these testimonies as finely layered, enhanced with details describing the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual dimensions of the survivor’s experiences. It is only after these individuals speak that the researchers introduce trauma in a separate chapter. The definitions of trauma cite two studies, Courtois’s 1988 study on incest and Judith Herman’s 1992 Trauma and Recovery, both seminal texts in the radical feminist incursions into victimology that defined domestic abuse. Million and Spearchief link particular parts of Aboriginal testimonies to trauma, but are careful to say that not every residential school student became traumatized. Breaking the Silence is also a detailed plan for a movement to heal fragmentation in a spectrum that goes from individual to nations, and through a trajectory that echoes the familiar sequence of trauma, repression, and resolution. However, the report calls for an Aboriginal sense of healing that is communal and defined locally. There can be no discrete “individual” per se, although respect for persons and differences is high on the list of social conditions integral to healing. Thus, Breaking the Silence recommends that “healing” will be the careful rebuilding of Indigenous psyches, families, and communities, all of which are distinct but interdependent. Safety, respect, and responsibility rely on cooperation among individuals to create safety, to actively respect oneself and others, and to embrace

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cooperative responsibility. That cooperative responsibility in turn depends on a respect for actual differences, as there is no one “right” way to attain healing. In this way there will be reconciliation rather than argument between those who believe in Western therapeutic methods for healing and those who practise Indigenous spiritualities (or those who mix the two, for that matter). Cooperation is urged between the abuse survivors and those individuals and families in the communities who feel positive about their residential schooling. The sphere of cooperation is also to be extended to allies, individuals, agencies, churches, and non-Indian communities who support their efforts at healing.45 According to Breaking the Silence, individuals do not come to consciousness about their pain, their past, or their residential school experience in a linear way, but in fits and starts. Parts of the individual criteria for healing in this text echo familiar texts for substance abuse therapy, that is, hitting bottom, taking one step at a time, and so on. Other witnesses speak with the trauma concepts as they are widely understood now – the triggering of traumatic memory and the working through of released emotions and anger. If the working through is done correctly, as Breaking the Silence suggests, a deeper level of self-examination becomes possible and the reframing of experiences has the potential to radically change one’s world view. Learning one’s own people’s history is included as a key step in resolving trauma for individuals, a step that involves coming to understand the position one’s people occupied in the larger context of an abusive nation-state. Breaking the Silence thus suggests a model for healing in Aboriginal communities that is holistic, meaning that it has to represent the whole community and necessarily goes beyond the individual. Healing cannot omit the larger community of Canada – which is called on to take responsibility for its own actions. The editors point out that part of assuring safety, a first criterion for healing, is out of the hands of Aboriginals themselves, since Aboriginal peoples may never be assured safety from larger Canadian policy, economic, and social interventions. Breaking the Silence is remarkable in the scope of its vision as it utilizes the logic of trauma as well as trauma as a diagnosis. It participates in a now extremely familiar discursive economy that other Indigenous peoples have made specific to their enduring oppression. Trauma is now established as the ubiquitous explanation and site for action, capable of making sense of the multiple social, psychological, and material outcomes of colonialism. Historical trauma is the term that has been used to extend the sense of injury to capture the enduring nature of Indigenous trauma across many generations. In their article “The American Indian Holocaust: Healing Historical Unresolved Grief,” Lakota psychologist Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart and her colleague Lemyra DeBruyn defined historical trauma and unresolved grief as “a current pathology, originating from the loss of lives, land and vital aspects of Native culture promulgated by the European conquest of the Americas.”46 Historical trauma stems from the genocidal conquest of the Americas attempted and achieved, an experience Braveheart and DeBruyn compare to the Jewish Holocaust.47 By 1998, in the Canadian context, Marie-Anik Gagné could publish an essay for Yael Danieli’s International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, “The Role of Dependency and Colonialism in Generating Trauma in First Nations Citizens.” Gagné could “integrat[e] sociological and psychological concepts with Third World development theory to explore the prevalence of PTSD in First Nations,” with the assurance that many would understand such a linkage of terms.48

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The Recurring Wound in the Temple of Justice Nigerian author Wole Soyinka says that our memory for what has wounded deeply is not covered by a statute of limitations: “Collective memory especially is the very warp and weft of history that makes up society. Unravel and jettison a thread from that tapestry and society itself may become undone at the seams.”49 His point is the collective fragility of identity. The memories of the disintegrated must fight for their very existence, and thus are implicated in movements for truth, restitution, social justice, and reparations. There is a form that these pleas for justice must take: truth commissions, whose purpose is to hear and evaluate violent individual and collective experiences that cannot be forgotten, those that have become endemic: “Cultural and spiritual violations … have left indelible imprints on the collective psyches and sense of identity of the peoples, a process that was ensured with savage repressions of coherent traditions by successive waves of colonizing hordes.”50 The past and the present are one in this knowledge. The colonizing in the past lives in the now. It erupts every few years into new enmity with old lineages. This is not an arcane knowledge, it is an understanding now held in suspension, recognized in a structure of “human rights” and “international law,” the fragile edifice between the colonial and the colonized that makes their collective histories and their present relations coherent. Across a spectrum, at international, community, and individual levels, healing from historical trauma is conceived as the reaffirmation of personal and social integrity, the restoration of holism from fragmentation. But the production of truth, of individual narrative for “healing,” is a very particular Western social act. As our global relations produce more humans whose experience has been of violence and displacement, Western societies establish networks of social welfare and medicalized settings to treat their “victims.” We compel them to witness, to “tell.” Foucault first reminded us that the confession is a powerful form in those societies that compel persons to become individual and self-examined within a logic of biopolitics. Individual Indigenous people have narrated mental and physical violence on the “record,” and some may do so again for the TRC. In earlier moments, too, even when their voices were produced in what could be interpreted as the public record (school records, anthropological reports, etc.), their truth did not become “public,” politically consequential, potent until they were able to participate in larger discursive movements. Only after the intensity of their experiences was framed within the narratives of social programs, ones that were designed to elicit self-examination, or for legal domains in courtrooms testifying against perpetrators, or now, in truth and reconciliation commission meetings where their voices join to communally testify once again for a process framed by a growing international human-rights logic, did their narratives become Indian narratives, their speech Indian speech. Not until they had gained access to discursive arenas, the media, texts, television, the Internet, and music, articulating their own words to existing discourses and rising to create their own. Until then, their experiences languished on dusty shelves, as the mounting psychological and economic data, the raw materials, for a chirographic society that measures the debris of the damage that its own administrative processes often wreak. But the white elephant in the room appears to me to be how the perception of the subject of colonial violence is indexical to comprehending the dance of hegemony in our times. If the institutions and discourses in place around our “damage” are hegemonic, what then are our relationships with the mechanisms of “healing” in the forms in which it is most usually

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presented now? The description and logic of trauma is hegemonic, but it also appears to be the language of justice and redress. How might we differentiate those Indigenous knowledges and customary practices that lie outside an international trauma paradigm? Such a differentiation is essential, as Indigenous thought and practice may counter and interrupt the production of the biopolitical subject, the subject of trauma that is a continuation of the colonized subjectivities I have critiqued here. What, for instance, is the intersection between colonial medical and psychological interventions and our desire for justice and health framed by Indigenous cultural and spiritual beliefs? What is the nexus between the desire for self-determining community-based action and our own self-management in social-welfare and criminal-justice systems? How might the practice of Indigenous subjectivities (to be Cree, to be Anishinabe, to be Inuit, to be Stolo) offer ways to not be a therapeutic subject? The therapeutic subject is heavily embedded in the continuing violence in poor and poorer communities, Indigenous and otherwise. Arthur Kleinman and Veena Das link escalated social violence and its concentric effects to global capitalism’s processes writ large, to the “clustering of substance abuse, street violence, domestic violence, suicide, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, sexually transmitted disorders … among people living in disintegrated communities.” Social disintegration, they argue, is an integral feature of impoverishment worldwide. Thus, poverty and “the vicious spiral of political violence, causing forced uprooting, migration, and deep trauma to families and communities, while intensifying domestic abuse and personal suffering, spins out of control across a bureaucratic landscape of health, social welfare, and legal agencies.”51 And as we, violated by power, participate in these bureaucratic interventions designed to “heal us” or modify our conditions, we must be exceedingly aware of their languages and effects. We must acknowledge the tight and fine line between sabotaging helpful effort and acknowledging that any “healing interventions remain embedded in a discourse [that] … by its very nature denies our own relationship with organized violence,” a violence that is part of business as usual, the business Westernized nation-states are engaged in but do not claim as such, the actual relations and outcomes of capitalism.52 The concepts that have evolved to speak to the violence inherent in capitalism’s social relations are those that both individualize social suffering and set up a script, a normalizing narrative in Euro-American liberal democracy that trades in victims and aggressors, victims and criminals, a dichotomy of helplessness and aggressors who are “not us” (Western liberal nations). Analyses of the power relations inherent in victimology and trauma as therapeutic discourse remain “impoverished in [their] inability to incorporate non-medical and non-Western sources of knowledge.”53 Humans have a range of responses to social violence, the complexities of which are flattened by the received trauma narrative, now a master narrative with scientific security and international social-justice carte blanche. Thus, other experiences and responses to social violence, particularly non-Western ones, are more often silenced in trauma’s logic. Not surprisingly, then, victimology’s offspring – trauma – underpins the only existing international discourse and practice in place to seek justice for colonial atrocities. In the current era of human rights and truth commissions, the victim seeks restitution from the perpetrator. The unequal power relations inherent in oppression become normalized in the search for a reconciliation. Where aggression lies in the realm of the foreign and deviant, but not at home, those who are victimized must be innocent and powerless. The underlying logics of this arena have great import for our times and for an analysis of what colonialism is now.

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Last Word: Business as Usual In this chapter I have outlined different times and subject positions that have been available to modern academia and Aboriginal communities to articulate the abject subject of Canadian colonialism. The anomic Indian has been succeeded by the Aboriginal traumatized victim, sometimes articulated as a survivor or as the subject of Indigenous healing. I end by reminding myself that the bottom line in the relationship between Canada and Aboriginal peoples is, and shall always be, land, as the essay by Eva Mackey in this volume argues. Canada cannot exist without the lands that Aboriginal people still contest. Canada is a preeminent Western capitalist nation-state and must develop and play the game of resource development to survive among other nations. The genealogy I offer here coincides with another timeline in Canada, the rise of neoliberalism beginning in the early 1970s, when Canada also began to modernize its Aboriginal policies along with its welfare-state government to coincide with a global economy. Neoliberalism, Gabrielle Slowey says, “favours a system of policies and processes designed to assist the marketplace … First Nations self-determination becomes more attractive than First Nations dependence on the state.”54 The continuing devolution of services to self-determining Aboriginal nations (job training and welfare reform) puts responsibility on those nations to successfully fund their own operations. In many ways neoliberalism fits the desires of those Aboriginal leaders who see development-centred nationalisms modelled on capitalist nation-states as an answer to the continuing suffering of Aboriginal peoples witnessed in healing forums. Since the early 1970s, Aboriginal peoples in Canada have had “their political rights, claimed their land and demanded renegotiated relationship[s],” backed by the strength of a growing body of international law and custom at the level of the United Nations.55 While the Canadian state was an early and vocal supporter of human rights, it is, again, not altruism alone that makes it interested in reconciliation. Canada needs a reconciled relationship with the Aboriginal peoples within its boundaries in order to fulfil demands in international markets. The business of “Indians” in Canada is still ensconced in the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. Canada speaks the language of human rights in convening an in-house “truth and reconciliation commission” to practise a national catharsis while sidestepping any actual supervision in a growing level of global law on the treatment of Indigenous Peoples. Canada “cares,” but it avoided signing the 2008 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples until 12 November 2010, some four years after signing the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Between 1921 and 1923 the Cayuga Iroquois leader Deskaheh led a sovereignty delegation to the League of Nations. Although Canadian delegates manipulated the league to reject hearing the Iroquois sovereignty argument, Deskaheh made a profound impact on those who did hear him. In 1927, after Deskaheh’s failed attempt to speak, Canada effectively banned Indians from organizing on their own behalf, a restriction that held until 1951. After that restriction was repealed, and the rush to Geneva occurred after the first Indigenous non-governmental organizations successfully regained a foothold in conversations at an international level in 1977, Canadian Aboriginal peoples were well represented and articulate. They knew the depth of their own cases and were thus uniquely knowledgeable about the power to take their grievances to a larger audience. But the process of “telling” is neither simple nor straight; it is in fact the colonial space of convoluted corridors and narrative power.

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NOTES 1 Nancy K. Miller and Jason Tougaw, eds., Extremeties: Trauma, Testimony, and Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 1–2. 2 Suzanne Fournier and Ernie Crey, Stolen from Our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and the Restoration of Aboriginal Communities (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997). 3 Adrian Humphreys, “Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Raises Controversy,” at canada.com (2008), http://www2.canada.com/story.html?id=943a72b6-9cfe-4538-a4c43fcf9ba40827. 4 The commission was called the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission when its creation was mandated as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement in 2007. 5 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Ottawa, ON: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1996). The report is available online at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ webarchives/20071115053257/http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sgmm_e.html. 6 On Argentina, see Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of the Truth Commissions (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), 135. On Chile and Guatemala, see Teresa Godwin Phelps, Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 7 Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 135. 8 Ibid., 135. 9 While I draw my analysis out of particular time spans, showing some evolution, I resist giving these discourses and terms any rigid teleology. They overlap. The term anomie is still used in social-sciences and political-science literatures pertaining to Indigenous peoples, and victim is both a predecessor of and a foundation for the American Indian and Indigenous use of the term historical trauma. 10 See especially the testimony gathered in the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. 11 A current strategy of peoples who deal with permanent settler states in their own homelands (North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, etc.), Indigenism articulates ancient and adaptive cultural practices and languages that represent a resistance strategy which can be positioned counter to any reductive nationalism, including any non-critical Aboriginal embrace of nationalism. Contemporary Aboriginal nationalisms and the construction of a monolithic Aboriginal subject have been ably and amply critiqued by Glen Coulthard and Indigenist political philosopher Taiaiake Alfred in a Canadian context, and thus I do not attempt a further critique here, except to agree that any Indigenous subjectivity is severely compromised by the logics of state identity formation, the quest for recognition from Canada to be. See Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005) and Glen S. Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (2007): 437–60. A seminal 1974 Canadian text in the Indigenist literature, The Fourth World, by George Manuel and Michael Posluns, outlined similarities between many peoples who practised land-based philosophies, spiritualities, and lifeways. The authors’ work suggested that Indigenous peoples seek lateral relations with each other to revitalize and reconstruct specific culture and languages, and rebuild Indigenous concerns that are not merely reactive to colonialism. Indigenism is

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Dian Million represented in Canada by many Aboriginal Elders and communities, among whose voices are authors and political writers, including George Manuel, who has now passed, Jeannette Armstrong, Sa’ke’j Henderson, Leroy Little Bear, Taiaiake Alfred, and others. Indigenism also represents an international movement gaining solidarity since the early 1970s, a movement which has sought relations with other colonized peoples and other friendly state entities to thwart their reduction to any simple binary opposition to their colonizer’s nationalism. It has been recognized at the international level by the early presence of activist groups such as the International Treaty Council, recognized in United Nations forums as a non-governmental organization after 1977. In 2008 the United Nations finally ratified a long-awaited Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The most comprehensive account of the rise of Indigenism in international law remains S. James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds., Social Suffering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), xi–xii (emphasis in original). Michael Ignatieff and Amy Gutmann, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, The University Center for Human Values Series (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 6. G.K. Gooderham, “Prospect,” in The Education of Indian Children in Canada. A symposium written by members of Indian Affairs Education Division, with comments by the Indian peoples, ed. L.G.P. Waller (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1965), 95 (emphasis added). I use the word profane in a particular manner I attribute to Niels Braroe’s usage. In Braroe’s late 1960s study, rural white Canadians heightened their own esteem by erasing any esteem attached to “Indian,” or their Indian neighbours. Niels Winther Braroe, Indian and White: SelfImage and Interaction in a Canadian Plains Community (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975). Diamond Jenness, The Indians of Canada, 6th ed. (Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1963). Jenness, “Canada’s Indians Yesterday: What of Today?” in As Long as the Sun Shines and Water Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies, Nakoda Institute Occasional Paper no. 1 (Morley, AB, 1983). Interestingly, in another essay, “Canada’s Indians Yesterday, What of Today?” originally published in 1954, Jenness had used the word apartheid system to describe the racial formation in Canada. The latter assessment of the reason for Indian inequality seems incongruent with the descriptions of Aboriginal anachronism in The Indians of Canada. Perhaps in 1954 Jenness was cogent in naming their racial system, but given the times kept such observations separate from his professional, ahistorical anthropological tomes. Henry Zentner, “Reservation Social Structure and Anomie: A Case Study,” in Henry Zentner, ed., The Indian Identity Crisis (Calgary, AB: Strayer Publications, 1973), 3. Ibid., 30. A. Richard King, The School at Mopass: A Problem of Identity, ed. G. and L. Spindler, Case Studies in Education and Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), 1 (emphasis added). “Anomie” and “Anomic Suicide,” in David Orenstein, “Emile Durkheim,” Sociological Theory: Classical Statements (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1990), 130. Robert King Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,” American Sociological Review 3 (1938): 672–82.

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23 Wolfgang Jilek, Indian Healing: Shamanic Ceremonialism in the Pacific Northwest Today, Cultures in Review Series (Surrey, BC and Blaine, WA: Hancock House, 1982); Jilek, Salish Indian Mental Health and Culture Change: Psychohygienic and Therapeutic Aspects of the Guardian Spirit Ceremonial (Toronto: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1974). 24 Pamela Amoss, Coast Salish Spirit Dancing: The Survival of an Ancestral Religion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978). 25 Curt Taylor Griffiths, J. Colin Yerbury, and Linda F. Weafer, “Canadian Natives: Victims of Socio-Structural Deprivation?” Human Organization 46, no. 3 (1987): 277–82. 26 Ibid., 278. See Zvonimir P. Šeparoviü for the extension of the idea of victimization beyond crime victims. Zvonimir P. Šeparoviü, “Victimology: A New Approach in the Social Sciences,” in Victims and Society, ed. E. Viano (Washington, DC Visage Press, 1974), 15–24. 27 Robert Elias, The Politics of Victimization: Victims, Victimology, and Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 28 Joseph E. Davis, Accounts of Innocence: Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and the Self (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Lorraine Wolhuter, Neil Olley, and David Denham, Victimology: Victimisation and Victims Rights (London: Routledge, 2008). 29 Christine A. Courtois, Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy (New York: Norton, 1988); Tony Martens, Brenda Daily, and Maggie Hodgson, The Spirit Weeps: Characteristics and Dynamics of Incest and Child Sexual Abuse with a Native Perspective (Edmonton: Nechi Institute, 1988); Rupert Ross, Returning to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2006). 30 Ross, Returning to the Teachings; Bruce G. Miller, “The Problem of Justice: Tradition and Law in the Coast Salish World,” in Fourth World Rising, ed. G.M. Sider and K. Dombrowski (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). Rupert Ross discusses reconciliation in relation to the different foci of Canada’s criminal justice system and any Indigenous idea of justice as reconciliation. Indigenous justice did not see a perpetrator as a criminal but as a family or community member in need of healing, with the larger goal of healing the community and family. Ross and Miller both analyse how difficult it was for Canada to accept this different focus; however, it is one that permeates any sense of restorative justice entailed in Canada’s healing or reconciliation. 31 Davis calls this move the “psychological turn,” where the social-justice goal in women’s grassroots articulations of social justice for survivors begins to be usurped by trauma, a particularly professionalized and medicalized diagnosis. See Davis, Accounts of Innocence; Courtois, Healing the Incest Wound; Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: BasicBooks, 1992). 32 Courtois, Healing the Incest Wound, xv. 33 Ibid., 5. 34 Herman, Trauma and Recovery, ix. 35 A good entry into this literature is Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1991). The literature on haunted societies includes: Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Renee L. Bergland, The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects (Dartmouth College Press, 2000); Mary C. Kelley, et al., eds. Reencounters with Colonialism (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000).

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36 Trauma occurs when a person is violated by an action or an event beyond normal experience that psychologically overwhelms or wounds them. A traumatized individual may repress any memory of their experience after the occurrence, but often acts out, sometimes invoking the traumatic experience, and revisiting it. 37 Yael Danieli, ed., International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, Plenum Series on Stress and Coping (New York: Plenum Press, 1998). Also see Peter Ehrenhaus, “Cultural Narratives and the Therapeutic Motif: The Political Containment of Vietnam Veterans,” in Narrative and Social Control: Critical Perspectives, ed. D.K. Mumby, Sage Annual Reviews of Communications Research (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Productions, 1993), 77–98. 38 Laurence J. Kirmeyer, Caroline L. Tait, and Cori Simpson, “The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: Transformations of Identity and Community,” in Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, ed. L.J. Kirmeyer and G.G. Valaskakis (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 24. 39 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, vol. 1: Looking Forward, Looking Back (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1996), 5. 40 Jeffrey C. Alexander et al., eds., Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1. 41 Howard Cardinal, Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s Indians (Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig, 1969); Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from the Native Point of View (Toronto: New Press, 1975). I provide a detailed explanation of the way Indigenous voice is “heard” in “Telling Secrets” and, more recently, in “Felt Theory” on the role of affect in “silencing.” See Dian Million, “Telling Secrets: Sex, Power and Narratives in Indian Residential School Histories,” Canadian Woman Studies/Le Cahier des femmes 20, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 92–104 and “Felt Theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History,” Wicazo Sa Review 24, no. 2 (2009): 53–6. 42 For instance, Breaking the Silence immediately cites Ing, Chrisjohn, Furniss, Jaine, Knockwood, Johnston, Haig-Brown, Bull, and the numerous community testimonies. Roslyn Ing, “The Effects of Residential School on Native Child-Rearing Practices,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 18, suppl. (1991): 67–116; Elizabeth Furniss, “In Their ‘Best Interests’: The Care of Native Students at Williams Lake Indian Residential School (1891–1920),” unpublished manuscript, copyrighted by Cariboo Tribal Council, Williams Lake, BC, as “Victims of Benevolence,” 1992; Basil Johnston, Indian School Days (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1988); Celia Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (Vancouver: Tillacum Library, 1988); Isabelle Knockwood and Gilliam Thomas, Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi’kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, 2nd ed. (Lockeport, NS: Roseway, 1992); L.R. Bull, “Indian Residential Schooling: The Native Perspective,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 18, no. 2, suppl. (1991): 1–63. 43 Wilma Spearchief and Louise Million, Breaking the Silence: An Interpretive Study of Residential School Impact and Healing as Illustrated by the Stories of First Nation Individuals (Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations, First Nations Health Commission, 1994), 5 and 112–19. 44 Ibid., 5. 45 Ibid., 112–19. 46 Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart and Lemyra M. DeBruyn, “The American Indian Holocaust: Healing Historical Unresolved Grief,” American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research 8, no. 2 (1998): 56–78. 47 Ibid. Drawing on a large body of trauma literature produced by Holocaust scholars and survi-

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vors, Braveheart entered the field in 1988 with DeBruyn and Tofoya with “Healing the Dysfunctional Indian Family,” a paper presented at the National Indian Health Board Conference. Dr Yellow Horse and her colleagues have recently defined historical trauma as a “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across generations, including one’s own lifespan, because everything up to a minute ago is history.” Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, “From Intergenerational Trauma to Intergenerational Healing,” Wellbriety! 6, no. (2005): 4. Braveheart and De Bruyn’s article appeared at the same time as Eduardo and Bonnie Duran’s Native American Indian Postcolonial Psychology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), which was a bestseller in Indian Country. Eduardo Duran must also be seen as an early Indigenous promoter of historical wounding as an explanatory term. See Transforming the Soul Wound: A Theoretical/Clinical Approach to American Indian Psychology (Archana Publications, 1990). Postcolonial Psychology mates his earlier thesis with trauma theory. Marie-Anik Gagné, “The Role of Dependency and Colonialism in Generating Trauma in First Nations Citizens,” in International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, ed. Y. Danieli (New York: Plenum Press, 1998), 372. Wole Soyinka, “Memory, Truth and Healing,” in The Politics of Memory: Truth, Healing, and Social Justice, ed. I. Amadiume and A. Abdullahi (New York: Zed Books, 2000), 21. Ibid., 27. Kleinman, Das, and Lock, eds., Social Suffering, xi–xii. Cecile Rousseau and Toby Measham, “Posttraumatic Suffering as a Source of Transformation: A Clinical Perspective,” in Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. L.J. Kirmayer et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 276. Rousseau and Measham, professors in psychology at McGill University, write of “the complexity of social violence, including our (Western researchers, academics) own implicit role in the process” (275). Ibid., 279. Gabrielle Slowey, Navigating Neoliberalism: Self-Determination and the Mikisew Cree First Nation (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008). Ibid., 15.

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10 Public Mourning and the Culture of Redress: Mayerthorpe, Air India, and Murdered or Missing Aboriginal Women amber dean 1

We have to consider how the norm governing who will be a grievable human is circumscribed and produced in these acts of permissible and celebrated public grieving, [and] how they sometimes operate in tandem with a prohibition on the public grieving of others’ lives.2

State-sponsored efforts to bring about some form of reconciliation between historically wronged constituencies and what is often framed as dominant or mainstream Canada frequently include the creation of opportunities for public mourning. Sponsorship of commemorative activities, such as the building of memorials for those who died as a result of some form of injustice, frequently go hand-in-hand with state apologies for past wrongs, and “proper” public mourning – the unveiling of monuments, the organization of public memorial services – is often believed to bring closure to an injustice that is framed as a “sad chapter” in a nation’s history. To publicly mourn the dead in a widespread way, particularly when the deaths in question are sudden, violent, and multiple, is a way of marking such losses as a national loss (and often, of repudiating the actions of those deemed responsible for the loss). When such mourning is not widespread, or is promoted as of widespread importance only belatedly, then this lack itself is often considered grounds for seeking reconciliation. However, unlike other redress cases discussed in this volume, the state-sponsored opportunities for public mourning (or lack thereof) occurring in response to the 2005 murder of four members of the national police force in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, and the disappearance or murder of 520 or more Aboriginal women over the last thirty years have not been explicitly articulated as acts of reconciliation. In contrast, although the bombing of Air India Flight 182 was once disavowed by the federal government as a national loss, in the years leading up to the 2010 formal apology, state-sponsored memorialization has been proffered as a gesture of reconciliation. In this paper, I want to probe the uneven status of statesponsored public mourning in response to national tragedies and argue that, even when public mourning seems to be disarticulated from reconciliation processes, such mourning plays a significant role in Canada’s “culture of redress.” I ask: What is the relationship between state-sponsored public mourning and the (re)production of an idealized “Canadianness”? And what possibilities exist for an alternative practice of public mourning that invites reflection on how the injustices of the past live on in ways that are both material and symbolic? Any such alternative would have to offer opportunities for “considering or

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taking responsibility for one’s implication in [the] reproduction [of relations of injustice],” as Roger Simon argues in his chapter in this collection, and thus would need to pay close attention to the kinds of affective responses likely to be evoked among diverse participants. Examining my three chosen examples in relation to each other helps to expose the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that state-sponsored public mourning frequently precludes opportunities for reckoning with colonial histories and their legacies. Such a juxtaposition has the potential to provoke the sorts of reflections on one’s own implication in relations of injustice that Simon calls for, and might also work to unsettle one’s preconceived notions of past and present, leading to more generative reflections on the many ways that present and past are instead enmeshed.3 I begin, then, with a consideration of the various affective responses likely to be evoked in instances of public mourning, arguing for the necessity of carefully considering how such affective responses might register among different groups, or cause distraction from injustices requiring concrete political changes. I follow this with an overview of public mourning’s role in sanctioning particularly narrow frameworks for comprehending a life as “grievable” by juxtaposing the extent and form of public mourning in response to my three chosen examples, building on Judith Butler’s work on the notion of “grievability” in Precarious Life (2004) and Frames of War (2009). From there I reflect on the many ways that state-sponsored public mourning of my three chosen examples (or, in the case of murdered and missing Aboriginal women, the lack of state-sponsored public mourning) frequently forecloses opportunities for examining how the injustices of the past continue to inflect the present. And finally, I consider one example of what I am calling “transformative” public mourning, an example that I believe offers openings for participants to consider how we are differently implicated in the losses being mourned, by provoking reflection on how those losses are tied to an unjust past that is anything but over. Mourning’s Affective Claims In “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud describes mourning as “the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, an ideal, and so on.”4 For my purposes I want to take note of two important insights that Freud advances: (1) that mourning is invested with particular affective responses, which Freud sums up as a “painful unpleasure”; and (2) that mourning is something that one normally, with time, works through and moves beyond, such that “the ego becomes free and uninhibited again.”5 Put slightly differently, through the process of mourning, then, “the past is declared resolved, finished, and dead.”6 I return later in this section to the relationship between mourning and putting the past behind us, but turn first here to mourning’s affective registers. As Freud argues, mourning is a process indelibly bound to various affective responses that are summarized neatly by his phrase “painful unpleasure,” but might also include sadness, longing, grief, guilt, solemnity, or anger, among others. In fact, conventional understandings of mourning have become so tied to working through various affective responses to loss that it is nearly impossible to separate mourning from affect.7 In instances of widespread (and widely mediatized) public mourning, these affective responses are often exhibited most powerfully by those who knew and loved the dead in life, and there is thus always the risk that such public mourning works as spectacle for the rest of us, inviting us

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to assuage our own affective responses to loss without ever being asked to reflect on our socio-political implication in the injustices that may have produced these particular losses in the first place.8 Such concerns expose something of the inadequacy of public mourning, at least as it is conventionally thought and practised, as a reconciliatory gesture. As Deena Rymhs so compellingly argues, such affective responses are likely to differ based on one’s relationship to an injustice; in Canadian society, “colonial dichotomies of oppressor-oppressed, colonizer-colonized” may be reproduced through forms of public mourning that evoke affective responses of guilt, on the one hand (for one’s perceived connection to the “oppressor/colonizer” half of the dichotomy), and assumptions about the colonized-as-victim (without agency, or political demands), on the other.9 “Can guilt be turned into tangible political action?” Rymhs asks, and “how much does the process of reconciliation help those who have been treated unjustly?” These seem important questions to ask of any act of public mourning framed as a reconciliatory gesture. In order to make a contribution to greater justice in the present, then, public mourning must instead be enacted in a way that intentionally or strategically avoids provoking an affective expunging or “closure” of loss or suffering of the kind that Freud advocates above. Instead, such mourning could be designed and performed along the lines that Judith Butler imagines when she writes: “One mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly for ever [sic]. Perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation) the full result of which one cannot know in advance.”10 While Freud’s and Butler’s conceptions of mourning are not antithetical, Butler’s offers greater possibilities for a radical transformation at the level of the individual and the social, one that seems imperative to a more just present. Rather than understanding mourning as a process of putting the past behind us, then, such that we become, as Freud argued, “free and uninhibited again,” Butler develops an understanding of mourning as a process of permanent and ongoing change. Translated from the domain of the psychic to that of the social, this might imply that a transformative praxis of public mourning requires opportunities for reflection on the many ways the past continues to shape the present, rather than imagining the past as something that can ever be closed or resolved once and for all. Those who take part in the public mourning of others we did not know in life, then, might do well to understand such mourning as a process of working through the loss of a belief in the pre-existence of just relations, one that will require us to submit to a transformation that is necessarily both psychic and social. This is an approach to mourning that demands we take seriously the assertion that such mourning is inadequate when not accompanied by political commitments to recognize and redress the ways that the injustices of the so-called past continue to shape the present in very concrete ways. Why advocate for a practice of public mourning at all, then? Why not just critique the vast inadequacies and foreclosures of state-sponsored public mourning and argue that its risks of evoking affect as a distraction from action or change make for a poor reconciliatory gesture? I have two main responses to such questions. First, what I am calling a transformative public mourning, one that embraces Butler’s understanding of mourning, has the potential to evoke reflection on one’s own implication in what Simon calls “relations of injustice,” which is no small or straightforward task. Second, I am persuaded by Butler’s argument (in the epigraph to this chapter) that acts of public grieving are intimately

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connected to questions of the human, questions of whose life is widely recognizable as a “grievable” life, and as a result I suspect that more widespread public mourning of losses that get cast as ungrievable (or less grievable) on a national scale may be necessary for challenging the dichotomous framing of “grievable/ungrievable” lives. In other words, lack of public mourning in response to certain deaths is tantamount to a failure to confer a type of symbolic or cultural capital, a capital that establishes one’s place as valued, as citizen, and ultimately as human. But increased opportunities for public mourning, although they may help to counteract such failures, are unlikely to transform relations of injustice without attending to the many ways that the injustices of the past remain enmeshed with the present. Public Mourning and the Making of Grievable Lives In the immediate aftermath of the murders of four Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) constables outside Mayerthorpe, Alberta, on 3 March 2005, signs of widespread public mourning were quickly evident in many communities across Canada. Over 11,000 people attended a national memorial service held at the University of Alberta on 10 March, which was also broadcast nationally on both radio and television. According to CBC reports, smaller services were held that day across the country.11 Prominent public officials participated in memorial events occurring shortly after the constables were murdered: the 10 March service was attended by then Prime Minister Paul Martin and Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, while Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip of England were present at another service held later that month in Regina. Prime Minister Martin declared that the murdered constables were mourned “by a nation”12 in his speech at the national memorial service, while Governor General Clarkson declared that a “sense of shock and bereavement has spread across our country.”13 Three years later, at the unveiling of a permanent monument to the constables in Mayerthorpe, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared to a group of their relatives, friends, and neighbours that on the day of their deaths “our entire nation joined with you in sorrow.” “There have been few more heart-wrenching moments in my experience in Canadian public life,” he shared with attendees, “than when we lost these four fine young men.”14 Thus, this loss is repeatedly cast as a collective loss, a loss that the prime minister insists was experienced and felt by a “we,” here meant to stand in for Canadians as an imagined collective. On 9 February 2008, the Globe and Mail ran a full-page advertisement for a new CTV movie about the murder of these four constables. Bold typeface at the top of the page proclaimed the date of these deaths as “a day no Canadian can forget.”15 Such a statement implies that if one cares to identify as Canadian one must remember these four constables and the event of their murders – that such remembrance is in fact a part of what it means to recognize oneself and others as Canadian. The imperative to remember and, thus, belong was concretized by the speed and extent to which various efforts to publicly mourn the constables took place across the country in the wake of their deaths. These acts and declarations of public mourning and remembrance encourage one to believe it is “only natural” to feel the loss of state agents who so strongly symbolize an idealized “Canadianness” as a personal loss, even when one did not know the murdered men in life. In fact, this sentiment is produced in large part through the acts of public mourning that followed these murders: in other words, the deaths of these four constables are produced as mattering to Canadians in ways that make this mattering seem natural and expected.

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In stark contrast to public mourning in response to the Mayerthorpe murders, the murder of 329 people aboard Air India Flight 182, with passengers travelling mainly from Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal – 280 of whom held Canadian citizenship – has only very recently occasioned acts of public mourning in Canada, a mourning that to date remains much less widespread. One might attribute this to the fact that the plane belonged to an Indian airline, or that the explosion itself took place off the shores of Ireland, or that the motivation behind the bombing was quickly framed as having to do with a political conflict over land in India, but the inadequacy of public mourning in this instance is much more complex than these facts alone can account for.16 Every year since the bombing an annual memorial service has been held, not in Canada, but in Ahakista, Ireland, near where the plane fell into the Atlantic. A permanent memorial was unveiled there in 1986, built through donations from the Canadian and Indian governments and Cork County’s contribution of the land and upkeep. The unveiling was attended not by the prime minister of Canada, though, but by the minister of external affairs. Not until the twentieth anniversary of the bombing, in 2005, would a Canadian prime minister attend this annual memorial event. In 2007, twenty-two years after these murders took place, permanent public memorials for the victims of Air India Flight 182 were installed in Toronto and Vancouver, and the following year an existing plaque was transformed into a memorial presumed more fitting in Ottawa. Permanent monuments are also in the works for Montreal and New Brunswick. These memorials are remarkably belated, and thus draw attention to a significant temporal gap between when these murders occurred and when the losses began to be claimed by the state as losses of and for Canadians. As Prime Minister Harper acknowledged in his speech at the unveiling of the Toronto monument: “Flight 182 may have flown that fateful day under the flag of India, but the murder of its passengers was singularly a Canadian crime and tragedy. And worst of all, many Canadians didn’t realize this until much, much later. Like bystanders at a public assault, many initially looked the other way and thought it was none of their business. This was a terrible, hurtful mistake. One that Canada will always regret.”17 Indeed, several family members of those who were killed have repeatedly spoken over the years of a sense of having been betrayed by Canada – not just by the state’s slow and inadequate response to their loss, but also by a widespread failure to recognize their loss as nationally significant. Two years after the bombing, Clarke Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee claimed that “the failure to acknowledge the victims of the crash as Canadians remains for most of the families the enduring political grief of Air India 182,”18 and almost twenty-three years later the Air India Victims’ Families Association (AIVFA) argued that Canada has “failed to incorporate this tragic event into its collective conscience and history, and as such, the families believed that they were ignored and that this tragedy was not seen as a Canadian tragedy.”19 Of course, it is problematic to generalize such sentiments to all those who lost loved ones in the bombing, but it is also worth noting that such claims are made; the fact that they are made at all suggests that widespread public mourning is sometimes, perhaps often, interpreted as a sign of national mourning. And in a “culture of redress,” such examples of public mourning are understandably viewed by some as a kind of compensation for loss that matters greatly because they are frequently perceived to confer dignity and humanity to the dead and, by extension, to the living mourners whose identities are frequently constituted on similar terms. The immediate and widespread public mourning of the four RCMP constables is also striking when juxtaposed with a stunning lack of widespread public mourning for an es-

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timated 520 Aboriginal women who have been murdered or have disappeared in Canada since the 1970s (and in approximately half of these instances, the women have been disappeared or murdered since 2000).20 Although the federal government funded the “Sisters in Spirit” research project by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), which has confirmed these numbers, there has to date been no state-sponsored memorial service or monument ordered, and no declaration of reconciliation, apology, regret, or national mourning has been made.21 NWAC has held vigils for the murdered or missing women on 4 October since 2006 in Ottawa and, in 2009, parallel vigils staged by NWAC or Amnesty International affiliates were held in more than seventy different cities or communities across Canada, perhaps suggesting that public mourning of these deaths is now becoming more widespread. But it is telling that the primary vigil is held on Parliament Hill in the interests of trying to draw the federal government’s attention to the extent of this violence. Opposition members of parliament have called for a national, independent public inquiry into these deaths, but thus far only one very localized inquiry has been launched in response to the specific circumstances surrounding the disappearance or murder of women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. While this inquiry may investigate and recommend changes applicable across British Columbia, its provincial terms of reference risk suggesting that the disappearance of women is confined primarily to Vancouver or British Columbia.22 Juxtaposing the widespread and immediate public mourning of the murdered RCMP constables with the vast differences in the extent and timing of such mourning in response to events like the Air India disaster or the disappearance and murder of so many Aboriginal women exposes the politics of what Judith Butler calls “grievability.”23 “Some lives are grievable,” she writes, “and others are not”: “The differential allocation of grievability that decides what kind of subject is and must be grieved, and which kind of subject must not, operates to produce and maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of who is normatively human: what counts as a livable life and a grievable death?”24 Clearly, there is a “differential allocation of grievability” at work in the examples I’ve brought together here, one that highlights how “conceptions of who is normatively human” in Canada remain bound up with what Sunera Thobani describes as the “exaltation” of national subjects like the Mountie, who maintain an exalted status that appears not to have changed much over the past century.25 The examples of public mourning I juxtapose here offer only one glimpse of the many ways that the “exaltation” of particular subjects continues to be (re)produced in Canadian society. Analysed in conjunction, these examples demonstrate how those who are commonly categorized as ”the immigrant” or “the Aboriginal” continue to be widely deemed “outsiders” to the nation, whose loss is only occasionally acknowledged as a “grievable” loss of and for “Canadians” as an imagined collective.26 Although I remain highly critical of practices of public mourning that represent some lives as significantly more grievable than others, I am not trying to suggest that the widespread public mourning that followed the murders of the four RCMP constables in Mayerthorpe should not have occurred. Instead, I am interested in how such mourning could be enacted on different terms. The public mourning that occurred in the wake of the Mayerthorpe murders was never articulated or framed as a reconciliatory gesture – but I would argue it has everything to do with a culture of redress. For the “exaltation” of the murdered constables through the public mourning that followed their deaths also works to stave off consideration of RCMP (and by extension the state’s) involvement in several of the historical injustices for which reconciliation or redress have recently been sought.

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In his speech at the national memorial service for the murdered constables, then Prime Minister Paul Martin made note of the pride he saw reflected in the photographed portraits of the murdered constables. “How could they not have been proud?” he asked. “They were members of our national police force. They were Mounties.”27 What are the possibilities for a public mourning of the Mounties that would refuse to treat Martin’s question as rhetorical? It must be admitted that public mourning almost always involves an idealization of the dead, so in that regard memorialization of the constables is not unique. There is of course a difference between the individual men who were murdered and the institution they represented, and it is perhaps unfitting that an event or memorial meant to mark the loss of those individuals should include within its form or design some critical reflection on the role of that institution in a slew of injustices. But it seems important to note that the individual men murdered in Mayerthorpe were transformed into figures of an idealized “Canadianness” through the widespread public mourning that followed their violent deaths, and that this occurred precisely because they represented the RCMP. Thus, public mourning of the murdered constables also worked to further “exalt” such figures, deepening a tendency to resist critical reflection on how the “exaltation” of some lives is premised on the forgetting of others. Would attending to this complexity in acts of public mourning and remembrance not do greater justice both to the efforts to represent the constables’ individual lives to a wider public and to the problematic ways that they are rendered model national subjects? It is true that in the face of growing pressure from family members of the dead and activists representing various groups, government officials have recently made apologetic gestures for the lack of widespread public mourning in the wake of the Air India disaster, and in 2010 the federal government issued a formal apology for its handling of the event and its aftermath. Similar reconciliatory gestures might also arise at some point in the perhaps not-so-distant future in response to the disappearance or murder of Aboriginal women. And, just as we have witnessed the building of permanent memorials for the victims of Flight 182 in Canada in recent years, it seems likely that it is only a matter of time before such state-sponsored monuments are built in remembrance of murdered or missing Aboriginal women, too. Certainly it does seem better to have these reconciliatory declarations and permanent memorials, however belatedly or inadequately, than not to have them at all – such gestures are perhaps a necessary part of countering how certain lives get cast as more “grievable” than others. But even if the Air India victims or murdered Aboriginal women were to be memorialized on a scale comparable to the RCMP constables, something would still be amiss, for the examples of public mourning I’ve discussed so far are heavily enmeshed in a nation-building project that stakes its legitimacy on locating racism and colonialism in Canada’s past. They fail to acknowledge – indeed, actively suppress – the many ways that these pasts continue to affect the present. Thus, I am left advocating a rather paradoxical position: it seems politically important (perhaps necessary) to counter how certain lives get (re)produced as more grievable than others through widespread, statesponsored opportunities for public mourning, and as such these opportunities ought to be equally available to mark the different losses being considered here. At the same time, the limitations of this form of public mourning suggest that increasing opportunities for such mourning in response to the losses represented by Air India or murdered and missing Aboriginal women will do little to alter what Simon has called “relations of injustice” in the present, since this form of public mourning is so frequently invested in distancing the present from the past.

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Enmeshments of Present and Past How might public mourning instead be deployed as an opportunity for reckoning with unjust pasts and their legacies? Avery Gordon suggests that to counter dominant stories about loss we must “not only repair representational mistakes, but also strive to understand the conditions under which a memory was produced in the first place, toward a countermemory, for the future.”28 To repair representational mistakes, accomplished, for example, by building permanent memorials dedicated to those lost in the Air India disaster in Canada, is important and necessary but inadequate on its own. By examining the conditions under which such events were produced as less worthy of widespread public mourning or remembrance in the first place, though, it is possible to provide openings for another form of memory, what Gordon describes as a “countermemory,” that challenges the very framing of certain losses as un- or less-“grievable.” Despite his expression of regret for how Canadians initially “looked the other way” after the Air India disaster, Prime Minister Harper also asserted at the unveiling of the new permanent memorial in Toronto that the bombing had “nothing to do with Canada.”29 Angela Failler compellingly insists that Harper’s statement represents a desire to suppress more widespread awareness that those accused of committing the bombings, as well as those who were killed, were in fact Canadians.30 Building on her insight, I would argue that the invitation to forget enacted by Harper’s statement that the bombing “had nothing to do with Canada” extends further still: it also attempts to bury a past in which the Canadian state and its many apparatuses contributed directly to casting immigrants from India as undesirable ”outsiders” to an imagined national community. His statement thus forecloses opportunities for reflecting on the ways that such casting has not changed as much in the ensuing years as the prime minister’s gestures towards reconciliation and inclusion suggest. The past that Harper’s statement invites us to forget involves a long history of systemic discrimination and symbolic dehumanization of South Asians in Canada. In 1914, for example, a ship named the Komagata Maru, a Japanese vessel chartered by an Indian Sikh named Gurdit Singh, arrived in Vancouver bearing 376 would-be immigrants, mostly Sikh men from India desiring to settle permanently in the burgeoning Dominion of Canada. Despite the fact that the passengers were British subjects seeking to relocate within the Commonwealth, they were denied entry to Canada and prevented from disembarking by an obscure immigration policy requiring that potential immigrants must make a continuous journey from their homeland to Canada. This legislation was designed with the specific goal of eliminating immigration from India without necessitating an outright ban, which would have exposed the lie of popular assertions that all British subjects were equal under the law anywhere in the Commonwealth. After this policy was passed, Canadian officials actively discouraged all steamship companies from offering direct passage from India to Canada.31 Seeking to challenge the continuous-journey policy and test “the justice of the British towards all their people,” the Komagata Maru sailed from Hong Kong with several stops along the way to board more passengers.32 After two months in the Vancouver harbour, during which time the passengers were prevented from leaving the ship and occasionally denied food and water, the Komagata Maru was finally forced back out to sea under threat from a Canadian navy vessel. Upon return to India, the governing British were concerned that the disgruntled passengers might be persuaded to join a burgeoning movement for India’s independence and decided to try to detain the vessel yet again. The British provoked hostilities and fired on the passengers, killing several.33

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Canadian governments, both provincial and federal, have recently offered public apologies for the Komagata Maru incident, but when Prime Minister Harper attempted to apologize for this atrocity to a largely Sikh audience in Surrey, BC, in 2008, he was caught off guard as attendees took control of the stage and insisted his apology was not acceptable, arguing it should have been made officially in the House of Commons. Clearly, this is a past that is not so securely historical as the government might like to imagine, and many experience the injustice of the Komagata Maru not as an almost century-old history but as an event that continues to matter in and for the present. One of the social and psychic legacies of this event includes the production of racialized identities that are marked as either “insiders” or “outsiders” in Canada. And this production, this casting of certain groups as “outsiders” on the basis of race, is of course deeply implicated in the Air India disaster as well as in the inadequacy of the state’s efforts to either prevent or respond to it.34 Lest we imagine that responsibility for this unjust past and its legacies can be restricted to state actors, though, it seems important to also explore the implication of a broader public in the sentiments underpinning and supporting the state’s actions. In his search for archival footage of the Komagata Maru, for example, filmmaker Ali Kazimi came upon the lyrics for “White Canada Forever,” which he found to be “the most popular beerparlour ballad” in the summer of 1914.35 The popularity of this ballad and the sentiment of white supremacy that underpins it are not often recalled as a significant aspect of our colonial history, and seem unlikely to find their way into the memorial or museum being planned for Vancouver to commemorate the Komagata Maru incident. Yet such sentiments were prevalent: indeed, Kazimi and others document how the action in the harbour leading up to the rerouting of the Komagata Maru was seen by many as a cause for celebration and a source of fun and entertainment. Kazimi’s film suggests that not only the state, or the media, or the legal system, but also the everyday assumptions, values, and beliefs of a wider community that imagines itself a part of “Canada” are all implicated here in the historical promotion of white supremacy. And this history of overt white supremacy continues to inflect the present in ways that are perhaps at times more subtle, but nonetheless still evident. Not all immigrants to Canada in the early twentieth century received similar treatment, of course. In fact, the continuous-journey policy was passed specifically to limit or prevent the arrival of non-European immigrants from other British colonies, and thus worked in tandem with other policies, like the Chinese head tax (see Lily Cho’s chapter in this volume), designed with the specific goal of keeping those racialized as “other” out of Canada. The contemporary tendency among many Canadians to conflate brown bodies with the categories of “immigrant” or “outsider” is a direct legacy of such policies – a tendency that remains enmeshed with the Air India bombing over seventy years later, when many white Canadians still presumed that brown people could not be Canadian, making widespread recognition of this loss as a specifically Canadian tragedy highly unlikely. It is a past that remains amply evident still today, for as Kazimi points out in his documentary, the continuous-journey policy of the early twentieth century is not so different from the new “Safe Third Country” Agreement, which allows Canadian immigration officials to turn away refugee claimants who have not reached Canada by continuous journey from their homeland (when their route took them through another country presumed by the Canadian government to be “safe” for refugees). Efforts to overturn this agreement were exhausted on 5 February 2009, when the Supreme Court of Canada decided not to hear an appeal of a prior court decision to uphold this policy.36

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All of this forms the very present past of the Canada that Harper insisted, in his speech at the 2007 unveiling of the new Air India memorial in Toronto, “has long served as a model of a prosperous, peaceful, pluralistic society.” “It is little wonder,” he further asserted, “that millions of people from around the world have been attracted to our shores, with each wave helping to further enrich our diverse and unique society.”37 The waves that brought the Komagata Maru are conveniently wiped away here, although the reference to “waves” and “shores” causes their haunting resonances to potentially seep through Harper’s speech. In 2010, in his apology speech at the twenty-fifth-anniversary commemoration of the Air India disaster, Harper made this point slightly differently: “When we invite from around the world,” he said, “those who share our aspirations for a better life, others also come, those who see in our Canada, not new bridges to a hopeful future but only another chance to travel the old roads to the blood-feuds of the past.”38 Here the onus is upon an “us” to “invite” others to make Canada home, and thus Harper re-enacts the logic of the continuous-journey policy of 1914, both through his insistence on the right of invitation (and subsequently, although not mentioned, of refusal) but also through the way his text implies the qualities of a “good” (i.e., easily assimilated) and “bad” immigrant (i.e., one who refuses to leave the past behind). It is not Canadians who are racist, Harper’s statements at both the 2007 unveiling and the 2010 commemoration and apology suggest, not the Canadian state that is the source or cause of racial injustice, but those “political, religious and ethnic conflicts that have darkened the lands and times” from which immigrants have come.39 Here Harper’s speech performs an additional feat of forgetting through its insistence that such conflicts exist in other “lands and times” and not among Canadians, many of whom were born in Canada or have lived in Canada for generations.40 Perhaps the monument unveiled in Toronto would offer a greater provocation for reckoning with the many ways that the colonial violence of this past remains amply present if the word “RECONCILIATION,” carved in large capital letters across a stone bench at the end of the memorial’s “Remembrance Walk,” were followed by a question mark. Signs of such unsettled pasts are also amply evident in the contemporary disappearance or murder of Aboriginal women. To date there are few examples of public mourning or memorialization of Aboriginal persons who died as a result of ongoing colonial violence, for to publicly mourn such deaths would expose colonial violence to scrutiny and raise questions about the very logic and justice of “Canada” as a nation. Perhaps this helps to explain why the federal government has not yet made reconciliatory gestures, funded the building of permanent memorials, or organized public memorial services for murdered or missing Aboriginal women. The government has, however, recently offered a very public apology to Aboriginal communities for the residential schools system, and a part of their commitment to redress the residential schools experience includes the “Commemoration” arm of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which promises $20 million for commemorative initiatives that will memorialize the experiences of those who survived, and presumably also those who died in, the schools.41 This gesture, too, demonstrates how the past is secured as past through such proposed acts of public mourning. Again, it seems better to have these gestures and commemorative activities than nothing at all. But also, as with the Air India bombing, there is a risk here of deploying public mourning to situate colonial violence as a regrettable part of Canada’s past, escaping reflection on how such violence and its legacies remain enmeshed with the present.

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The ongoing, alarming rates of disappearance or murder of Aboriginal women represents such a startling example of colonial violence in the present that widespread public mourning of their loss in Canada, if that mourning were framed through the terms articulated by Butler above, could shake the foundations on which this nation is built. Unless, of course, such violence is dismissed not as colonial violence, intimately tied to the violence of residential schools or the discriminatory effects of the colonial Indian Act, but as the actions of a few mad individuals who clearly represent an inhuman “evil” (as has been done, for example, in British Columbia through the arrest and trial of Robert Pickton). The gender discrimination of the Indian Act in particular, which led to loss of status for many Aboriginal women (and subsequent loss of land and property rights, including the right to live on reserves) is well documented,42 and is deeply implicated in the over-representation of Aboriginal women among those who do survival sex work in urban inner cities in Canada. Again, one must look for signs of a past usually considered over and done with to expose the ways that this contemporary violence belies such conventional understandings of the relations between past and present. Sherene Razack offers one such moment of exposure in her analysis of the murder of Pamela George, a Saulteaux woman from the Sakimay First Nation in Saskatchewan, who at the time of her murder did street-based sex work in an inner-city neighbourhood in Regina, Saskatchewan. Razack argues that George’s murder is overly determined by how Canada’s colonial history constitutes and constrains the identities of George and her murderers and simultaneously legitimizes assumptions about contemporary inner-city spaces as “degenerate,” frontier-like zones.43 “The city belongs to the settlers,” Razack insists, “and the sullying of civilized society through the presence of the racial Other in white space gives rise to a careful management of boundaries within urban space.”44 Razack argues that George’s murderers saw themselves to be crossing a border into one such frontier-like space when they visited “the Stroll” in Regina’s inner city on the night of George’s murder. She suggests that the violence George experienced was “fully colonial – a making of the white, masculine self as dominant through practices of violence directed at a colonized woman.”45 Razack’s delineation of how colonialist legacies naturalize contemporary violence against certain bodies occupying certain spaces (in this instance, the body of an Aboriginal woman occupying an inner-city neighbourhood in western Canada) is especially productive when read alongside Sara Ahmed’s book Strange Encounters. Ahmed is interested in the figure of “the stranger,” in how encounters between those deemed familiar and unfamiliar (or strange) produce those subjects in the encounter. As she explains, “the encounter itself is ontologically prior to the question of ontology (the question of the being who encounters).”46 For Ahmed, then, our analysis should be concerned with the question of “how contemporary modes of proximity reopen prior histories of encounter.”47 Thus, it is necessary to consider the violence experienced by Aboriginal women today as encounters that are fully enmeshed with colonial history, belying its past-ness. Yet, although a history of colonization certainly impacts the encounter, it is important to note that it does not fully determine it; that because the history produced the categorizations rather than the other way around, other outcomes were and are possible. Citing and expanding upon comments by the Native Council of Canada, Razack notes that the rearrangement of space in Canada through attempts to isolate Aboriginal people on reserves continues to sustain a “perception that being Aboriginal and being urban are mu-

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tually exclusive.”48 In her analysis of the murder of Pamela George, Razack draws our attention to the fact that George’s murderers first drove her to the outskirts of Regina, where they murdered her and abandoned her body. She locates this violent act on a continuum of similar contemporary efforts to violently expel Aboriginal bodies from cities in western Canada, such as the alarmingly common police practice of driving Aboriginal people beyond city limits and abandoning them there, a practice that has been linked to the freezing deaths of several Aboriginal men in recent years.49 These events far too neatly parallel historical efforts to remove Aboriginal people from the newly developing colonial cities, to “contain” them on reserves and, later, in the residential schools that the government is now willing to apologize for. Many of the women who have been disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood were, like George, also Aboriginal, and they were also removed from the inner city, their remains discovered on a rural property in the suburban outskirts. The pattern has been similar in Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg, where the bodies of women, disproportionately Aboriginal women, many of whom were involved in survival sex work in the inner city have, over a period of several years, been found outside of the city limits.50 This is precisely the kind of encounter that Ahmed tells us is indelibly bound to a prior history of encounter – a deeply unsettling illustration of the social and psychic legacies of a colonialism that is anything but past. The residential schools apology and any planned commemoration of the schools experience could break with the pattern of locating injustice and colonial violence in the past by explicitly identifying the contemporary disappearance and murder of Aboriginal women as an unsettling example of how this past remains present. Indeed, former NWAC president Beverly Jacobs and her colleague Andrea J. Williams have argued for the necessity of recognizing this connection in their essay “Legacy of Residential Schools: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women.”51 As they write: In the interviews NWAC has conducted to date with families of missing or murdered Aboriginal women, there is often confirmation that the systemic inequalities and Canada’s genocidal policies … have played a key role in the lives of these stolen sisters. In most cases, parents or grandparents of the women had attended residential school. Many spoke of the resulting family dysfunction or disconnect as impacting their lives and placing the women in a vulnerable situation.52

Recognizing the enmeshment of the historical injustices of the residential school system, which Canada has apologized for and is planning to commemorate, with a present still consumed by a violence so intimately tied to this history demands a different sort of public mourning than the various examples that have been discussed in this chapter thus far. Transformative Public Mourning While the state-sponsored public mourning of losses that have been previously disavowed may help to “repair representational mistakes,” such mourning is seldom enacted in a way that provokes “countermemory, for the future.”53 According to Gordon, the “something to be done” in response to this situation “is not a return to the past but a reckoning with its repression in the present, a reckoning with that which we have lost, but never had.”54 To

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conclude, then, I turn to one example of public mourning that I believe has the potential to inspire just such a reckoning: the annual Valentine’s Day Memorial March in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.55 Initially organized in 1991 as a march of protest to draw attention to the extensive violence directed at women in the Downtown Eastside, the annual Valentine’s Day Memorial March continues to combine elements of mourning and protest. I have been fortunate to participate in a few of these events while living in or visiting Vancouver, and have noticed that government officials are not invited to lead or sanction the march (I like to imagine that this has always been, and will always be, the case). “Their spirits live within us” has become the march’s theme, a theme that charges those in attendance with a responsibility to bring the dead into presence, to “hold a place for their absent presence in one’s contemporary life.”56 The march itself, led by Aboriginal elders and a group of Aboriginal women who organize the event annually, winds through the streets of the Downtown Eastside, pausing to perform smudges and leave offerings of roses, cedar, and tobacco at the many spots along the way where women were either murdered or last seen. Often before the march and as it winds to an end, political speeches are made that highlight the injustices and inequities so visible in the Downtown Eastside. These speeches are an important, strategic aspect of the event, but for me what is so very compelling about this march is the provocation for reckoning with one’s own implication in the disappearances of women from this neighbourhood that is brought about by how the theme and numerous pauses along the way draw attention to the presence of the dead and to the ongoing responsibility of everyone present to try to create some form of hospitable memory for them. This is no small charge, for as my friend Lora McElhinney has written, the women’s spirits don’t always live within us “easily” – perhaps especially true for those of us who find ourselves in Canada today as the descendants of European colonizers.57 Thus, the annual repetition of the Valentine’s Day march is more than anything an opportunity, an opening that invites participants to learn about and reflect on what it might mean to actually reckon with the injustices of the past and the many ways they remain amply evident in the violence and losses we are here to remember and mourn. This example of public mourning has the potential to invoke what Gordon has called “a countermemory, for the future” because, while organizers insist that the deaths being memorialized are indelibly bound to a colonial violence that simply cannot be relegated only to the past, the march also resists the assimilationist motivations of such violence by enacting a distinctly Aboriginal mourning that has, through centuries of colonization, refused to disappear. It counters the representation of Aboriginal women primarily as victims of violence through how it makes visible Aboriginal women’s organizing and leadership. And as it winds through the streets of the Downtown Eastside it also asserts an Aboriginal reclaiming of this space and land. Yet the event is open to everyone, and attendance keeps growing annually. It is an event that makes it difficult to locate oneself outside of the losses being mourned, as though they have little or nothing to do with who, where, and what we are in the present. This example of public mourning thus compellingly demonstrates several ways that we might collectively begin to reckon with one of those things “we have lost, but never had”: namely, a just relationship between Aboriginal and colonizer/settler communities. If such a form of public mourning were to become widespread, it seems possible that it might provoke the sorts of transformations Butler gestures towards in her explication of mourning – transformations that will no doubt thoroughly unsettle our conventional

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notions of “Canadianness” and bring us closer to a time in which the colonial violence and racial injustices of the past are a cause for collectively reckoning with the many ways they remain too amply evident in the present.

NOTES 1 I am greatly indebted to Angela Failler for her thoughtful critique of several versions of this chapter, and for her own compelling work on memorialization of the Air India disaster. Many thanks also to Pauline Wakeham and Jennifer Henderson for their extensive engagement with several drafts. I also wish to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their support of my postdoctoral research, from which this paper arises. 2 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Viking, 2004), 37. 3 For more on the notion of juxtaposition as a pedagogical practice of remembrance, see Roger I. Simon, The Touch of the Past: Remembrance, Learning and Ethics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), esp. chapters 6 and 7. For more on reckoning as a method for grappling with how the injustices of the past live on, see Sharon Rosenberg, Amber Dean, and Kara Granzow, “Centennial Hauntings: Reckoning with the 2005 celebration of Alberta’s history,” Memory Studies 3, no. 4 (2010): 395–412. 4 Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14 (1914–16), trans. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1957), 243. 5 Ibid., 245. 6 David Eng and David Kazanjian, eds., Loss: The Politics of Mourning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 3. 7 I am thinking here in particular of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s influential model of the five stages of grief, each of which involves working through various affective responses to grief or loss. See Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1969). 8 For more on loss and suffering as spectacle and the “splitting off” of affect from responsibility that can result, see Roger Simon’s essay in this volume. 9 Deena Rymhs, “Appropriating Guilt: Reconciliation in an Aboriginal Canadian Context,” English Studies Canada 32, no.1 (March 2006): 109. 10 Butler, Precarious Life, 21 (emphasis in original). 11 CBC, “Memorial Honours Mounties ‘Who Have Given Everything,’” 11 March 2005, http:// www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/03/10/rcmp-memorial050310.html. 12 “Address by Prime Minister Paul Martin to the National Memorial Service,” 10 March 2005, http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/301/prime_minister-ef/paul_martin/06-02-03/www.pm.gc.ca/ eng/news.asp@id=437. 13 “Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson Speech on the Occasion of the National Memorial Service for the Four Fallen RCMP Officers,” 10 March 2005, http://www .gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=4395. 14 “PM Attends Unveiling of Memorial for Fallen RCMP Officers,” 4 July 2008, http://pm.gc.ca/ eng/media.asp?category=2&id=2189. 15 Globe and Mail, 9 February 2008. 16 It is beyond the scope of this paper to repeat the theories about who or what was behind the

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bombings themselves (two Air India flights were targeted on 23 June 1985, and another bomb that detonated while in baggage transfer at Narita airport in Japan, just hours before the bomb on Flight 182, also killed two baggage handlers). It appears to be quite widely accepted at this stage, however, that the bombs were planted by Sikh separatists fighting for an independent Khalistan, or Sikh homeland, in India, and were possibly an act of retaliation for a series of violent attacks on Sikhs in India in the year before the bombings, although the men accused of plotting the attacks have never been convicted in a court of law (only one man has ever been convicted, of manslaughter, for his role in the two bombings). Readers desiring more background on the bombings and associated events might consult any of several journalists’ accounts, including Clarke Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee, The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (Markham, ON: Viking, 1987); Kim Bolan, Loss of Faith: How the Air-India Bombers Got Away with Murder (Toronto: McClelland & Steward, 2005); or Salim Jiwa and Donald J. Hauka, Margin of Terror: A Reporter’s Twenty-Year Odyssey Covering the Tragedies of the Air India Bombing (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2006). For a rendition of these events in fiction, see Anita Rau Badami, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). Information about the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182 can be viewed online at http://www.majorcomm.ca/en/. “Prime Minister Unveils Memorial Dedicated to the Victims of Air India Flight 182,” 23 June 2007, http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1719. Blaise and Mukherjee, The Sorrow and the Terror, 203. AIVFA, Where Is Justice? AIVFA Final Written Submission, Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182 (Ottawa, 29 February 2008), 59. The submission can be found online at http://www.majorcomm.ca/en/submissions/. See Native Women’s Association of Canada, Voices of Our Sisters in Spirit: A Report to Families and Communities (2nd ed., March 2009), 88–93. The report can be accessed online at http://www.nwac-hq.org/en/sisre search.html. In fact, the federal Conservatives have, as of May 2011, refused to renew funding for NWAC’s “Sisters in Spirit” project, which ran out on 31 March 31, 2010. See http://www .winnipegfreepress.com/local/project-for-slain-women-faces-end-84292267.html. See the website of Liberal opposition MP Anita Neville for questions and statements made in the House of Commons on 13 May, 26 May, and 2 June 2009. http://www.anitaneville .ca/HofC.html. For the BC Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, see http://www .missingwomeninquiry.ca. Butler, Precarious Life, xiv. Ibid., xiv–xv. The RCMP was not founded as such until 1920, but its predecessor, the North West Mounted Police, was established in 1873, a few short years after Canadian confederation in 1867. See http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/hist/index-eng.htm. Sunera Thobani’s notion of exaltation is developed in her book Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). Although many in North America have been lamenting the loss of the “disappearing Indian” as a generalized phenomenon for centuries, I would argue that this is quite different from the public mourning of specific deaths of Aboriginal people resulting from colonial violence (which has rarely happened). Such lamentation positions the disappearance of Aboriginal people as a whole as a naturalized and inevitable phenomenon, and therefore as pitiable but not necessarily as warranting widespread public mourning. I hope to explore this distinction further in future

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27 28 29 30 31 32 33

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writing on the subject of public mourning in Canada, and I thank Pauline Wakeham and Jennifer Henderson for drawing my attention to it. “Address by Prime Minister Paul Martin.” Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 22. “Prime Minister Unveils Memorial.” Angela Failler, “Remembering the Air India Disaster: Memorial and Counter-Memorial,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 31 (2009): 164. See Hugh Johnston, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada’s Colour Bar (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), 23. Ibid., 30. For this too-brief recounting of the story of the Komagata Maru, I am indebted to both Ali Kazimi’s documentary Continuous Journey (Toronto: Peripheral Visions Productions, 2004) and Johnston’s The Voyage of the Komagata Maru. It is beyond the scope of this essay to outline the state’s many shortcomings in advance of and following the bombing of Flight 182. Interested readers should consult the journalists’ accounts noted above, or the findings of the commission of inquiry, which are available online at http:// www.majorcomm.ca/en/. Cited in Kazimi’s Continuous Journey. “Courts Allow Safe Third Country Agreement to Operate,” Rabble.ca, 17 March 2009, http:// www.rabble.ca/news/courts-allow-safe-third-country-agreement-operate. “Prime Minister Unveils Memorial.” “Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada,” 23 June 2010, http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media .asp?id=3471. The prime minister’s formal apology for the government’s failures in relation to the Air India disaster was given long after an initial draft of this essay was completed. As a result, I have only been able to incorporate very brief discussion of it here, but plan to analyse the apology text in further detail in later work. “Prime Minister Unveils Memorial.” See Failler, “Remembering the Air India Disaster,” 164. For more on the Commemoration Initiative of the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, see http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rqpi/rcomm/index-eng.asp. Although there is no mention on the website of commemoration initiatives with the specific purpose of memorializing those who died in the schools, the TRC is supporting research into the numbers and causes of these deaths, so it seems reasonable to surmise that some of the resources for commemoration will be diverted to this purpose. Information about the “Missing Children Research Project” can be found on the TRC’s website at http://www.trc-cvr.ca/about.html. See, for example, Bonita Lawrence, “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004), esp. chaps. 2, 3, and pp. 111–12; Sharon McIvor, “Aboriginal Women Unmasked: using equality litigation to Advance Women’s Rights,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 16 (2004): 106–36; and Janet Silman, ed., Enough Is Enough: Aboriginal Women Speak Out (Toronto: Women’s Press, 1992). Sherene H. Razack, “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 15, no.2 (2000): 91–130. I am focusing on western Canada here because a vastly disproportionate number of the murdered or missing Aboriginal women identified through NWAC’s research (68%) were murdered in or disappeared from the four western provinces alone. See NWAC, Voices of Our Sisters in Spirit, 92.

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Elsewhere I have argued that there is a strong connection between western frontier mythology, which resurfaces frequently in contemporary descriptions of inner-city neighbourhoods in western Canada, and this pattern of violence against Aboriginal women. See Amber Dean, “Space, Temporality, History: Encountering Hauntings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside,” in The West and Beyond: Historians Past, Present and Future, ed. S. Carter, A. Finkel, and P. Fortna (Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University Press, 2010), 113–32. See also Kara Granzow and Amber Dean, “Revanchism in the Canadian West: Gentrification and Resettlement in a Prairie City,” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 18 (2007): 89–106. Razack, “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice,” 97. Ibid., 96. Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (London: Routledge, 2000), 7. Ibid., 13 (emphasis in original). Native Council of Canada, qtd. in Razack, “Gendered Racial Violence,” 102. It is unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper to elaborate on these heinous acts of police violence, but interested readers should consult Susanne Reber and Rob Renaud, Starlight Tour: The Last, Lonely Night of Neil Stonechild (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003). See “Third prostitute found dead in Man,” Star-Phoenix, 5 September 2007 and Warren Goulding, Just Another Indian: A Serial Killer and Canada’s Indifference (Calgary: Fifth House, 2001). Beverly Jacobs and Andrea J. Williams, “Legacy of Residential Schools: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women,” in From Truth to Reconciliation: Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools, ed. M.B. Castellano, L. Archibald, and M. DeGagné (Ottawa, ON: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 121–40. Ibid., 133. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 22. Ibid., 183. Although I don’t discuss them in this paper, examples of efforts to differently frame remembrance of and provoke reckonings with the Air India disaster certainly exist as well. For a compelling reading of Eisha Marjara’s experimental film Desperately Seeking Helen (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1998) as an example of one such “counter-memorial,” see Failler, “Remembering the Air India Disaster,” 166–72. See Roger I. Simon, Sharon Rosenberg, and Claudia Eppert, eds., Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical Trauma (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 4. Lora McElhinney, “Memorial March, 2007,” West Coast Line 41, no. 1, special issue on Representations of Murdered and Missing Women, ed. A. Dean and A. Stone (2007): 73.

11 “The Compulsion to Tell Falls on the Next Generation”: Ukrainian Canadian Literature in English and Victims of the Past lindy ledohowski 1

In September 2009 the Globe and Mail ran a story entitled “Detention: It’s all about remembering,” which observed that “it’s been nearly a century since Canadian authorities rounded up thousands of immigrant families they considered enemy aliens and sent them to labour camps during the First World War. More than 8,500 people, mostly from what is now Ukraine, were sent to 24 internment camps across Canada.”2 The story confirmed that funds had finally been committed to commemorate the internment of Ukrainian Canadians during the First World War.3 Both the federal act that acknowledges this internment and the funds allocated as compensation redress this injustice through public memorials, linking redress to recognition and recognition to public representation, as the very terminology indicates: Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act and the Canadian First World War Recognition Fund to pay for “research and commemorative projects.” This chapter situates redress for First World War internment within the larger context of contemporary Ukrainian Canadian literature in English and its construction of Ukrainian identity in terms of the remembrance of wounds. This body of literature demonstrates the shift from suffering grief to voicing a grievance, from experiencing wrongs to redressing them, and from remembering pain to representing it. Looking at these representations of both sorrow and specific acts of victimization in English-language Ukrainian Canadian literature suggests to us that there exists an important interrelationship between the “culture of redress” and the artistic representation of historic memory; in the case of Ukrainian Canadian literature, a tradition of representing identity in relation to the inheritance of suffering has been inflected, more recently, with the representation of what might be called the redressable injury of wartime internment. Insofar as the redressability of this injury is constituted, in part, through the drawing of figurative connections between Ukrainian Canadians “here” and Ukrainian suffering overseas “there,” these representations also must contend with a complex history of Ukrainian complicity in the suffering of others and Ukrainian victimization, and also with the reductive perceptions of that history in normative Anglo-Canadian culture.4 Understanding the injury of Ukrainian Canadian internment and what it means in the present, therefore, requires as much of a backward-turned glance that crosses continents, moments in history, and relationships historical and present, as it does a forward projection into the future. Redress, in this context, also requires an examination of the complicated intersection between identity and suffering. Much of the body of English-language Ukrainian Canadian literature yokes images of victimization and violence to “Ukrainian-ness.” Indeed,

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in envisioning what it means to “write ethnicity” in a Ukrainian Canadian context, Janice Kulyk Keefer admits that her interest lies in “the problems and traumas and unacknowledged possibilities that compose the true site of [her] ethnicity,” an identity that emerges from “a collective history that is more a series of catastrophes than any master narrative of progress toward nationhood.”5 The present chapter asks, Why do authors and critics link “Ukrainian-ness” to trauma?6 And how does the response to the Ukrainian Canadian redress movement fit within these figurations of what it means to be “Ukrainian” in Canada? To situate the Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act and its endowment fund in the context of contemporary articulations of “Ukrainian-ness” in Canada, we must first look at Ukrainian Canadian literature in English, a literature that, critics argue, subordinates a Ukrainian Canadian identity within the dominant discourse of what Daniel Coleman has identified as “white civility.”7 This is the point that Vivian Hall makes in arguing that the “European immigrant’s language and culture became his or her ‘badge of inferiority’ – obstacles to full assimilation into Canadian culture.”8 Lisa Grekul’s literary history of English-language Ukrainian Canadian writing outlines the early pressures for Ukrainian Canadians to assimilate quickly and effectively into a dominant “Canadian” identity.9 Yet as the twentieth century progressed, ethnic-minority writing in Canada began to increase, particularly due to discourses of federal multiculturalism.10 In this context, Ukrainian Canadian writers who grappled with what it meant to be Ukrainian in Canada did so already with a great sense of loss. Even the seemingly celebratory pioneering narratives representing a mythology that “glorifies the first of the three waves of Ukrainian immigrants” do so with a pained sense of nostalgia.11 The first English-language novel written by a Canadian of Ukrainian descent claims to be a story for Ukrainian Canadians “offered as a reminder of their lost inheritance.”12 Thus, by the time Ukrainians in Canada began writing in English, they had been in Canada for generations and had been forced to assimilate. What multiculturalism in the latter half of the twentieth century offered Ukrainian Canadian writers – during what Kulyk Keefer calls the “heyday of multiculturalism in the 1970s,” a time “when it was suddenly ‘fun to be ethnic’” – was, in the words of one critic, a case of “too little encouragement too late.”13 Enoch Padolsky credits the era after the Second World War as the time, “especially from the late 1970s onwards,” when “the number of Canadian minority writers increased dramatically, along with the range of groups represented.”14 However, this increase in ethnic minority writing – including Ukrainian Canadian writing – could not compensate for “the profound cultural and linguistic loss that had already occurred among second- and third-generation [Ukrainian] Canadians.”15 Writing, therefore, became one space where the expression of this loss could be made public, and, as such, written articulation of wounds began to offer a powerful tool to understand and explain Ukrainian Canadian-ness. In analysing “the modern preoccupation with identity and recognition,” Charles Taylor argues that “dialogical relations with others” constitute identity,16 underscoring the idea that our identities include “not only self-knowledge but also one’s persona as recognized by one’s fellows.”17 The underlying principle here is one of public recognition. If we agree with this principle of recognition as playing a key role in informing the articulation of group as well as individual identity, then it should not be surprising that Ukrainian Canadian literature’s construction of the pain involved in being Ukrainian in Canada was not just interested in articulating a sense of itself within a vacuum. Rather this literature sought an

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external audience to recognize elements of Ukrainian suffering and loss and, in so doing, to validate Ukrainian-ness, particularly in a contemporary Canadian context inflected with the discourses of apology and redress. In tracing the cultural capital of injustice to identity formation, Wendy Brown identifies “politicized identity’s desire within liberal-bureaucratic regimes … to inscribe in the law and in other political registers its historical and present pain.”18 Ukrainian Canadian literature’s illumination of past traumas reflects a Canadian-born, “Ukrainian” subject’s attempt to articulate his or her minoritized identity in a way that allows for public recognition within a broader political culture that rests on the political positioning of pain.19 In Canada discourses of redress and reconciliation began to inflect discourses of multiculturalist pluralism at the federal level by the 1990s, just at the time that Ukrainian historian Alexander Motyl made the claim that “Ukrainians [are] traumatized by their own past.”20 A key element of the suffering found in Ukrainian Canadian literature is an explicit connection between the Ukrainian Canadian subject and brutalized Ukrainians overseas. The violence done to Ukrainian bodies is a particularly important trope. Andrew Suknaski’s 1981 collection of poems In the Name of Narid offers an early and striking example of the use of this trope that becomes almost archetypal throughout the literature.21 Suknaski’s earlier collection, Wood Mountain Poems, locates ethnicity and identity in the particular locale of his childhood town, Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan.22 In the Narid poems, he still situates many of his poetic ruminations within the Suknaski family and its hometown, but he also ties the sense of “Ukrainian-ness” in Canada to Ukraine itself.23 In many of his Narid poems, Ukrainians metonymically represent a national Ukrainian persecution, a suffering at the whim of Soviet oppressors.24 For instance, in the poem “What Is Remembered,” the third section, “Reality,” paints the following picture: you volodymyr vanished on an april monday […] you later found hanging from a tree the official KGB report claiming death by suicide. […] but tell me volodymyr how does a suicide cover his own body in lacerations and bruises? or drive broken branches of the redberried kalyna tree

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through his own ribs or climb to tie a rope?25

This poem is about Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk, who was found hanged; the official version was suicide despite continual rumours to the contrary. By not only highlighting the oppression at the hands of corrupt KGB officials, but also apostrophizing the dead artist, Suknaski’s poem creates a connection between the living Ukrainian Canadian poet and the tragically killed Ukrainian composer. The focus on the gruesome details – “hanging / from a tree,” “lacerations / and bruises,” “broken branches / … through his own ribs” – embodies the violence and victimization of the scene. In italicized text, Suknaski intersperses the description of Ivasiuk’s death with a quotation from the first chapter of Acts from the New Testament, from the moment when Jesus has arisen and tells the apostles that they will be witnesses of his resurrection. “It is not for you to know / times or dates / that the father has decided / by his own authority … / you will be my witnesses / … to the ends / of the earth.”26 The poem has a messianic mission, to bear witness to Ukraine’s suffering written across the bodies of Ukrainians. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s work on trauma and witnessing offers guidance here, because they understand being a witness (seeing) and offering a testimonial (speaking or writing) as intimately related. “In literature,” they write, “the witness might be … the one who (in fact) witnesses, but also the one who begets, the truth, through the speech process of the testimony.”27 Suknaski constructs himself as an eye witness to the crime who can testify; he begets the truth through his poetic utterance.28 In her analysis of “the melancholy of race” through an examination of Asian American literature and the “transformation from grief to grievance, from suffering injury to speaking out against that injury,”29 Anne Anlin Cheng reminds us that “one traditional method of restitution has been the conversion of the disenfranchised person from being subjected to grief to being a subject speaking grievance.”30 I contend that in the writing of Ukrainian Canadian authors like Suknaski who address what it means to be multigenerational Ukrainian Canadian subjects in terms of suffering, we see attempts to move from being “subjected to grief” to speaking about various, specific instances of Ukrainian grievance. This move often locates Ukrainian grievances in Ukraine, making Ukrainian Canadians testifiers to Ukrainian suffering. While the Ukrainian Canadian subject is not the disenfranchised person suffering in Ukraine, he testifies to the various calamities informing twentieth-century Ukraine. These are catalogued by Kulyk Keefer: “the terror and purges of the 1930s and that era’s forced famine; the Nazi occupation of Ukraine and the genocidal horrors it unleashed; the obscene crime of the Chornobyl disaster and ensuing cover-up.”31 The proxy witnessing of Suknaski’s poems describes the famine that becomes one of the more important tropes that this Ukrainian Canadian literature feels obliged to tell. Holodomor, the Ukrainian word for famine-genocide, refers to the Soviet-made famine that saw the deaths of millions of Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933.32 Just as Ivasiuk’s murder is explained away officially as a suicide, the Holodomor is often considered no more than an unfortunate side-effect of Soviet collectivization. Months before his death, Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, known for his writings condemning Stalinist atrocities, unexpectedly came out publicly to deny state involvement in the Holodomor, claiming: “The provocative outcry about [the Holodomor as] ‘genocide’ only began to be take shape dec-

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ades later – at first quietly, inside spiteful, anti-Russian, chauvinistic minds – and now it has spun off into the government circles of modern-day Ukraine.”33 Tellingly, Elizabeth Bachinsky’s poem “Holodomor” offers no words, only a blank page evoking the silences and denials that have surrounded the Holodomor.34 Countering this kind of discourse that denies state involvement in the Holodomor, Suknaski’s words offer an alternative testimonial to the crime of the Holodomor: 5 to 6 million dead in 3 years some perishing by cholera some by spotted fever and dysentery others mostly by famine some who survived remembering “some washed away by the flood floated down the dnieper ripe … as mushrooms.”35

The italics construct the famine as something textually different, and hence more significant, than the other calamities – cholera, spotted fever, and dysentery. The evocation of millions dead and the quoted survivors describing bodies floating “ripe … as mushrooms” highlight not just the embodied injustice of the deaths, but also a visual witnessing. Ukraine is constructed as a place where the traumas of state oppression are written across Ukrainian bodies that cannot speak for themselves. Suknaski’s Narid poems can be taken as the first clear example of Ukrainian Canadian English-language literature’s construction of the Ukrainian Canadian self speaking on behalf of a traumatized Ukrainian. In the years following the collection’s publication, we continue to see literature “speaking grievance” in this fashion. Fran Ponomarenko’s collection The Parcel from Chicken Street and Other Stories provides historical and political connections to painful images of Ukrainian suffering under Soviet oppression, raising questions which must be answered by Ukrainians overseas.36 Ponomarenko frames her collection of stories through the sending of parcels between Canada and Eastern Europe, indicating a specific duty which the Ukrainian Canadian subject owes the Ukrainian one. In the opening story, set in Cold War–era Montreal, one of the characters exclaims: “I have a sister in Poland. One in Germany and two in Siberia. They have small children too, and live in such misery.”37 The character feels both a sense of guilt and an obligation to aid Ukrainians suffering in Eastern Europe; she shoulders the responsibility of alleviating their suffering through the sending of the eponymous parcels. Another scene brings the pain of Ukraine much closer. During a Ukrainian Canadian funeral, when a conversation about the Holodo-

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mor turns to grisly rumours of cannibalism, there is an outburst from a recent Ukrainian émigré: “She cried so badly it was terrible to watch … She was crying and screaming about the ‘taste of blood’ … With every word she became worse. ‘I was hungry!’ she yelled. ‘All my life I was hungry! A dead chicken. A dead baby. What’s the difference? Corpses. I say corpses. All of them!’ She looked so broken. She finally just hobbled out of the house sobbing.”38 Ponomarenko expresses her character’s failure to articulate the trauma of the Holodomor through the syntactical breakdown of declarative sentence fragments.39 The Ukrainian’s guilt and suffering are transferred to the Ukrainian Canadian observers, who find the inarticulate expression “terrible to watch,” but bear the burden of witnessing and telling. The text constructs Ukrainian Canadian subjects as proxy witnesses, implying that the burden of experiencing trauma second hand is the responsibility to tell that which cannot be told by those who have experienced it first hand. These multigenerational Ukrainian Canadian artists (and their subjects) express something akin to “postmemory,” Marianne Hirsch’s term for the received and inherited memories that the children of trauma survivors articulate through art.40 Hirsch’s argument focuses on the children of Holocaust survivors who articulate the traumas of the Holocaust that their parents experienced, as well as their own burdens of being proxy witnesses. Contemporary Ukrainian Canadian literature not only is characterized by the genre of postmemory; I argue below that it also navigates a complicated connection to the Holocaust, a pivotal twentiethcentury event, particularly in the discourse of redress and the affirmation of human rights.41 One of the first complicated links between this community’s “postmemory” and the Holocaust is the comparison drawn between the Holodomor and the Holocaust. Historian Orest Subtelny, for instance, joins the role of the Holodomor in the Ukrainian imaginary to the Holocaust by means of a chain of equivalences, writing that the Holodomor “was to be for the Ukrainians what the Holocaust was to the Jews and the Massacres of 1915 for the Armenians.”42 Motyl makes a similar assertion, claiming that the Holodomor “is the defining moment of [Ukrainian] recent history, no less traumatic and portentous than the Holocaust is for Jews.”43 Yet, the belief that the Holodomor functions as a key defining instance, like the Holocaust, for diasporic Ukrainians – including Ukrainian Canadians – is contradicted by literature that presents a more complex picture. Ukrainian Canadian literature uses the Holodomor among numerous other traumas and catastrophes to create a litany of embodied victimization and suffering, rather than one, specific ur-moment. In this way, the desire to witness and testify as part of a desire to redress past wrongs is continual, as that list of past wrongs can be elastic and expansive. While imagery from the Holodomor looms large in Ukrainian Canadian literature in English, the literature does not locate inherited trauma in a singular catastrophic moment;44 rather, it presents a collection of instances of past oppression around which the minoritized subject position begins to cohere, particularly in the context of a public domain interested in identifying and redressing historic wrongs.45 Myrna Kostash’s travel memoir Bloodlines: A Journey into Eastern Europe picks up on the sense of bearing witness and shouldering a burden of guilt. Part travel literature, part memoir, and part political rumination, Bloodlines outlines trips Kostash made during the 1980s to Europe, including trips to different parts of Ukraine under the Soviet regime. In the Ukrainian section of the book, she insists on the connection between Ukrainians in Ukraine and those from Canada who do the speaking: “I cannot say I have come unprepared: an upbringing in an East European ethnic community [in Canada] during the Cold War has impressed upon me the catastrophe that Soviet Communism has been for the

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Ukrainian nation.”46 Yet despite this preparation, she is taken aback: “I am shocked by the beggars – palsied crones wrapped in bits of old coat – at church doors, the amputees and cripples on crutches, the legless man pushing himself along on a little trolley like a skateboard, his hands scraping the sputum-spattered pavement as he careers through the crowd.”47 Once again, a body in pain or dying represents the catastrophe of Soviet oppression in Ukraine. Like Ivasiuk’s murdered corpse or the dead and dying Holodomor victims, the Ukrainian bodies Kostash witnesses are traumatized. She does not, however, stop with this first glimpse of suffering, but turns the text’s attention to the Holodomor: I remember stories of peasants scrabbling through piles of horse manure, looking for undigested seeds and grasses, and of the Red Army soldiers guarding grain piles at railway stations, and of scarecrow-survivors reduced to eating their boots and, later, their children. I remember pictures of wagons filled with frozen corpses like cords of wood. And the portrait of a madwoman who had pickled her own dead children, stuffing chunks of their flesh into large glass jars that she lined up on a shelf like a proud, thrifty housewife.48

Again, it is the abject – “corpses” and “dead children” – to which Kostash, the speaker, draws our attention, and she does so in specifically mediated ways.49 She begets truth by speaking it, but she is not an eyewitness. The “stories,” “pictures,” and “portrait” of the abject stress Kostash’s status as a proxy witness who, in remembering these representations, also disseminates them anew. Unlike Hirsch’s “postmemory,” wherein descendents are close to their parents’ first-hand suffering of trauma, a narrator like Kostash is removed from the site of trauma. She admits: “This is hard, this remembering. This isn’t just about Ukrainians dying of hunger. This is about me, trying to get rid of them.”50 Her use of the third-person pronoun “them” refers to both the actual deaths as well as the stories/memories that she cannot expunge. Despite her desire to “get rid of them,” the deaths become hers to bear, even though she is removed from the site of trauma. They have become her own in the sense that they are involuntary; she wants to “get rid of them” but cannot. At the end of another book, Kostash writes that “the repressed will always return. Because, half-knowingly perhaps, we have passed it on.”51 The continual returning of the “repressed” or that which she wants to “get rid of” suggests that the repeated memories and stories represent a responsibility. She grapples not only with those in the past “dying of hunger,” but also with her present responsibilities to them and to herself. Embedded in the sense of responsibility we can also recognize a Ukrainian Canadian survivor’s guilt and desire to assuage that guilt in acts of testifying. Kostash writes that the broken back of a crone seen in Ukraine “could have been [her] grandmother, had Baba not escaped the Sturm und Drang of revolution and the terrible violence done in her name.”52 We can almost hear her sigh of relief before the weight of guilt descends upon her shoulders. No wonder “this is hard, this remembering.” This responsibility to speak (and write) of Ukraine and Ukrainians and this burden of “speaking grievance” develops, in part, out of a context of public ignorance. It is not surprising that the case of First World War internment redress takes the form of “research and commemorative projects,” when much of this literature is also at pains to make Ukrainian traumas better known. Beyond articulating second-hand traumas, these authors often didactically attempt to fill voids in the public imagination about the catastrophic events affecting Ukraine and “Ukrainian-ness.”53 Although the “history of Ukraine and of Ukrainians in Canada” is “fraught with tragedy, warfare, ethnic conflicts, racism, anti-Semitism, political

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intrigue, ecological disasters,” Bachinsky observes, many Canadians – of Ukrainian descent or not – “are unaware of some [of this] basic history.”54 Kulyk Keefer writes about working on her Ukrainian novel, The Green Library, in which the protagonist travels from Toronto to Kiev. She writes that her “editor would keep referring … to [her] character Eva’s trip to ‘Russia,’” and she fears that for many Canadians “Ukrainian-ness” means “only borshch and cabbage rolls, vast and shining wheat fields, and pretty girls with whirling ribbons and flashing red boots”; in response to this lack of knowledge, she “felt it obligatory to make [Ukrainian] catastrophes better known to a Canadian reading public.”55 These authors, therefore, work to simultaneously articulate a traumatized identity and educate an often wilfully obtuse wider public, as part of the burden of being Ukrainian Canadian. The specific moments of Ukrainian history that Kulyk Keefer narrativizes in her 1996 novel The Green Library are incidents in which the Ukrainian body is traumatized and silenced, and the Ukrainian Canadian subject must speak for it.56 The novel also develops an interesting strand in the already mentioned twinning of the Holodomor with the Holocaust and the sometimes fraught relationship between “Ukrainian-ness” and “Jewish-ness,” by directly addressing Ukrainian anti-Semitism and the massacre at Babi Yar.57 The Torontoborn protagonist learns that she is half-Ukrainian. This fact that does not sit well with her Jewish boyfriend, Dan, because “he’d grown up on cossack-shaped bogeymen; for him, borscht suggests something saltier and far darker than mere beets.”58 Through Dan, Kulyk Keefer stresses that the aforementioned ignorance about Ukraine and Ukrainians may be one element that Ukrainian Canadians struggle against, but another figuration of Ukrainians in late-twentieth-century Canadian public discourse conceptualizes Ukraine as a nation of anti-Semites. (Kostash has described this notion in terms of the stereotype of the “aging, anti-Semitic alleged pro-Nazi collaborato[r]”; Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s 2001 young adult novel, Hope’s War, has the Ukrainian Canadian protagonist’s grandfather wrongly accused of war crimes for collaborating with Nazis; and Motyl writes that “the history of relations between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Jews includes some terrible episodes.”)59 In The Green Library, Dan recalls that Ukrainians “were the bogeymen [his] grandparents frightened [him] with if [he] didn’t behave,” and reminds Eva, the protagonist, about the massacre at the Ukrainian ravine, Babi Yar, “and all those jolly Ukrainian guards at the death camps, some of whom are alive and well and living in friendly, all-Canadian towns the length and breadth of this fair land.”60 Kostash refers to this kind of thinking as “the war crimes controversy, namely the intention of the Canadian government to deport suspected war criminals to Ukraine.”61 Kulyk Keefer’s novel provides a kind of answer to this conception of “Ukrainian-ness” in Canada by acknowledging the existence of certain Ukrainians complicit with Second World War–era acts of violence, while simultaneously presenting a sympathetic individual Ukrainian who experiences the misrepresentation of all Ukrainians as war criminals as yet another burden to be borne. For Kulyk Keefer, “part of the aesthetics of writing ethnicity is the writer’s ethical need to confront and struggle with the history.”62 Grappling with this “ethical need,” her protagonist, Eva, visits the massacre site of Babi Yar, but does not see it as fitting solely within the Nazi attempts to eradicate the Jewish populations of Europe. One of the characters describes the massacre site for Eva as follows: Seventy thousand Jews were murdered here. The poor Jews from Podol, the ones who couldn’t leave the city when the government cleared out. Men and women; the very old; small children. And after them, some hundred thousand other “enemies of the people.” Waitresses from the

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Kiev nightclubs, when the German officers got tired of them. Actors, writers, musicians crazy enough to want to practise their art. The Dynamo soccer team, because they dared to beat the Germans in a match designed to show off Aryan superiority. And the political: partisans, insurgents, nationalists. Collaborators and informers, too, once they’d served their purpose.63

The historian Orest Subtelny, whom Kulyk Keefer references in the acknowledgments of her novel, places the number killed at 33,000 Jews in forty-eight hours at Babi Yar,64 and, thus, the details narrated by this character in Kulyk Keefer’s novel that do not adhere to the official record as documented by Subtelny reflect a desire to offer an alternative testimonial, one that would allow the bodies of various contingent parties to commingle in death. The widening of the net – from Jews to include various anti-Nazi groups – strategically departicularizes the victims of Nazi atrocities, indirectly challenging the perception (given to the protagonist’s boyfriend in the novel) of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Canadians as nothing more than anti-Semitic war criminals. In speaking for the “hundred thousand other[s]” whose existence is erased in official accounts of the horrors of Babi Yar, Kulyk Keefer offers an image of universality and communality between and among different groups that might otherwise be considered to be at odds. Victims – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – are combined in death as “bones, millions and millions of human bones.”65 Kulyk Keefer suggests that if the departicularized victims at Babi Yar can be combined in death as “bones,” leaving the protagonist to wonder, morbidly, “what’s the name for the kind of soil made from human bones?”, then surely Ukrainians must not all have been death camp guards and unrepentant war criminals.66 Reiterating the link between Ukraine and Canada, Eva also begins to understand that the bodies at Babi Yar are neither distant nor anonymous, because her own grandmother was killed and thrown into the ravine with the other victims. Eva muses on the “bones piled under her, and the minute fraction of those bones that belong to her,” suggesting that as a Ukrainian Canadian subject, she is connected to the dismembered Ukrainian body, a body which is recast as a Second World War victim, not its criminal.67 Importantly, at the close of the novel, Kulyk Keefer complicates this identification of a Ukrainian Canadian subjectivity with a traumatized Ukrainian body whose victimization at the hands of the state can be connected to a larger victimization through an evocation of the Holocaust. The novel ends with the image of the protagonist’s father murdering his own mother and throwing her body into the ravine at Babi Yar. Thus, Eva, the Ukrainian Canadian, is the descendant of both a murderer at Babi Yar (her father) and a victim there (her grandmother), positioning Ukrainians as both perpetrators and sufferers of the catastrophes that define their collective unconscious. While this construction of Eva’s father as a matricidal Ukrainian dissident who emigrates to Canada under a false name does acknowledge the public conception of Ukrainians in Canada, the novel foregrounds Eva’s connection with her victimized grandmother, not her father. While standing at Babi Yar, the place where her grandmother, a Ukrainian nationalist poet, was shot and killed, Eva accepts the responsibility of speaking for victimized and traumatized Ukrainian bodies. As she stands there, she “feels it tugging at her now: that line between herself and the woman she calls at last […] her grandmother.”68 Lisa Grekul’s 2003 novel Kalyna’s Song offers us another vision of Ukrainian victimization within larger Holocaust narratives and the attendant responsibility to speak for those who cannot.69 The novel offers a coming-of-age story of young Colleen, a Ukrainian Ca-

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nadian who struggles to articulate her “Ukrainian-ness” as an English-speaking, Canadianborn subject who has never been to Ukraine and knows little about its history. In one episode, Colleen starts to learn about the horrors of the Second World War. Like Kulyk Keefer’s Eva, who begins to see some Ukrainians as complicit in acts of violence and some as victims of it at Babi Yar, Grekul’s Colleen will come to a similar realization through suffering situated not at the massacre of Babi Yar, but at Auschwitz. Colleen learns that her beloved piano teacher from Ukraine was “rounded up by SS soldiers,” along with her husband and children.70 The piano teacher cannot “forget what Ukrainians did to their own people, and to Jews, in the war,” demanding that the protagonist “remember, too. The good things, and the bad,” once again compelling a proxy testimonial from the Ukrainian Canadian who “should write it down.”71 Significantly, Grekul constructs the piano teacher as a victim of Holocaust crimes. Thus, while the novel acknowledges Ukrainian complicity in the atrocities through the character’s insistence on remembering and passing on the responsibility of proxy witnessing, it simultaneously secures a victim position for the character who voices these ethical responsibilities. In writing about what she terms “the growth of memory culture,” Hirsch hypothesizes that the need to narrate events as “memories” may be “a symptom of a need for inclusion in a collective membrane forged by a shared inheritance of multiple traumatic histories and the individual and social responsibility we feel toward a persistent and traumatic past.”72 Contemporary Ukrainian Canadian literature invested in the telling of Ukrainian traumas seems to have a desire to construct “Ukrainian-ness” as a shared inheritance of multiple Ukrainian catastrophes. It places a burden of articulation on the shoulders of Ukrainian Canadian characters who must remember and communicate the traumatic histories that will enable a legitimate and valorized identity, countering both ignorance about Ukraine, Ukrainians, and Ukrainian Canadians and stereotypes of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Canadians as war criminals. In creating a Ukrainian Canadian imagined community based on the inheritance of Ukrainian traumas, the literature creates a space that includes traumas experienced on Canadian soil. “If,” in the words of Anne Anlin Cheng, “grievance is understood to be the social and legal articulation of grief,” then what if those who have caused grief cannot be made answerable to that grief presented in the form of a grievance?73 Ukrainian Canadian testimonials of grief cannot make the Soviet state answerable now. However, in a contemporary Canadian redress culture, particular instances of historic injustice have been rendered redressable. In the case of Ukrainian Canadians, internment during the First World War offers a public site for the continued articulation of “Ukrainian-ness” in Canada as a burdened and traumatized subjectivity, offering what Wendy Brown describes as a source of power generated out of powerlessness.74 This literature simultaneously testifies to Ukrainian victimization and suffering, while grappling with the burdens of Second World War atrocities committed by Ukrainians, and it illustrates how a redress culture built upon “speaking grievance” and post-Holocaust human-rights discourse come together in a complicated and strange matrix for Canadians of Ukrainian descent. We see this in a most pronounced way in Skrypuch’s young adult novel Dear Canada: Prisoners in the Promised Land, a book which also situates the case of Ukrainian Canadian internment within an intertextual context that invites comparisons to European injustices.75 As we see in both Kulyk Keefer’s and Grekul’s fictive constructions of the Ukrainian subject as a victim of Second World War atrocities, the nature and

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structure of Skyrpuch’s text situates Ukrainian Canadian internment within a public imaginary that evokes one of the Holocaust’s most well-known individual victims, Anne Frank. Skrypuch’s text appears as the diary of a young girl, like Anne Frank’s own, and its diarist’s name – Anya – further echoes that Holocaust memoir. Anya, the Ukrainian Canadian interned during the First World War, becomes another innocent victim of state-sponsored injustice, and the allusions to Anne Frank offer Anya as a sympathetic alternative image of the Ukrainian Canadian subject, in order to counter the pervasive image of the war criminal. Anya is the fictional embodiment of real Ukrainians interned during the First World War, but her creator, the author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, is the descendent of an actual internee. She has become an activist as part of the redress campaign, and Anya’s story, structured like a memoir, allows Skrypuch to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, much like the silenced Ukrainians whose burdens of memory are passed on to Ukrainian Canadians to voice. Kulyk Keefer’s 1998 memoir Honey and Ashes also includes the internment of thousands Canadians of Ukrainian descent in various concentration camps throughout Canada during the First World War.76 Although this unjust internment did not affect Kulyk Keefer’s immediate family, she incorporates it as part of the burden of articulation resting on the collective shoulders of Ukrainian Canadians. The memoir represents this home-grown, Canadian victimization as fitting into a long pattern of Ukrainian victimization in Eastern Europe. In writing of her grandfather (who had not yet emigrated from Europe at the time of the internments), she says: “Tomasz Solowski was too young to have been conscripted into the Austrian army at the outbreak of World War I; too young to have set out for Canada before that war, joining other hungry men of his region who, because of their nominal Austrian nationality, were branded enemy aliens and shut up in forced labour camps at Fort Henry near Kingston, Spirit Lake in Quebec, in Brandon, Manitoba, and Castlefield, near Banff.”77 Despite the fact that Tomasz was untouched by this particular ordeal, with the repetition of “too young” signalling a chain of suffering experienced by the “men of his region” that excludes the young Tomasz, Kulyk Keefer’s memoir describes the internment experience, linking her grandfather to internees in Canada by virtue of their shared geographical origins. Like much of this English-language Ukrainian Canadian literature that feels compelled not only to articulate the grievances of those who cannot speak but also to educate a wider public about Ukraine and “Ukrainian-ness,” Kulyk Keefer’s memoir stresses the traumatic moment to be told and the piece of hidden history to be revealed. Similarly, Nancy Hawrelak’s 1998 historical novel Breaking Ground, in its sweeping account of early immigration from Ukraine to Canada, didactically situates the internment as a moment of Ukrainian victimization.78 The novel creates a parallel between this injustice on Canadian soil and the many injustices suffered by Ukrainians in Ukraine. One of the characters grappling with the threat of internment, Wasyl, narrates the contents of a letter he receives: “Hretzco [a Ukrainian Canadian friend writing from Yorkton] wrote that one evening he and two of his friends, Marko and Nazar walked out of my cousin Paulo’s hotel, minding their own business, when the police swooped down on them … They called them enemies of this country and pushed them toward the paddy wagon.”79 The specific names of the Ukrainian Canadians – Hretzco, Marko, Nazar, and Paulo – individuate the victims of injustice at the hands of an anonymous and unjust police force whose seemingly arbitrary dictates determine their enemy status. The novel presents Ukrainian Canadians as a united brotherhood, preyed upon by a callous state apparatus. The friend who writes the letter to Wasyl is

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lucky, avoiding such unjust imprisonment “in some prison camp, surrounded by hardened prisoners,”80 a description which emphasizes the inherent danger of the camp not merely as a space of confinement, but also one that threatens physical harm. After narrating this second-hand imprisonment incident, Wasyl says: “I never leave home now without my papers. Every day I watch in fear as another brother without a job is taken by the police to their dreaded prison camps.” 81 Although the novel allows that Canada’s persecution is neither as brutal nor as sweeping in scale, the ominous Canadian state power echoes the threatening Soviet regime in Ukraine.82 By casting the Canadian government and its police as arbitrary wielders of unjust power to abuse and imprison Ukrainian Canadian subjects, the novel situates the case of Ukrainian Canadian internment within a larger leitmotif of Ukrainian state victimization. Given this literature’s investment in articulating a Ukrainian Canadian subjectivity emerging from images of Ukrainian victimization both in Europe and in Canada, a subjectivity burdened with the tasks of articulating and educating, perhaps we should not be surprised that the culmination of the Ukrainian Canadian redress movement in relation to First World War internment (arguably the only instance of injustice on Canadian soil for which official powers can possibly be made answerable) should take the form of funds to be used to create public expressions of and memorials to this victimization. In the Globe and Mail article announcing the results of the involved negotiations and deliberations to agree upon appropriate restitution for the internment of Ukrainian Canadians, a descendant of one of these internees is quoted as saying that these monies “could become a vibrant source of communication, a model for remembering.”83 He thinks it best for “the money [to] be used to fund educational material, rather than [to] be paid to individuals.”84 If one of the key motifs emerging from the oeuvre of contemporary Ukrainian Canadian English-language literature is the construction of a particular kind of “Ukrainian-ness” based on “speaking grievance,” then the form that this particular redress takes is fitting. The dominant expression of “Ukrainian-ness” offers up a traumatized and silenced Ukrainian body whose traumas must be articulated by a speaking Ukrainian Canadian. The Canadian government’s funds to redress the case of Ukrainian Canadian internment flows from this logic. There are no known living survivors of these camps, and so those silenced internees are recast as victims fitting within a larger Ukrainian Canadian imaginary, and the redress fund will pay for the continued telling and retelling of this catastrophe as one in a list of traumas experienced by Ukrainians and articulated by Ukrainian Canadians. Kostash writes: “The compulsion to tell falls on the next generation, and the next, until it will be heard.”85 Ukrainian Canadian literature gives evidence of this burden – this compulsion to tell – experienced by contemporary Canadians of Ukrainian descent. If the literature combats a public lack of information when it comes to conceptions of Ukraine, Ukrainians, and Ukrainian Canadians, in part by developing a Ukrainian Canadian imaginary that testifies to Canadian traumas, then the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund offers further support for testimonials to tell this story, “until it will be heard.”

NOTES 1 I am grateful to the Canadian Association of Slavists and a wonderful audience attending their annual conference in 2009, who gave me valuable and informative feedback on a conferencepaper version of these materials. I also thank the Law Department at Carleton University’s

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Lindy Ledohowski Jurisprudence Centre and the Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture, and the Humanities, who invited me to deliver a talk on these materials in March 2010. Elizabeth Church, “Detention: It’s all about remembering,” Globe and Mail, 12 September 2009, p. A3. Ibid. Under the War Measures Act of 1914, approximately 5000 Canadians of Ukrainian descent were interned in various concentration camps throughout Canada during the First World War. In 2005 Bill C-33l, “Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act (The Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act),” an act which recognized and apologized for this unjust internment, was passed. In May 2008 funds were allocated for various memorial projects commemorating the internment of Ukrainian Canadians. For more information on the redress campaign for the internment of Ukrainian Canadians, see Bohdan Kordan and Craig Mahovsky, A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and Ukrainian Canadian Redress (Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2004); Bohdan Kordan and Peter Melnycky, In the Shadow of the Rockies: Diary of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp (Edmonton: CIUS Press, 1991); Bohdan Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War: Internment in Canada During the Great War (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); Lubomyr Luciuk, Without Just Cause (Kingston: Kashtan Press, 2006); and Lubomyr Luciuk, Righting an Injustice: The Debate over Redress for Canada’s First National Internment Operations (Toronto: Justinian Press, 1994). In writing about “Ukrainian Canadians” and “Ukrainian Canadian literature,” I must acknowledge the difficulties with group labelling and naming with respect to Ukrainian Canadians and Ukrainian Canadian literature that scholars have raised. See, for example, Sonia Mycak, Canuke Literature: Critical Essays on Canadian Ukrainian Writing (Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publications, Inc., 2001), xi; Helen Potrebenko, review of Leaving Shadows: Literature in English by Canada’s Ukrainians, by Lisa Grekul, Canadian Literature 193 (2007): 99; Janice Kulyk Keefer, “Coming Across Bones: Historiographic Ethnofiction,” Essays on Canadian Writing 57 (1995): 99, 89; and Fred Wah, Diamond Grill (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1996), 53. Thus, I only use “Ukrainian Canadian” as a provisional label to refer to a loosely connected group of writers and critics. Kulyk Keefer, “Coming Across Bones,” 89. See Marusya Bociurkiw, “Bordercrossings: Skin/Voice/Identity,” Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme 14, no. 1 (1993): 6–7; Kulyk Keefer, “Coming Across Bones,” 93; Alexander J. Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993), 15; Mycak, Canuke Literature, 35; and Frances Swyripa, Ukrainian Canadians: A Survey of Their Portrayal in English-Language Works (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1978), 21. Daniel Coleman, White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). Vivian Hall, “Coming to Canada: Land of Promise and Cold Reality,” Queen’s Quarterly 104, no. 3 (1997): 421. Lisa Grekul, Leaving Shadows: Literature in English by Canada’s Ukrainians (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2005), 7–10. Enoch Padolsky, “Canadian Ethnic Minority Literature in English,” in Ethnicity and Culture in Canada: The Research Landscape, ed. J.W. Berry and J.A. Laponce (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 364; and Mary Kirtz, “Old World Traditions, New World Inventions: Bilingualism, Multiculturalism, and the Transformation of Ethnicity,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 28, no. 1 (1996): 8.

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11 Mycak, Canuke Literature, 49. For more on Ukrainian Canadian nostalgic pioneering narratives see Kulyk Keefer, “Coming Across Bones,” 89; Mycak, Canuke Literature, 49–77; Grekul, Leaving Shadows, 116; and Frances Swyripa, Wedded to the Cause: Ukrainian-Canadian Women and Ethnic Identity 1891–1991 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 225. 12 Vera Lysenko, Yellow Boots (1954; Edmonton: CIUS Press/NeWest Press, 1992), ix. 13 Janice Kulyk Keefer, Dark Ghost in the Corner: Imagining Ukrainian-Canadian Identity (Saskatoon: Heritage Press, 2005), 19; Grekul, Leaving Shadows, xv. 14 Enoch Padolsky, “Canadian Ethnic Minority Literature in English,” in Ethnicity and Culture in Canada, ed. Berry and Laponce, 364. 15 Grekul, Leaving Shadows, xv. 16 Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition: An Essay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 99, 103. 17 J. Douglas Porteous, “Home: The Territorial Core,” Geographical Review 66, no. 4 (1976): 384. 18 Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 66. 19 Ibid., 74. 20 Alexander J. Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993), 15. 21 Andrew Suknaski, In the Name of Narid, ed. D. Cooley (Erin, ON: Porcupine’s Quill, 1981). 22 Andrew Suknaski, Wood Mountain Poems, ed. Al Purdy (Toronto: Macmillan, 1976); and Lindy Ledohowski, “Becoming the Hyphen: The Evolution of Ukrainian-Canadian English-Language Writing,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 39, nos. 1&2 (2007): 113–14. 23 Ledohowski, “Becoming,” 118–19. 24 For thorough histories of Ukraine written in English, see Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 3rd ed. (1988; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); Paul Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); and Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence. 25 Suknaski, “What Is Remembered,” in In the Name of Narid, 20, 21–2. 26 Ibid., 21. 27 Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1991), 16. 28 Dennis Cooley makes clear this link between the spoken and written word in Suknaski’s poetry when he writes: “In its expression of self and in its overt appeal to audience, the Suknaski poem does not pretend to be, nor can it be construed to be, a disembodied voice thinking out loud and outside its moment of enunciation.” Dennis Cooley, The Vernacular Muse (Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1987), 185. 29 Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3. 30 Ibid., 7. 31 Kulyk Keefer, Dark Ghost, 19. 32 For information on the Holodomor, see William Henry Chamberlain, The Ukraine: A Submerged Nation (New York: MacMillan Co., 1944), 60–1; John Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine: A Study in Discrimination and Russification (Toronto: Peter Martin Assoc., 1968), 20; Clarence A. Manning, The Story of the Ukraine (New York: Philosophical Society, 1947), 282; Clarence A. Manning, Twentieth-Century Ukraine (New York: Bookman Assoc., 1951), 93; and Subtelny, Ukraine, 413–16, 529. 33 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Ukraine famine not a genocide,” Boston Globe, 5 April 2008.

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34 Elizabeth Bachinsky, “Holodomor,” in God of Missed Connections (Gibbons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2009), 21. 35 Suknaski, “What Is Remembered.” In yet another poem alluding to this same event, “A Letter to Mykola,” Suknaski lays specific blame: “7½ million dead / in those years of famine / forced by Russia”; In the Name of Narid, 31. 36 Ludmilla Bereshko [Fran Ponomorenko], The Parcel from Chicken Street and Other Stories (Montreal: DC Books, 1989). 37 Bereshko, “The Parcel from Chicken Street,” in The Parcel from Chicken Street, 52. 38 Bereshko, “Xenia,” in The Parcel from Chicken Street, 64–5. 39 In writing aboutpost-traumatic stress disorder, Cathy Caruth describes the inarticulatability of trauma as encompassing the traumatic “event’s essential incomprehensibility,” and this notion of trauma as the “impossibility of a comprehensible story” explains Bereshko’s character’s inability to shape her trauma into a complete sentences and a coherent narrative structure. Cathy Caruth, “Recapturing the Past: Introduction,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. C. Caruth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 154. 40 Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (2008): 105. 41 For a discussion of the connection between the international protection of human rights and prosecution and/or redress, see Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice, 3rd ed. (New York: The New Press, 2006), 288–96. 42 Subtelny, Ukraine, 413. 43 Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence, 14. 44 Hirsch refers to both traumas and catastrophes, but as I use these terms, “trauma” evokes a bodily harm and “catastrophe” suggests a tragic denouement; therefore, the catastrophe is the event that causes trauma. Put simply, trauma is the effect of catastrophe. 45 In addition to essays in this collection theorizing redress movements in a contemporary Canadian context, for an analysis of a global political climate of redress see Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn, eds., Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); Brown, States of Injury; and Samuel P. Oliner, Intergroup Apology, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation (St Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2008). 46 Myrna Kostash, Bloodlines: A Journey into Eastern Europe (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd, 1993), 165. 47 Ibid., 165. 48 Ibid., 188. 49 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L.S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 50 Kostash, Bloodlines, 188. 51 Myrna Kostash, All of Baba’s Great-Grandchildren: Ethnic Identity in the Next Canada (Saskatoon: Heritage Press, 2000), 43. 52 Ibid., 164. 53 Motyl calls Ukraine “The Unknown Country” because of how little the rest of the world knows about its history, politics, and culture, and voices what Ukrainian Canadian writers have long known – that Ukraine “remains virtually unknown throughout most of the world.” Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence, 4. 54 Bachinsky, “Postscript,” in God of Missed Connections, 75. 55 Kulyk Keefer, Dark Ghost, 19, 20. 56 Janice Kulyk Keefer, The Green Library (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1996).

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57 Babi Yar functioned as a site for the execution of Jews within a larger Nazi program of extermination. For more information on Babi Yar in the context of Nazi policy in Ukraine, see Ronald Aronson “Never Again? Zionism and the Holocaust,” in Social Text 3 (1980): 63; Robert Scholes, “The Illiberal Imagination,” in New Literary History 4, no. 3 (1973): 534; and Christian Gerlach, “The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler’s Decision in Principle to Exterminate All European Jews,” in Journal of Modern History 70, no. 4 (1998): 797. 58 Kulyk Keefer, The Green Library, 51. 59 Kostash, All of Baba’s Great-grandchildren, 30, 32. Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, Hope’s War (Toronto: Boardwalk, 2001); and Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence, 5. 60 Kulyk Keefer, The Green Library, 113. 61 Kostash, All of Baba’s Great-grandchildren, 19. 62 Kulyk Keefer, “Coming Across Bones,” 101. 63 Ibid. 64 Subtelny, Ukraine, 468. 65 Kulyk Keefer, The Green Library, 185. 66 Ibid., 186. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. When Eva has come to understand her newfound “Ukrainian-ness,” the novel articulates it in reference to this murdered grandmother, deftly sidelining the murderous father. This traditional envisioning of ethnic identity transmission, from one womb down through the generations, makes for an embodied connection but also creates narrative sympathy for the Ukrainian-as-victim, distancing the image of the Ukrainian-as-war-criminal. The novel thus acknowledges the existence of certain Ukrainians complicit with Second World War–era acts of violence, while simultaneously presenting a sympathetic individual Ukrainian who experiences the misrepresentation of all Ukrainians as war criminals. 69 Lisa Grekul, Kalyna’s Song (Regina: Coteau Books, 2003). 70 Ibid., 114. 71 Ibid., 115–16. 72 Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” 111. 73 Cheng, The Melancholy of Race, x. 74 For a further discussion of the logic behind the seeming paradox of the power of the powerless, see Brown, States of Injury, 66–7; William Connolly, Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 21–7. 75 Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, Dear Canada: Prisoners in the Promised Land (Toronto: Scholastic Canada, 2007). See Jennifer Henderson’s article in this volume for another discussion of this book. 76 Janice Kulyk Keefer, Honey and Ashes (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1998). 77 Kulyk Keefer, Honey and Ashes, 171. 78 Nancy Hawrelak, Breaking Ground (Vegreville, AB: Willow Press, 1998). 79 Ibid., 170. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 After Wasyl informs his listeners of the fate of his friends, the narrator tells us that “the men heard stories of mistreatment in those camps. In the worst camps, the interned were prodded with bayonets, physically and mentally abused, and fed a diet of bread and water.” The men then discuss a friend who, disillusioned with Canada, returns to Ukraine, but the narrator gloss-

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es this decision by didactically stating that in Ukraine, “there were beatings, bloodshed, persecutions, murders, incarceration and banishment to Siberian work camps, and forced famines of whole cities.” The juxtaposition of the unjust persecution of hapless and innocent Ukrainian immigrants put into Canadian camps, who are abused and malnourished, with this description of victimization in Ukraine parallels the two contexts. Hawrelak, Breaking Ground, 171, 172. 83 Church, “Detention: It’s all about remembering,” A3. 84 Ibid. 85 Kostash, All of Baba’s Great-grandchildren, 42.

12 Redress Rehearsals: Legal Warrior, COSMOSQUAW, and the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards len findlay

In this chapter I attempt to bring out the distinctive instrumentality, shared values, and objectives of jurisprudence, performance art, and public celebration. Tracking these activities in Indian country, real and imagined, in Canada today necessitates careful attention to Aboriginal scholars, artists, and media activists, and to the challenges they pose to mainstream (and also to Aboriginal) understandings of how knowledge is organized and mobilized, as well as the multiple kinds of redress being sought by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples as part of an astonishingly global striving for “reparations for Indigenous peoples.”1 To this end I will investigate three sites of arguably “unorthodox” or “impure” Aboriginal practice: the legal scholarship of Sa’ke’j Henderson, director of the Native Law Centre of Canada at the University of Saskatchewan; the multimedia artistic projects of Lori Blondeau, co-founder and executive director of the Aboriginal artist collective Tribe; and the annual National Aboriginal Achievement Awards show which, in its structure, content, and production values, both adopts and adapts a mainstream form of popular entertainment ceremony to the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal people. These sites may seem an odd mix, in that two focus on the work of individuals, and one on a collective enterprise. However, this choice is deliberate, in order to make two points: first, the individual/collective distinction, and the categorical sensitivities it accommodates, make little sense in the context of proudly plurivocal Indigenous cultural production; second, the individualist emphasis of colonial legal regimes and a burgeoning celebrity culture run counter to Indigenous arguments for collective rights and the understanding of accomplishment as the result of indebtedness and interdependency. In both individual and collective sites we will see performance-as-agency in the necessarily interventionist struggle for redress, agency with variable yet resolute relations to activism, and agency with its own ideas about “what is transformative about the performative.”2 We will move from performance as cultural ceremony within treaty federalism and Indigenous legal studies,3 to performance as strategic embodiment within and against the over-regulated time and space of contemporary Canada, to performance as the glitzy yet gritty recognition of Aboriginal accomplishments within and beyond mainstream economies of celebrity and excellence. All three of these sites will reveal themselves to be wary of culture as the mark of exotic marginality and as consolation prize for political defeat. All three sites will show themselves haunted by spectres of co-optation while making claims to knowledge and justice in the name of Canada as a multinations state where redress can and should be pursued in multiple sites and media, and in registers ranging from the sober to the impassioned, from the accusatory to the

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conciliatory, but in each instance functioning as an index of strategic emphasis and not immutable essence. In its acceptance of (or emphasis on) the contingencies of time, place, and audience, performance may seem to leave the world of lasting effects and consequences to other expressive forms. However, in so doing it can escape prevailing structures and rigidities while aligning resistance with persistence and thus with the possibilities of otherwise unimaginable, unattainable, lasting change. The organizing trope of rehearsal allows me to bring out the diverse pursuit of redress as performance of this latter sort: academic, cultural, and political theatre which functions as a necessary preliminary to the big show of belated justice that may transform Canada into a more thoroughly decolonized, if not a fully post-racist, society. The idea of rehearsal suggests review or recapitulation, as in rehearsing an argument; and it also suggests private experimentation, repetition, and refinement in the interests of achieving a better public performance. Performance in this context is a conduit for Aboriginal agency that produces several distinct but complementary modes of address on the way to redress. Reclaiming agency in critical relation to dominant structures of authority and value is a key part of the “Indigenous Renaissance”4 that exposes violence and zeal as key properties of the impetuousness of empire but also of empire’s more discreetly damaging intimacies in areas such as sexuality and education.5 Moreover, the performance of resistance to, and transcending of, such violence and zeal simulates, replays, and renounces them non-violently, in a considered affirmation of Aboriginal ways of knowing and living. Such affirmation adapts those ways to urbanization, new modes of knowledge keeping and knowledge making, and numerous other forces loosely grouped under notions of modernization and globalization. Legal Warrior The idea of a legal warrior may seem to a non-Aboriginal person embarrassing bravado or uncivilized endangering of the law’s impartiality and its subordination of violence to reason and rules of evidence. The notion may also seem problematic to Aboriginal scholaractivists like Taiaiake Alfred who complain about “the reformist urgings of tame legalists.”6 However, any seeking of legal redress has, as Miki and Kobayashi so ably show,7 to endure criticism from within the affected community as well as obstruction from without. Sa’ke’j Henderson has been able to negotiate such challenges with no loss of commitment, no lessening of solidarity with Aboriginal youth, peers, and elders alike. Indeed, Henderson is much concerned with building social movements, and insistent on locating his version of warrior practice in Indigenous knowledge and ceremony.8 Henderson’s struggle for conscientization, recognition, and redress is as opposed to the excesses of “the state and capitalism” as is his determination to give justice a “forward” gaze within and beyond Aboriginal organizations.9 Henderson, Alfred, Patricia Monture, Mary Ellen Turpel, John Borrows, and other legal warriors of both genders share many common goals for Indigenous peoples in North America, but they do not agree about everything. Nor should we expect or require them to. In focusing on one particular warrior fighting for justice, I do not mean to deny the diversity of Indigenous redress initiatives needed to counter and replace the multimodal apparatus of colonialism, even though that diversity is still used by the Canadian state as an opportunity to divide and rule – on those occasions, that is, when this state is not ruthlessly homogenizing Indigenous and Canadian differences in us/them binaries. Henderson’s is one warrior’s struggle within and beyond the agonistic advocacy conven-

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tions of Canadian law, a struggle that began for him in the United States, where tribalism, understood “not as an association of interest but a form of consciousness,” has had to withstand relentless “attempts to subvert this consciousness and replace it with the naked, alienated individualism and formal equality of contemporary American society.”10 When he left Berkeley for Mi’kmaw country with his partner, Marie Battiste, Henderson continued to make extraordinary contributions as a legal warrior.11 But each accomplishment on the way to recognition and redress, even though based on exhaustive retrieval and analysis of written documents and oral traditions, and on the inspiration and approval of elders and ancestors, remained a performance in a regional theatre that doubled as rehearsal for the long march to full justice, both in a particular inalienable territory and as preparation for participating in larger dramas at the national level and at the United Nations, where, in 1983, with strong Canadian First Nations’ leadership, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations was founded and began to work in earnest on what would become in 2007 the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.12 Henderson’s focus on the matter of the moment while rewriting the larger decolonizing script held and holds true especially because of the federal government’s determination to use its deep pockets and massive human resources to fight Aboriginal legal warriors case by asymmetrically gruelling case. For those interested in connecting their academic vocation to issues of social justice, Henderson offers an inspiring but cautionary example. Doing your homework helps you to be right but you need more than facts and truth on your side in order to prevail. Meanwhile, political will is increasingly shaped by money, and by the access to decisionmakers and media clout that money too readily buys. As he rehearsed for ever-larger venues, Henderson refined and shared with a growing band of legal warriors, many of whom studied at the Native Law Centre of Canada, whose research director he has been for more than a decade, an Aboriginal hermeneutic which takes on uncompromisingly the question of colonial violence, but has done so largely without the support of disciplines that can surely be expected to help undo the colonizing damage they facilitated, namely, the complicitous and now quiescent humanities.13 This Aboriginal hermeneutic works by a double gesture of compliance and circumvention, first studying and counter-colonizing imperium (control of jurisprudence) and dominium (control of lands),14 concepts from canon law that underwrote Mi’kmaq relations with the Holy See. Henderson then deployed anew or for the first time within the flows and portages of treaty federalism a series of transformative formulae: most notably Aboriginal tenure,15 sui generis citizenship,16 First Nations jurisprudence, Indigenous diplomacy, and dialogic governance.17 At the same time, and more markedly from the Aboriginal side, Henderson retrieved and redeployed Aboriginal resistance via The Concordat’s Mi’kmaw “glossary” and its Indigenous analogues, and by means of postcolonial ghost dancing and ledger drawings, using cultural practices in different media to further animate the force of his blackletter legal analysis.18 How the west was won was intimately connected to how the west was spun, and Henderson showed how Aboriginal resistance habitually entails cultural as well as legal performance while refusing entrapment in either law or culture (or the relations between them) as Eurocentrically understood. Meanwhile, his revisionary reading of state-of-nature doctrine19 readied him for the protection of Indigenous knowledge and heritage while freeing him to envisage the reconstitution of academic disciplines – and all their relations – as knowledge ecologies20 rather than as variously useful instruments in an emergent knowledge economy.21

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State stonewalling of recognition and redress based on Aboriginal and treaty rights has required great tenacity and patience on the part of legal warriors like Henderson. But endless rehearsal, case by case, has also had the effect of making Aboriginal theorists and litigators more fluent and compelling while exposing ever more clearly the ignorance and incoherence of many federal policies and positions. The arts of opposition are nowhere better understood than in Indian country, as is the need for change beyond redress, in a much fuller realization of the promise of the treaties and the Canada they make possible. Aboriginal legal rehearsal has acquired a cumulative and increasingly normative force even while the state has tried to prevent that very eventuality by its strategy of iterative particularism, dividing up issues, territories, and peoples with all the arrogance that capitalism more broadly has brought to the division of labour. Above all, Henderson has used treaty hermeneutics and the shift from parliamentary to constitutional supremacy to outmanoeuvre the Canadian state while meeting it, and mostly defeating it, in the courts in its own Eurocentric, neocolonial terms. Under an increasingly withering Aboriginal gaze, federal power has been turned into federal parochialism and resentment, with the Supreme Court performing its own re-education at a speed that makes federal governments seem worse than slow. Meanwhile the experience of serial resistance and endless rehearsal of arguments and invocations has led to a stunning international victory in the form of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the full text of which Henderson includes in his Indigenous Diplomacy as evidence of the tone, scope, and substance which he and his fellow drafters had to work painstakingly towards. When compared with the Government of Canada’s belated agreement to sign the declaration, Henderson’s “categorical creativity,”22 and that of the other legal warriors who share his struggle, represents an arresting, memorable performance on a multilateralist stage that ought to bring Canada’s policies back to the multilateralist best practices of an erstwhile honest broker and continuing middle power. And in order to assist that process, academic humanists have a “duty to consult”23 Henderson’s redress rehearsals with more openness and less cynicism than is evinced by federal and provincial governments in their past and current interactions with Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Such consultation can assist all academics, but perhaps especially all humanists, to identify more clearly and more effectively expunge colonial residues and re-emergences from their disciplines, pedagogy, and host institutions. As someone who has directed a humanities research unit for two decades and who has occupied leading positions in learned societies and their umbrella organizations, I have experienced deeply and directly evasion, denial, and desperate extenuation of humanists’ complicity in colonialism, this accompanied by the favouring of Euro-Canadian concepts of textuality, orality, culture, knowledge, and spirituality over their Indigenous analogues. Humanists have a duty to consult the histories of their own knowledge systems so as to animate and guide their own citizenship practices towards the goals of redress by suffusing the here and now with obligation and opportunity. COSMOSQUAW Sa’ke’j Henderson ties redress to treaty making and the legal pursuit of treaty implementation in the spirit of interpretative generosity mandated by the “Honour of the Crown.” This is an ancient doctrine applied by Canadian courts to treaty matters so as to require of “any exercise of governmental power ‘a high standard of honorable dealing,’ which is composed

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of different but overlapping obligations.”24 On this doctrinal basis Henderson affirms a version of Aboriginal holism as implicating, in different orders, a sensory plenum and embodied agency, as Indigenous people take their place in the trenches of litigation as well as on the judicial bench, in Parliament, and even, vocally, on the floor of the House on the day when the Government of Canada offered a formal apology for its residential school policy. This entering into whitened space as an active participant rather than a marginal or passive witness is replayed in performance art where Aboriginal artists make an especially distinctive mark. The legal warrior’s double vision, of the moment of decision and of the momentum of redress, is shared by artists who use time- and site-specific performance to evoke and refashion links between unique, ephemeral episodes and collective, enduring narratives. The domain of the aesthetic has a strongly exclusionary history tied to the social distribution of “taste,” a history that, not coincidentally, keeps fairly close pace with the rise of capitalism and Euro-imperialism from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. High art’s two principal others or “inferiors” are fixed in domestic and colonial hierarchies intimately connected to class and “race” respectively. Within a thoroughly classed and racialized aesthetic system, art is neither craft nor anything mass-produced in factories; and art, as the product of civilized creators, is also distinct from the “generic” objects of ethnographic inquiry removed from the material cultures of “primitive” peoples. The art world was difficult to break into, even in the nineteenth century. For example, Zacharie Vincent (Telariolin) started off modelling Le dernier Huron (1838; acquired by Lord Durham and taken back to England by him) for Paris-trained Quebec artist Antoine Sébastien Plamondon. This keen-eyed artist’s model then taught himself to paint and produced along with numerous other works eight self-portraits that express Huron aesthetic, cultural, and political autonomy while defying the disappearance of the Aboriginal people of Old Lorette.25 But, the successes of such an inspirational autodidact as Vincent notwithstanding, the art world in Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remained largely within the wider regime of colonial representations and hence closed to Aboriginal people, apparently following Louis Riel’s prophecy for the Métis: “My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they awake it will be the artists who give them back their spirit.”26 Discreet visual appeals for redress from Aboriginal sources are detected by the cultural mainstream from time to time,27 and someone like Norval Morriseau (1931–2007) is a sure harbinger of wider changes of status, even though his representations of Indigenous spirituality are less directly political than the work they inspired. The processes of aesthetic recognition and legitimation set in motion by Morriseau at a moment when the extraordinary gifts of Cape Dorset artist Suvinai Ashoona and so many others were still “undiscovered”28 were broadened and accelerated after 1973 by the Woodland School. This group of Anishnaabe artists named itself “Professional National Indian Artists Inc.” while being named in dominant narratives in a predictably romanticized way as The Indian Group of Seven – a label that suggests Daphne Odjig and her associates were taking their lead towards the land and towards self-organization from white settler-artists as the Anishnaabe emerged from aesthetic nullity and the paternalistic stockades of ethnography and folk art. Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth, as Bob Boyer attests in his fine retrospective essay on Odjig.29 A work like Boyer’s own A Smallpox Issue (1983; figure 12.1) marks another stage in the connections of visual arts to the politics of redress as he uses the materials of a flannel sheet simulating a blanket, together with rawhide and oil paint in an

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Figure 12.1 Bob Boyer, “A Smallpox Issue,” 1983. Oil with rawhide on blanket, 190 cm × 122 cm. Saskatchewan Arts Board Permanent Collection. Photo: courtesy of the MacKenzie Art Gallery

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accusatory formation that helps document the colonial utility of European diseases but also the capacity of the survivors to pass, and refuse to pass, by the standards of Western art and the civilization whose proxy art so often claims to be.30 One blanket statement deserves another (the first in fact of many) that corrects the historical record, interrupting at least for a moment white triumphalism, and intimating through geometric abstraction, historical allusion, and the aestheticizing of the ordinary – what the dominant do not know but could seek to learn as invaluable access to “cognitive justice.”31 As Boyer’s blanket paintings rapidly made clear, one can make beauty out of betrayal, but the aesthetic testimony of Aboriginal artists is still prone to dismissal or co-optation, as events surrounding the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of Turtle Island in 1492 made specially clear. Yet once again domination was countered by increasingly adroit Aboriginal resistance in multiple sites, most aptly perhaps in 1992 at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, where Gerald McMaster and Lee-Ann Martin co-curated an exhibition entitled Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives, refusing the art/anthropology divide more radically than Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada just across the Ottawa River. Indigena audaciously reclaimed physical, conceptual, imaginative, and political territory more often stolen than willingly ceded. Living up to its name, Indigena both engulfed and rewrote white histories of discovery and conquest in forms ranging from traditional sculpture to mixed-media installation and video works, poetry, and performance, which fearlessly blended documentation, imagination, and political will, all the while supported by a collection of searing artist statements. It was an intervention without guarantees, of course, but an intervention that exposed the enormity of public ignorance and the academic interconnections bolstering elite prejudice. Venerable quests for cultural freedom, autonomy, and redress were given fresh stimulus by these interruptions of the dominant discourse of the Columbus quincentennial, but a public culture of redress would have to wait, and many would argue it has arrived as yet only in stunted and tepid ways. However, if European art forms could prove an excuse for reasserting control over Aboriginal knowledge and imagination, then maybe that elitist tradition’s recent and radical internal others could assist in developing a more thoroughly Indigenized artistic practice. Performance art, most usually abjective, donative, or queer/fem32 – in other words, the three most prominent performance emphases that respectively foreground the experience of vulnerability, the willingness to trust and share by putting oneself on display, and the affirmation of “alternative” sexualities otherwise legislatively imperilled or informally stigmatized – has been practised in extraordinary ways, not only by the European and North American avant-garde but by a range of Aboriginal artists who give further proof of “categorical creativity,” the “Indigenous Renaissance,” and the counter-salience of the Aboriginal female or two-spirited body on the road to redress. Especially notable for a linking of the performative to the transformative is Rebecca Belmore, one of Canada’s most courageous and accomplished political thinkers and workers for redress through recognition, remaking, and de-whitening.33 One could look to Dana Claxton and Shelley Niro too, or to astonishing younger artists who recently transcribed the Federal Indian Act (Nadia Myre and friends) and disease (Ruth Cuthand) into bead-work.34 As there is no lack of legal warriors, so there is no lack of Aboriginal artists. However, here I have scope to feature only the work of an artist born on the Gordon Reserve in Saskatchewan, a province with one of the largest (and growing) Aboriginal populations in Canada. Lori Blondeau lives, works, and studies in Saskatoon, a university city with strong traditions of public culture and a

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well-deserved reputation for racism.35 Negotiating this space has required some controlled nomadic behaviour.36 Blondeau has maintained Tribe’s refusal to be confined to a gallery space while taking up all sorts of room individually and collectively where Aboriginal bodies may be neither expected nor welcome, whether on certain streets of Regina and Saskatoon or Venice, or on embarrassing anniversaries of the death or disappearance of Aboriginal women and men. Like Belmore, Niro, Claxton, and her kinsman Edward Poitras, Blondeau is a rigorous scholar-activist. Yet despite her well-documented accomplishments, her scholarship has met with a mixed reception at the University of Saskatchewan. There she has had to be an intellectual counter-colonizer because a heroic white pioneer narrative is everywhere evident and was so especially during the pseudo-inclusive rewhitening of the province on the occasion of its centennial celebrations in 2005. Blondeau’s brown pioneering began with her use of PLAR (Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition) to gain admission to graduate work, despite her lack of an undergraduate degree. This lack and special pleading from an applicant with a considerable body of creative and curatorial work to her credit forced the university to rethink some of its Eurocentric rigidities. It also allowed Blondeau to produce an MFA exhibition and thesis (2003) that was given the Distinguished Thesis Award by the College of Graduate Studies and Research.37 A key early intervention by Blondeau, with the assistance of photographer Bradlee Larocque (the man behind the mask, dark glasses, bandana, and military fatigues in the iconic photograph by Shaney Komulainen of the Oka standoff on 1 September 1990), COSMOSQUAW made her light-box diva debut in 1995 in Nation to Nation’s exhibition Native Love, housed in various artist-run spaces from Montreal to Victoria. As the photograph in figure 12.2 indicates, gender, “race,” and class politics converge in a memorably risky combination of image and text. Sa’ke’j Henderson’s double gesture of compliance and circumvention is emulated here to similar redressive purposes, not only within the law as site of indifference and incompetence (the patriarchal taxonomy of the Indian Act with its several generations of enforcers) but also within the police investigation as site of indifference and incompetence in innumerable cases of “missing women,” many of whom went from residential school to becoming sex-trade workers.38 When one is reduced to a sex object, then embodiment can turn, with the help of a little “war-paint,” into mimicry and masquerade. If one is reduced to a bingo-playing pauper, then one can turn the aleatory against casino capitalists, well-heeled Johns, and their pretensions to social and cultural refinement, the red and black of gaming tables joined by a brilliant reworking of Cosmopolitan fashion magazine conventions and the technology of stereotyping, the latter itself a development of print technology that arrived when Euro-imperialism was on the rise. Blondeau uses the apparent crudity of literalization to expose what is usually only implied in fashion magazines. Sex sells, and sex is for sale formally and informally around the world and here at home. Blondeau’s title, COSMOSQUAW, asserts an international Indigenous presence as well as directing irony against white presumption and risking the wrath of Aboriginal women and men for seeming to perpetuate an extremely damaging stereotype. Complicity with, or co-optation by, the dominant are both in play here, in equally risky ways, while dress codes are decoded and recoded. Redress itself functions as code for an ongoing process of code breaking and remaking that will challenge the receiver directly or obliquely to connect sense data to issues of (and possible actions on behalf of) social justice. Relations in this work across image and text and performance are complex. Blondeau’s red dress puns on redress as well as pushing sexual promiscuity, mixing self-assertion

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Figure 12.2 Lori Blondeau as COSMOSQUAW, 1996. Photo: Bradlee LaRoque

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with self-loathing and a pathetic aspiration to pass for white.39 But so far this is an insufficiently ironized reading that can be more firmly connected to the gestures and conceptual catachreses of Sa’ke’j Henderson’s decolonizing lexicon. For dress is working here to return justness, and hence the possibility of justice, to the gaze. COSMOSQUAW is instantly intelligible (despite the sly concealing of the central part of its lettering) but endlessly suggestive, performing ambiguity by virtue of hybridity and contact across linguistic differences. These differences stretch Eurocentrically back through acquisitive English to definitive Greek, to mobility as expansionary power rather than induced homelessness, power that works to the benefit of rich cosmopolitans and not the Indigenous peoples they exploit and/or displace and exoticize. COSMOSQUAW reminds the viewer of the global distribution of Indigenous peoples as well as the global reach of modern empires and male imperialists’ groping, grasping habits. COSMOSQUAW simultaneously concedes and exercises self-determination. The title of the work is an Aboriginal woman’s coinage in the language of the Canadian dominant. Blondeau controls the details and main thrust of this hybrid creation, though not the ramifying identity politics it activates in its audiences and for which they themselves become responsible. And its headline text is ably supported by the other texts on this quasi-cover with its quasi–cover girl deriving her identity from placement in an illustrated commercial publication. “10 easy tips for a killer Bingoface!” This sardonic promise of useful magazine content uses different fonts to suggest that size matters. It also, “savagely,” satirizes through its simulated citation the interpellation of women readers as needing guidance in looking good. The colloquial usage “killer,” in echoing the idea of a man as a lady-killer, offers another mordant literalization of a term connected to real dangers for Aboriginal women inside and outside Aboriginal communities. It is a difficult truth deftly conveyed. The other similarly parodic piece of text, to the bottom right of the image, is equally “savage” in its irony: “Is your man getting tired of the same old dish? Learn how to spoonfeed your Man! Why he’ll always come back for seconds.” Self-help manuals are in play here, in a more inclusively feminist appeal to women not to substitute someone else’s appetites for their own, and to refuse to live a life subservient to a man whose sexual gratification may only take “seconds.” Spoon-feeding takes women’s nourishing role to a calculated extreme, re-infantilizing the man in question, or making him an invalid octogenarian and hence sexually impotent. But “spoon” in village English means “vulva,” and suggests feeding through oral sex and penile penetration so that “your man” will want more of the “it” to which you have allowed yourself to be reduced. Redress moves beyond and within gendered and racialized redness, on the one hand, and the sexual and commercial consequences of poverty, on the other. Meanwhile reductiveness shines through too in the box (ancient sexual slang as well as indicating a Duratrans display both high-tech and prominently commercial in its time) which contains and backlights the image. There is then an enormous freight of meaning being carried by this work. But it is not performative in the time- and site-specific way much of Blondeau’s later work becomes. Rather it monumentalizes a deliberate pose in the rich traditions of theatrical photography.40 The reductive trajectory of sexism is reversed so that the sexualized female body connects back along an obscured continuum to the (hard) core values of respectable society in a former French and British colony. The tropes of the Indian princess and the Indian trollop are recomposed as a report on what counts as beauty and as a political intervention. Politics is not just a man’s game, whether he be white or brown, a radical or a reactionary.

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Moreover, sexual politics is neither an oxymoron nor a mere distraction from the struggle of males for domination. This script had been anticipated a year earlier in Blondeau’s performance, We Want to Be Just Like Barbie That Bitch Has Everything, and her pouting squaw persona leaves the light box for the stage in the name of “Reinventing the Diva” before Blondeau undresses COSMOSQUAW into Lonely Surfer Squaw on the banks of the semi-frozen South Saskatchewan river (digital print, 1997), as well as morphing her in full cabaret mode from Belle Rogue (2000) into Belle Sauvage (2003), the gay rodeo cowgirl who will find male companionship in the guise of the equally irreverent, brilliantly twospirited persona of Buffalo Boy (performed by the artist Adrian Stimson).41 Blondeau’s emphatic shift into performance marks a continuing commitment to redressing colonial injustices and their powerful residues, but also a commitment to interfuse accumulating memories of her performances with memories of and in the settler archive, so that Belle Sauvage can continue “Putting the Wild Back in the Wild West,” making that construction both live on and explode before our eyes. To appreciate Blondeau’s performances one needs to be aware of some of the realities of Indian country and white Canada, and be willing to learn uncomfortable truths. Blondeau works memory as wound, suture, and activist steroid by continuously adding to it, rehearsing her messages and documenting her performances in various stages of dress and undress, so that the legacies of the Indian Act, residential schools, self-sanitizing white narratives, and dire gender politics, both white and brown, can be remediated in the courts of empathy and imagination. They should also of course be redressed in courts of law, which still witness criminalization of Aboriginality as such, and the warehousing of Aboriginal youth and young adults in Saskatchewan’s and Canada’s prisons in proportions that implicate, indeed incriminate, us all. Each of Blondeau’s performances is both an achievement in itself and a rehearsal for the next intervention on the road to justice, the next “cultural portage.”42 Performance functions as a mnemonic device through its intensified presentness and ephemerality. Never the same twice, it is seldom at ease within Aboriginal or mainstream traditions; it is restless travelling theory, and practice that has already produced bodies of work (and at work) that both achieve and refuse the status of art (or the final achievement of justice). If you do not have a sense of humour, beware. If you do not have a sense of history, be prepared to acquire one. Blondeau’s performances, like those of so many Aboriginal artists, incorporate repetitive gestures but connect them to the rhythms and seasons of physical survival, and to the iterations of serial political resistance as well as to the possibilities of a psychic working-through of trauma in or against the Freudian traditions of Durcharbeiten. The labour theory of value is connected to the labouring Aboriginal body in order to call in question capitalism’s exchange values and what they are doing to the health of Aboriginal peoples, the rest of the global poor, and to the planet we all claim to share. Such performance pursues transformation of education, art, and public understanding as essential components of redress, beading the moments of laughter and searing critique into the fabric of what may become a fuller and more spontaneous justice in Canada. Aboriginal Awards Ceremony In his film Shooting Indians: A Journey with Jeffrey Thomas (1997), Ali Kazimi brings out over a period of nine years the role of photography and other visual technologies in subject-

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ing Native North Americans even as bullets have done and do. This cultural colonialism needs to be addressed and redressed. To this end, Alanis Obomsawin has brilliantly dewhitened Canadian documentary traditions in her forty years with the National Film Board, while younger Aboriginal artists have taken to witnessing in experimental video and digital forms and initiatives like CyberPowWow that refuse high-tech revalidation of terra nullius as terra virtualis. What Tom Paine called “the liberty of appearing” has been thoroughly Indigenized in the making visible and honouring of a range of activities that go on in Indian country across Canada. This move or “red shift” – from projected or imposed incapacity to proven competencies – dramatizes the benefits of Aboriginal self-determination within a respectful and collaborative polity with serious aspirations to decolonizing itself (in other words, Canada on a good day). It is intimately connected to redress both through critique and as the demonstration of expressive capacities denied or devalued in order to facilitate settler-state agendas. The first of September 2009 marked the tenth anniversary of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), one of the first such networks anywhere and a key conduit for critique and counter-affirmation. This network is a creation of the National Aboriginal Awards Foundation, a non-profit organization established to mark the UN-sponsored International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Interestingly, the foundation does not currently include a full account of its origins on its website and print publicity. Not that there’s a skeleton in this closet, but only a communitarian-style self-effacement of key actors and a focus on the future for Aboriginal youth. The foundation, according to its current CEO, the Six Nations Aboriginal legal warrior and expert on conflict resolution Roberta Jamieson, developed from the Canadian Native Arts Foundation, established in 1985 by Mohawk musician and conductor John Kim Bell.43 The trigger for Bell himself had been the experience of featuring in a 1984 CBC documentary about his journey from reserve life in Kahnawake to the Broadway stage and the classical concert circuit. Being the subject of sympathetic documentary scrutiny gave him a chance to rehearse his past beyond his music, and to perform on and beyond the medium of film his renewed sense of whom and what he had left behind and the avenues to Aboriginal advancement and cultural recapitalization provided by the arts. The reconnection of the exceptional individual to his birth community reminds us of how that connection can seem to be severed while actually living on in ways that can be reactivated and aligned with collective goals. Bell himself proved to be a remarkable role model, advocate, and fundraiser with governments and corporations, and someone untroubled by others taking up his ideas and expanding the remit of the first foundation in order to confront a full range of obstacles to redress, and to honour as well as nourish Aboriginal achievement. Here too we see via the UN Decade of Indigenous Peoples the benefit of Canadian connections to UN multilateralism and attempts to foster global redress for modernity’s victims, and of the need to reconcile ourselves to ourselves and others through a model of collaborative internationalism. APTN seeks, in the words of a recent media advisory, to provide “unique and relevant programming that doesn’t just meet, but exceeds industry standards while staying true to the network’s mandate to share the stories of our peoples.”44 It is with this unapologetically Aboriginal emphasis and mandate that the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards recognize fourteen people annually, including “one outstanding youth achiever and one lifetime achievement recipient.” This attention to intergenerational continuity sits well with the inclusiveness of the categories of awards, which

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are conventional “disciplines,” careers, and vocations distinctively inflected, animated, and Indigenized both by the ancestry of the recipients and by the configuration of the disciplines under the principal idea that education is key to the future for Canada’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. There are of course residential school ironies and dangers of co-optation attending this emphasis on education. But such risks are worth taking, so long as ideas of Aboriginal passing are linked (as they frequently are) to surpassing and refusing to pass, in a process of ongoing negotiation, emulation without assimilation, and gradually more mutual transformations of what is meant and done in the name of education (and research) in Canada. Once again we see strategic compliance with the mainstream, but that compliance helps us to appreciate the differences too, as Aboriginal participants rehearse and perform their capacities for effective self-representation in the classroom as well as the courtroom and various cultural performance spaces. The NAAA shows inhabit an area between the Oscars and Geminis, on the one hand, and the governor general’s recognition of citizenship and accomplishment on the other. The NAAA shows try to give celebrity a good (Aboriginal) name. They offer also a holistic affirmation of a renaissance that will lead through “categorical creativity” to all sorts of dialogic parity animating a new national conversation. The citations for those receiving these awards contribute annually to a remarkable archive of accomplishment that deserves to be more broadly known and acted upon as an instrument of reconciliation supporting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in a different key. And the same holds true for the remarks in the shows’ printed programs which, mostly in more moderate tones than the artist’s statements at Indigena in 1992, identify redress of collective injustices as underpinning leadership and impelling opportunity.45 It is all about Indigenizing excellence, but a great deal of that excellence was and continues to be produced in overcoming appalling conditions in an officially multicultural poster democracy. As a leading Mohawk intellectual and activist said at the recent funeral of her sixteen-year-old daughter, “This has got to stop.” Indigenous Renaissance, Revenge Tragedy, and the Genres of Redress In hailing an Indigenous Renaissance, Battiste and Henderson are well aware that no analogy is perfect, no exhortation foolproof. They are claiming rebirth of knowledges, each of which has its own prehistory, a decolonizing version of discovery, and mimesis with a difference. Meanwhile, the two Afro-Canadian participants in the 2008 awards show, Ngozi Paul and Tanya Lee Williams, were hailed in the official program as respectively “a true renaissance woman” and “a modern-day renaissance woman.” Whether considered as a movement or as a characteristic of multitalented individuals, “the” Renaissance is being wrested from Eurocentric contexts to help redress historical and perceptual imbalance. Comparisons with the “real” or “original” Renaissance are courted confidently, even impudently by Indigenous visionaries and revisionists. And so one might look as far as the dark side of the European Renaissance for signs of a potentially positive comparative message within the tales of expansionist greed and equally devastating disease and cultural cleansing. For instance, the history of a Renaissance genre like revenge tragedy can help us appreciate more fully the patience and generosity shown by Canada’s Aboriginal peoples in their struggle for justice.46 This form of tragedy, wed to the endlessness of vendetta, reveals how violence brings neither lasting satisfaction nor closure worthy of the name. This form

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of what Francis Bacon aptly called “rough justice” stages the anxieties of elites in ways that leave them little honour beyond the savour of temporary triumph. There is no honour of the Crown here, but only chronic uneasiness and treachery. Revenge is an open-ended economy and inherently insatiable. Even its reductio ad absurdum in a play like Hamlet cannot instantly dent revenge’s popularity, and revenge tragedy would continue to command large audiences until the regicide of Charles I, the ensuing civil war, and the restoration of the monarchy called for something other than what the implacable Stuarts proposed. Other models than revenge, other genres than ones that culminated in mass carnage onstage, were needed for national reformation and a new political project. But how can this brisk history shed light on the genres favoured by the Indigenous Renaissance, and the kinds of redress its proponents and practitioners seek? With historical determination of the viability of genre in mind, two points need to be made. In Renaissance Britain, classicism and conditions on the ground encouraged an emergent English empire to look for precedent and legitimation to imperial Rome. However, their own experience of instability and bloodletting drew some British dramatists to the bloodiest moments of Nero’s Rome and its dramatic capture in Seneca. In other words, rebirth is never mere replication but appropriation and adaptation to new times. Revival is keyed to current survival, involving choices and performing affinities. Aboriginal dramatists in Canada today, despite the violent history of their colonization and ongoing vulnerability, appear to feel little need to develop their own forms of revenge tragedy out of classical or Renaissance antecedents. Playwrights like Tomson Highway, Daniel David Moses, or Drew Hayden Taylor, for example, see little point in rehearsing yet again notions of endless cycles of violence. They know the punitive approach has not worked with them and never will, so why would they apply it to others in the name of reconciliation and redress? These Aboriginal dramatists work instead in traditions of sharing rather than supplanting, and revenge tragedy therefore has little appeal to them. Moreover, if tragedy is read more philosophically than politically, that is, as a genre committed to exploring the nature of the human, then its Euro-universal solemnities invite scepticism and playfulness, which is what happens in Aboriginal theatre when it chooses to deal with the Western dramatic canon. On the one hand, tragedy’s interplay of fear and violence leaves little room for forgiveness; on the other, the revenge tragedian’s empathy with his characters at least leaves more room for ambiguity than literature and criticism determined to prove the universally curative powers of literature.47 From a cynical perspective, one might wonder if the tragic history of colonialism in Canada is now replaying itself, if not as revenge tragedy then perhaps as farce, in that degenerate reprise identified by Marx at the heart of European capitalism in the incisive mockery of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.48 This is a suggestive analogy, not least because it willingly accommodates humour, irony, and parody, but it remains too Eurocentric to be fully to the purpose here. Trickster was never a Bourbon king! Marx’s scathing critique of monarchy leaves little room for that invaluable instrument of redress, the honour of the Crown. The genres of Aboriginal resistance are sui generis and genera mixta, but recognize no Aristarchean or Polonian authority in either instance. These Indigenized genres replay relations with prescriptive authority in order to move the cathartic properties of tragedy to another space that cannot be effectively policed by any party. The tragic sequences of hubris, nemesis, atƝ produce the effect of tragic inevitability that Aboriginal resistors refuse, unintimidated by the prestige of tragic anagnorisis and insisting instead, and recurrently, on what is hidden in plain view. In this latter connection, note that

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the Canadian role in the writing and acceptance by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been an important source of national pride and source of national self-fashioning. Rightly so, because the contributions of McGill’s John Humphrey led fairly directly to Lester Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize.49 But when Ted Moses, Leroy Little Bear, and Sa’ke’j Henderson play key roles at the United Nations in developing and bringing to fruition the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, what do we find in much of Canada? A deafening silence – and in official Canada a pooh-poohing of “aspirational” documents and an only too-well-rehearsed clutch of ministers justifying Canada’s appalling, self-isolating refusal to sign the declaration until very recently.50 Canada has fallen far indeed from its best self, and only Aboriginal thinkers, artists, and activists can save us. It seems almost too much for us white folks to comprehend. And it is therefore almost more than we deserve.

NOTES 1 See the collection of essays so entitled and edited by Federico Lenzerini (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 2 See Kelley Oliver’s essay so entitled in Continental Feminism Reader, ed. A.J. Cahill and J. Hansen (Lanham, NY: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 168–90. 3 For treaty making as textual finality versus cultural performativity via speech and listening, song, dance, and pipe rituals, see L.M. Findlay, “Memory’s Hegelian Estate: Class, ‘Race,’ Memory, and the Canadas of Alexander Morris (1826–89),” Essays on Canadian Writing 80 (2003): 229–40. For the resultant insistence on multisensory traditions of witnessing, interpretation, and ratification in Indigenous legal contexts, see James [Sa’ke’j] Youngblood Henderson, First Nations Indigenous Diplomacy and the Rights of Peoples: Achieving UN Recognition (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 2006), 1–4. Treaty federalism is summarized thus in Henderson’s Treaty Rights in the Constitution of Canada: it “was, and still is, an existing constitutional concept and mechanism to allow First Nations to take over their affairs and destiny. It is consistent with their constitutional right to think and freely express First Nations’ conscience about their relations with both the imperial Crown and Canada. As a constitutional standard of Canada, treaty federalism is not a racial, ethnic, religious, or linguistic standard.” James Youngblood Henderson, Treaty Rights in the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: Thomson/Carswell, 2007), 1045. 4 See Marie Battiste and Sa’ke’j Henderson, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 2000), 13–14. 5 See Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), esp. chaps. 3–5. 6 Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005), 23. 7 Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talon Books, 1991), 89–90. 8 Alfred defines his version of the “warrior’s path [as] … a ceremony of unity, strength, and commitment to action. Wasáse is an ancient Rotinoshonni war ritual, the Thunder Dance. The new warrior’s path, the spirit of Wasáse, this Onkwehonwe [Native American] attitude, this courageous way of being in the world – all come together to form a new politics in which many ideas

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Len Findlay and strategies for making change are fused together in a movement to challenge white society’s control over Okwehonwe and our lands. Wasáse, as I am speaking of it here, is symbolic of the social and cultural force alive among Okwehonwe dedicated to altering the balance of political and economic power to recreate some social and physical space for freedom to re-emerge.” Wasáse, 19. See Wasáse, 29, 42, and 27. Russel Lawrence Barsh and James Youngblood Henderson, The Road: Indian Tribes and Political Liberty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), viii. For a sense of the scope and importance of these contributions, see the tribute by Grand Captain Denny that prefaces Henderson’s book The Míkmaw Concordat (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1997), 9–11. The James Bay Cree perspective on this process is described by Grand Chief Ted Moses in Marie Battiste, ed., Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), while in the same collection Erica-Irene Daes offers a more Euro-libertarian perspective. With characteristic humility, Henderson takes stock of the slow advances, frequent setbacks, and eventual success at the UN in his Indigenous Diplomacy. This point is plainly made by Henderson in “Dialogical Governance: A Mechanism of Constitutional Governance,” Saskatchewan Law Review 72, no.1 (Winter 2009): 29–73. See Henderson, Míkmaw Concordat, 25 and 57–73. The book that appeared in 2000 on Aboriginal tenure was co-authored and emphatically “crosscultural and cross-disciplinary,” its methods not so much eradicative as Indigenizing and corrective, three of its seven parts devoted to interrelated versions of “reconciliation.” James (Sa’ke’j) Henderson, Marjorie L. Benson, and Isobel M. Findlay, Aboriginal Tenure in the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: Carswell, 2000), 9. By retaining and regrounding the notion of tenure, a notion which today defines the distinctive status of some academics as well as supporting the owning and transferring of all kinds of property, this collaborative work keeps colonizer and decolonizer at the table while asking both how far they have distanced themselves from the “absolutist European legal principle of nulle terre sans seigneur.” Henderson, Benson, and Findlay, Aboriginal Tenure, 5. It makes a strong but conciliatory case for the apparently outrageous claim that “in Canada, Aboriginal tenure is not derived from Crown tenure; rather, Crown title is derived from Aboriginal tenure.” Henderson, Benson, and Findlay, Aboriginal Tenure, 8. In order to alter the politics of difference practised by Canadian courts, Henderson and several other scholars first zeroed in on the arch-signifier of difference in legal discourse, namely, the Latin expression sui generis, in a special issue of the Alberta Law Review (36, no. 1, December 1997). On that occasion, Henderson linked the concept to the treaties. In later writings he links it to Aboriginal tenure (2000) and Aboriginal and treaty citizenship (2002), once again showing how Euro-legal concepts can be used, with the assistance of Aboriginal knowledge-keepers and legal authorities, to clarify and reconcile colonial and Indigenous legal orders. Here again we see Henderson’s non-violent but transformative embrace of the discourse of the dominant. For a similar example of appealing to people’s better selves by encouraging them to think about their consoling words while eating them, see, e.g., what Angela Davis does by combining “abolition” and “democracy” in her book of that name (Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture [New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005]). For this strategic double competency, compare, e.g., Henderson’s essay on “Postcolonial Ghost Dancing” in Battiste, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice, and his indefatigably sober yet seditious inhabitation of centuries of imperial and constitutional case law and commentary in his punitively

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documented book Treaty Rights in the Constitution of Canada (Toronto: Thomson Carswell, 2007). See “The Context of the State of Nature,” in Battiste, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice, 11–49. For knowledge ecologies, see, e.g., Battiste and Henderson, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge, 40–8, and Henderson, Indigenous Diplomacy, 148–50. See Battiste and Henderson, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge, 40–8, and Henderson’s First Nations Jurisprudence (Saskatoon: Native Law Centre, University of Saskatchewan, 2006), 148–50. On “categorical creativity,” see Henderson, Treaty Rights, 298. Canada refused to endorse the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples until November 2010. See Henderson, “Dialogical Governance,” 53. See Henderson, Treaty Rights, 887–944; or, more succinctly, “Dialogical Governance,” 66–8. See L.M. Findlay, “Spectres of Canada: Image, Text, Aura, Nation,” University of Toronto Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2006): 656–72, and Véronique Rozon, “Pour une réflexion sur l’identité huronne au XIXe siècle: Une analyse de la thématique du ‘dernier des hurons’ sous l’éclairage des théories de l’ethnicité,” Actes du colloque étudiant (Montreal: UQÀM, 2005), 223–61, for more details about the contexts and consequences of Vincent’s art. This prophecy is cited as the epigraph to Rielisms, curated by Catherine Mattes with text by Sherry Farrell Racette (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery and Regina: Dunlop Art Gallery, 2001). See Gerald McMaster, ed., in Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art (Fredericton and Ottawa: Goose Lane Editions and the Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1998), 19–30. Sarah Milroy uses this term with pointed irony in “Contemporary Aboriginal art: A new look at our entanglements,” Globe and Mail, 6 October 2007, Review section. Bob Boyer, “Daphne Odjig: A Lifetime of Changing Images,” in Odjig: The Art of Daphne Odjig, 1960–2000, ed. P. Gevik (Toronto: Key Porter, 2001), 9–12. See the excellent account in Lee-Ann Martin, Bob Boyer: His Life’s Work / Le travail d’une vie (Regina: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2008), 35–40. This concept is at the heart of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ed., Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledge for a Decent Life (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007). For its application in a Canadian context, see Findlay, “Dialogical Governance.” These are the three main versions of performance art mapped by Bruce Barber in “Three Modes of Canadian Performance in the Nineties,” in Art Action 1958–1998, ed. R. Martel (Quebec: Editions Intervention, 2001), 296–316. For the scope and impact of Belmore’s remarkable practice, see Daina Augaitis and Kathleen Ritter, eds., Rebecca Belmore: Rising to the Occasion (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 2008). For a more detailed account of the building of community from 1999 to 2002 through beading the entire fifty-six pages of the Indian Act, see Myre, Indian Act, http://themedicineproject.com/ nadia-myre.html. For Cuthand’s play with beads as trading goods, viral symbols, and Aboriginal women’s craft material, see “MacKenzie Art Gallery to buy some of Ruth Cuthand’s Trading series with award,” Regina Leader-Post, 1 September 2009. My former graduate student, Tasha Hubbard, won a Gemini for her documentary about policeenabled starlight tours and the ramifications of racism in Saskatoon, Two Worlds Colliding (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 2004). For a young Aboriginal woman to penetrate

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Len Findlay the “blue wall” of the police brotherhood while excelling at her university studies is an amazing achievement. The University of Saskatchewan was of course eager to put Tasha on their website as a poster girl, having ignored the conditions that had her “squaw hair” admired by white Canadian students and her identity and rights travestied at an event meant to “celebrate” Indigenous students. Tasha refused to allow her image to function as an alibi on the institution’s website. For strategic nomadism, see Mary Longman, “Mary Longman Speaks …,” in McMaster, ed., Generation X. See also the wonderfully reflexive catalogue for the National Gallery of Canada’s Nomads exhibition (Ottawa: National Gallery Publications, 2009). Blondeau is now pursuing, with undue difficulty, as a band-funded single parent, and as a working mother and artist, an interdisciplinary PhD at the same institution, work which I am co-supervising with Dr Lynne Bell of the Department of Art and Art History (while I am continuously reminded of the absurdities attending my service as external “expert” on Maria Campbell’s ill-fated pursuit of an MA in Native Studies, also at the University of Saskatchewan). See Beverly Jacobs and Andrea J. Williams, “Legacy of Residential Schools: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women,” in From Truth to Reconciliation, ed. M.B. Castellano, L. Archibald, and M. DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 121–40. Blondeau also played these possibilities in redresser/dressreddress in a performance of that name at the Performance Perimeters symposium in Regina in 2005. For similar semantic play, see Roy Miki, Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing (Toronto: Mercury Press, 1998), 49, and Felicia Gay’s development of the Red Shift Gallery. See Lori Pauli, ed., Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre (London and New York: Merrell; Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2006). See Catherine Crowston, ed., Facing the Nation (Edmonton: Art Gallery of Alberta, 2008), and Lynne Bell, “Scandalous Personas, Difficult Knowledge, Restless Images: The Work of Lori Blondeau,” Canadian Art 21, no. 4 (2004): 48–53, and the mid-career documentation and assessments of Blondeau in Dan Ring, ed., Lori Blondeau: Who Do You Think You Are? Performance/Installation/Documentation/1996–2007 (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 2009). For a brilliant reading of Buffalo Boy’s ironic invocations of redress, see Lynne Bell, “Buffalo Boy Testifies: Decolonizing Visual Testimony in a Colonial Settler Society,” Humanities Research 15, no.3 (2009), n.p. At http://epress.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Humanities+Research+ Vol+XV.+No+3.+2009/96/ch05.xhtml. See L.M. Findlay, “Lori Blondeau: Cultural Portage and the (Re)markable Body,” in Ring, Lori Blondeau, 17–27. See Elisa Birnbaum, “Funder Focus: Roberta Jamieson and the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation,” interview with Roberta Jamieson, Charity Village News Week, 4 June 2007. Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Media advisory, 11 August 2009, http://www.aptn.ca/ corporate/Media_Releases/APTN_celebrates_10_year _anniversary.pdf. In the 107-page printed program for the Awards ceremony held in the Sony Centre in Toronto in 2008, for example, two presences stand out amidst the paternalistic feel-goodism of political and corporate sponsors: first, Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s appeal to the “ancestral teachings of the petroglyphs of the territory that provide an overarching theme and details for the performances staged and choreographed by Aboriginal professionals with assistance from AfroCanadian peers”; second, the dignified but incisive comments from such Aboriginal activists as Beverly Jacobs, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and Vera Pawis Tabobondung, president of the National Association of Friendship Centres.

Redress Rehearsals 235 46 See, e.g., Fred Kelly, “Legacy of Residential Schools: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women,” in From Truth to Reconciliation, ed. Castellano, Archibald, and DeGagné, 30. 47 For such an essentialist overvaluing of art see Julie McGonegal, Imagining Justice: The Politics of Postcolonial Forgiveness and Reconciliation (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), 178. 48 See Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1979), 11: 103. For detailed genre analysis of this passage, see L.M. Findlay, “Otherwise Engaged: Postmodernism and the Resistance to History,” English Studies in Canada 14, no. 4 (1998): 391–3. 49 See Timothy Curle, Humanité: John Humphrey’s Alternative Account of Human Rights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 50 The Harper government has shown remarkably similar disdain for the “aspirational” in the contexts of Indigenous rights and climate change. The pronouncements of federal ministers like Chuck Strahl, Jim Prentice, and John Baird make only too much sense when linked to Prime Minister Harper’s claim on 25 September 2009 at the G8 meetings in Pittsburgh that Canada “has no history of colonialism.” Harsha Walia, “Really Harper, Canada has no history of colonialism?” The Dominion: News from the Grassroots, 28 September 2009. See also CanWest News Service, “Liberals favoured UN declaration on aboriginal rights, former PM says,” 17 July 2007, http://www.canada.com/news/index.html, and John Ward, “Climate-change stand raises ire,” Whig Standard (Kingston, ON), 9 November 2009, http://thewhig.com/ ArticleDisplayGenContent.aspx ?e=4377.

13 The Nonperformativity of Reconciliation: The Case of “Reasonable Accommodation” in Quebec anna carastathis

When the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (CCPARDC) concluded its tour of the regions and cities of Quebec and, in the spring of 2008, the commissioners (philosopher Charles Taylor and sociologist Gérard Bouchard) issued their report on the state of ethnocultural relations, their titular emphasis was on reconciliation.1 Their report, Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation, urged the francophone Québécois majority and immigrant or immigrant-descended cultural and religious minorities in Quebec – the two groups between whom the conflict was staged in the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” – each to take its respective responsibility to rebuild Quebec interculturalism in the aftermath of its public “crisis.” They called on the “majority group” to move forward “imbued with good faith and common sense, in a spirit of trust and reconciliation” with “immigrant Quebecers.” Addressing immigrants to Quebec, the commissioners reminded “them” that “their new home is a law-based society that wants to treat fairly all of its citizens.” Immigrants should “develop a desire to understand the history and sensitivities of the society with which they have chosen to associate, and … be attentive to its anxieties and aspirations.”2 The appeal to reconciliation, in this context, should give us pause. First, because in the context of the Bouchard-Taylor commission’s work and its report, the use of “reconciliation” seems out of step with the way in which the term has come to be understood in the global culture of apology and forgiveness in the last thirty years, where it is tied to postconflict contexts of historical reckoning and reparations to members of victimized groups. There is no call for redress of historical injury in connection to the reconciliatory appeal in Building the Future. Bouchard and Taylor issue their call to reconciliation in response to a present-day “multicultural crisis,” imploring the settler majority to reconcile itself to the presence of immigrant Others,3 and reassuring immigrants that the rule of law will ensure their equal treatment. This absence of a focus on wrongs of the past, which makes the Bouchard-Taylor commission’s invocation of “reconciliation” anomalous within the larger context of truth and reconciliation commissions, might serve to call attention to some problems with the more typical invocation of “reconciliation” today by dominant social groups. Injuries tend to be confined to the past; present-day forms of discrimination are deracinated from their historical origins; and a teleology of social progress is inscribed in a nation-building project which seeks to “harmonize” social and citizen–state relations. If the Bouchard-Taylor commission sits slightly to the side of current “reconciliation” debates in Canada, it nevertheless performs its own kind of operation on history and also connects

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the assumptions about progress in the wider culture of redress to an older philosophical teleology of “reconciliation.” As I argue, in severing the “crisis” in Quebec from historical considerations that would situate the anxieties of the francophone settler majority not just in relation to the insecure status of Quebec as a linguistic “minority” in North America, but in relation to anxieties about legitimacy stemming from the displacement of Aboriginal sovereignties, Building the Future affirms a particular version of history. “Reconciliation” in the context of the Bouchard-Taylor commission, furthermore, far from disrupting a teleology of progress, acquires philosophical resonances that connect the healing of conflict between social groups to a teleology focused on the necessity of the individual’s becoming reconciled to, or at home in, society’s central institutions. With this additional sense of “reconciliation” – as an overcoming of alienation – in play, claims of discrimination that form part of the perceived intercultural “crisis” risk being interpreted through a liberal politics of recognition. In a Hegelian register, the report may be read to promise that if immigrants embrace social institutions and their embedded norms, they will be recognized as full members of the national political community.4 Yet any such promise, I will argue, turns out to be nonperformative, disavowing the material conditions which structure intercultural and interracial relations in Quebec, and foreclosing the redress of these conditions. Finally, the Bouchard-Taylor commission’s invocation of “reconciliation” appears more anomalous than it actually is within the wider context of the culture of redress because the specific practices for seeking “reasonable accommodation” of cultural difference that the commissioners recommend – the practices representing what their vision of “reconciliation” would mean on the ground – are located in precisely the informal relations of civil society that tend to be privileged in projects of healing from the divisions of historical conflicts. The commission’s report encourages immigrants to opt for the dejudicialized “citizen route” in pursuing accommodation of cultural practices through informal, local negotiations, instead of through litigation. Much more could be said about the way in which the Bouchard-Taylor commission was shaped by the wider circulation of “reconciliation.” My examination of the commission’s work endeavours to contribute to the study of the political culture of reconciliation by asking, What does it mean when calls to reconciliation come from dominant social groups? Whom do these calls address? What effects do they have? I take up these questions through a case study of the public discourse on “reasonable accommodation” in Quebec.5 My case study indicates that when performed by the dominant group, calls to reconciliation can function in a complicated way to reproduce, rather than to transform, existing relations of power. Specifically, in the context of a nation-building project of a white settler society they may bolster, rather than undermine, the social bases of power that characterize such societies. But in calling for “reconciliation” – as opposed to, for instance, redistribution – the institutionalized relations of power internal to the Quebec nation are fortified, not undermined. In this way, the call to “reconciliation” is a response to “crisis” which carries on the discursive work of its precursor concept, “reasonable accommodation.” To demonstrate in what the operations of the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” consist, I invoke Sara Ahmed’s concept of “nonperformativity.”6 For Ahmed, if a “performative” speech act does what it says, a nonperformative speech act fails to do what it says it does. But the ineffectual nature of nonperformative speech is not an accident. Nor does some external circumstance bring about its failure. Rather, failure is internal to this form of

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speech. That is, not doing what it says it does is how this form of speech “succeeds.” Nonperformative speech dissimulates, distracts, and disavows its real, lived effects. It elides the actual character of the material relations of power that enable such speech. Reading the discourse on “reasonable accommodation” as an instance of nonperformative speech is instructive because it reveals the inverted nature of the concept of accommodation. In this chapter, I focus on the ways in which “accommodation” – and the related concepts of “harmonization” and “reconciliation” – invert the social realities of exploitation, marginalization, and oppression faced by migrant people in Quebec. I further argue that the project of “managing diversity” (gérer la diversité),7 which has long been a preoccupation in Quebec and in Canada, cannot be understood without an analysis of how it secures settler power and legitimizes the ongoing colonization and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. These two projects (managing diversity and settler nation building) foreclose the question of the legitimacy of the Quebec nation. Because the deep conflicts in this society are traced to the arrival of “newcomer” ethno-cultural minoritized groups, the racial project of the settler nation becomes projected onto the racialized difference of the “cultural communities” (“communautés culturelles,” as they are called in Quebec). Racial conflict is located in recent immigrants, rather than in an ongoing project of white-settler colonialism. Becoming “hosts” to racialized immigrants, settlers thereby become “natives.” In this way, the prior political contradiction between settlers (and, more specifically, the settler nation) and Indigenous peoples is rendered invisible. Quebec becomes “chez nous.” Arguably, this is doubly mystified in the Quebec context, where national sovereignty has long been constructed as an anti-colonial project against Anglo domination through analogies between the Québécois and internal colonies of the United States and Canada.8 Ahmed’s account of nonperformativity helps me demonstrate that the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” furnishes one case in which calls from dominant groups urging reconciliation or social integration have precisely the opposite effect. Through a close reading of the report issued by the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, and an examination of various flashpoints in the public debate, I argue that the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” served to reproduce, rather than undermine, the racial formation of Quebec society. The Nonperformative Call for Reconciliation In her work on the speech acts of institutions, Sara Ahmed identifies a class of speech acts that she terms “nonperformatives.”9 Drawing on J.L. Austin’s notion of the performative utterance – a speech act which does what it says – Ahmed argues that institutional discourses of antiracism are replete with nonperformative utterances: speech acts that do not do what they say.10 In Austin’s taxonomy, failed performatives are “unhappy” or “infelicitous” performatives.11 For Austin, they fail to bring about the action they name because of conditions external to the utterance.12 One category of failed performatives is composed of insincerities, infractions, and breaches. For example, an apology is “infelicitous” – it fails to do what it says – if the person who issues it is insincere.13 But Ahmed wants to introduce a third kind of performative speech, which is not quite “happy,” but, at the same time, does not “fail” in Austin’s sense. Ahmed calls this third category “nonperformative” speech. She distinguishes between Austin’s “failed performative” and “nonperformative” speech acts in the following way. Austin’s “failed performative”

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fails because certain requisite conditions for the success of the action are not in place. But the “nonperformative” succeeds precisely “because it fails to bring about what it names.”14 In other words, “the failure of the speech act to do what it says is not a failure of intent or even circumstance, but it is actually what the speech act is doing.”15 Paradoxically, then, a nonperformative speech act only succeeds when it fails to bring about the effect it names. These are not “unhappy” performatives, but “deceptive” performatives, which dissimulate as to their effects. They appear to be doing one thing (for instance, apologizing), but what they are really doing is something else. They are failing: but this failing is a doing – and that is why nonperformatives are a particularly nefarious, slippery form of speech. Ahmed’s account is important for our purposes because it enables us to see how certain public discourses at once name certain effects and foreclose them in the same breath. By “naming” effects, I mean that in a performative speech act itself – for instance, in an apology – we take the speaker to be doing something: apologizing. This is not external to the speech act (as in a promise to apologize later). Instead, the effect is internal to, or coextensive with the speech act. The point is that speech itself can bring about certain effects. As Austin put it, one can “do things with words.” But how then do we understand speech acts which seem to do things – for instance, they seem to apologize – but which we intuitively or empirically know are doing something else (for instance, defusing a protest of injustice)? I am interested in understanding the nonperformative call for reconciliation in just this way: if some calls for reconciliation fail to bring about this effect, it is not necessarily that reconciliation fails because of some external conditions. Examining the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” in Quebec, I want to argue that in certain instances we should locate “failure” in the call to reconciliation itself. But this failure is really the “success” of the nonperformative speech act. That is, the speech act succeeds in failing to bring about reconciliation. That calls for reconciliation issued by dominant groups may fail to do what they say they do – initiate a process of reconciliation – is not accidental. Consider Ahmed’s analysis of institutional speech acts which “make claims ‘about’ or ‘on behalf’ of an institution,” like a university.16 She examines the role of nonperformatives in constituting antiracism as a matter of organizational pride (“we are good because we are antiracist”), rather than as a commitment to institutional change. Conversely, in this slippery discursive terrain, admissions of racism (“we are institutionally racist”) become readable as declarations of commitment to antiracism.17 In both cases, nonperformative speech acts “function to hinder rather than enable action.”18 At the same time, they “create the illusion of being behind an action, even at the moment the action is not performed.”19 Nonperformatives are a useful tool in the growing arsenal of institutional “image management.” They occlude and mystify the “gaps between words and deeds.”20 One lesson to draw from this is that “the language we think of as critical can lend itself to the very techniques of governance we critique.”21 Language we think of as progressive or as signalling “good intentions” – like “reconciliation” – can lend itself to state projects of “managing diversity.” Nonperformative speech is perhaps one of the most powerful ideological tools in the service of building state legitimacy. It is one way that the state is able to reconfigure relations of dominance in response to profound challenges to its legitimacy. In simple terms, the wrongdoer who apologizes redeems himself. But this redemption forecloses real redress (even if it is accompanied by tokenistic reparations). That is because, in attempting to sever the link between past and present practices, the apology locates injustice in the past.22

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After all, who apologizes for something he continues to do? The Quebec Native Women’s Association responded to Prime Minister Harper’s apology to survivors of Indian residential schools, arguing something similar. Harper’s apology cannot be taken seriously while the Indian Act is still in force, and while Indigenous children are placed “in care” by child welfare agencies in disproportionate numbers.23 In 2005, one in every ten status “Indian” children was in child welfare custody as compared to one in 200 for non-Indigenous children in Canada. There are currently between 22,500 and 28,000 Indigenous children in the child welfare system. 24 In fact, three times as many Indigenous children are now “in care” than were enrolled at residential schools in 1940, at the height of the residential school system.25 The number of Indigenous children who are placed in child welfare custody is actually rising: between 1995 and 2001, it rose by 71.5 per cent nationally.26 As Cindy Blackstock puts it, “if reconciliation means not having to say sorry twice, Canada is failing.”27 But what if that failure is a kind of success – for the Canadian state? What if the nonperformance of reconciliation enables the state to keep saying “Sorry”? Ahmed’s argument leads us to question the popularity of the discourse of reconciliation, tolerance, and accommodation in colonial liberal democracies. Arguably, this kind of speech shores up the state’s authority by restoring its legitimacy. Nonperformative calls for reconciliation are discursive gestures, which preserve rather than transform oppressive social structures in need of legitimation at times of political crisis. Unlike a generic appeal to tolerance, which implies “enduring with forbearance” and “without interference” something or someone one dislikes, reconciliation denotes the “restor[ation] of friendly relations”; if there was a “quarrel,” it is now “settled.” At worst, if the conflict seems intractable, the dominant group can make the subordinated one “accept a disagreeable thing.”28 When multicultural tolerance is reinvented as reconciliation, conflict is repressed in the name of a harmonious resolution. The debate surrounding the “accommodation” of cultural and religious minorities in Quebec furnishes an example of this kind of nonperformative discourse of reconciliation. The “Reasonable Accommodation” Crisis In response to “public discontent,” Premier Jean Charest announced the mandate of a commission to study “accommodation” practices in Quebec on 8 February 2007.29 This “public discontent” manifested in a series of events that are widely cited as catalysts for the mandate.30 The first was the publication in the Journal de Montréal in January 2007 of a Léger Marketing poll that reported that 43 per cent of Québécois admitted they were “mildly racist,” 15 per cent “moderately racist,” and 1 per cent “very racist.” It also reported that 50 per cent of Québécois had negative views of Muslims. The second widely cited catalyst, the so-called Hérouxville Affair, seemed to substantiate the findings of the Léger poll. In late January 2007, the small municipality of Hérouxville adopted a set of resolutions outlining local norms for prospective immigrants. These resolutions banned ostensibly “Islamic” practices in Hérouxville – a hamlet with a population of 1338 residents, none of whom are immigrants, nor Muslim.31 While many critics pointed out the profoundly Islamophobic nature of the Hérouxville document, and its egregious distortion of Islam as an inherently violent, misogynist religion, what is also worth noting is that it foreshadowed many statements about Muslims living in Quebec later expressed by “moderate” interveners, some of them representing state-funded institutions; for instance, the Conseil du statut de la femme. As such, Hérouxville took on the contradictory role of serving both as the exception and

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the quintessence of this debate, at once seen as an aberration and “not so out of step with the political mainstream.”32 The third catalyst occurred a month later, in late February, when an eleven-year-old soccer player, Asmahan (Azzy) Mansour, was excluded from an indoor game in Laval by the referee when Mansour refused to remove her hijab at the referee’s request.33 Mansour’s coach withdrew the team from the competition in protest. Even Premier Charest weighed in, voicing his support for the decision of the referee, who cited safety concerns. Then, on the eve of a provincial election, the chief returning officer decreed that women who wear the niqab (a form of hijab that covers the face, except for the eyes) would not be allowed to vote.34 It is important to note that this was all happening in an election year. With the provincial elections approaching in March 2007, “reasonable accommodation” became an issue through which the political parties vying for power could articulate their positions on language, sovereignty, and immigration. The leader of the far-right Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ), Mario Dumont, was courting a xenophobic public by claiming Quebec should accept fewer immigrants and write its own constitution, in which the rights of minorities would be spelled out. The Parti Québécois (PQ) was viewing the ascendancy of the ADQ with trepidation. The governing Liberal party also viewed the ADQ’s growing popularity as a threat. In an attempt to palliate xenophobic sentiments and simultaneously reassure minoritized groups within Quebec of its commitment to tolerance, Charest’s Liberal government – slipping in popularity in the pre-election polls – mandated a commission to study the crisis in intercultural relations, just a month before the election. A month later, Charest won the provincial election, forming a minority government, with the ADQ as the official opposition. After two years of heated public debate, the much-awaited report of what came to be known as the “Bouchard-Taylor commission” concluded that the frenzied public discourse about “reasonable accommodation” of cultural and religious minorities that led the Charest government to mandate the commission was, in fact, a pseudo-crisis, fuelled by sensationalist media outlets.35 At the end of the commission’s tour in the winter of 2008, the press was reporting that the commissioners had concluded that “the crisis is only in people’s heads.”36 In their report, Bouchard and Taylor stated that there is no crisis in actual accommodation practices in Quebec, but only in “Quebecers’ minds and perceptions.”37 Many people were surprised to hear, after such a long and intense debate, that requests for cultural or religious accommodation in public institutions and workplaces are rare, they are usually settled through informal negotiations, and, in general, “the situation is under control.”38 This anti-climactic analysis had two consequences. First, because they located the crisis in people’s “perceptions,” in “rumour,” and in sensationalist media coverage, the commissioners made the crisis seem less real. Second, they made the crisis – whatever this crisis was – seem less systemic. The report minimized structural obstacles to integration by focusing on individual attitudes and prejudices, and all but effaced the broader context of structural racism in which these attitudes develop. Paradoxically, while calling for the elaboration of policies of interculturalism and non-discrimination, the commissioners arguably absolved public institutions, private enterprise, and government of responsibility for the structural role they play in regulating or profiting from relations of inequality among settlers – Québécois “de souche” and Anglos – migrants, and Indigenous people.39 Discrimination was constructed as an aberration in an otherwise just society, rather than the reflex of a society profoundly structured by racism.

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Accommodation, Harmonization, and Reconciliation as Idioms of Racial Anxiety The Bouchard-Taylor report constructs accommodation – and, its supposed relatives, harmonization and reconciliation – as the gestures a dominant culture makes, or decides not to make, in “managing diversity” in a pluricultural society.40 “Harmonization” is meant to refer to a broader category of practices than “accommodation,” which notwithstanding the expansive uses to which it was put, actually has a narrow legal meaning. I discuss the commissioners’ definition and use of “harmonization” below. “Reconciliation” is not defined explicitly in the report (not even in the glossary). It appears a scant eight times in the report – twice in the title (on the front page and the overleaf), and only six times in the main text.41 Needless to say, it seems remiss for a text written by academics, which heralds “a time for reconciliation” not to define precisely what reconciliation means.42 It appears that accommodation and harmonization do the work of giving “reconciliation” its content in this report. We might speculate that the authors of the report sought to exploit the cachet of the emergent “culture of redress” to legitimize a neoliberal project of nation building. Whatever their motivations, Bouchard and Taylor perform a semantic slide from accommodation to harmonization, and from harmonization to reconciliation. As I will argue in this section, the slippage between these three terms evinces that the call to reconciliation is, here, a nonperformative one. Reconciliation, for the commissioners, does not involve any fundamental transformation of social relations. It does not require of dominant groups that they cede power to, or share power with subordinated groups. In fact, Bouchard and Taylor argue that reconciliation might well be achieved if dominant groups wield their social dominance in more confident – but also more benevolent – ways. At the outset, it is important to notice that “reasonable accommodation” was not a grassroots concept. It did not emerge from immigrant communities as a term to describe a desire for inclusion or integration. As I go on to explain, it is a technical legal term which originates in labour law. But by the time the commission’s mandate was announced on 8 February 2007, “reasonable accommodation” had become the idiom in Quebec for expressing all kinds of anxieties about immigration and the integration of “ethnocultural communities” into the francophone mainstream. Not only the government, but also many Québécois “de souche” were asking themselves and each other, “Are we too accommodating” of minority religious and cultural groups?43 Had Quebec ceded too much to Canadian-style multiculturalism? Were immigrants changing the face of Quebec, and were “they” a threat to its (supposed) cultural purity?44 Before the winter of 2006, then, “reasonable accommodation” was a fairly obscure term.45 Yet it became the catchword for “people’s perceptions” of intercultural crisis. Both by the media and by the state, “reasonable accommodation” was discursively constructed to name the problem of racial conflict, then to invert it, and finally to define the material bases of this conflict out of existence. “Reasonable accommodation” refers to a legal standard for accommodating employees’ needs in the workplace (for instance, to make workplaces accessible to workers with disabilities).46 The basis for such accommodations is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibits discrimination. The connection between reasonable accommodation and legally prohibited discrimination is rarely remarked upon in the commissioners’ report. Yet private employers and state institutions have a legal duty to avoid and correct indirect discrimination. The authors’ choice to use the term “reasonable accommodation”

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instead of the term “duty of accommodation” is indicative. In the glossary appended to their report, Bouchard and Taylor define “reasonable accommodation” as “an arrangement that falls under the legal sphere, more specifically case law, aimed at relaxing the application of a standard in favour of an individual threatened with discrimination because of personal traits protected by law.”47 They define the term “duty of accommodation” as that “duty which, under law, makes it the responsibility of the managers of public and private institutions to avoid all forms of discrimination by adopting relaxation or harmonization measures in the administration of certain statutes or regulations.”48 Despite its proximity to “reasonable accommodation,” the term “duty of accommodation” hardly appeared in the public debate, and only a handful of times in the commissioners’ report.49 While “duty of accommodation” conjures the legal obligation of public institutions and private enterprises to uphold citizens’ and employees’ rights as they are entrenched in the Canadian and Quebec Charters of Rights and Freedoms, the term “reasonable accommodation,” by contrast, does not make explicit to the lay ear that there exists a legal obligation to avoid or correct indirect discrimination. Moreover, most of us who are not trained in law hear the emphasis in “reasonable accommodation” on the adjective – “reasonable” – which, in this context, is misleading. We might understand that accommodation can only go so far as is “reasonable” – whatever “reasonable” means. Or, that it is reasonable to accommodate certain (deserving) groups, but not others. We might even hear in the term the suggestion that requests for accommodation are inherently unreasonable – “they” ask “us” for “special treatment.” Finally, the arbiter of what is reasonable seems disjoined from the person making the request for accommodation. But to qualify accommodation as a duty stemming from constitutional commitments to non-discrimination is very different from constructing it as a generous gesture of a “hospitable” majority. It was this latter notion of hospitality that prevailed in the public discourse. The “original” and “real” Québécois were constructed as “hosts” to foreign “guests”: immigrants, migrant workers, and even long-standing racialized groups in Quebec. Furthermore, what is elided in this framing is the dispossession of Indigenous nations by the settler nations of Quebec and Canada. Becoming a benevolent host to “recent arrivals” means taking ownership, and legitimating the previous expropriation that made this ownership possible. In this way, settlers become “natives” – originary, “de souche” – while those who are actually Indigenous – and the violent process of their expropriation – seem to disappear. The popular discourse of “reasonable accommodation” (in which the commissioners’ report participates) systematically inverted the legal meaning of accommodation – a duty to prevent indirect discrimination – in order to make this concept fit into a xenophobic ideology of settler entitlement. The first five references to “duty of accommodation” appear well into the document, on page 63, when the authors are defining what reasonable accommodation actually means in law. They state that to be cognizable, an accommodation request requires a claim of discrimination in relation to a protected ground of discrimination enumerated in the Quebec (and, we might add, the Canadian) Charter.50 This request is deemed “reasonable” when it does not impose “undue hardship” on the institution or individual who would grant it. They note that the duty of accommodation is a duty for all proprietors of businesses and all managers of public or private institutions.51 Another reference appears two pages later, when Bouchard and Taylor are explaining the distinction between what they identify as “the legal route” and as “the citizen route.”52 Those who pursue an accommodation request

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through litigation are taking “the legal route,” and it is only these cases that constitute, properly speaking, instances of “reasonable accommodation.” The “citizen route” does not involve the law, but rather consists in informal arrangements between, say, the employer and the employee. Bouchard and Taylor term these arrangements – which can be required by law or be entirely optional – “concerted adjustments.”53 One of the recommendations of their report is that individuals seeking accommodation choose the “citizen route” over the “legal route,” and thereby contribute to the overall “dejudicialization” of accommodation requests.54 But as Avigail Eisenberg has argued, in drawing this contrast between these two ostensibly separate options, the report implies that people who choose the “legal route” are declining the “citizen route” and are trying to win rather than compromise.55 Yet, not only are “legal processes … [an] important part of civic dialogue”; they specify “matters in which there should be no compromise.”56 Indeed, most accommodation requests begin with an attempt to resolve the issue informally, and only end up in courts when refused by employers and managers. In the deflationary “reality check” they provide in the first two chapters, Bouchard and Taylor themselves tell us that the vast majority of accommodation requests are resolved through informal negotiation. And yet, Bouchard and Taylor spend a great deal of time in the report arguing for the “dejudicialization” of accommodation. However, the fact that some accommodation cases end up in court indicates the intractability of these conflicts and the severity of the underlying discrimination. A subsequent reference to “duty of accommodation” occurs on page 70, where the authors debunk the myth that a much-publicized, controversial agreement reached by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) du Parc in Montréal and the Hassidic synagogue next door, Yetev Lev, constituted an instance of “reasonable accommodation.”57 Like a string of similar incidents, it was misrepresented as such in the media. But, because the director of the YMCA and the synagogue came to an informal agreement (that the YMCA would, at the expense of Yetev Lev, frost some of its windows so as not to “distract” young men in the synagogue with the sight of women exercising) rather than taking the legal route, this is not a case of “reasonable accommodation” in the strict sense just explained. There were many didactic moments like this in the commission hearings and in the report. While clarifying misperceptions is surely an important goal of a document such as this one, what is problematic is that it was the commission’s own mandate that created widespread confusion about the relationship of “reasonable accommodation” to the many referents it quickly acquired. That is, the commissioners set out to study incidents like this one under the misleading mantle of “accommodation practices.” Their mandate inflated the scope of this legal term, thereby contributing to the impression that “reasonable accommodation” aptly characterizes the “host–guest” relationship between Québécois “de souche” and the “communautés culturelles.” Rather than being dispelled, this confusion is, again, reproduced in the report. Why advocate the “dejudicialization” of accommodation requests if “reasonable accommodation” is itself a legal construct? The commissioners seem to be suggesting something else: that Quebec residents and workers who face indirect discrimination voluntarily relinquish their right to contest discriminatory practices in court, and instead engage in informal negotiations with administrators, bosses, and managers. But this elides the very reason individuals resort to legal challenges: they face an imbalance in power with obdurate authorities.58 Interestingly, on a few occasions, Bouchard and Taylor clarify that accommodation is not a favour bestowed on the minority by the majority, but a measure to correct discrimina-

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tion.59 But they hasten to reassure the reader that “the duty of accommodation … cannot be absolute.”60 “A request can be rejected when it infringes on the people’s rights or when it violates the collective interest or ‘general well being.’”61 The imagined audience for these passages is likely the reader who is anxious that “it is impossible to say No to them.”62 Bouchard and Taylor reassure this reader that unruly or demanding requests for accommodation need not be granted, since “a requester who displays intransigence might release a manager or employer from his duty of accommodation.”63 They go on to state that accommodation presupposes an asymmetrical relation of power between two parties. While they call attention to the fact that “law maintains that the duty of accommodation centres, first and foremost, on the manager as the possessor of authority,” they emphasize that “both parties are subject to an obligation of reciprocity.64 Here, they simultaneously assert and efface the structural inequality between “managers” and “requesters.” The notion of a “request” for accommodation also fails to capture the legal weight of the measure of “reasonable accommodation” in direct relation to Charter rights. Rarely do Bouchard and Taylor remember that “requests” for accommodation function legally more like claim rights, which have corresponding duties. More often they represent the “requester” as a supplicant, and the employer, manager, or public institution that might – or might not – grant the request as acting out of benevolence as far as is “reasonably” allowed. Thus, the concept of “duty of accommodation” is infrequently mentioned in the report. When it is mentioned, it is used in a highly technical way, while the (equally technical) term “reasonable accommodation” – which proved to be a more flexible concept – appears at least sixty-seven times. “Reasonable accommodation” is more amenable to expressing two central fantasies of white settler society: first, the conflation of whiteness with rationality (Enlightenment), and second, its imagined generosity to those it deems its inferiors.65 Bouchard and Taylor’s discussion of “harmonization” in the report is a rare moment in which they speak to – even as they efface – relations of power between dominant and dominated groups. It should be noted that “harmonization” is a new concept which the report introduces into this discourse. This term was altogether absent from the public lexicon before the commission. To “harmonize” means to make something tuneful which was discordant; to eliminate conflict.66 Conflict, here, is traced to cultural difference. The commissioners write that “the question of the management of diversity inevitably arises in any society in which two or more cultures meet. This question has always arisen.”67 Bouchard and Taylor identify two “historical” resolutions to this problem. First, the authoritarian resolution: domination. The “more powerful culture” assimilates or eliminates “the other(s).”68 The second approach to managing diversity in a cultural clash they term “intercultural harmonization.”69 They present “intercultural harmonization” as a more “respectful,” pluralistic approach to achieving the “complete integration of all individuals (or at least those who want to integrate) into collective life.”70 The authors locate the “authoritarian” resolution in the past – at least for Western liberal democracies. By contrast, they state that harmonization is a “new vision” which has taken hold over the last “several decades, above all in the West.”71 They claim that “attitudes and laws have changed as the democratic nations have … become much more respectful of diversity.”72 In this way, Bouchard and Taylor pave the way for constructing “reconciliation” as a virtue exclusive to the West – by marrying it to the concept of democracy (which the West has already appropriated as its own). In so doing, they attempt to vindicate the ongoing history of Western imperialism, stating that “practices aimed at relaxation or reconciliation have always existed, even in empires.”73

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The inclusion of “relaxation” as a relative of “reconciliation” implies two things: first, that reconciliation need not involve a break with practices of domination (rather, these can be “relaxed” for the purposes of social cohesion); second, that reconciliation can be a benevolent gesture of imperial or colonial rule. But if these “practices of reconciliation” have always existed, in what sense can harmonization be said to constitute an enlightened “new vision”? The caveat that reconciliation has “always existed, even in empires” contradicts their distinction between the authoritarian and the harmonizing resolution to “culture clash.” If these resolutions are not different in kind, the progress narrative of Western democracy rings rather hollow. If authoritarian domination can be synchronous with harmonization, then reconciliation is compatible with imperialism. I want to argue that this is not just an oversight in their account, which we might excuse as the consequence of a thorny collaboration between a structuralist sociologist of culture and a liberal political philosopher. Instead, it reveals that the boundary between domination and reconciliation is much more porous than we might think. The commissioners tell us that even empires can “do” reconciliation. This means that reconciliation and harmonization do not make, as it first may appear, a rupture with practices of domination. If imperialist power can coincide with practices of reconciliation, then reconciliation is not necessarily an anti-authoritarian ethic. Instead, empires which have come under scrutiny and anxious settler societies can use the nonperformative gesture of reconciliation to reinvent or legitimize themselves. While “power” makes a brief appearance here, actual relations of power are effaced, because while the authors refer to “power,” they attach “power” to “culture” (as in the phrase “the more powerful culture”).74 The authors make oblique reference to “difficulties and misunderstandings” that “arise” – ostensibly quite naturally – in the “encounter of different cultures.” Of course, the word “encounter” has long served as a euphemism for colonial domination. This takes on a particular meaning when we recall that intercultural harmonization is named as a way of “managing cohabitation” in Quebec. Quebec is a white settler society that controls about 60 per cent of its immigration.75 It exploits the labour of immigrant, migrant, and refugee workers, and retains control over Indigenous territories. For Quebec – as for Canada, and for any other settler society – “cohabitation” is a pressing policy problem. “Reconciliation,” in the context of structural racial conflict, becomes crucial to a nation-building project. To the extent that it is conceived as a way of managing diversity, a nonperformative call to reconciliation issued by the dominant group secures white settler power rather than disrupting it. Indeed, in the conclusion of their report, Bouchard and Taylor explicitly construct reconciliation as the culmination of a colonial narrative. They identify colonialism as the “common ground” on which reconciliation might be achieved: “it is on this common ground, that of the men and women founders, that reconciliation and solidarity must be rooted.”76 Some observers argued from the outset against the construction of “accommodation” as a response to immigration, whereby the settled majority (or, “host society”) “accommodates” immigrant minority groups.77 While the commissioners were charged with studying accommodation practices, they linked these to “immigration” in, arguably, an overly expansive interpretation of their mandate. But while no one wanted to explicitly equate accommodation with immigration, this linkage was embedded from the outset in the conceptualization of “reasonable accommodation” as a policy problem by the government of Quebec. The commission’s mandate, which was presented as an Order in Council by the Charest government, clearly indicates that immigration is the antecedent condition to the

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problem of accommodation in Quebec.78 The Order in Council by which the government created the commission’s mandate describes Quebec society as having “chosen to be an open society.”79 It states that practices of accommodation related to cultural differences result from the choice Quebec society has made to be governed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; the Charter of the French Language (known as Bill 101); the government’s policy of equality between men and women; and the regulation and management of immigration and integration.80 The “crisis” in intercultural relations, for some interveners, consisted in perceived conflicts between these constitutional and policy commitments, on the one hand, and practices of accommodation, on the other. That is, it seemed to them that ethnocultural and religious minorities were seeking accommodations that affronted these fundamental values of Quebec society – or, worse still, that transgressed norms inscribed in law. Ironically, “reasonable accommodation” was widely constructed as introducing discrimination into Quebec society, rather than existing as a legal measure to correct discrimination. For example, an ostensible conflict was constructed between freedom of religion and gender equality.81 In this discourse, the nonperformative rhetoric of antisexism provided an occasion for racism.82 The assumption is that immigration introduces cultural and religious diversity, which in turn creates conflict with Quebec’s constitutional and political commitments to a set of “fundamental values.” On this view, immigration is seen as inserting cultural minorities into the otherwise “homogeneous” Quebec nation. In other words, immigrants – specifically of Muslim faith – are the source of cultural (read: racial) conflict. The conflict between settlers and Indigenous peoples, or even between francophone settlers and anglophone settlers is elided. The worry animating the commission’s mandate was that “certain” practices of accommodation could “call into question the proper balance between the rights of the majority and the rights of minorities.”83 Bouchard and Taylor spend considerable time responding to this worry in their report. In the appendix, where they respond to “common objections” to accommodation practices, they remind “Quebecers of French-Canadian origin [who feel that they] do not dare express themselves” that “it is incumbent in a democracy on the majority group to express its will … except as regards the interpretation and application of the law. As we see in the history of all societies, a majority may be tempted to impose discriminatory rules on minorities. We are living in a democratic society that protects everyone’s rights, including minorities.”84 But the histories of empires and of white settler societies do not bear out the claim that a group’s power to impose its will on another group derives from the strength of numbers that characterizes democratic majority rule. Further, in these histories attempted genocides, forced displacements, laws of exclusion, and coerced migration figure prominently. These violent processes overdetermined the current demographics of white settler societies. If accommodation is linked to immigration, so, too, it is linked to colonialism. The “proper balance” between majorities and minorities in Quebec and in Canada was achieved through racial violence. These societies, which have made themselves hosts on stolen land, have clearly not overcome the “temptation” to impose “discriminatory rules” on Indigenous peoples, migrants, immigrants, and refugees. Reinventing Racism According to Sunera Thobani, in the post-Holocaust era only the “overtly apartheid regimes” and the political margins of Western nations continued to defend the merits of sci-

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entific racism and the use of eugenicist and other racial values in law and public policy.85 In this shifting racial climate, the Canadian state was “seeking to transform itself from a settler colonial state into a liberal-democratic one.”86 Decolonization movements around the world “increased the visibility” of Indigenous people’s struggles for self-determination against the newly sovereign, colonial Canadian state.87 The ongoing use of violence to repress Indigenous resistance to colonial power became indefensible in many important international venues, in particular the newly formed United Nations.88 In addition, Canada had to deracialize its immigration policy because it was a signatory to the UN Charter, which banned raciological state laws and policies.89 The exposure of Canadian society as a racial formation made “platitudes of civilizational and moral superiority” less convincing.90 This meant that another basis of the colonial state’s legitimacy needed to be sought if the white elite was to maintain its hold on power. The racial project had to continue under a different name. In his infamous speech in 1947, Prime Minister Mackenzie King argued that while the Canadian economy needed a new wave of mass migration, its “absorptive capacity” vis-à-vis immigrants had to be ensured if “a fundamental alteration in the character” of the nation was to be prevented.91 As Eva Mackey argues, this euphemistic language signalled the persistence of a racist immigration policy at a time that Canada, reinventing itself as a liberal democracy, was officially disavowing racism as an explicit principle of social organization.92 By 1988, Thobani concludes, “official multiculturalism had become ‘a diffusing or a muting device’ for the deeply entrenched conflicts of race.”93 Multiculturalism saved white supremacy when it was in need of discursive rescue. Understood as the munificence of the white “host,” accommodation shores up a “national fantasy of benevolent, innocent, and liberal origins.”94 Arguably, this popular interpretation of “reasonable accommodation” (and the homologous concepts of “harmonization” and “reconciliation” that the commissioners introduce in their report) secures the legitimacy of the white Quebec nation – whether as a sovereign nation or as a binational partner in the Canadian colonial project – at a time when it is undergoing a legitimacy crisis, both in its own eyes and in those of the Indigenous and migrant communities it oppresses.95 But to function as a justifying discourse capable of performing discursive rescue, “reasonable accommodation” had to be a flexible concept. Indeed, it proved able to attach itself to the various contemporary manifestations of attitudinal racism: liberal racism, racist hate speech, xenophobic nativism, cultural racism, and colonial entitlement. Moreover, “reasonable accommodation” was invoked to exonerate some forms of racism while seeming to condemn others. The notion of a quantitative “racism spectrum,” which implies that there are different degrees of racism, so that one can be “more or less” racist, became the explicit focus of the “reasonable accommodation” debate on at least two occasions. The first was in relation to the aforementioned marketing poll published by the Journal de Montréal that revealed that 59 per cent of Québécois – as opposed to 47 per cent of Canadians in other provinces – located themselves somewhere on a spectrum of “mildly racist” (43%) to “very racist” (1%), with “moderately racist” (15%) as the midpoint.96 The second prominent instance occurred as the televised public consultations were coming to an end, and the commissioners had to respond to the widespread criticism that the commission had given people a forum to “air their racism.” The commission responded by forming a research group to perform a statistical analysis of the public’s contributions at the hearings. To some, this seemed an exercise in exonerating the commission. Recalling Ahmed’s critique of the antiracist

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avowals of institutions, we might say that this study achieved similar results. It enabled the commission to respond, nonperformatively, that “we too are concerned about racism” while producing evidence that racist speech was infrequent in the hearings – and thereby shutting down antiracist critique.97 The academics who performed the analysis constructed a “racism spectrum” to define as racist only the “openly xenophobic, racist, unacceptable remarks” of numerically few interveners in the hearings (2%), as opposed to the “negative” – but not “racist” – “tactless, rash, hurtful, ignorant, stereotypical or prejudiced remarks” of a larger number of interveners (12%).98 Gada Mahrouse argues that by restricting the scope of the concept of racism in this way, it became “more difficult to notice the ways in which less apparent forms of racism were in fact structuring the Commission’s proceedings.”99 Specifically, what was obscured is how “the idea of majority tolerance towards immigrants and minorities, which the commission ended up endorsing, could be seen as a solution precisely because” expressions of cultural racism, which construct the “majority as superior because more progressive and tolerant,” were defined out of existence as racism.100 Bouchard and Taylor warn that “we must always be wary of imputing to racism certain attitudes or remarks that in actual fact stem from collective insecurity or, more precisely, from the exploitation of this insecurity.”101 Indeed, in their report, Bouchard and Taylor suggest we restrict “racism” to ideologies of superiority based on biological characteristics, excluding racisms based on cultural characteristics. Dismissive of its elaboration as a concept in the critical race literature, Bouchard and Taylor claim the term “cultural racism” is “confusing” because racism, they insist, is based on biological characteristics.102 Yet cultural racism is one of the most relevant concepts on which they might have drawn to explain and critique the true crisis facing Quebec society. (Their proposed substitute term, “ethnism,” does not have much political or theoretical traction.) As Étienne Balibar has argued with reference to “postcolonial” France, the category of immigration substitutes for the category of race in constituting the “new racism” along cultural lines.103 He describes cultural racism as a form of “racism without races” in which the “dominant theme is not biological heredity but the insurmountability of cultural differences.”104 If, in a post-Holocaust context, the biological basis for racism has been widely discredited, cultural racisms have proliferated, inflamed by the so-called War on Terror. Culture – an apparently non-racial category – serves as the alibi for race. Hiding behind the apparently non-racial concepts of “culture” and “religion,” racism seems to disappear. I want to argue that this reflects what is perhaps the central contradiction that troubles the commissioners’ report: the need to, at once, deny, minimize, contain, and recommend out of existence a social problem that, as it has been constructed, inverts the social reality of structural racism. Immigrant and non-immigrant racialized groups are not accommodated in Quebec. Members of these groups face conditions of exploitation, violence, poverty, precarity, structural and interpersonal discrimination, alienation, marginalization, and harassment. Crisis, Domination, and Resistance If there was something positive about the commission, for me, it was witnessing the courage of people who were marginalized both in this discourse and in Quebec society, who nevertheless made themselves heard. In some cases, these were people who were faced with material obstacles to public participation, even risking deportation by publicly iden-

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tifying themselves as non-status. In some cases, they were mocked in the media for their accents.105 For me (an immigrant to Canada who later became a permanent resident in Quebec), as for many other immigrants, the commission represented insult added to injury. In their submissions and testimonies to the commission, members of immigrant communities were pointing to the massive social and economic disparities, unemployment and under-employment, repressive and exploitative immigration laws, structural racism, and state violence as the real obstacles to integration.106 It seemed to many of us that the commission licensed the expression of xenophobia and settler entitlement, displacing the problem of structural racism onto its targets.107 That is, it framed the problem as one of “accommodation” of cultural difference, rather than as one of endemic racism towards immigrant groups. The economic underbelly of the “interculturalism” debate surfaced predominantly in the interventions of migrant workers and of racialized minorities. For instance, the Immigrant Workers’ Centre in Montreal issued a statement in which the authors argued that “‘cultural accommodation’ blinds the public to the realities of migration, and how the middle and owning classes of Quebec society benefit from the exploitation of the ‘they.’ The connections between immigration and labour are absent from the debate and we believe that [they] should be at its centre.”108 In the commission hearings, at academic conferences, and in marginal spaces, migrants – including people on temporary worker programs, “legal” immigrants, permanent residents, non-status people, and international students – overwhelmingly spoke to the economic relations that structured their experience living and working (or looking for work) in Quebec. From the non-recognition of degrees and credentials from foreign institutions, to rampant discrimination in hiring, they shared the structural conditions which lead to unemployment and underemployment, overwork, hyper-exploitation, and dangerous working conditions. The fact that this theme emerges so clearly from immigrants’ interventions in the hearings and briefs submitted to the commission has not been sufficiently addressed in the commission’s aftermath. Rejecting a structural critique of Quebec society, Bouchard and Taylor identified the “roots of the crisis” – or perceived crisis – as the “identity-related anxiety” which they argue still plagues French-Canadian Quebecers.109 In a psychoanalytic moment, they write that the francophone majority must confront “the identity question” because if avoided, it resurfaces as repressed content.110 As such, the authors of the report encourage francophone Québécois to “start acting like a majority” in control of its political and cultural institutions.111 They concede that “it would certainly be unfair to demand of small minority nations somewhat mistreated by history” (a reference to Quebec’s identity as the “conquered colonialists”),112 “the assurance of imperial nations.”113 Yet, they insist that a majority that is confident in its identity and in its ability to “manage diversity” in the society it dominates would not be anxious when faced with difference. This, Bouchard and Taylor tell us, “is the first lesson we should draw from recent events”: that as “a cultural minority in the Americas, Québec as a French-speaking society needs a strong identity to allay its anxieties and behave like a self-assured majority.”114 What does it mean to “start acting like a majority”? A majority that wants to imagine itself as modern and liberal conducts itself with confidence in the legitimacy of its rule. It does this by tolerating – and managing – difference within its midst. Thus, the commissioners recommend that Quebec society pursue an intercultural ethic, based on which it could elaborate a policy of interculturalism, accompanied by an “open secularism.” But to

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construct the problem of racism as the problem of the accommodation of minorities by the majority and to urge the reconciliation of these two groups is to obviate how racism structurally functions. While it is now clear that it was never the intention of this commission to study how structural racism informs immigration policy and practices of interculturalism, nor, for that matter, to learn about the struggles of migrants in Quebec, members of immigrant and racialized communities nevertheless compelled the commissioners to consider their points of view, and to give their experiences and analyses at least token mention in their report. While the commission touted itself as an exercise in participatory democracy, only certain kinds of highly restrained contributions were admissible. The commission took no care to ensure that dissenters’ rights to assembly and free speech were respected by law enforcement. At a public hearing at the Palais de Congrès in Montreal, riot police violently rounded up protesters who were dispersing, striking them with batons and injuring some people (including elders), and arresting, in addition to two others, a journalist who had been documenting the scene.115 Inside the auditorium, undercover police dressed in long, black leather coats had been seated throughout the proceedings among the participants, only outing themselves in time to remove a speaker (who identified himself as a member of the political party Québec Solidaire) who broke the protocol restricting participants to two-minute interventions. Given many migrants’ experiences of living under military dictatorships, and of having family members killed or “disappeared” by the state, the actions of police – both in uniform and undercover – were a chilling reminder of the limits of liberal democracy in Quebec. This is particularly problematic given that Montreal police are one of the primary agents of racialized violence in Quebec. At the same time as Quebec was asking itself whether it had gone “too far” in accommodating immigrants and minorities, racialized communities were reeling from the death of Mohamed Anas Bennis, a young man who was killed by a police officer in Côte-des-Neiges while he was returning home from his early morning prayers at the mosque. In the two years between 2005 and 2007, police killed fifty-three civilians, and wounded another twenty-nine, refusing to make public the details surrounding these deaths and injuries.116 In the summer of 2008, police in the north of Montreal killed another young person of colour, Fredy Villanueva. To date, the state has not been held accountable for these police murders and for the routine brutality law enforcement authorities visit upon racialized youth, homeless and street-based people, sex workers, non-status people detained in “Immigration Prevention Centres,” Indigenous people, and protesters.117 Given the treatment of protesters by police at the Palais de Congrès, it is hard to quote without irony Taylor’s assessment that the commission offered “an enlightening experience in Québec-style democracy.”118 Nothing Fails like Success While the frenzy around “reasonable accommodation” was eventually met with saturated attention spans, conditions have not improved for immigrant and long-standing racialized groups in Quebec. The Charest government amended the Quebec Charter to emphasize the equality of women and men, but to my knowledge did not implement any of the substantive recommendations of the report to combat discrimination against immigrant women.119 When the report was formally submitted to the Quebec government, newspapers expressed

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the sentiments of a weary public with the dismissive headline, “Enough about the hijab.”120 It would seem that this was another nonperformative, since a year and a half later, Quebec debated legislation (Bill 94) which, if approved, would deny essential government services, public employment, educational opportunities, and health care to Muslim women who wear the niqab. If the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” was overblown and the crisis largely imagined by an insecure majority, as the commissioners want to claim, the foundations of Quebec society remain deeply racialized, profoundly exploitative of, and hostile to immigrant and Indigenous people. In other words, what seems clear in the aftermath of the “reasonable accommodation” debate is that the crisis that Bouchard and Taylor were appointed to study was not the right crisis to attend to if the intention was to transform Quebec into a more just or egalitarian society. But was this ever the intention? And if not, then what are we to make of the call to reconciliation that the commissioners issue in their report? If we are convinced by Ahmed’s account of nonperformativity, we have reason not to take this call at face value, but to probe for the inverted meaning it carries. Like the construction of “reasonable accommodation” as a favour bestowed by the majority on the minority – or, more accurately, by the socially powerful on the disempowered – it functions to divert our attention from the actual actions and inactions of the state, its representatives, and its entitled or “exalted” citizens.121 More generally, then, we need to interrogate calls for “reconciliation” that dominant groups issue without ceding their position of dominance. In not doing what they say, nonperformative calls to reconciliation succeed in reproducing – rather than failing at transforming – status quo relations of power.

NOTES 1 CCPARDC commissioned thirteen research projects by Quebec academics, ran thirty-one focus groups, had fifty-nine meetings with experts, and consulted with an advisory committee composed of fifteen specialists from various disciplines. From the public the commission received over 900 analytical briefs and heard the experiential testimony of 241 individuals. Members of the public were invited to make two-minute interventions at televised forums held in Montreal and in fifteen regions of Quebec, in which approximately 3400 people participated, and which thousands of others watched from home. Gada Mahrouse, “‘Reasonable Accommodation’ in Québec: The Limits of Participation and Dialogue,” Race and Class 52, no.1 (2003): 85–96. 2 Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation (Quebec: Gouvernement du Québec, 2008), 243; http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/index-en.html. 3 I capitalize “Others,” here, following the practice of Bouchard and Taylor, which indicates that they use the word intending to denote social alterity. Immigrants are the “Other” to “FrenchCanadians,” the normative citizens of the Quebec nation (243). In the discourse of “reasonable accommodation,” the question of the integration of the Other was projected predominantly onto Muslims, specifically hijabi Muslim women, who were the targets of virulent gendered racism in this discourse (Simone de Beauvoir Institute, 2007; see note 5 below). 4 Since Charles Taylor is well known as a Hegelian philosopher, and “reconciliation” (the usual translation of his Versöhnung) is at the centre of Hegel’s social philosophy, it would be interesting to explore the Hegelian resonances of “reconciliation” in the context of the BouchardTaylor commission; yet such an analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter. No mention of Hegel is made in Building the Future, rendering such an interpretation somewhat speculative.

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As Michael O. Hardimon has noted, reconciliation is used by Hegel as a “technical term referring to the process of overcoming alienation. It is the process of overcoming the splits that divide the self from the social world and the attendant splits that divide the self from the self. Reconciliation is also the state in which the process of overcoming alienation results – the state that Hegel characterizes as being at home in the social world,” Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 2. See G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. Alan White (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002). The question of how “reconciliation” with the modern social world (as the natural and necessary end for the individual in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right) is connected to the centrality that Hegel gives to the human need for recognition by an other (the intersubjective basis of self-worth, in his Phenomenology of Spirit) would seem relevant to the Bouchard-Taylor commission. (See G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977].) Taylor’s published work on Canadian multiculturalism suggests that one of the rewards of (Hegelian) “reconciliation” (understood as accommodating oneself to the social world so as to be capable of feeling “at home” in it) is having one’s human (subjective) needs for recognition met. Taylor combines the stresses on reconciliation and recognition in his essay on the “politics of recognition” in the Canadian context, specifically in relation to the tension between collective and individual rights, and the challenges of evaluating demands for special constitutional status for Quebec and for recognition of the moral value of non-Western cultures. See Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in New Contexts of Canadian Criticism, ed. A. Heble, D. Palmateer Pennee, and J.R.T. Struthers (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1997), 98–131. The critique of this essay offered by Smaro Kamboureli’s ‘Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literatures in English Canada (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2000) is pertinent. Kamboureli maintains that Taylor’s suggestion that other cultures should be studied before having their roles in Canadian multiculturalism evaluated in fact positions these cultural others (who may well be citizens) as “defendant[s],” and the normative “we” that would know them as “judge, prosecution, or jury” (113). Taylor’s insistence on the dialogical nature of recognition is not maintained through his essay’s discussion of the challenges presented by cultural differences, Kamboureli argues. For another critique, see Himani Bannerji, “Charles Taylor’s Politics of Recognition,” in Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism, and Gender (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000), 125–50. 5 As the “reasonable accommodation” commission was beginning its tour of Quebec in the fall of 2007, I was teaching at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in Montreal. Faculty and students collaborated to write and present a statement at the commission hearings (Simone de Beauvoir Institute, “‘Reasonable Accommodation’: A Feminist Response. ‘Accommodements raisonnables’: Une réponse féministe,” Raph Beaulieu, trans. [Montreal, Fall 2007]). My analysis in this paper owes much to that collective process, and particularly to Dr Gada Mahrouse, Dr Trish Salah, and Dr Candis Steenbergen. The Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CRÉUM) awarded me a postdoctoral fellowship to study the discourse of “reasonable accommodation” in 2008–9. My adviser, Dr Daniel Weinstock, the director of CRÉUM, was also a member of the advisory board of the commission. He generously shared with me his insights, his criticisms, and his long view of Quebec interculturalism. I am also grateful to Dr Pauline Wakeham and Dr Jennifer Henderson for their invaluable editorial suggestions. Finally, I wish to thank Riel Dupuis-Rossi for pointing me to Cindy Blackstock’s research on the child welfare system and, more generally, for raising my awareness of the endurance and pervasiveness of colonialism in Anówara Kawenote.

254 Anna Carastathis 6 Sara Ahmed, “The Nonperformativity of Antiracism,” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 7, no. 1 (2006): 104–26. 7 The verb “gérer” (to manage) and the noun “gestion” (management) are commonly used in Quebec to describe the policy tasks presented by interculturalism (Ministère des Communautés culturelles et de l’Immigration, La gestion de la diversité et l’accommodement raisonnable [Quebec: Ministère des Communautés culturelles et de l’Immigration, 1993]). 8 Pierre Vallières, Nègres blancs d’Amérique: Autobiographie précoce d’un “terroriste” québécois (Montreal: Éditions Parti Pris, 1968). 9 Ahmed, “The Nonperformativity of Antiracism.” 10 J.L. Austin, “How to do things with words,” in The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard in 1955, ed. J.O. Urmson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). 11 Austin, “How to do things with words,” 14; Ahmed, “The Nonperformativity of Antiracism,” 105. 12 Austin, “How to do things with words,” 14–15; Ahmed, “The Nonperformativity of Antiracism,” 105. 13 Austin, “How to do things with words,” 45–6, 55; Ahmed, “The Nonperformativity of Antiracism,” 105. 14 Ahmed, “The Nonperformativity of Antiracism,” 105. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 104. 17 Ibid., 108. 18 Ibid., 110. 19 Ibid., 112. 20 Ibid., 118, 125. 21 Ibid., 108. 22 Harsha Walia, “Komagata Maru and the Politics of Apologies,” Znet, 25 August 2008, http:// www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18536. 23 Quebec Native Women’s Association/Femmes Autochtones du Québec, “Reaction to the Government of Canada’s Apologies for Residential School System,” press release, Kahnawake, 11 June 2008, http://www.faq-qnw.org/pressrel-en.html. 24 Cindy Blackstock et al., “Wen:de – we are coming to the light of day” (Ottawa, ON: First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, 2005). 25 Cindy Blackstock, “First Nations Child and Family Services: Restoring Peace and Harmony in First Nations Communities,” in Child Welfare: Connecting Research Policy and Practice Waterloo, ed. K. Kufeldt and B. McKenzie (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003), 331–43. 26 Brad McKenzie, “Block Funding Child Maintenance in First Nations Child and Family Services: A Policy Review” (Montreal: Kahnawake Shakotiia’takehnhas Community Services, February 2002). 27 Cindy Blackstock, “Residential Schools: Did They Really Close or Just Morph into Child Welfare?” Indigenous Law Journal 6 (2007): 71–8. 28 Judy Pearsall, ed., Oxford English Dictionary, 10th (rev.) ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1197, 1506. 29 Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, “Bouchard-Taylor Commission Citizens’ Forums: Absence of a Notable Divide between Montréal and the Rest of Québec,” press release, Montreal, 19 December 2007, www .accommodements.qc.ca/communiqués/2007-12-19-en.html.

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30 I name just a few of the main events that were reported in the media in the lead-up to the mandating of the commission. In chapters 2 and 3 of their report, Bouchard and Taylor discuss these and many other incidents – most of which were misperceived as instances of “reasonable accommodation.” See Yasmin Jiwani, “Editorial: Focus from Québec,” R.A.C.E. Link, Spring 2007: 2–3, http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/Documents/1120/RACELINK%20SPRING%202007.pdf. 31 Monika Kin Gagnon, “Making (Non)Sense of L’Affaire Hérouxville,” R.A.C.E. Link, Spring 2007: 4–6, http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/Documents/1120/RACELINK%20SPRING %202007.pdf. 32 Graeme Hamilton, “Did Hérouxville get the last laugh on multiculturalism? ‘They don’t laugh anymore,’” National Post, 23 October 2007, www.nationalpost.com/scripts/story .html?id=01eb9942-d454-4b76-9432-f77467c9c2b0. 33 Tanisha Ramachandran, “Endangering Canadian Values: The Case of Hijab, an Eleven-year-old Girl, and a Soccer Ball,” R.A.C.E. Link, Spring 2007: 6–7, http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/ Documents/1120/RACELINK%20SPRING%202007.pdf. 34 Controversy about “veiled voting” had been raging at the federal level as well. The House of Commons passed Bill C-31 in its spring 2007 session, which requires visual identification of voters. But Elections Canada refused to interpret this as requiring niqabi women to unveil themselves, and stated on its website that they had the option to provide additional pieces of identification, or to arrive with another registered elector who would vouch for their identity under oath. According to Mohamed Elmasry, the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, only 50 of 300,000 Muslim women in Canada wear the niqab, and they would willingly unveil for a female elections official. “It’s a non-issue for us,” stated Elmasry. Barry Brown, “Veiled-voting issue irks tolerance-weary Quebec; Muslim culture a flash point in Canada,” in Washington Times, 28 September 2007, A1. 35 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future. 36 Jeff Heinrich, “‘Crisis’? What ‘crisis’? Nothing to fear about Quebec situation, authors say; Problems exist in people’s minds, not reality,” Montreal Gazette, 20 May 2008, A8. 37 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 25. 38 Ibid., 25; quoted in Heinrich, “‘Crisis’? What ‘crisis’?” A8. 39 “De souche” means “original” or “rooted.” For a discussion of this term, which refers to nonimmigrant, non-Indigenous, and generally non-anglophone Québécois see “Lettre ouverte des Québécois dits “de souche” contre l’intolérance,” Montreal, 29 October 2007, Blog Contre l’Intolerance, http://contrelintolerance.blogspot.com. 40 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 160. 41 Excepting the two times “reconciliation” shows up in the title of the report, the remaining six instances are as follows. The introduction announces that “the time has come for reconciliation. This is the meaning of this report, entirely inspired by a search for balance and fairness, in a spirit of compromise and clarification” (Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 25). A discussion follows concerning how Western nations are “exploring forms of reconciliation between old, destabilized identities and ethnocultural diversity that intends to assert its rights” (42). The third instance of “reconciliation” is in reference to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Multani case (53). Then, the term is used to praise Bill 101 (which established French as the common public language of Quebec), “which proposed a form of intercultural reconciliation centred on French speaking culture as a rallying point” (116). The next instance is their claim, which I analyse below, that “reconciliation has always existed, even in empires” (160). I have already discussed the sixth instance – which constructs colonialism as the foundation of reconciliation – earlier in this chapter (243).

256 Anna Carastathis 42 On the relevance of a specifically Hegelian understanding of “reconciliation” to the term’s usage in the report, see note 4, above. 43 L’actualité, “Trop Accommodants?” cover, L’actualité, 1 October 2007. 44 In separatist discourses, “allophones” (that is, non-anglophone immigrants and immigrantdescended groups) have long been constructed as a threat to Québécois national sovereignty. This anxiety has survived the “allophone shift” recorded in the 2006 census, whereby French had topped English as the language adopted by immigrants. Gazette staff writer, “We’re evolving – dramatically: Census shows major linguistic immigration changes,” Montreal Gazette, 5 December 2007, A1. The anxiety fuelling language politics would seem to have more to do with the complexions, national origins, and accents of the speakers than with a real worry of linguistic decline. The same census data showed that non-immigrant francophone Québécois had become “a minority” in Montreal, due to their decreasing birth rate, their flight to the suburbs, and the growing number of immigrants. Andy Riga, “A minority on the island: Proportion of francophones is now 49.8% because of more immigrants, low birth rate,” Montreal Gazette, 5 December 2007, A1. 45 “Accommodation” appears for the first time in relation to interculturalism in the policy document “Autant de façons d’être québécois. Plan d’action à l’intention des communautés culturelles” (Gouvernement du Québec, 1981). 46 As a legal doctrine, the duty of accommodation was imported by the Supreme Court of Canada from the United States. See Michael Lynk, “A Hardy Transplant: The Duty to Accommodate and Disability Rights in Canadian Labour Law,” Labour Law Journal 49 (1998): 962–80. See also Faisal Bhabha, “Between Exclusion and Assimilation: Experimentalizing Multiculturalism,” McGill Law Journal / Revue de droit McGill 54 (Spring 2009): 43. In Canada, the first decision which applied this legal standard was O’Malley and Ontario Human Rights Commission v. Simpson-Sears Ltd (1985), where the court decided that discrimination could be indirect, so that a finding of discrimination did not require presence of intent to discriminate (Lynk, “A Hardy Transplant,” 963). Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys (2006) is cited as the most significant decision concerning the “accommodation” of religious practices under the Charter thus far (Bhabha, “Between Exclusion and Assimilation,” 2009). However, it is important to note that this case was not decided using the legal standard of reasonable accommodation, but rather using the proportionality test, which elaborates the limitations clause (section 1) of the Canadian Charter. 47 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 289. 48 Ibid., 286. 49 It appears only seventeen times in the report, which is 278 pages long, excluding appendices. 50 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 63. 51 Ibid., 63. 52 Ibid., 65. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 252. 55 Avigail Eisenberg, Conference presentation, “The Bouchard-Taylor Report, One Year Later: International Perspectives,” Université de Montréal, 1 May 2008. 56 Ibid. 57 Gazette staff writer, “YMCA windows cause flap in Mile End neighbourhood,” Montreal Gazette, 7 November 2006, http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story .html?id=60efc79f-e610-461c-90cd-b5b3068e7a5a&k=67093.

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58 This is evident in Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys (2006). The court found that the school board had violated Gurjab Singh Multani’s right to freedom of religion when it prohibited this student from wearing the kirpan, an article of the Sikh faith, to school. In negotiations with Multani’s parents, the school board had initially agreed to allow the student to wear his kirpan if it were sewn into the fabric of his clothing. His parents agreed to this compromise, but the council of commissioners of the school board later retracted it, forcing the Multani family to seek a judicial resolution of the conflict. 59 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 161, 173, 177. 60 Ibid., 164. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid., 282. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 66 Pearsall, ed., Oxford English Dictionary, 650. 67 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 160. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., emphasis added. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. See Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity (Cambridge, MA: Princeton University Press, 2008). 75 The Constitution Act (1867) grants concurrent jurisdiction over immigration to the provincial and federal governments. Provincial legislatures may make laws with respect to immigration as long as these do not conflict with any act of the Parliament. Nevertheless, Quebec is the only provincial government that currently has immigration legislation and a provincial department of immigration. Quebec decides in approximately 60% of immigration cases, whereas Canada decides in the remaining 40%. The legislative basis is the Cullen Couture Agreement (1978), amended by subsequent accords between Canada and Quebec (Canada-Quebec Accord Relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, 1991). In 1981, the Quebec government enacted its own immigration laws (An Act Respecting Immigration to Québec, 1981). 76 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 243. 77 Daniel Marc Weinstock, “Quatre clés pour éviter la crise,” L’actualité, 1 October 2007: 39–40. 78 This was underscored in the press release issued by the office of the premier: “Québec is a host society. The new arrivals, like those who came before them, come to Québec to share in our success, to live freely and to make a new life for themselves. They come to enrich Québec with their knowledge and their culture; they construct Québec with us. Yet, each one of them has the responsibility to integrate into our nation. This means that they must commit to adhering to our fundamental values. In return, we, as the host society, also have a responsibility: we must be open to their difference.” Gouvernement du Québec, “Le premier ministre énonce sa vision et crée une commission spéciale d’étude,” press release, 8 February 2007, http://www .premierministre.gouv.qc.ca/salle-de-presse/communiques/2007/fevrier/2007-02-08-en .shtml.

258 Anna Carastathis 79 Reproduced in Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 275. 80 Ibid. 81 Conseil du statut de la femme, “Summary,” Droit à l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes et liberté religieuse. Drafted by Caroline Beauchamp, trans. LexLingua International, Inc. (Quebec: Gouvernement du Québec, 2007), www.csf.gouv.qc.ca; Pierre Bosset, “Égalité des sexes, religion et chartes des droits: La prudence s’impose,” Le Devoir 98, no. 229, 10 October 2007, A7; Beverley Baines, “Must Feminists Support Entrenchment of Sex Equality? Lessons from Quebec,” in Constituting Equality: Gender Equality and Comparative Constitutional Law, ed. Susan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 82 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (July 1991): 1292. 83 Reproduced in Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 275. 84 Ibid., 283. 85 Thobani, Exalted Subjects, 151. 86 Ibid., 150. 87 Ibid., 151. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid, 66. 90 Ibid,151. 91 Quoted in Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (London: Routledge, 1999), 65. 92 Mackey, House of Difference, 66. 93 Thobani, Exalted Subjects, 150. 94 Ibid., 151. 95 Many commentators have pointed out that official multiculturalism was a strategy to contain the secessionist movement for Quebec sovereignty. Mackey writes that the shift from bilingualism and biculturalism to official multiculturalism, one of the proposals of the Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1971), was conceived to “undercut Québec’s demands for special recognition by bestowing recognition on other cultural groups” (Mackey, House of Difference, 77). 96 See Jiwani, “Editorial”; Kin Gagnon, “Making (Non)Sense of L’Affaire Hérouxville”. 97 These five categories were “racist,” “negative,” “moderate,” “pluralist,” and “other.” CCAPRCD, “Bouchard-Taylor Commission Citizen’s Forums: Absence of a notable divide between Montréal and the rest of Québec,” press release (Montreal, 19 December 2007), www.accommodements.qc.ca/communiques/2007-12-19-en.html. Rachad Antonius et al., “Analyse préliminaire des interventions faites lors des forums de la Commission de Consultation sur les Pratiques d’Accommodement Reliées aux Différences Culturelles,” (Montreal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2007). 98 Ibid. 99 Mahrouse, “‘Reasonable Accommodation’ in Québec,” 95. 100 Ibid. 101 Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 238. 102 Ibid., 222. Though they note that “a number of authors speak of neoracism in this regard,” it nevertheless seems to them “preferable to keep the old meaning of the notion of racism, which bases the hierarchy on physical or biological traits, and to resort to the notion of ethnism (or xenophobia, which is related to it) to indicate hierarchies based on ethnic or cultural traits”

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103 104 105

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(ibid., 221–2). In the glossary they define “ethnism” as “the violation by an ethnic group of other people’s rights just because the group believes its culture to be superior to another one” (286). Étienne Balibar, “Is There a Neo-Racism?” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 1991), 21 Ibid. One target of this racist mocking was one of my students who eloquently presented the Simone de Beauvoir Institute’s critical statement at the hearing at the Intercultural Library in Côtedes-Neiges in her third language, French. As I later learned from a colleague who watched the evening news, the anchors laughed at this young person’s “imperfect” French in their report on the event. Immigrant Workers’ Centre, “Whose Reasonable Accommodation?” Unpublished statement (Montréal, 2007); Samaa Elibyari, “Rapport soumis à la Commission Bouchard-Taylor” (Quebec: Le Conseil Canadien des Femmes Musulmanes, October 2007); South Asian Women’s Community Centre, “Brief Submitted to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation,” drafted by Sadeqa Siddiqui (Montreal, Fall 2007); Al Hidaya Association, “Debating Reasonable Accommodations: Can a Progressive Nation Overcome Racism?” Brief submitted to the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (Montreal: Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montréal, 2007). Simone de Beauvoir Institute, 2007. Immigrant Workers’ Centre, 1. Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 185. Also see Susan Judith Ship, “Citizens of the State but Not Members of the Nation: The Politics of Language and Culture in the Construction of Minorities in Québec,” in Possibilities and Limitations: Multicultural Policies and Programs in Canada, ed. C.E. James (Halifax: Fernwood, 2005), 76–92. Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 188. Ibid. Ship, “Citizens of the State,” 2005. Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 244. Ibid. Stefan Christoff, “Acquitted of charges stemming from protests against ‘reasonable accommodation’ hearings,” Palais de justice, Montreal, 28 October 2009, E-mail on file with the author. Henry Aubin, “Alarming number of Quebecers have died at police hands,” Montreal Gazette, 8 September 2007, B7. The detention facility operated by Citizenship and Immigration Canada in Laval, Quebec, in which undocumented migrants, asylum seekers who are refused under the “Safe Third Country Agreement,” and others who are placed in the “removal stream” are imprisoned until they are deported is officially called the “Centre de prévention de l’immigration de Laval” (“Immigration Prevention Centre of Laval,” or IPC). See Laila Malik, “The immigration prevention centre,” Herizons 17, no. 2 (2003): 47. Charles Taylor, quoted in press release, “Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, 2007.” The thirty-seven recommendations of the report are too numerous to list here. They fall under six broad areas: (A) Learning diversity; (B) Harmonization practices; (C) the Integration of immigrants; (D) Interculturalism; (E) Inequality and discrimination; (F) the French language;

260 Anna Carastathis (G) Secularism; and (H) Research to be conducted (see Bouchard and Taylor, Building the Future, 266–72). 120 Jeff Heinrich, “‘Enough about the hijab’: Quebecers should accept the headscarf and move on, study concludes,” Montreal Gazette, 20 May 2008, A1. 121 Thobani, Exalted Subjects.

14 Rewiring Critical Affects: Reading “Asian Canadian” in the Transnational Sites of Kerri Sakamoto’s One Hundred Million Hearts roy miki

“What do you tell the dead when you lose?”1

In the nation-based assumptions that have underwritten the emergence of “Asian Canadian” as a cultural and literary area, Asian remains a highly fraught abstraction. Produced under colonial-settler relations in Canada, it has been used to stand in for specific groups that trace their origins to countries as diverse as Japan, China, India, Korea, Vietnam, and so on. Although Asian, when set alongside Canadian, has generated proliferating cultural works, as evident in the surge of Asian Canadian literature in recent years, the term Asian Canadian carries the burden of histories of racism in which Asian has been aligned with alien or minor status. Writers who are identified as, or who self-identify as, Asian Canadian often find themselves having to negotiate the effects of this contradiction in their work. How they account for or otherwise represent the subjective coordinates of racism will influence the aesthetic dimensions of their work. The integral connection between subject formation and aesthetics in Asian Canadian writing has meant that its cultural content has been largely a function of its highly mobile and indeterminate critical formation, and not vice versa. The term Asian Canadian makes its appearance out of an ensemble of contingencies that embody the uncertain effects and affects of both elements in its formation, the Asian and the Canadian of which it has been constituted. Since it is produced out of constantly shifting boundaries of identity and power, it can be read as a limit term that simultaneously references groups identified under its aegis – that is, groups tracing their ancestries to a host of Asian regions with highly differentiated histories, languages, and cultural values – and nation-states that have been at odds with each other through long histories of colonialism, as well as cultural and economic competition. In the more restricted arena of Canadian liberal multiculturalism, the modifier Asian has provoked complex and multifaceted effects and affects in those subjects, in most cases citizens, who have had to contend with a national discourse that produced the Asian as an internal outsider, at once a threat to its racialized body politic and a presence to be reckoned with. In this drama of effects and affects, the Japanese Canadian redress settlement of 22 September 1988 which redressed injustices endured during and after the Second World War, remains a visible sign of the malleable – and always potentially transformative – nature of Asian Canadian formations.

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Such is the case for Kerri Sakamoto’s novel One Hundred Million Hearts (2003), a work that exposes the shifting boundaries of Asian Canadian literary production under the current literary, cultural, and institutional conditions governing the study of Canadian literature. In Sakamoto’s narrative, a nation-based Japanese Canadian network of affects is rewired to encompass its complicated ties with a Japan that apparently got lost in the internment of Japanese Canadians. When stripped of their citizenship rights and branded Enemy Alien by their own government, many Japanese Canadians demonstrated their loyalty to Canada, the country of their birth, by disavowing their transnational connections to Japan. The novel’s critique of a Japanese nationalism in which the aesthetics of cherry blossoms is used to glorify Second World War kamikaze pilots, whose deaths are ritualized in the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, points to the potential of Asian Canadian to move beyond its nation-based borders to speak back to the transnational contexts of its cultural formations. The limits of Japanese Canadian subjectivities within these borders had precluded such speaking back. Three Points of Entry as Departure One: During a childhood in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where my family resettled after the mass uprooting of Japanese Canadians from the British Columbia coast in the 1940s, I found myself in an identity conundrum, one shared by others of my generation who grew up in the aftermath of internment. In the dispersed sites of forced relocation, living among white majorities, we were consistently framed as Japanese, even though we were Canadian by birth. At the same time, as Japanese Canadians whose loyalties were always suspect, we encountered the internalized pressure to disavow relations to Japan, even though we had familial and cultural ties. The pressure to disavow – “I am not Japanese” – in the face of the social condition – “You are Japanese” – gave rise to the qualified drive to excel at becoming Canadian, becoming, in this sense, more than Canadian in what became a model minority syndrome. In the qualification, though, there was nestled a restless curiosity about Japan, an exotic place portrayed in the Canadian media as rich in aesthetically refined cultural practices, yet a nation whose fanatical military government had caused such pain and suffering to others and who, in return, had suffered horrendous mass deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This curiosity got the upper hand during the late 1960s and 1970s, the searchfor-roots era, when a number of sansei (third-generation Japanese Canadians), myself included, set out to live in the land of our ancestors. But it did not take long to realize that we would never be seen and accepted as genuine Japanese. The strict identitarian borders of Japan as a nation-state, seemingly homogeneous to the core at that time, refused to yield to our desire for a connection. Two: There was the conundrum that 4000 Japanese Canadians, over 75 per cent of whom were Canadian-born, faced when they were exiled from Canada near the end of the war. The Canadian state represented their journey to war-torn Japan as “repatriation,” but similar to other state-manufactured words, such as resettlement and evacuation, this one too was an euphemism for expulsion or deportation. The bureaucrats who administered the policy of repatriation never questioned the reality that one could not be repatriated to a country to which one had never belonged. One member of this group, Irene Tsuyuki, despite her Canadian birth, was categorized as Enemy Alien, that is, Japanese under the Canadian federal government’s racialized policy of treating her as “of the Japanese race.” When she

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landed in Japan, she was also categorized as Alien, but there it was because of her Canadian nationality. An alien in the regulatory discourses of the two nations, Irene became stateless for several years, until she was able to return to Canada.2 Three: Immediately following the Japanese Canadian redress settlement, many of us were surprised to learn about large numbers of Japanese Canadians in Japan who were not acknowledged during the movement itself. The National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC), the organization that negotiated the settlement, had been so intent on impressing on Canadians the hyper-Canadian nature of its human-rights cause that it had unintentionally disavowed its responsibility to the Japanese Canadians living in Japan. We had missed the transnational implications of redress, not recognizing those who had been trapped in Japan during the war, many of whom never returned to Canada. When the question of their exclusion arose, the NAJC and the Canadian government established a Redress Advisory Committee, under the authority of the secretary of state for multiculturalism, to determine on a case-by-case basis their eligibility for the redress compensation received by other Japanese Canadians. I served on this committee and remember many heart-wrenching stories of children separated from their families, of families unable to return to their Canadian homes, and even of young men who were conscripted into the Japanese military, and I also learned that in some instances they had joined voluntarily. The stories told in the applications confirmed the complicated and at times highly conflicted transnational ties that Japanese Canadians had with Japan before the war. Many had sent their children there to be educated and acculturated, and one of the reasons was for security. Many feared that the anti-Asian forces in Canada could one day succeed in expelling them. Their children would at least have a chance to work in Japan. Transnational Dilemmas in One Hundred Million Hearts Kerri Sakamoto’s One Hundred Million Hearts (2003) is adept in its narrative handling of the transnational dilemmas often elided in representations of Japanese Canadians that deal with the traumatic effects of race assumptions, injustice, and internment. Her protagonist Miyo Mori inhabits an uncertainly disabled body, a condition that mirrors her relationship with Masao, her Canadian-born father, whose secret life in wartime Japan has sealed them in a psychologically debilitating bondage to each other – until Miyo’s father dies. She then discovers from her father’s former lover, Setsuko, that she has a half-sister in Japan, Setsuko’s daughter Hana, who had been given up at birth for adoption by Setsuko’s Japanese sister. In what is her first decisive act, Miyo travels to Japan to meet Hana, but also to investigate her father’s secret past which is mysteriously tied to Japan’s wartime military regime. Arriving in Tokyo, Miyo is drawn into the ghostly landscape of wartime memories through Hana’s large, obsessively created visual collages that project the figures of the infamous kamikaze (“divine wind”) pilots. Hana initiates her into the lives of some Japanese who continue to relive the permeating ideological injunction of the wartime imperial nation – that all Japanese subjects were expected to sacrifice their lives to the one body of their divine emperor. This expectation, translated into belief, is captured in the mantra that Sakamoto cites in her novel’s title: “one hundred million hearts beating as one.” By dying for the emperor, the kamikaze would become gods (kami), and as kami they would become immortal and be remembered each year at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine during the season of falling cherry blossoms (sakura). The blossoms themselves would embody their sacrificial

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act for the emperor. In the wartime refrain “See you at Yasukuni,” the kamikaze, or the soldiers of the Special Attack Force, the tokkotai, went to their deaths with the thought that they would return as gods to Yasukuni Shrine. I have to confess that on first reading One Hundred Million Hearts my impulse was to shy away from the figure of a Japanese Canadian kamikaze. This affective response to the figure was difficult to accommodate for me, evoking as it did a tangle of nerve-endings associated with its history in the imagination of North Americans: the kamikaze suicide bombers as the epitome of the fanatical and maniacal enemy whose sole intent was to destroy all whites. Becoming the face of military Japan, the kamikaze were represented in popular culture through newsreels, cartoons, and Hollywood films as the incarnation of “yellow peril,” a discourse that referenced the “Asiatic” as an alien-other that had to be expunged from the Canadian nation. For Japanese Canadians, the figure conjured shame and fear through its association with their own ascribed status as Enemy Alien in the country of their birth. For someone whose subjectivity was influenced by the anti-Japanese propaganda in Canada, the media-produced faces of kamikaze bombers – their compassionless eyes riveted on their target – descending on a US war ship typified the racialized other as a diabolical threat to security.3 However, in drawing attention to the history of the kamikaze, Sakamoto’s novel challenges the more familiar nation-based Japanese Canadian narratives of the internment, and this creative intervention on her part provoked a rewiring of my own critical affects. The kamikaze may have been the product of Japan’s military machine, but the “yellow peril” images generated in response to them in Canadian contexts expose a transnational dimension to Japanese Canadian history previously covered over. In transgressing the limits of strictly nation-based representations of Japanese Canadians, One Hundred Million Hearts can be read as a post-redress literary work: that is, a work that seeks to move beyond the vestiges of the shame of being identified and interned as Japanese by the Canadian state.4 Sakamoto suggests as much in an interview when she comments that her “parents’ generation felt a sense of shame by association. There was an impulse to distance oneself, especially because the whole internment was perpetrated because Japanese Canadians couldn’t be distinguished from Japanese. But we need to get past that. The redress movement brought Japanese Canadians a kind of re-enfranchisement and a reaffirmation of citizenship, so we can be more bold and speak out” (140).5 If the redress movement gave permission to “speak out,” then it also gave permission to “speak back” to the Japanese wartime conditions that left their marks on the memories of Japanese Canadians. The achievement of redress in Canada can thus function as a critical frame that brings into relief the politics of memory in Japan around the question of responsibility for the massive injustices the Japanese state inflicted on others. Among the groups, as listed by Laura Hein in “War Compensation,” are “women who were forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese military forces (the ‘military comfort women’), Asian men who were compelled to perform other kinds of slave labor, Chinese people subjected to chemical or biological experimentation, and Western POWs who were mistreated, starved, and forced to work in contravention of the Geneva Conventions on Prisoners of War.”6 Although compensation for past injustices remains an important component of calls for redress from the Japanese government, acts of acknowledgment and remembrance are also crucial for those directly affected, just as these acts were for Japanese Canadians in their redress struggle.

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The Politics of Memory Steven Okazaki’s White Light / Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007), a film that presents the memory of fourteen atomic bomb survivors (known as hibakusha), begins with a select group of iconic images that encapsulate Japan’s war years: Japanese troops in 1931 leaving for the conquest of Manchuria, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US president’s declaration of war on Japan, massive bombings of Japan by the United States, probably in the final year of the war, and, finally, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. When we cut to the present, we encounter a bustling street scene with a two-person street rock band dressed in red, and lines of pedestrians passing them. The scene, which could be in Tokyo or any large urban centre in Japan, serves to situate viewers in Japan’s present. We are witness to a highly developed, technologically sophisticated consumer society, which is a radical contrast to the utter violence of the war years. We are told on-screen that “75% of the population of Japan was born after 1945,” after which the film-maker enters the crowd to ask a number of twenty-something Japanese, “What historical event occurred on August 6, 1945?” In a succession of responses, they all say they do not know, and the implication is that there has been a systematic forgetting, even suppression, of their nation’s dark wartime history, both its aggressive imperialism and its defeat following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.7 As Miyo, the protagonist of Kerri Sakamoto’s One Hundred Million Hearts, enters the urban street life of Tokyo, she too becomes conscious of the amnesiac relationship that the younger generation has to the war years and, as a consequence, their indifference to the subject of her trip: the exploits of the tokkotai (“special attack forces”), otherwise known as the kamikaze, a group of young Japanese, her own Japanese Canadian father among them, who sacrificed themselves to the emperor and his war machine. In a scene that reveals not only the cultural amnesia but also the pop cultural transformation of the fanaticism that fuelled the ideology of Japan’s military government, Miyo drops into a crowded and noisy bar with a fast-talking turntable DJ, the new centre of youth culture. Miyo’s sister Hana yells to her, “He’s our Emperor,” adding: “DJ Atomic … who can make them do anything.”8 This sensory saturated space of commodity culture typifies the new dominance of electronic forms of social mediation, suggesting the extent of the modernization process that began in the rubble of defeat, a process made possible by the technological bubble that fuelled the economy from the 1970s on. On the other side of this mass amnesia among the youth generation we encounter Hana’s small band of elderly women who faithfully mourn the war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine during cherry blossom season in April, a highly ritualized time of Japanese cultural life.9 The mourning enacts the identification of fallen cherry blossoms with the fallen soldiers of the tokkotai who sacrificed their lives for the emperor, thus fulfilling their sacred duty as honourable Japanese subjects. But in the mourning process for the war dead, no questions are raised about the indoctrination of the young soldiers, particularly the military government’s propaganda that linked the aesthetics of falling cherry blossoms – a highly charged affective image in Japanese culture – with the act of becoming one with the so-called divine body of the emperor. The tokkotai were not instrumental in the military’s war strategy from the outset; the concept of the unit was manufactured in late 1944, when military leaders knew that the defeat of Japan by superior US forces was imminent. The suicide missions were a last-ditch effort to inflict as much damage as possible before the inevitable happened. In her impressive book on the

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tokkotai, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney provides convincing evidence to support her claim that young, untrained, and inexperienced soldiers were exploited by the military leaders: “When the operation was instituted, not a single officer from the military academy volunteered to sortie as a pilot; they knew too well that it was a meaningless death. Those who ‘chose their fate’ consisted of teenage soldiers, university students whom the government graduated early so that it could draft them.”10 The propagandistic conjunction of suicidal violence for the sake of the emperor and the ephemeral beauty of cherry blossoms proved to be a lethal medium for attracting – and more often than not coercing – young idealistic university students to join the tokkotai.11 In One Hundred Million Hearts, Hajime is one of the young men. It is through his wartime letters to his then young lover Kiku, which she reads from as a ceremonial act at the Yasukuni Shrine, that Miyo learns an awful truth: Hajime had taken the place of her father Masao. Why? Because Masao was ostracized for being Canadian. We also learn that Hajime had serious doubts about the belief that the kamikaze, in death, would become one with the body of the emperor. In his letter, Hajime goes so far as to confess that he has chosen to die for Kiku, not for the emperor. For her part as the dutiful survivor, Kiku has carried this knowledge forward to the present, but she is tormented because it was her love for Hajime that drove her to insist that he die for the emperor. Both got tangled in the inconsistencies of an ideology of sacrifice that left little room for critical reflection on its consequences. Moreover, Kiku’s will to continue the mourning process so many years after the war is a testament to the power of the belief in sacrifice in the general population. The dogma that sent the kamikaze to their deaths saturated the daily lives of the Japanese subjects. They were persistently called upon to support the war and to honour the dead as resurrected gods at Yasukuni Shrine. Indeed, as David C. Earhart argues, the government instituted an overall “kamikazefication” (570) whereby all Japanese were expected to sacrifice their lives for the emperor.12 In effect, they were required to emulate the actions of the kamikaze in what was a “state of Total Warfare,” and this, Earhart says, resulted in a traumatic period “of self-censorship, self-denial, and self-annihilation” (576).13 The will to honour the sacrificial acts demanded of them during the long period of war (1931–45), despite the lethal nature of these acts, would persist in the decades ahead in the continuing nationalization of memory. The Context of the Asia Pacific War The history of the kamikaze becomes a major component of the narrative that Sakamoto constructs to make the transnational dimensions of Japanese Canadian identity formations visible before and during the Asia Pacific War (what we normally refer to as the Second World War). In her novel, not only Miyo’s father, Masao, but another central figure, Buddy (Koji) Kuroda, both Japanese Canadian nisei, get swept up in the wartime mandate to die for the emperor. During April, the designated month for commemorating falling cherry blossoms, he recalls being attracted to Japan’s colony in Manchuria (or Manchukuo in Japanese), China. Compared to the racialized conditions of life in Vancouver’s Japanese Canadian ghetto community around Powell Street, his life in Manchukuo seems full of the promise of freedom derived from his imagined Japanese identity, which he acquired through a process of mimicry. In his body movements and especially in his use of Japanese, he does everything he can to become transparent, though in his consciousness, where Eng-

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lish continues to circulate, he knows he is an alien and will be an alien forever. It is through Buddy’s double consciousness that the novel exposes the constructedness, not only of Japanese Canadian identities, but also of Japanese identities built on essentialist premises that foreclose an awareness of Japan’s culpability for its war crimes in the Asia Pacific region. Historian John Dower, among others who have studied the US occupation government from 1945 to 1953, has noted that some of the ways in which the Japanese government came to “embrace defeat” in response to the occupation produced the conditions that subsequently enabled it, not only to evade taking responsibility for its wartime actions, but also to reconstruct the nation as peace-loving, democratic, and unique in being the first victims of the atomic bomb.14 It is as if, in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which led to the surrender on 15 August, Japan was relieved of making amends for its own actions. Reinforcing this lack of responsibility were General MacArthur’s actions to protect the emperor from blame for Japan’s imperialist atrocities. Even though he legally divested Emperor Hirohito of his divine nature, MacArthur allowed him to retain symbolic status as the centre of Japanese society. This may have been a pragmatic move, a response to the fear that removing the emperor would cause uncontrollable social unrest. But by exonerating the emperor while retaining his symbolic status, MacArthur also relieved the people as a whole from having to face their own accountability. Instead, blame was transferred to a small, identifiable group of military and government leaders, who were then charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison or hanging in highly publicized war trials. The demonization of a named group of war criminals offered the alibi that those responsible for Japan’s actions had been officially punished. Although many Japanese writers and social critics would call for more accountability from the Japanese as a whole, the government was not compelled to acknowledge and redress the injustices it had caused – in a trail of bloodshed that cut through the colonization of Korea and the massacres in Nanjing. Despite the illegality of ties between state and religion in the US-produced Japanese constitution, Yasukuni Shrine was not dismantled, nor were its close affiliations with the emperor disrupted. While officially no longer aligned with the state, in the inner confines of Yasukuni Shrine the business of worshipping and commemorating the dead soldiers as national heroes went on as usual. Eventually, starting in 1975, various prime ministers quietly began visiting the shrine to commemorate the day of surrender, 15 August – in Japan, marked as the end of the war – claiming that they were doing so as private citizens and not as state representatives. Then, in 1978, without public notice, fourteen Class-A criminals who had been executed for war crimes were inducted into the shrine, joining all those, such as the tokkotai, who had sacrificed themselves for the emperor. Against highly vocal international opposition to the ceremonial visits to Yasukuni Shrine by successive prime ministers, the visits have continued, a sign of the continuing influence of conservative groups who have baulked at any form of apology or acknowledgment and who continue to valorize Japan’s imperial past. Without diminishing the threat of the Japanese conservative right, at a deeper level the ritual commemoration of the wartime dead may be symptomatic of a nation in a state of arrested mourning, fixated on an unresolved relationship to the Asia Pacific War. As Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook propose, because the Japanese government had failed to assume responsibility for the wartime atrocities, it has not had to script a post-war language of accountability and acknowledgment, a language that might have mediated the humiliating and shameful affects of defeat and surrender. Instead, in the absence of such a

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language the war continues to be remembered in the language of the pre-surrender period, when the myth of sacrifice for an essentialized nation (the Yamato nation) was the norm. That myth, they say, portrayed the soldiers as “‘the emperor’s soldiers’, [who were] willing to die for the Imperial Nation, secure in the belief that, should they fall in battle, their spirits will be enshrined and honoured by their families and even by their Emperor in the Yasukuni Shrine.”15 In their interviews with ordinary Japanese survivors, the Cooks have noted how quickly the survivors use the language of the military government to frame their private experiences: “So little in the public sphere stands between their war memories and the moment of their telling decades later, that the language of those war years comes immediately back to their lips.”16 In Sakamoto’s novel, Setsuko informs Miyo that her father’s last words for her were “endure the unendurable,”17 quoting Emperor Hirohito who, in his surrender speech, told his subjects to do the same. Even in death, Masao has no intimate words to offer Miyo; instead, he performs the language of the past, just as the elderly women at Yasukuni Shrine do in their yearly gatherings to mourn their loved ones during cherry blossom season. The death of loved ones includes both civilians and soldiers, and it is here that Hiroshima, the other site of mourning in the politics of memory that structures the novel, gets linked with the ritualization of remembering at the Yasukuni Shrine. Rather than confronting the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as one of the consequences of the nation’s own militarism, mourning the bomb victims at the shrine produces a memory field antithetical to the process of acknowledgment and redress. It is as if the US bombings, which led Emperor Hirohito to tell his subjects that they must “endure the unendurable,” were of such enormous proportions with such a high death toll that, in a stroke, their effects and affects somehow counteracted the horrific record of bloodshed and brutality left in the wake of the Japanese military’s imperialist drive to territorialize much of East Asia. Without eliminating the question of the United States’ own motives in singling out the Japanese people as the target for the unprecedented use of nuclear weapons, the bombings propelled Japan into the atomic age as its first casualty, and it was not long before the images of mutilated and deformed bodies became the dominant representation of Japan as a defeated and deflated nation. The fact of the victimization of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was and is undeniable, but the critical problem is that the victimization would overshadow the broader question of responsibility and accountability. It would result in what Lisa Yoneyama in Hiroshima Traces has identified as “amnesic elisions,”18 a condition in which “Hiroshima memories have been predicated on the grave obfuscation of the prewar Japanese Empire, its colonial practices, and their consequences.”19 The forgetting of Japan’s role as victimizer in the ritual memorializing of Hiroshima resulted in covering over – or otherwise excluding from public recognition – the violence endured by countries that were subjected to its imperial ambitions. From the context of China, for instance, the affects were radically different and remain so up to the present time. Cultural theorist Rey Chow has recalled that As a child, I was far more accustomed to hearing about Japanese atrocities against Chinese men and women during the war than I was to hearing about US atrocities against Japan … It is as if the sheer magnitude of destruction unleashed by the bombs demolished not only entire populations but also the memories and histories of tragedies that had led up to that apocalyptic moment, the memories and histories of those who had been brutalized, kidnapped, raped, and slaughtered in the same war by other forces.20

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In mediating the cataclysmic effects of the atomic bombings, post-war Japan could transform its national image of militarism into one that projected its peace-loving nature and its achievement of normalization (after the so-called madness of warfare). This new, more gentle nature, according to Lisa Yoneyama, was part of the post-war construction of a “feminized memory” that coincided with the democratization of gender instituted by the US occupation government to counter the severe patriarchy of the wartime government.21 With the rising stature of women in the public sphere, the figure of the mother was used to generate “memories of innocence, victimhood, and perseverance with regard to prewar and wartime women, Japanese and non-Japanese alike.”22 The mothers of Hiroshima, more specifically, “are remembered as victims oddly similar to those who suffered from Japanese colonial and military rule,” and this sense of equal modes of suffering enabled “a forgetfulness about how Japanese women’s feminine subjectivities were, and have continued to be, interpellated as imperialist and militarist.”23 In Sakamoto’s novel, Kiku and the other women in her group are unable to break the spell of mandatory mourning for the sacrificial war dead, even when they intuitively sense not only the futility of their actions but also their own complicity in maintaining the very imperial values that condoned the deaths of their loved ones. The melding of victimization by bombing with a deep cultural impulse to honour those who sacrificed themselves for the war would buffer, even preclude, critical awareness of responsibility for atrocities the Japanese military government inflicted on others when they acted, in the memory of Kiku, as “crazed monsters.”24 Refusing the myth of sacrifice, the Japanese American Rinzo tells Miyo he feels no sympathy for Japanese mothers who gave up their sons “‘in the name of their emperor,’” adding: “No one dares speak of this today. Only Hana and a few others. Everyone would rather forget.”25 Near the end of the novel, at Yasukuni Shrine, as Kiku reads from Hajime’s letters, we witness the power of the myth of sacrifice in her, but we also recognize the state of arrested mourning that it instils in those formed in its crucible. Despite Hajime’s doubt that he is giving his life for the emperor, and then his confession that he is undertaking the suicide mission out of love for Kiku, and despite Kiku’s love for Hajime and her insistence that this love is manifest in giving Hajime’s body up to the emperor, there is finally no consummation. Nothing has come of his actions. Japan was defeated, the country devastated, and all the expectation of a nationalism full of meaning has collapsed into “All … gone,” what one of the survivors says.26 Although, as Harry Harootunian has argued, “Yasukuni provided the site … where the aura of the past coexisted with the present, through acts of public mourning and remembering the dead,”27 in Sakamoto’s novel these acts demonstrate the larger cost of the inability to move beyond the stage of mourning – because the beyond only invokes the spectre of defeat, failure, and an overwhelming sense of emptiness at the core of Japanese ritual practices stemming from the war years.28 While the posture of mourning the war dead is maintained, the liberation possible through taking responsibility is seemingly forever deferred. As Hana tells Miyo, “‘We don’t want to say what we’ve done.’”29 By exposing the contradictions inherent in the injunction to sacrifice for the sake of the emperor, Sakamoto’s novel opens up a critical space that speaks back to its ideological underpinnings. In their failure in consciousness to carry out the mandate, the members of the tokkotai reveal that they were not passive and compliant subjects but that they acted out of motives other than utter devotion to the emperor. To the extent that many of them were critical of the mandate, or at least were self-conscious of being used by the military machine, the rituals of commemoration at Yasukuni Shrine are exposed as a religious and

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cultural form that forecloses a critical awareness of the injustices perpetrated by the Japanese government, even on its own subjects. Such a foreclosure may be symptomatic of a reaction in the present to a governmentperceived crisis in national unity – in other words, a reaction to the fragmentation of Japan’s formerly more homogeneous identity formation. The conservative re-appropriation of the wartime discourse of sacrifice then becomes a political strategy to shore up an essentialized Japanese subject. This is a subject who is rapidly achieving obsolescence, as it confronts, on the one hand, the disappearance of its past in the hyper-mediated electronic gadgetry that dominates its youth culture and, on the other hand, the emerging voices of minority groups within (Korean, Okinawan, Ainu, and Burakumin), who are demanding policies and changes in consciousness that respect principles of equality, social justice, and redress.30 These voices make evident the development in Japan of what Jennifer Henderson and Pauline Wakeham identify as “the culture of redress,” a social medium they associate with efforts to redress historical injuries and to reconcile “social divides framed as stemming from those injuries.”31 As in Canada, the calls for redress in Japan have not been “borne of reflexive state initiatives but, rather, by the ingenuity of citizens.”32 What is telling is that the same memory politics that has allowed many in Japan to distance themselves from responsibility for the wartime atrocities has fostered the oppositional and transformative work of social-justice advocates and peace activists, many of whom, for instance, have coalesced to oppose the rescinding of article 9, the “renunciation of war” provision in the constitution drafted during the US occupation. Philip Seaton issues a warning that the dominant or “orthodox” representations of Japan from the outside – his example is the British media as reflected in BBC reports, but he includes the United States and Australia – dwell so much on the Japanese state’s “war responsibility” that they tend to ignore acts of resistance and opposition within the Japanese body politic.33 As one example, he notes that there is strong opposition to textbooks that whitewash or otherwise excise Japanese war crimes, and that some 40 per cent of those polled about Prime Minister Koizumi’s 2001 visit to Yasukuni Shrine opposed his action (304).34 As a site of war memory, the Yasukuni Shrine generates complex and often conflicted memories in individual Japanese, and these memories are often out of sync with those who subscribe to the nationalism of the past. The artistic work of Hana suggests in the novel that the subjective responses to the wartime sacrifices, while still unresolved, point towards the possibility of reclaiming responsibility and therefore of creating affects that foster critical reflection and redress. Asian Canadian Literary Formations In her narrative treatment of Japan’s unresolved relationship to its past, Sakamoto reinforces the potential for Asian Canadian literature to go transnational without abandoning the critical concerns that underwrote its formation within the nation. To appreciate the critical relevance of this continuity, we need to remind ourselves that “Asian Canadian” has always been, from the outset of its use in the 1970s, a shifting formation with referential limits that have varied according to critical assumptions and presumptions. The very notion of Asian in its Canadian contexts has a long history in the belly of a nation that constituted itself through privileging its colonial ties to British imperialism – an imperialism that was seen as parallel to Japanese imperialism at the outset of the twentieth century. The social figures identified as Asian gestated inside the nation, and for a long period of time suffered a bar-

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rage of exclusionary state policies, including disenfranchisement until the late 1940s. By then, the Chinese Canadians, Indo-Canadians, and Japanese Canadians, who would finally be able to act as citizens, had already struggled for decades to show their loyalty to Canada, even through military service. Such service proved that many were willing to sacrifice their lives to protect the security of a nation that had not granted them the right to determine its political representatives. What remains crucial is that Japanese Canadian literature and, I would argue, Asian Canadian literature, came to appearance in the history of those categorized as Asian. The initial literary efforts to redress the racism of this history came, not surprisingly, in the form of representational spaces that demonstrated how Asian Canadian subjects had been integral to Canada’s social and historical development. In speaking back to the normalization of colonial history in English Canadian literature, the first Asian Canadian novels to receive institutional approval, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981) and SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe (1990), adopted a genealogical form that mirrored the nation’s generational history, while going further to expose the anti-Asian policies and assumptions that framed Chinese and Japanese Canadians as alien-others. In contrast to the nation-based narratives of novelists Kogawa and Lee, which emphasized the claiming of place within the nation, the more current focus on the transnational has generated interest in flows and exchanges – on mobile rather than settled identities. The so-called globalization of cultural production seemingly opens up more expansive contexts for creativity, but it also raises, once again, the question of what constitutes the intentionality of Asian Canadian cultural formations. The presence of an imagined Japan in Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms (1994) and The Kappa Child (2001), an imagined China in Larissa Lai’s When Fox Is a Thousand (1995) and Salt Fish Girl (2002), novels that are still set in local Canadian sites – though a futuristic Vancouver in Salt Fish Girl – and, even more recently, an imagined Malaysia in Madeleine Thien’s Certainty (2006), all point towards a spatialization of narratives quite different from the genealogical structures of Obasan and Disappearing Moon Cafe. Although the notion of moving beyond, in this case beyond the boundaries of the nation, has a positive ring to it, this shift brings into play a new binary that needs to be questioned. On the one hand, there is the apparent loss of urgency for nation-based cultural production, which signals the passing of what has been called the literature of identity politics. On the other hand, there is the apparent gain in visibility for Asian Canadian literature, as it finds a niche in the broader transnational spheres of cultural representation. This assumption of discontinuity, of Asian Canadian literature moving on from the confines of its nation’s borders, risks the loss of connection with the collective struggles and the critical reflexivity inherent in its literary formation within the nation. Severed from its local contingencies and the specific histories in which it has been produced, the “Asian” in its formation can easily become another sign in a global market economy of a consumable commodity, on a par perhaps with the popularity of Japanese obento as a form for both food and software. In other words, transnational stories, comparable to transnational commodities, are more amenable to commodification for a readership that expects fiction to reflect the cross-border traffic in goods and services. Sakamoto’s novel may appear to fit this model of cultural consumption, but the critical nodes of its narrative resist such expectations, projecting instead the effects of transposing the conditions of Japanese Canadian redress to contemporary Japan. Here, the narrative itself is crucial, and it is one that Miyo, a third-generation Japanese Canadian, performs

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in body and imagination as she travels to Japan to meet her Japanese-raised sister Hana, an artist obsessed with stories of the kamikaze, one of whom was their father Masao Mori. This transnational familial structure complements Miyo’s ambiguously disabled body, a condition that bound them together in a disempowering cycle of mutual dependency. At one point the Japanese American Rinzo even suspects that Miyo’s condition may have been inherited from her mother, as if she had been a hibakusha (“those affected by the bombing”). He draws from speculations that hibakusha women may give birth to deformed children. In her interview, Sakamoto admits that she inserted this slight possibility – it turns out not to be true – in her story, perhaps to draw out the problematic connection between the suffering at Hiroshima and during the war as analogous in Japanese national memory. The suggestion is that Miyo’s knowledge about the debilitating consequences of the ideology of sacrifice, the “secret” of her father’s inability to move beyond his wartime experience, constitutes a rewiring of affects that helps to heal her body. In the narrative, signs even appear that Miyo’s condition may be largely psychosomatic. We see her gaining new psychic energy and physical mobility as she unravels her father’s secret life in Japan before and during the war. Considered as a novel that comes after the redress settlement, One Hundred Million Hearts is one example of what can happen when Asian Canadian literature goes transnational while recognizing its contingent relations with the fraught social and historical conditions of its nation-based affiliations. Consciousness of these relations in the novel functions as a powerful critical screen to make visible similar processes in other national contexts, such as in contemporary Japan, where cultural homogeneity leads to the denial of full rights and equality to the minorities in its midst. Adopting for Asian Canadian cultural work what Kandice Chuh says about Asian American studies, we can mobilize the transnational “as a critical frame attuned to bringing to surface the practices of life and culture that unfold beneath the radar of state power.”35 For Asian Canadian writers, these practices can expose often fraught ties to Asian ancestries that have been under-represented in nationbased formations and thereby open up new modes of representing the imagined Asia of their own social and cultural subjectivities. In mediating the “Canadian” in its formation, Asian Canadian writing has been woven into the dynamic power relations of settlement, citizenship, and representation, but by entering into critical engagements with its transnational ties, as Sakamoto does in One Hundred Million Hearts, it can extend its constitutive drive towards redress to cultural spaces beyond – yet of – the nation.

NOTES 1 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 486. 2 Irene Tsuyuki’s experience is noted in Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver and Winnipeg: Talonbooks and National Association of Japanese Canadians, 1991), 49; and told in her own words in Irene Tsuyuki, “The Second Uprooting: Exiled to Japan,” in Homecoming ’92: Where the Heart Is, ed. R. Enomoto (Vancouver: NRC Publishing, 1993). 3 In Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, Naomi’s brother Stephen comes to feel shame for being Japanese partly through internalizing the media representation of Japanese soldiers. In writing to her

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sister, Naomi and Stephen’s mother, in Japan, Aunt Emily comments that “Stephen spends his time reading war comics that he gets from the neighbourhood boys. All the Japs have mustardcoloured faces and buck teeth.” Joy Kogawa, Obasan (Toronto: Penguin, 1981), 101. The redress settlement of 22 September 1988, which included funding assistance for creative projects, was the impetus for a sharp increase in Japanese Canadian cultural production. I use the term post-redress to acknowledge the settlement as a turning point that allowed for the concept of redress to be disseminated beyond its Japanese Canadian boundaries. Kerri Sakamoto, “Surviving History: Kerri Sakamoto Interviewed by Pilar Cuder-Dominguez,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 41, no. 3 (2006): 140. Laura Hein, “War Compensation: Claims Against the Japanese Government and Japanese Corporations for War Crimes,” in Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices, ed. J. Torpey (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 127. White Light / Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, DVD, directed by Steven Okazaki (New York: HBO Home Video, 2007). Kerri Sakamoto, One Hundred Million Hearts (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004), 79. As early as 1869, Yasukuni Shrine, the highly regarded shrine located in Tokyo near the Imperial Palace, was deemed to be the national site to honour those who died in warfare for the emperor. At the outset of the Meiji era, government leaders were intent on creating a strong imperialistic nation-state held together by a Shinto belief system. The belief in sacrificial death for the emperor made loyalty to the Japanese empire sacrosanct, and Yasukuni Shrine ensured that those who died for the emperor would be honoured as “gods” by the general populace. More recently, Yasukuni Shrine provoked international outrage, especially from Korea and China, as different Japanese prime ministers attended ceremonial commemorations for the war dead. For critics of Japan’s wartime record of atrocities, such visits confirmed that Japanese leaders were honouring soldiers whose actions should be condemned. These controversies and other aspects of Yasukuni Shrine have generated numerous critical commentaries. See also Harry Harootunian, “Memory, Mourning, and National Morality: Yasukuni Shrine and the Reunion of State and Religion in Postwar Japan,” in Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, ed. P. van der Veer and H. Lehmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 144–60. Other than those cited, several other articles helped me understand the current politics of memory around the shrine. See Jeff Kingston, “Awkward Talisman: War Memory, Reconciliation and Yasukuni,” East Asia 24 (2007): 295–318; Brian Masshardt, “Mobilizing from the Margins: Domestic Citizen Politics and Yasukuni Shrine,” East Asia 24 (2007): 319–35; Masaki Matsubara, “Cultural Memory, Ventriloquism, and Performance: Reflections on Yasukuni Shrine,” Acta Orientalia Vilnensia 7, nos. 1–2 (2006): 27–43; Michiki Maekawa, “The Politics and Culture of Contemporary Religion in Japan,” Nanzan Bulletin 26 (2002): 44–59; John Nelson, “Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine,” Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 2 (2003): 443–67; and Daiki Shibuichi, “The Yasukuni Shrine Dispute and the Politics of Identity in Japan: Why All the Fuss?” Asian Survey 45, no. 2 (2005): 197–215. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 4. Through an analysis of documents and diaries written by members of the Special Attack Forces, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows that the university students who were mandated to carry out suicidal missions were often well-read intellectuals. Rather than passively accepting their fate, they wrestled with their relationship to the military leaders’ propaganda. In many instances,

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Roy Miki they consciously rejected the belief that they were sacrificing themselves for the emperor, and acted instead in the belief that they were fighting to protect the lives of their families and friends. David C. Earhart, “All Ready to Die: Kamikazefication and Japan’s Wartime Ideology,” Critical Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (2005): 570. Ibid., 576. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999). Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, “A Lost War in Living Memory: Japan’s Second World War,” European Review 11, no. 4 (2003): 576. Ibid., 577. Sakamoto, One Hundred Million Hearts, 42. Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 4. Ibid., 3. Rey Chow, “The Age of the World Target: Atom Bombs, Alterity, Area Studies,” in The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 26. Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces, 193. Ibid., 193. Ibid., 196. Sakamoto, One Hundred Million Hearts, 258. Ibid., 118–19. The will not to remember may be the effect of the wartime condition termed “the kyodatsu condition, a sense of ‘exhaustion and despair’” (Dower, Embracing Defeat, 87–9), which descended on Japanese social life in the immediate post-war years because of extreme poverty, deprivation, and hopelessness. According to Dower, this condition helps explain why “a pervasive victim consciousness took root, leading many Japanese to perceive themselves as the greatest sufferers from the recent war. The misery on hand was far more immediate and palpable than accounts of the devastation that the imperial forces had wreaked on strangers in distant lands” (119). Sakamoto, One Hundred Million Hearts, 247. Harootunian, “Memory, Mourning, and National Morality,” 151. For a discussion of the “powerful void at the center of the modern Japanese body politic,” see Yasushi Uchiyamada, “The Face of the Japanese Body Politic,” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28, no. 2 (2005): 282–306. Uchiyamada examines the power of the state’s representation of the war dead as evident in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, arguing that the ritual commemoration of the war dead “transforms the fallen soldiers into the victims of the war, into the martyrs of the nation, and into the cause of Japan’s postwar economic miracle” (283). Sakamoto, One Hundred Million Hearts, 72. For an excellent introduction to some of the people who have been active in minority struggles in Japan, see David Suzuki and Keibo Oiwa, The Japan We Never Knew: A Journey of Discovery (Toronto: Stoddart, 1996). Reconciling Canada, 6. Ibid., 5. Philip Seaton, “Reporting the 2001 Textbook and Yasukuni Shrine Controversies: Japanese

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War Memory and commemoration in the British Media,” Japan Forum 17, no. 3 (2005): 288. Seaton’s argument is based on “two major controversies” that received media attention in 2001: “a textbook crisis that occurred when the Minister of Education passed a nationalistic textbook for potential use in Japanese schools; and Koizumi Junichiro’s worship at Yasukuni Shrine in his official capacity as prime minister on 13 August” (287). 34 Ibid., 304. 35 Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian American Critique (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 14–15.

15 Rendition and Redress: Maher Arar, Apology, Exceptionality1 pauline wakeham

At first glance, an essay discussing the highly publicized case of Maher Arar’s extraordinary rendition by the United States government to Syria appears incongruously placed in an anthology debating Canada’s contemporary culture of redress. The Arar case has become emblematic in the popular imagination of the casualties of the “War on Terror” and the post-9/11 securitization of Western “homelands” – a problem that has been framed euphemistically by dominant discourses as unfortunate collateral damage rather than striking evidence of the perilous intensification of racialized violence and infringement upon human rights effected by the globalization of “counter-terrorism” initiatives. Several scholars have analysed the extraordinary rendition of Maher Arar as a textbook example of current theories of biopolitical government, most notably Giorgio Agamben’s examination of the state of exception that, he argues, “tends increasingly to appear as the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics.”2 According to Agamben, the state of exception hinges upon the “transformation of a provisional and exceptional measure into a technique of government” through which “law encompasses living beings by means of its own suspension.”3 As a quintessential case in point, Agamben identifies the Bush administration’s issuing of “military order[s]” authorizing the “indefinite detention” of non-citizens suspected of “involvement in terrorist activities” – orders that have enabled the suspension of legal rights and processes by manufacturing what Agamben calls a “political” or “fictitious” state of emergency inaugurated on 11 September 2001.4 The related practice of “extraordinary rendition” – the transfer of a person to the custody of another nation-state where she or he faces a risk of torture – in its very name reiterates the logic of the “extraordinary” or exceptional measure crucial to the state of emergency that justifies itself by virtue of putatively anomalous and exigent circumstances.5 While readings of Arar’s extraordinary rendition through the lens of the state of exception have been useful for contextualizing this case in relation to the broader political crisis fomented by the “War on Terror,” most analyses have focused upon the matter of this Canadian citizen’s torture in a Syrian prison and not the events that followed upon his return to Canada: the federal appointment of the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar and, spurred by the commission’s final report and recommendations, official apologies from the chief commissioner of the RCMP, the House of Commons, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, accompanied by a $10.5 million compensation package.6 In drawing attention to governmental efforts to produce a version of reconciliation around Canada’s role in the rendition and torture of Maher Arar, my intent is

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not to celebrate these gestures as mitigating factors that could diminish Canadian complicity in the deployment of emergency to suspend human rights. Rather, my critical interest in this latter part of the Arar case hinges upon the way it brings into complex relation two simultaneous global phenomena that have tended to remain bifurcated in contemporary political and critical discourses: the “War on Terror” and what Jacques Derrida has diagnosed as the “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness.”7 If recent years have been marked by the manufacture of a culture of fear and a state of exception under the threat of global terror, this period has also been dubbed the “age of apology” in response to the proliferation of gestures of contrition performed by nationstates and imperial metropoles grappling with the histories and presents of systemic violence.8 Both of these current phenomena have been traced back to an overlapping period of origin, suggesting their intertwined evolution. While Derrida marks the Second World War, the Holocaust, and their aftermaths as the conditions of possibility for the emergence of apparatuses of confession and forgiveness across the global stage, Agamben similarly locates the modern incarnation of the state of exception in the world wars of the twentieth century.9 Contextualizing the current phenomena of the “age of apology” and the state of exception known as the “War on Terror” in light of these longer historical genealogies is crucial for demythologizing the claims to “newness” and unprecedented progress or crisis attached to these movements. Tracing the entangled development of the state of exception and reconciliation also helps to illuminate the ways in which these seemingly divergent phenomena are imbricated at the level of ideology: while governments, truth and reconciliation commissions, and human rights tribunals affirm Western liberal democratic principles as vital for the establishment of just and equitable societies, the “War on Terror’s” crimes against humanity are being legitimated via uncannily similar discourses regarding the spread of democracy and the defence of freedom and peace. As Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Nisha Nath observe, “New technologies and rationales of and for security … [have become] responsible for profound [forms of] insecurity,” doing violence to both the rights of individuals and the stability of nation-states, all while under the banner of protecting or “securing” both.10 The “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness” and the “War on Terror” are also discursively entangled by strategic invocations of the logic of exceptionality. While Agamben and many other scholars have compellingly demonstrated how the “War on Terror” relies upon claims to exceptional and exigent circumstances, the status of the exception in several hegemonic formulations of reconciliation has yet to be interrogated. Before I make a foray in this direction, a caveat is required: the “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness” is uneven and heterogeneous and, as a result, a variety of nation-states and other actors have developed a diverse range of both dominant and counter-hegemonic reconciliatory programs. That said, certain trends are discernible in the dominant discourses of reconciliation produced by settler states recently engaging in acts of apology, and it is in this context that the logic of exceptionality seems particularly striking. In Canada especially, the government’s recent slate of apologies for the internment and forced relocation of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, the Chinese head tax, and the residential schools system have all attempted to contain discussion of grievances to discrete, historically delimited policies in an effort to evade recognition of the systemic and ongoing racism and colonial genocide that enabled them.11 Thus, in the process of purportedly acknowledging these grievances, the federal government labours to depict them as exceptions to the imagined norm of Canadian

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civility, reaffirming, as Stephen Harper did in his apology for the Chinese head tax, that “Canadians … are a good and just people.”12 While the accumulation of redress claims in the contemporary era begs the question as to why, if Canada is indeed such a civil society, does it have so much to apologize for, the Arar case further challenges nationalist master narratives of peacekeeping and benevolence by revealing Canada’s dual participation in the “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness” and the “War on Terror.” In so doing, the Arar case complicates contemporary theories of the state of exception by demonstrating the paradox through which power may both suspend human rights via the declaration of a state of exception while simultaneously manufacturing spectacles of redress that purport to reaffirm those very rights as universal. And yet, under the semblance of affirming such rights, state performances of apology invoke alibis of exigency and contingency that reinforce the very logic of exceptionality that legitimated certain gross injustices in the first place. In this context, political apologies may function, at times, as uneasy supplements to the state of exception. Moreover, the Arar affair raises provocative questions regarding how the declaration and implementation of the state of exception within a globalizing framework might be crucial for both suspending and ceremoniously restoring human rights via the strategic dispersion and (dis)articulation of sovereign power across multiple, asymmetrically positioned nation-states, corporations, and agencies. Lastly, the Arar file further demonstrates how the Canadian state labours to position itself strategically within this global system of power. The Transnational Traffic of Rendition and Reconciliation While many narrativizations of the Arar affair exist, I want to briefly recount the version detailed on Arar’s own website and in the report of the commission of inquiry.13 Maher Arar is a dual citizen of Syria and Canada who first immigrated to Canada in 1991 and subsequently became a successful wireless technology consultant in Ottawa. On 26 September 2002, he was returning home from a family vacation in Tunisia when he was detained by US authorities during a brief stopover at New York’s JFK airport. For almost two weeks, Arar was interrogated about his supposed ties with Al Qaeda, first being denied and then given only limited access to a phone call, a lawyer, and consular visits. When Arar was informed by US agents that he was to be deported, he repeatedly and unequivocally requested to be sent to Canada and expressed fears of being tortured if he were sent to Syria. Despite his entreaties, on 8 October 2002 Arar was flown to Syria, via Jordan, where he was subjected to physical and psychological torture and inhumane conditions of imprisonment in the Palestine branch of the Syrian prison system. Due to the success of public lobbying efforts by Arar’s wife, economics professor Dr Monia Mazigh, a reluctant Canadian government was eventually pressured to intercede, leading to Arar’s release from Syrian custody on 5 October 2003 and his subsequent return to Canada. Both during and after his imprisonment, Arar’s reputation was discredited by media reports that unfairly cast suspicion on him and minimized his torture based on false information leaked by anonymous Canadian government employees. Irrefutably debunking such allegations, the commission of inquiry’s final report confirmed that no credible evidence of illegal activity committed by Arar has ever been found.14 Arar’s circumstances have frequently been taken up as the ostensibly anomalous “Canadian content” example of extraordinary rendition in the wake of 9/11 that embroiled the

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country in processes assumed to be “un-Canadian” – processes overwhelmingly associated with the United States’ recent securitization strategies under the Bush administration and supplemented by the purportedly unscrupulous behaviour of other(ed), less “civilized” countries of the Middle East. A closer scrutiny of Canadian involvement in the Arar case, however, demonstrates that the Canadian government and intelligence and policing agencies were not unwittingly subsumed by the transnational tide of global security networks and coerced into hegemonic “War on Terror” policies. Although, since 9/11, Canada has been pulled further into the web of US securitization through initiatives such as the December 2001 Smart Border Declaration that increased transnational collaboration regarding the development and augmentation of “antiterror” legislation, the sharing of intelligence, and the administration of border control between the two countries, the Canadian government still retains room for agential decision making about the information it discloses and the extent of “cooperation” it offers. While Justice O’Connor’s Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar at times euphemizes the “mistakes” of Canadian officials, the details provided therein reveal a staggering combination of bureaucratic mismanagement, institutional cover-ups, smear campaigns, racial profiling, and rampant “Islamophobia” at the root of the injustices suffered by Arar. The problems uncovered by the inquiry are too numerous to recount comprehensively here, but a brief outline of the most glaring ones will help to flesh out the nature of Canadian complicity – and, moreover, the problems squarely attributable to Canadian agencies – in what Sedef Arat-Koc has called the “transnationalization of [t]orture.”15 Maher Arar first became a “person of interest” to Project A-O Canada, an investigative department of the RCMP, when he was seen talking to the key subject of the project’s investigation, Canadian citizen and Ottawa resident Abdullah Almalki, at Mango’s café in the nation’s capital during the fall of 2001. Although Almalki was under investigation for suspected ties to Al Qaeda, Justice O’Connor’s report affirms that he “has never been charged with any offence and is presumed to be innocent of any criminal activity.”16 Based on Arar’s casual acquaintance with Almalki, he became classified as a “person of interest” in the investigation. In late October 2001, the RCMP incorrectly posted “‘terrorism’ lookout[s]” for Arar and his wife to Canada Customs and the US Border Patrol, misusing a category reserved for those actually “suspected of being a member of a terrorist organization” and characterizing the Arars as “Islamic Extremist individuals suspected of being linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist movement.”17 Moreover, before the events that befell Arar in September 2002, Project A-O Canada also gave American agencies documents “that variously described [him inaccurately] … as a suspect, a target, a principal subject of its investigation, … and a business associate or a close associate of Mr. Almalki.”18 Upon being informed by the FBI of their intent to question Arar, the RCMP faxed additional questions to US officials that erroneously suggested Arar’s presence in the Washington, DC, vicinity on 11 September 2001. RCMP officials also incorrectly indicated that Arar had declined to be interviewed by the policing agency in January 2002 and then left Canada “suddenly” for Tunisia.19 Canadian collusion in the injustices perpetrated against Arar continued once the United States deported him to Syria. When the Syrian Military Intelligence (SMI) provided the Canadian ambassador with a written communication on 3 November 2002 stating that Arar had allegedly confessed to receiving mujahedeen training in Afghanistan in 1993, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) distributed it to the

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RCMP and CSIS without acknowledging that the confession was likely the result of torture. Moreover, when DFAIT later proposed to send a unified letter of support to the Syrian government advocating for Arar’s return to Canada, the RCMP and CSIS insisted that Arar be classified as “a subject of a national security investigation” when he was only a “person of interest.” These disagreements caused another three-month delay, when the prime minister finally wrote a letter requesting Arar’s release. During his plane ride back to Canada with consular official Léo Martel, Arar reported that he had been beaten by Syrian authorities. Although Martel repeated this information to DFAIT officials verbally on 7 October 2003, a month later, he prepared written documents denying Arar’s testimony regarding his physical torture.20 Sedef Arat-Koc argues that since 9/11, the transnational and diasporic affiliations of Arab and Muslim persons have been scrutinized “to question their belonging and even their loyalty” to “host land” nations such as Canada and the United States. “What are rarely, if ever, interrogated,” Arat-Koc continues, “are the ‘loyalties’ as well as the various material transnational connections – economic, cultural, political, and even military – of dominant groups and of the state.”21 The Arar affair demonstrates the importance of investigating such hegemonic transnational political, military, and intelligence affiliations. At the same time, however, the case provokes urgent questions regarding the limits of transnationalism: while this extraordinary rendition was the result of multi-state collusion, the subsequent redress efforts launched by the Canadian government have been contained within a decidedly national framework. The final report of the commission repeatedly notes that the United States, Jordan, and Syria declined invitations to participate in the inquiry. The failure of the commission to be transnational in the scope of its investigation, however, has been the key to Canada’s successful reputation damage control: as the sole nation to conduct an examination into its role in the Arar case and to issue a subsequent apology, Canada has managed to distinguish itself from the transnational network of countries involved in this extraordinary rendition, reframing itself as ostensibly the most self-reflexive and least complicit party. Moreover, the non-participation of other nation-states in the inquiry has had a crucial impact upon Justice O’Connor’s findings. O’Connor repeatedly notes in his final report that “without the evidence [and testimony] of the American authorities, I am unable to conclude what role, if any, [such actions as the posting of] the TECS [border] lookout for Mr. Arar requested by the RCMP in late October 2002 played in the American decisions to detain Mr. Arar and remove him to Syria.”22 Although it seems extremely likely that the RCMP’s mistaken classification of the Arars as “Islamic Extremists” with suspected links to Al Qaeda would have a severely prejudicial effect, the non-cooperation of the United States in the commission’s investigation has putatively precluded definitive statements regarding the contributions of Canadian officials to the extraordinary rendition. As I will demonstrate in the next section, such conveniently “unconfirmable” questions have enabled strategic framings of the apologies proffered by the prime minister and the chief commissioner of the RCMP. The Logic of Apology: Manufacturing Exceptionality Legal scholar Audrey Macklin has argued that the Canadian government’s decision to appoint a commission of inquiry into the role of Canadian officials in the Arar affair was not “obvious or inevitable” and that it has set “a remarkable precedent” as “one of the first

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instances of government accountability for the consequences of complicity in the U.S.-led ‘War on Terror.’”23 Macklin implicitly suggests that the commission may in itself serve as a gesture towards redress that sets Canada apart from its American and Middle Eastern collaborators.24 That said, Macklin notes the profound contradiction that hindered the objectives of the commission: while the federal government “appointed a public inquiry” apparently invested with holding the state and its apparatuses openly accountable, it simultaneously “cast a wide and heavy blanket of national security confidentiality over the process,” restricting a significant amount of testimony to in-camera hearings and withholding information under spurious claims of necessary secrecy.25 In fact, on behalf of the federal government, the attorney general of Canada challenged Justice O’Connor’s powers to oversee the divulgation of information to the public by launching a case in federal court, Canada v. Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar. The federal court issued its ruling in July 2007, ordering the public disclosure of 1000 words that were previously redacted from the commission’s final report released in November 2006. This material confirmed that CSIS was aware of the risk of torture to Arar immediately upon his rendition to Syria (even though many officials have denied such knowledge) and circulated his confession obtained while imprisoned without scrutinizing its reliability. Thus, the redacted material revealed the federal government’s attempt to suppress information that would damage its own reputation by invoking the exception of national-security confidentiality. While Macklin suggests that “one might read into this a reminder that the state is not monolithic and is not animated by a singular rationality,” she also proffers another interpretation: “that the government was content to give the appearance of openness by appointing a public inquiry, while zealously pursuing the objective of minimizing disclosure … during the inquiry itself.”26 At the very end of the Arar commission’s three-volume final report, Justice O’Connor suggests, as his final recommendation, that “the Government of Canada should assess Mr. Arar’s claim for compensation” – specifically, his pending lawsuit seeking $37 million in damages and an official apology – “in the light of the findings in this report and respond accordingly.” While the mandate of the commission precluded O’Connor from making an assessment regarding the government’s civil liability in this case, he offered the following observation: “If the Government of Canada chooses to negotiate with Mr. Arar, negotiated arrangements can be more creative than a mere damage award. A compensation agreement could involve anything from an apology to an offer of employment or assistance in obtaining employment.”27 The Arar case raises questions about whose interests are served by the “creative” flexibility of a negotiated compensation agreement. Under the weight of public pressure and a motion initiated by the Bloc Québécois and unanimously passed on 20 September 2006 in the House of Commons calling for an official apology, the Government of Canada eventually settled with Arar at the cost of $10.5 million for damages, another $1 million in legal fees, and a statement of apology delivered by the prime minister on 26 January 2007. Harper’s apology, composed as a letter to Arar, was intimate in its epistolary form, its address to the familial unit, and its invocation of a first-person speaking voice. Beginning the letter to “Dear Mr. Arar,” the prime minister professed, “On behalf of the Government of Canada, I wish to apologize to you, Monia Mazigh and your family.”28 By deploying the rhetoric of the beneficent liberal state that views its citizens as individuals and by capitalizing upon the affective powers of statements of contrition, the personalized apology

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reinforced the framing of Arar’s experiences as individualized and anomalous rather than systemic. The letter thus obscured the connection between Arar’s rendition and what AbuLaban and Nash have referred to as the “structural violence” of “the particularly heightened racialisation of Arab and Muslim people in the post-9/11 context.”29 At the same time, however, the letter was read as part of a press conference and posted on the Office of the Prime Minister’s website as a public gesture that sought to reaffirm Canada’s putative role as an international leader in the protection of human rights. At once an intimate letter and a foreign and domestic press release, the apology mobilized the logic of exceptionality on two levels: Maher Arar’s experiences were portrayed as an exception to the rule of Canadian citizens’ full access to human and citizenship rights and, second, the Canadian nationstate’s supposedly minor involvement in the extraordinary rendition was constructed as an exception to the national norm of peacekeeping and rights-upholding behaviour. Beneath its performance of remorse, Harper’s statement was deliberately vague in its reference to “any role Canadian officials may have played in the terrible ordeal that all of you experienced in 2002 and 2003.” The statement echoed a similar rhetorical strategy employed in RCMP chief Giuliano Zaccardelli’s apology, delivered on 26 September 2006, which expressed “how truly sorry” he was “for whatever part the actions of the RCMP may have contributed” to the rendition of Arar.30 In the very act of purportedly offering an apology, the prime minister and RCMP chief performed a rhetorical sleight of hand, cannily evading an admission of wrongdoing by leaving the vague phrasing of “whatever” or “any role” played by Canadian officials in the conditional form of the ostensibly undecidable “may have.” Capitalizing upon the messy web of transnational relations in which Arar’s extraordinary rendition was carried out, as well as the non-participation of other nationstates in the commission, the apologies sought to obfuscate Canada’s complicity. At the same time that Harper’s apology seized upon the transnational networks shaping the Arar case to dissimulate Canada’s collusion, the prime minister outlined how Canada stands as a shining exception to the other nation-states involved. In his public statement, Harper noted that, in addition to the apology and compensation package, the Canadian government “sent letters to both the Syrian and U.S. governments formally objecting to the treatment of Mr. Arar.” He also underscored that Canada had removed the border lookout on Arar and had “requested that the United States amend its own records accordingly.” The prime minister then pressed further, remarking that the United States in turn had “requested that Canada not push [the American government] … to amend its records for Mr. Arar.” In response, Harper defiantly asserted: “This government – the government of Canada – has every right to go to bat for one of its citizens when … a Canadian is being unfairly treated by another country.”31 In a profoundly ironic move, the prime minister’s self-righteous assertion overwrote the fact that Canada essentially initiated the “unfair treatment” of Arar in the first place by providing inaccurate and highly prejudicial information to American security agencies. On the surface, the apologies proffered to Arar appear to stem from an ideological perspective antithetical to the one bolstering the “War on Terror”: whereas Canadian efforts at redressing these injustices create the semblance of a culture in which human rights and public accountability are prioritized, the logic of the post-9/11 emergency state of “counter-terrorism” seems to be predicated upon the sacrifice of the rights of some individuals for the sake of collective safety, all practised under the veil of clandestine operations necessitated by exigent circumstances. But what if the contemporary global state of emergency

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fomented by the “War on Terror” does not operate in dichotomous relation to human rights discourse and, rather, has evolved in ways that might at times appear to uphold and restore the rights of individuals and even perform self-reflexivity about the dangers of the hegemonic security paradigm? Mark Gibney and Niklaus Steiner have recently argued that the “phenomenon” of the apology “has come to occupy a central role in the ‘War on Terror’” and that “the conduct of foreign policy and military affairs has appropriated the language and symbolism of apology.”32 As examples, Gibney and Steiner note that, in 2003, the United States implemented an initiative offering $5000 in fiscal compensation and a perfunctory apology performed by a US official to Iraqi civilians who were physically wounded or suffered property damage, and to the surviving family members of those who were killed, at the hands of the American military.33 Moreover, a flurry of mea culpas ensued following media coverage of the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including statements by many high-ranking officials in the US government such as Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell. As Gibney and Steiner have pointed out, while the US government has proffered such isolated apologies for very specific aspects of the war in Iraq, the Bush administration resolutely resisted calls from the media and the public for a broader apology with regard to the war itself and the unfounded claims of weapons of mass destruction and links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the invasion. In light of this disjuncture, Gibney and Steiner contend that “state apologies continue to be sporadic events that seldom tell a complete or coherent story. More than that, however, these acts of acknowledgment and contrition have also proven useful in hiding larger truths.”34 Building upon this argument, I contend that the American government’s isolation of “sporadic events” of wrongdoing via the “political tool” of the apology functions as a way of portraying such events as anomalies, as regrettable exceptions to the overarching logic of the putatively justified “War on Terror.”35 This logic is evident in the specific discourse utilized by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who, in his apology for the torture at Abu Ghraib, asserted that “it was inconsistent with the values of our nation, it was inconsistent with the teachings of the military … and it was certainly fundamentally un-American.”36 In a rhetorical move that strangely anticipated Stephen Harper’s assertion – in the midst of ostensibly apologizing for the cluster of racist immigration policies against Chinese persons known as the head tax – that “Canadians … are a good and just people,” Rumsfeld’s apology upheld the imagined norms of American democracy, justice, and freedom by strategically reframing the abuses at Abu Ghraib as an aberrant exception. In so doing, Rumsfeld strategically obscured the fact that such tactics of torture and dehumanization are integral aspects of the systemic ideology and practice of the US-led “War on Terror.”37 The examples of “War on Terror” apologies noted by Gibney and Steiner invite consideration of the link between the apology as an anomaly-making technology and theories of the state of exception that have become paradigmatic for understanding current global power dynamics. In this context, political apologies may be co-opted by hegemonic power structures to dissimulate the extent to which the “War on Terror” has instituted systemic and racially targeted, rather than discrete and idiosyncratic, acts of violence. And yet, if the social technology of the apology is indeed more compatible with the state of exception than it may at first appear, it would be a mistake to also presuppose the apology’s total assimilation into the current regime of “counter-terrorism.” Instead, it is more useful to understand the instrument of the political apology as an unstable supplement to the state of exception.

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Appropriating the notion of supplementarity from its “proper” Derridean sense, I argue that the apology may function in an “ambivalent [and doubled] status as an unnecessary surplus and yet a necessary compensation for a lack.”38 In Derrida’s words, the “dangerous supplement” simultaneously “adds itself” as “a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude” even as “it adds only to replace”; “it intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-placeof” that which it is articulated to.39 In the context of contemporary politics, the apologyas-supplement both adds to and “intervenes or insinuates itself” into the state of exception, both bolstering and yet also destabilizing the logic of global emergency to which it has become tenuously tethered. The apology-qua-supplement attempts to shore up the logic of exceptionality but, in its “intervening,” “insinuating” way, interrupts the self-evidence and necessity of the state of exception and points to the constitutive “lack” at the core of emergency, thereby revealing the “fictional” (to recall Agamben’s term) or manufactured status of the “emergency” that power foments in its service. The Canadian government’s apology to Maher Arar also challenges any facile identification of the locus of sovereign power in a formulaic application of Agamben’s theory to the contingencies of contemporary world politics. For while the examples listed by Gibney and Steiner enable a containment of the doubled dynamic of counter-terrorist infringement upon human rights and the recognition of rights via apology within the easily definable parameters of US sovereignty, the Arar case muddies this terrain with its transnational affiliations and discontinuities. If George W. Bush has been repeatedly identified as the comical and yet terrifying embodiment of sovereign power (the self-proclaimed “decider” who unwittingly enacts with textbook didacticism Carl Schmitt’s prophetic assertion that “sovereign is he who decides on the exception”), the multi-state involvement in the extraordinary rendition of Arar and the Canadian government’s subsequent decision to differentiate itself from this transnational network via a performance of contrition complicate the locus of sovereign authority and the regulation of the state of emergency.40 In negotiating the fallout of public outrage during and after Arar’s imprisonment in Syria, the Canadian government seemed happy to duck criticism as much as possible by diminishing its own sovereign agency and deflecting blame onto the supposed global sovereign of the “War on Terror,” the United States. However, in the aftermath of the commission of inquiry, Canada seized its performance of apology as an opportunity to distance itself from the web of global cooperation in counter-terrorism and to reassert nation-state autonomy. In proclaiming that Canada “has every right to go to bat for one of its citizens” when he or she is “being unfairly treated by another country,”41 Stephen Harper attempted to critique the “War of Terror” from a seeming position of sovereign exteriority that gave the lie to the United States’ justification of its imperializing global reach due to the exceptional exigencies of a stateless and mobile state of “terrorist” emergency. At the same time, however, in the very act of issuing an apology to Arar, Canadian officials lapsed back into hegemonic post-9/11 state of emergency discourse when the threat of global terror served to justify their own governmental actions contributing to Arar’s ordeal. As RCMP chief Zaccardelli stated in his response to the commission’s findings: “I think it’s vitally important that the events in question be put into context – a context of a unique time in the world, and for all of the areas of government to respond to terrorism.”42 In offering this mitigating “context,” Zaccardelli cited Justice O’Connor’s own assertion that “following the events of September 11, 2001, those involved in Canada’s national security were confronted with unprecedented challenges. An all-out effort was being made … to

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track down individuals involved in the 9/11 conspiracy” and to prevent “a second wave of attacks.”43 Through the political instrument of the apology, therefore, Canadian officials consequently aim to legitimate the state’s actions via the sovereign responsibility for national security while simultaneously blaming incursions upon Canadians’ civil liberties on American global sovereignty over the “War on Terror.” Ironically, Canada’s tactic of deflecting blame onto another nation-state in an effort to efface its complicity in the extraordinary rendition of Arar seems to follow a page from the United States’ own cunning playbook from recent years. For, at a time when American executive privilege seems to have overridden not only domestic laws but also those of other nations and international conventions, the United States has at times strategically exercised power precisely by playing upon the limits of its sovereignty and acknowledging, at least in strategic lip service, the autonomy of other states. For example, this is precisely the logic involved in the “outsourcing [of] torture” to other countries that may engage in interrogation techniques that are legislatively prohibited within the geopolitical parameters of the United States.44 Although the United States is, in many cases, responsible for initiating such renditions, it has utilized the sovereignty of other nations as a foil for dissimulating its own culpability. In the landmark 2004 Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush, the US government argued that foreign nationals imprisoned at Guantánamo were ineligible for habeas corpus rights entrenched in American law because, as Nasser Hussain summarizes, “the United States was not even the ultimate and de jure sovereign of the territory, that title belonging to Cuba.”45 When convenient, therefore, the US government has, at least rhetorically, undermined the scope of its own sovereign power in order to shield itself from the violence of its own “counter-terrorism” tactics. While the United States at times reverts back to at least a rhetorical recognition of the geopolitical limits of its sovereignty, at other moments the American government takes recourse to the construction of terrorism as a stateless phenomenon – a force that, without the authority of statehood, loses its supposed legitimate right to violence and opens itself to US-led interventions into other sovereign countries. This strategic vacillation between the affirmation of the sovereignty of all nation-states and the denial of the sovereign rights of countries “harbouring” stateless terrorists underscores the need for a more complex theorization of sovereign power in the post-9/11 state of emergency. When Agamben applies his theory of the state of exception to empirical political contexts, his examples, spanning the twentieth century into the new millennium, remain largely bound within nation-state frameworks. Indeed, even his mentions of the contemporary post-9/11 crisis and the global “War on Terror” are focused upon brief references to US military orders and the Patriot Act. As Susan Buck-Morss reminds us, however, “state and sovereignty are not synonymous.”46 This observation is at the core of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s diagnosis of the emergence of a “new global form of sovereignty,” historically distinct from prior imperialisms, that unites “a series of national and supranational organisms” under a “single logic of rule.”47 The examples I’ve discussed in this essay, however, powerfully demonstrate that the logic of different “national and supranational organisms,” as they jostle for position in an asymmetrical formulation of global power, is irreducible to a singularity or a unified logic identified in Hardt and Negri’s “imperial sovereignty.” Thus, whereas Agamben’s empirical examples remain mostly constrained to a formulation of sovereign power within the particularity of a single nation-state, Hardt and Negri’s analysis of a new global form of sovereignty tends towards a totalizing universality. A more robust conceptualization of the

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complex form of sovereign power animating the current emergency regime consequently requires theorization of the simultaneous overlapping and dis-articulation of state and sovereignty, or the perpetual reshaping of sovereign power in ways that may oscillate between shoring up the autonomy of specific nation-states and re-articulating hegemony across transnational networks. Such complex reconfigurations of sovereign power serve to scramble and disperse responsibility and culpability for the gross violations of human rights effected in the name of the post-9/11 state of emergency, thereby rendering the task of holding parties accountable – and seeking redress and reparations – a complicated endeavour. And yet it is only through recognizing these challenging conditions that we might begin the task of reckoning with the violence waged under the banner of “securing” the world from “terror.” Canada’s tactical deployment of the commission of inquiry and the subsequent apology to Arar reveals that the United States is not the only country strategically vacillating between affirming national sovereignty and deflecting blame onto other encroaching nations engaged in the “War on Terror.” While Harper’s defiant words to the United States in the midst of his apology to Arar might seek to position Canada as an exception to – a nation that stands outside and beyond – the worst human rights abuses perpetrated in the name of emergency “counter-terrorism” measures, in other ways, the Canadian government’s efforts to portray the Arar affair as an isolated and itself exceptional violation of the rights bestowed upon Canadian citizens may work to the benefit of the trans- and supranational networks of empire. Despite the fact that the Canadian government has attempted to frame Arar’s experiences as a profoundly anomalous case, three other Canadian citizens – Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-El-Maati, and Muayyed Nurreddin – were similarly detained and tortured in Syrian prisons during the same period as Arar. Both Almalki and El Maati were subjects of the same RCMP Project A-O investigation and, in his final report, Justice O’Connor briefly noted that, based on information that arose during the inquiry, the “cases of each of the other three men … raise troubling questions about what role Canadian officials may have played in the events that befell them.”48 And yet, O’Connor also played a role in helping the government bury these cases by recommending a private investigation and suggesting, with unintentionally ironic word choice, that another public inquiry would be “a tortuous, time-consuming and expensive exercise.”49 By restricting public knowledge of these other cases, the Canadian state and its apparatuses have further sought to frame Arar’s experience as a radical exception to the rule of the protection of Canadian citizens’ rights both at home and abroad. At the same time, however, Canada’s self-interested reputation damage control also works to the benefit of the Syrian government by shielding it from further international scrutiny for the imprisonment and torture of Almalki, El Maati, and Nurreddin.50 Such is one way that Canada’s use of the inquiry and apology regarding Maher Arar has functioned to “render” Arar an exception and, in so doing, also reinforce the power of the post-9/11 state of emergency by playing a role in dissimulating its other grievances. Canada’s Culture of Redress: Norms and Exceptions The story of Maher Arar initially appears as an exception to the norms of Canada’s culture of redress. One of those defining norms is the recognition of collectivities rather than individual bearers of rights, with concentration on injustices perpetrated against and apologies delivered to marginalized diasporic and Indigenous communities. The state’s redress practices have accordingly incorporated what Matt James calls “the group recognition charac-

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teristic of official multiculturalist affirmations,” mobilizing a “difference-conscious focus on group disadvantage, group restitution, and group responsibilities.”51 The Arar affair appears to deviate from the norm of group injury and recognition – a difference exacerbated by the decidedly personal address of Stephen Harper’s apology that sought to disarticulate Arar’s experiences from Canada’s complicity in the “War on Terror’s” racialized violence against people of Arab descent. However, reading the Arar case in relation to Canada’s broader culture of redress helps to recontextualize Arar’s experiences within overarching systems of discrimination as well as the state’s current strategies for managing its indictment for such systems. Of course, not all groups have been racialized in the same ways nor have the same strategies of oppression been applied to all minoritized constituencies. The Arar file underscores the historical contingency of the tropes and inflections of particular racial discourses and the ways in which these inflections make the state of exception appear new and urgent each time it reinvents itself. Moreover, reading the Arar apology in relation to the culture of redress sheds light on how the logic of exceptionality mobilized to present Arar’s mistreatment as singular rather than structural is analogous to the strategies of containment operative in most official apologies proferred by the Canadian state. In the case of apologies for group injuries, exceptionality is deployed to contain injustices as discrete policy initiatives rather than long-standing and pervasive structures of oppression. Managed in this way, the wartime internment of Japanese Canadians is severed from Anglo-Canadian xenophobic resentment of Japanese Canadian labourers in the Pacific fishing industry, while residential schooling is framed as a misguided educational policy born of treaty obligations rather than part of a multifaceted system of colonial genocide. Another normative characteristic of Canada’s contemporary culture of redress is its focus upon righting the wrongs of the so-called past, such that an ostensibly enlightened government apologizes for unjust policies implemented by historically distinct administrations in a different moment of national history. Such a strategy, Matt James argues in his contribution to this anthology, has been materialized in the emergence of a state policy of “heritage redress.” As I have argued elsewhere, a recurring rhetorical strategy of the Canadian government’s apologies has been the mobilization of the rhetoric of “pastness” in order to impose historical closure upon injustices and to reinforce a teleology of national progress that overwrites ongoing forms of racist and colonialist inequity.52 Eva Mackey’s analysis (in this volume) of Harper’s recent residential schools apology makes this strategy and its implications particularly clear. In contrast, the Arar case has the potential to destabilize the normative temporality of redress by presenting a grievance that cannot be consigned to the distant past and by necessitating an apology in relatively close historical proximity to the time of the injustice it addresses. And yet, Harper’s apology to Arar mobilized strategies of temporal containment reminiscent of those used in previous government mea culpas for historical injuries. Despite the fact that Arar suffered ongoing discrimination and was discredited by the media well after his return to Canada, the prime minister’s statement carefully circumscribed the temporal parameters of Arar’s grievance in terms of “the terrible ordeal that … you experienced in 2002 and 2003.” Harper was quick to position his current administration as enlightened in comparison to its predecessor, asserting that “although these events occurred under the last government,” the present administration was willing to defend Arar’s civil liberties. Harper’s 2007 apology to Arar thus echoed the rhetorical strategies he employed a year before in his apology for the Chinese head tax, in which he asserted: “Even though the head tax – a product of a profoundly different time – lies far in

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our past, we feel compelled to right this historic wrong for the simple reason that it is the decent thing to do.”53 The technique of temporal distancing employed in both statements differs in degree, not in kind. Just as the Canadian state’s mea culpas for historical injustices have repeatedly invoked tropes of closure such as “turn[ing] the page” and closing a “sad chapter” upon the wrongs of the past, Harper’s address positioned itself as enabling the Arar family “to begin a new and hopeful chapter in … [their] lives.”54 The apology therefore presented itself as a ceremonial end to an “ordeal” that had already ceased long before, thereby denying the fact that the post-9/11 state of exception has proved to be not nearly as temporary as Bush initially suggested and Obama later promised. While the apology to Arar did afford him at least a minor measure of protection within the ongoing “War on Terror,” his rights and safety have continued to be jeopardized by ongoing false allegations of terrorist involvement by the media and by US security apparatuses. While Arar notes that the apology and compensation package have not enabled him to “buy [his] life back,” he and his wife have exercised agency within these constraints, employing the apology to draw attention to other casualities of Canada’s participation in the “War on Terror.”55 Arar’s example consequently points towards how strategic re-appropriations of governmental performances of contrition may not only address the past, but also advance counter-hegemonic agendas in Canada’s present and future. Perhaps most interestingly for the purposes of this essay collection, the strategic articulation of the Arar case to Canada’s culture of redress reveals that the invocation of the state of emergency is, in the words of Walter Benjamin, “not the exception but the rule.” “We must,” Benjamin reminds us, “attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight.”56 While these words are oft cited, they have far less frequently been uttered in particular relation to a conception of Canadian history, one that examines the specificities of national politics while also contextualizing them in relation to global phenomena. In the context of the Canadian state’s deliberate self-fashioning as a bulwark of civility, tolerance, and human rights protectionism with a history putatively so pacific as to be dubbed “boring,” it is a powerful corrective to reread the Canadian past and present in terms of the routinized fomentation of states of emergency that have enabled the perpetuation of gross injustices against marginalized constituencies in Canada. For instance, the so-called crises of the “Yellow Peril” and the invasion of “enemy aliens” have been utilized to justify extraordinary measures that violate the rights of marginalized communities, such as the invocation of the War Measures Act for the internment of Italian, Ukrainian, and Japanese Canadians.57 Without collapsing the differences between heterogeneous cases of racialized violence and the subsequent redress campaigns that have been spearheaded to address them, such a reading of the manufacturing of fictitious emergencies in Canadian pasts and presents might help to rupture the excuses for violating human rights provided by the “War on Terror” or other future emergencies. Mapping these connections might be one way to contribute to the ongoing critical project of analysing the logics of exceptionality and normativity as they play out in the circuits of violence and atonemement.

NOTES 1 I wish to thank Sally Fuentes and Marlon Thompson for their work as undergraduate research assistants in the preparation of this essay. Special thanks are also owed to David Drysdale, Jen-

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nifer Henderson, Erica Kelly, Thy Phu, Josh Schuster, and Nicole Shukin for their extremely insightful readings of early drafts of the paper. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 2. Analyses of the Arar case in relation to the state of emergency include David Mutimer, “Sovereign Contradictions: Maher Arar and the Indefinite Future,” in The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror: Living, Dying, Surviving, ed. E. Dauphinee and C. Masters (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2007), 159–79; and Martin French, “In the Shadow of Canada’s Camps,” Social and Legal Studies 16, no. 3 (2007): 49–69. Ibid., 2–3. Ibid., 4. Although the most common use of the phrase “extraordinary rendition” is the one cited above – namely, “the transfer of terror suspects to countries where they may face torture” – the nonprofit organization Human Rights Watch uses the phrase “extraordinary rendition” to signify “the extralegal form of the practice” of rendition “in which a person is apprehended in one country and handed over to another without any formal legal procedure” (2). According to the Human Rights Watch Report to the Arar Commission, “Mr. Arar’s case may have been a rendition within a lawful procedure, given that it appears he was removed from the United States after being placed in expedited immigration proceedings. His case is likely not among those considered to be ‘extraordinary renditions’ by U.S. officials … Despite the fact that Mr. Arar’s rendition purportedly occurred within … [an expedited] legal process, it remains unclear whether U.S. officials adhered to the legally prescribed procedures in his case” (2–3). Wendy Patten, Human Rights Watch Report to the Canadian Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar (Ottawa: Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, 2005), 2–3. An important exception is Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Nisha Nath’s excellent article “From Deportation to Apology: The Case of Maher Arar and the Canadian State,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 39, no. 3 (2007). Although I did not discover the article until the latter stages of revising this essay, Abu-Laban and Nath’s work similarly attempts to think through the relation between Arar’s deportation and the Canadian government’s subsequent apology. My essay differs in its linking of the Arar apology to a broader culture of redress in Canada and its focus upon how the logic of exceptionality underpins both the state of emergency and the discourse of apology. While Abu-Laban and Nath argue for a conceptualization of “the contemporary Canadian state as one in which multiculturalism and liberalism co-exist with structural violence in the form of racialization and exception” (74), I argue instead that the relationship between the culture of redress and the state of exception is not one of contradictory “co-existence” but rather a more intricately entangled relationship of supplementarity, as I will explain in this essay. Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. M. Dooley and M. Hughes (New York: Routledge, 2001), 31. Deena Rymhs has recently termed the current era the “age of forgiveness” in “Appropriating Guilt: Reconciliation in an Aboriginal Canadian Context,” English Studies in Canada 32 (March 2006): 105. Paul Gilroy has similarly referred to the present moment as “the age of apologies” in Between Camps: Nations, Cultures, and the Allure of Race (New York: Routledge, 2004), 5. Agamben argues that “World War One (and the years following it) appear as a laboratory for testing and honing the functional mechanisms and apparatuses of the state of exception as a paradigm of government” (State of Exception, 7). The Second World War further solidified this

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16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27

Pauline Wakeham phenomenon with the rise of Hitler, the Third Reich, and the concentration camps of the Holocaust, which Agamben reads as the paradigmatic example of the camp. See Puspa Damai, “The Killing Machine of Exception: Sovereignty, Law, and Play in Agamben’s State of Exception,” CR: The New Centennial Review 5, no. 3 (2005): 264 and Stephen Humphreys, “Legalizing Lawlessness: On Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception,” European Journal of International Law 17, no. 3 (2006): 683. While it might be tempting to position atrocity and emergency within the first half of the twentieth century and mark the “post-war” period as the advent of human rights and international reckoning with injustice, such a delineation would be misleading. During the same “post-war” period that gave birth to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, peoples across the globe were still struggling for decolonization and the liberal nation-state of Canada was extending the suspension of Japanese Canadians’ rights through legislation such as the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act and the Constitution of Transitional Measures Act (see appendix item G.II.1 in this book for further information). Abu-Laban and Nath, “From Deportation to Apology,” 78. For a detailed discussion of the temporal boundaries imposed upon the recognition of injustices by state programs of redress, see Matt James’s contribution to this collection. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 22 June 2006, pp. 2863–6. For the full text of Harper’s apology to Chinese Canadians, please see appendix D5 in this book. For a more detailed account of Arar’s experiences, please refer to “Maher’s Story” at MaherArar.ca, or to Dennis O’Connor, Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Analysis and Recommendations, report prepared for Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, vol. 3, 2006. Within the first page of O’Connor’s findings, the justice writes: “I have heard evidence concerning all of the information collected about Mr. Arar in Canadian investigations and there is nothing to indicate that Mr. Arar committed an offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada” (1: 9). Sedef Arat-Koc, “Whose Transnationalism? Canada, ‘Clash of Civilizations’ Discourse, and Arab and Muslim Canadians,” in Transnational Identities and Practices in Canada, ed. V. Satzewich and L. Wong (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 217, 234. O’Connor, Report, 3: 17. Ibid., 3: 19; 3: 20–1. Ibid., 3: 25. Ibid., 3: 28. Arar did not decline the interview in January 2002; rather, upon the advice of legal counsel, he “agreed to be interviewed, subject to certain conditions” (ibid.). Moreover, Arar travelled to Tunisia five months later, not promptly following the RCMP’s request for an interview. O’Connor, Report, 3: 34, 3: 41. Arat-Koc, “Whose Transnationalism?” 216. O’Connor, Report, 3: 30. Audrey Macklin, “From Cooperation, to Complicity, to Compensation: The War on Terror, Extraordinary Rendition, and the Cost of Torture,” European Journal of Migration and Law 10 (2008): 13. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 25. O’Connor, Report, 3: 362–3. Arar at first wanted to sue the Canadian government for $400 mil-

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lion. CBC News, “Harper’s apology ‘means the world’: Arar,” 26 January 2007, http://www .cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/01/26/harper-apology.html. “Prime Minister releases letter of apology to Maher Arar and his family and announces completion of mediation process,” 26 January 2007, at Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1509. All subsequent references to the text of the apology in this essay are from the source cited here. “From Deportation to Apology,” 9. Giuliano Zaccardelli, “Response to the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar,” 28 September 2006, at Royal Canadian Mounted Police, http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/speeches/sp_arar_e.htm. “Prime Minister releases letter of apology.” Partisan politics are also cited as a mitigating factor for the Conservative government in power at the time of the apology, as Harper asserts in his letter to Arar: “Although these events occurred under the last government, please rest assured that this government will do everything in its power to ensure that the issues raised by Commissioner O’Connor are addressed.” Mark Gibney and Nicklaus Steiner, “Apology and the American ‘War on Terror,’” in The Age of Apology: Facing up the Past, ed. M. Gibney et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 287. Ibid., 295. Ibid., 287. Ibid., 288. Quoted ibid., 292. Ibid., 294. It should be briefly noted that the logic of exceptionality mobilized by the post-9/11 emergency state is crucially related but not wholly reducible to the long and complex genealogy of American exceptionalism that has sought to legitimate imperial annexation and encroachments upon other countries’ sovereignty under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The particular US nationalist inflection of exceptionalism renders the current US recourse to the state of emergency particularly rich and complex. Garry Sherbert, “Canadian Cultural Autoimmunity: Derrida and the Essence of Culture,” Mosaic 40, no. 2 (2007): 280. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G.C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 144, 145. Jason Frank and Tracy McNulty make the link between Bush’s much repeated assertion and Schmitt’s statement in “Introduction: Taking Exception to the Exception,” diacritics 37, nos. 2–3 (2007): 3. “Prime Minister releases letter of apology.” Zaccardelli, “Response to the Report of the Commission of Inquiry.” O’Connor quoted ibid. “Outsourcing torture” is a phrase coined by Arar and made famous in Jane Mayer’s article “Outsourcing Torture: The Secret History of America’s ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Program,” New Yorker, 14 February 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6. Nasser Hussain, “Beyond Norm and Exception: Guantánamo,” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 4 (2007): 738. Susan Buck-Morss, “Visual Empire,” diacritics 37, nos. 2–3 (2008): 171. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), xii.

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48 O’Connor, Report, 3: 276. As just one example of Canadian collusion in the “transnationalization” of the torture of these three men, the final report of the commission of inquiry notes that Canadian officials faxed questions to Syrian authorities for their interrogation of Almalki, as they had done for Arar (ibid., 3: 38). 49 Ibid., 3: 276. Following O’Connor’s advice, in December 2006, the federal government initiated the Internal Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmed El Maati and Muyyedd Nurredin, led by retired Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci. According to the terms of reference for the inquiry, Justice Iacobucci was directed to “take all steps necessary to ensure that the inquiry is conducted in private.” Quoted in Macklin, “From Cooperation,” 29. 50 Another complex case in point is that of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who has been detained in Guantánamo since 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade during a firefight that killed a US soldier. Although Khadr was only fifteen years old at the time, and thus a “child soldier” according to international law, he was prosecuted via a military tribunal in Guantánamo. Khadr is the only citizen of a Western nation who remains in Guantánamo; Britain, Australia, Sweden, and Germany have repatriated their citizens from this detention centre while the Canadian government has yet to intervene on Khadr’s behalf. Sean Fine, “Omar Khadr: A most peculiar young offender,” Globe and Mail, 22 March 2008, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ story/RTGAM.20080320.wcoessay0322/BNStory/specialComment/home. An FBI interrogator testified in January 2009 that Khadr confessed to having seen Maher Arar at a terrorist safe house in Afghanistan. Although the FBI agent’s testimony was contradicted under crossexamination, these events led to renewed unfair questioning of Arar’s affiliations. While Stephen Harper spoke boldly about standing up for the rights of Canadian citizens at the time of issuing his apology to Arar, when asked about the events of the Khadr trial, Kory Teneycke, communications director for Harper stated dryly: “We have seen the story and we have no comment at this time.” Michelle Shephard and Tonda MacCharles, “Khadr pointed finger at Arar, court told,” Toronto Star, 20 January 2009, http://www.thestar.com/SpecialSections/ article/573901. Beyond the examples of injustices done to Canadian citizens, the federal government has also initiated questionable infringements upon the civil liberties of permanent residents and foreign nationals with the implementation of “security certificates” that enable the detention and deportation of non-citizens who are believed to “pose a national security threat” “without formal charges or conviction.” Colleen Bell, “Subject to Exception: Security Certificates, National Security and Canada’s Role in the ‘War on Terror,’” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 21, no. 1 (2006): 63. 51 Matt James, “Do Campaigns for Historical Redress Erode the Canadian Welfare State?” in Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, ed. K. Banting and W. Kymlicka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 224. 52 Pauline Wakeham, “The Cunning of Reconciliation: Reinventing White Civility in the ‘Age of Apology,’” in Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies, ed. S. Kamboureli and R. Zacharias (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 209–33. 53 Please see appendix D5 in this book. 54 These tropes of closure are found in the Chinese head tax apology and the residential schools apology, respectively. For the full texts, please refer to appendices D5 and A8 in this book. 55 CBC News, “Harper’s apology ‘means the world.’” 56 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. H. Arendt, trans. H. Zohn (1950; New York: Schocken, 1968), 257.

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57 Martin French argues for an examination of the state of emergency and “the proliferation and diffusion of the detention camp” – that zone of exceptionality where, according to Agamben, subjects are rendered “bare life” and stripped of their political identities and rights – on Canadian soil rather than abroad in “outsourced” sites such as Guantánamo (“In the Shadow of Canada’s Camps,” 51). Although French focuses upon the post-9/11 context, his analysis invites a historical analysis of different formations of the camp in Canada.

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APPENDIX A ABORIGINAL PEOPLES AND RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS 1. Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, 18791 Residential schools in the territory that became Canada may trace their embryonic origins to the work of the Récollets, a Franciscan order of priests that established boarding schools to assist in the religious conversion of Indigenous children as early as 1620.2 While religious institutions were involved in educating Aboriginal youth over the next two centuries, the government did not become involved in the process until the mid-1800s. In 1842, Governor General of the Province of Canada Sir Charles Bagot chaired the Bagot Commission, which helped to articulate the cornerstone of “Indian” policy for the next six decades: assimilation. The Bagot Commission Report argued that education was integral to the project of assimilation and, therefore, advocated the development of “many manual labour or Industrial schools.”3 Shortly after Confederation, the Government of Canada began to put the policy of assimilation via education into practice, assuming responsibility for administrating Indian residential schools in the 1870s. In 1879, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald commissioned Nicholas Flood Davin to travel to the United States and observe the system of industrial boarding schools implemented there. Davin published his findings in the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds (often referred to as the Davin Report), advocating that Canada adopt a similar regime. The Davin Report played a crucial role in shaping the Indian Residential School system for the next several decades as a cooperative venture between church and state focused upon “civilizing” and assimilating Aboriginal children.

Ottawa, 14th March, 1879 To the Right Honourable The Minister of the Interior Sir, – I have the honour to submit the following report on the working of Industrial Schools for the education of Indians and mixed-bloods in the United States, and on the advisability of establishing similar institutions in the North-West Territories of the Dominion. In accordance with your directions of the twenty-eighth of January, I went to Washington. His Excellency Sir Edward Thornton, the Honourable Carl Schurtz, Secretary of the Interior, and the Honourable E. A. Hayt, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, secured for me every facility for becoming acquainted with the establishment, cost and practical value of industrial schools among the Indian populations of the United States. The industrial school is the principal feature of the policy known as that of “aggressive civilization.” This policy was inaugurated by President Grant in 1869. But, as will be seen, the utility of industrial schools had long ere that time been amply tested. Acting on the suggestion of the President, Congress passed a law early in 1869, providing for the appointment of the Peace Commission. This Commission recommended that the Indians should, as far as practicable, be consolidated on few reservations, and provided with “permanent individual homes”; that the tribal relation should be abolished; that lands should be allotted in severalty and not in common; that the Indian should speedily become a citizen of the United States, enjoy the protection of the law, and be made amenable thereto; that, finally,

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it was the duty of the Government to afford the Indians all reasonable aid in their preparation for citizenship by educating them in industry and in the arts of civilization. After eight years’ experience of the partial carrying out of these recommendations, the Board pressed for a still more thorough policy; they urged, among other things, that titles to land should be inalienable from the family of the holder for at least three generations. From 1869 vigorous efforts in an educational direction were put forward. But it was found that the day-school did not work, because the influence of the wigwam was stronger than the influence of the school. Industrial Boarding Schools were therefore established, and these are now numerous and will soon be universal. The cry from the Agencies where no boarding industrial schools have been established is persistent and earnest to have the want supplied. The experience of the United States is the same as our own as far as the adult Indian is concerned. Little can be done with him. He can be taught to do a little at farming, and at stock-raising, and to dress in a more civilized manner, but that is all. The child, again, who goes to a day school learns little, and what little he learns is soon forgotten, while his tastes are fashioned at home, and his inherited aversion to toil is in no way combated. There are two ways of conducting the industrial boarding schools. In the one, the Government carries on the school through the Agency; in the other, by contract. A contract is made, for instance, with the Episcopal Church authorities, or the Roman Catholic Church authorities, or with the authorities of any other body of Christians, to carry on an industrial boarding school among the Indians. One hundred and twenty-five dollars a year is paid for each pupil boarder, when the attendance at the school does not exceed thirty; in larger schools, one hundred dollars; and even less when the school is of considerable size. The Honourable the Commissioner of Indian Affairs is not in favour of the contract system, because the children at schools under contract do not, as a rule, get a sufficient quantity of food. The contractor, in addition to supplying the food, prepares the clothing, the raw material of which is found by the Government. The Commissioner was emphatic in his testimony as to the happy results which had attended the industrial schools wherever established. Experience has demonstrated that it is better to have the dormitory separated from the school. The school is now, therefore, always erected about ten rods from the dormitory. Thus the children are kept from spoiling the building. … Among the Indians there is some discontent, but as a rule it amounts to no more than the chronic querulousness of the Indian character, and his uneasiness about food at this time of year will unfortunately leave no trace in his improvident mind when spring opens and fish are plentiful. The exceptions are furnished by one or two chiefs whose bands are starving, that is in the Indian sense of that word, without a certain prospect of food in the future. Distress will always exist among improvident people, and undoubtedly distress and misery exist in many Bands. The attitude of the chiefs referred to, and the language held by the chief on the occasion of a visit to the St Peter’s Reservation – language which showed that he was in communication with the unsettled Bands – open up, in the event of the disappearance of the buffalo (a disappearance no protective legislation can long retard), a prospect which demands the serious consideration of the Department. No race of men can be suddenly turned from one set of pursuits to another set of a wholly different nature without great attendant distress. But, suddenly, to make men long accustomed to a wild unsettled life, with its freedom from restraint, its excitement and charm, take to the colourless monotony of daily toil, the reward of which is prospective, is impossible.

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The half-breeds or mixed-bloods are thoughtful, if not anxious, regarding the Government’s intentions respecting them. But the problem before the Department cannot be settled by the issue of scrip. That problem can be solved only by gradually educating Indians and mixed-bloods in self-reliance and industry. … There is now barely time to inaugurate a system of education by means of which the native populations of the North-West shall be gradually prepared to meet the necessities of the not distant future; to welcome and facilitate, it may be hoped, the settlement of the country; and to render its government easy and not expensive. I would respectfully warn the Department against listening to alarmists who would press them to act in a manner which would develop, with tropical rapidity, in every chief, the pestilent character of the demagogue. But as far as we can judge from approximate returns, there are some twenty-eight thousand Indians in the seven territorial divisions cov[e]red by treaty. There are about twelve hundred half-breed families. Chief Beardy and Big Bear are malcontent. Beardy’s Band is put down in the official returns as not more than thirty-nine. His Band is, however, many times larger than this. We have warlike and excited refugees within our territory. A large statesmanlike policy, with bearings on immediate and remote issues, cannot be entered on too earnestly or too soon. The Indian character, about which some persons fling such a mystery, is not difficult to understand. The Indian is sometimes spoken of as a child, but he is very far from being a child. The race is in its childhood. As far as the childhood analogy is applicable, what it suggests is a policy that shall look patiently for fruit, not after five or ten years, but after a generation or two. The analogy is misleading when we come to deal with the adult, and is of course a mere truism and not a figure of speech when we take charge of the Indian in the period of infancy. There is, it is true, in the adult, the helplessness of mind of the child, as well as the practical helplessness; there is, too, the child’s want of perspective; but there is little of the child’s receptivity; nor is the child’s tractableness always found. One of the prime conditions of childhood is absent – the abeyance of the passions. Anybody who has tried to educate grown-up civilized men, with untrained minds, as are the minds of most civilized men, will understand the disturbing and dwarfing influence of the complex interests which crowd in on the adult. The Indian is a man with traditions of his own, which make civilization a puzzle of despair. He has the suspicion, distrust, fault-finding tendency, the insincerity and flattery, produced in all subject races. He is crafty, but conscious how weak his craft is when opposed to the superior cunning of the white man. Not to speak of him – even some of the half-breeds of high intelligence are incapable of embracing the idea of a nation – of a national type of man – in which it should be their ambition to be merged and lost. Yet he realises that he must disappear, and realizing this, and unable to associate himself with the larger and nobler idea, the motive power which inspired a Pontiac and a Tecumseh, is absent. The Indian’s stolidity is in part assumed, in part the stupor produced by external novel and distasteful conditions, and in both respects has been manifested in white races at periods of helplessness and ignorance, of subjection to, and daily contact with, the power and superior skill and refinement of more advanced races, or even more advanced branches of the same race. We need not, therefore, recall the names of Indian heroes to make us respect the latent capacities of the red man. We have only to look to the rock whence we were hewn. The Indian, I repeat, is not a child, and he is the last person that should be dealt with in a childish way. He requires firm, bold, kindly handling and bound-

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less patience. He exacts, and surely not unreasonably, scrupulous honesty. There ought to be a special exemplary punishment provided for those persons who, when employed by the Government to supply the Indian with stores, cheat him. It would be traveling beyond the record to comment on our Indian policy and our treaties with the Indians, though I have formed very decided opinions respecting both. But this remark is pertinent. Guaranteeing schools as one of the considerations for surrendering the title to land, was, in my opinion, trifling with a great duty and placing the Government in no dignified attitude. It should have been assumed that the Government would attend to its proper and pressing business in this important particular. Such a guarantee, moreover, betrays a want of knowledge of the Indian character. It might easily have been realized, (it is at least thinkable), that one of the results would be to make the Chiefs believe they had some right to a voice regarding the character and management of the schools, as well as regarding the initiatory step of their establishment. Chief Prince is giving some trouble on this head. There are cases where a denominational would be more suitable than a secular school, and vice versa; there are other cases where no Government school is needed, and where the true policy is to utilize the mission schools. The establishment and conduct of schools are matters which should have been left in a position to be considered apart from the disturbing, and sometimes designing predilections of a Chief; the needs and aptitudes of the settlement are alone worthy of being weighed. The moment there exists a settlement which has any permanent character, then education in some form or other should be brought within reach of the children. This is not merely a matter of policy. It is that, of course, in the highest degree. It is a sacred duty. One ill result of promising the Indians schools, is that the Church Missionary Society is withdrawing its aid to the mission schools – a step which adds to conditions already sufficiently imperative, calling for a prudent, far-seeing and vigorous educational policy. The first and greatest stone in the foundation of the quasi-civilization of the Indians, wherever seen, was laid by missionaries, men who had a supreme object and who did not count their lives dear unto them. Schools are scattered over the whole continent, wherever Indians exist, monuments of religious zeal and heroic self-sacrifice. These schools should be utilized as much as possible, both on grounds of efficiency and economy. The missionaries’ experience is only surpassed by their patient heroism, and their testimony, like that of the school teachers, like that of the authorities at Washington is, that if anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions. … The importance of denominational schools at the outset for the Indians must be obvious. One of the earliest things an attempt to civilize them does, is to take away their simple Indian mythology, the central idea of which, to wit, a perfect spirit, can hardly be improved on. The Indians have their own ideas of right and wrong, of “good” Indians and “bad” Indians, and to disturb this faith, without supplying a better, would be a curious process to enlist the sanction of civilized races whose whole civilization, like all the civilizations with which we are acquainted, is based on religion. A civilized sceptic, breathing, though he does, an atmosphere charged with Christian ideas, and getting strength unconsciously therefrom, is nevertheless, unless in instances of rare intellectual vigour, apt to be a man without ethical backbone. But a savage sceptic would be open to civilizing influences and moral control only through desires, which, in the midst of enlightenment, constantly break out into the

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worst features of barbarism. Where, however, the poor Indian has been brought face to face with polemics and settlements are divided, or think they are divided, on metaphysical niceties, the school should be, as at the White Earth Agency, Minnesota, undenominational. … The recommendations I venture to submit are as follows:– … (7.) Some distinction should be made between the treatment of parents who send their children regularly to the day-school, and of those who are either careless whether their children go to school or not, or who are wholly opposed to their children attending school, as some are. To the first, an additional ration of tea and sugar might be given. (8.) Where practicable, some inducement of a special nature should be held out to the child. (9.) As Bands become more amenable to the restraints of civilization education should be made compulsory. (10.) The character of the teacher, morally and intellectually, is a matter of vital importance. If he is morally weak, whatever his intellectual qualifications may be, he is worse than no teacher at all. If he is poorly instructed or feeble in brain, he only enacts every day an elaborate farce. It must be obvious that to teach semi-civilized children is a more difficult task than to teach children with inherited aptitudes, whose training is, moreover, carried on at home. A teacher should have force of character, and when he presides over an industrial school should have a knowledge of farming. Such a man must be adequately paid. The advantage of calling in the aid of religion is, that there is a chance of getting an enthusiastic person, with, therefore, a motive power beyond anything pecuniary remuneration could supply. The work requires not only the energy but the patience of an enthusiast. The teacher’s appointment to an industrial boarding school should be made by the Government, after consultation with the religious body immediately interested, and the whole machinery should be carefully guarded against the suspicion of having any character of religious endowment, or any likelihood of issuing therein. (11.) In order to secure that the education given would be efficient, there ought to be competent inspection. Failing this, when industrial boarding schools come to be widely established, large sums will be thrown into the sea. The education given in Indian schools is, as a rule, of a very poor sort, mechanical to the last degree. (12.) Where boys or girls, whether Indians or half-breed, show special aptitudes or exceptional general quickness, special advantages should be offered them, and they should be trained to become teachers and clerks in connection with the Department, as well as fitted to launch out on commercial and professional careers. (13.) The salary of a teacher must be such as will induce good men to offer themselves. The teacher should be paid according to his qualifications. In the future, when the manual labour boarding school is an established institution, those teachers who manage their schools in a manner tending towards self-support, should have a percentage on the reduction in the cost of management. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, NICHOLAS FLOOD DAVIN.

304 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools NOTES 1 Nicholas Flood Davin, “Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, 1879,” Library and Archives Canada, AMICUS 3018608. 2 J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 39. 3 Bagot Commission Report, quoted in John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879–1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 13.

2. Testimony of Duncan Campbell Scott before 1920 House of Commons Committee on Bill 14, “An Act to Revise the Indian Act”1 Bill 14, which proposed making residential and day schooling for Aboriginal children compulsory, widening the criteria for the enfranchisement of Aboriginal men, and giving band councils powers to pass bylaws, was given its first reading in Parliament in March 1920. The draft legislation was then referred to a special committee, to which Duncan Campbell Scott, deputy superintendent general of the Department of Indian Affairs, testified on 31 March 1920. Below are excerpts from the minutes of that meeting, in which Scott makes arguments in favour of residential schooling and a more aggressive policy of enfranchisement. Scott bolsters his testimony by distributing letters of support from “Indian educators” and church societies. One of the letters, from the Garden River First Nation, registers a strong objection to the proposed legislation. Other “Indian witnesses” present at the meeting criticize the paternalism of the state in relation to Aboriginal peoples.2 The committee held seventeen subsequent meetings before presenting a report to Parliament in June of the same year. On 29 June 1920 Bill 14 was passed by the Senate without amendment. An Act to Amend the Indian Act not only made residential schooling compulsory, it also increased the power of Indian agents to enforce school attendance and inflict penalties on resistant parents and guardians of school-age children.

mr. d.c. scott: … We cannot do any more for the Indians than we are allowed to do, by law and by Parliament. The appropriations are determined by Parliament; If I had my own way I would immediately double the appropriation for Indian education … I have to contend in my official life with difficulties, because a civil servant never gets away from obstacles. Our obstacle in regard to Indian education is the lack of a compulsory system, the same as the white people have. Under the present Act the Governor in Council is empowered to pass regulation, and he has passed regulations and we are now conducting our Indian Schools under a regulation passed in 1908, and under the Act these regulations permit us to commit to an industrial school the child who will not or who is not attending the day school on the reserve. That is as far as it permits us to go. Not having any other powers to commit except the child who is not attending the school on the reserve the object of this Bill is to give us power not only to compel children to attend day school on the reserve, but we can take [a] child, place it in the industrial school without the parents’ consent. That, of course seems going very far, but I may say that the Bill hardly applies to Eastern Canada at all in any of its provisions, although it extends to all parts of Canada, to Eastern Canada, as well as in

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the West. But our residential schools in the East are practically full, we have waiting lists, none of them can accommodate any more pupils, and the compulsory clause almost entirely affects the Western part of the Dominion, although it may [affect] certain cases in the East when at least we have an Indian abusing or neglecting his child. In the West we have a great deal of difficulty in getting children to school. I may say that our school system is somewhat peculiar in that the churches co-operate with us in the work of education, and I have always been in favour of that because of the success which has attended the work … The difficulty in the West is with the almost savage people we have there, to get them to realize the benefit of education and to send their children voluntarily. Now the educators who are conducting these schools have resorted to all sorts of means to get these children to attend. I will not say that they have resorted to bribery, that is not the proper term to use, but they have really paid to have the children brought to school, and the difficulty is to keep them there when they get there, because just as soon as the child enters the school the parents want to take it out for some reason or other, either because of supposed sickness or somebody has died, and they want to get the children out of school. The Bill is to give us control of that and we have endeavored to take the sting out of the separation of the child from its parents and the breaking up of the home life; the Indians parents are very fond of their children. There has always been every effort made and opportunity taken to study their character – I am speaking of the Tribes in the West now, not of those in the East, because they deal with their children the same as we do. I have endeavored to mitigate the separation as much as possible by providing that there shall be a holiday every year, and that the Department shall pay the expenses of sending their children home and bringing them back so that the Indian parents will be assured of seeing their children running around the Tepee for a month or six weeks every summer at least. I am very doubtful whether that is a benefit to the child because if we take the children from the vermin ridden shack with lice, bed-bugs and vermin of all kinds, and bring them to the schools, clean them and clothe them, and give them the benefit of nourishing food and then sent them back to the place whence they came – that does not apply of course to all cases – it does not [tend] to improve them in regard to the education of the children. To point to the benefit of the policy of the department I may say that not more than 25 years ago we were practically feeding the Indians of the West, after the disappearance of the buffalo, Canada took up the obligation of feeding these people and keeping them alive. To-day we see hardly one-tenth of the gratuitous feeding in the Northwest Territories, the Indians are practically self-supporting on account of our policy. I have brought pictures here of schools. When I took charge of the schools I made up my mind that they would be considered only from the point of view of the public interest and not from the standpoint that anything was good enough for the Indians. That was the trouble in the old days, the Department put up cheap places which very soon became dilapidated and filled with tuberculosis germs so that they were unfit for the purposes for which they were erected. The institutions we have erected in recent years have been such that any member of the community can go into them and be proud of them, and the plans we have drawn and the schools we have put up since that time for the Indian children are such as we have put up in Portage La Prairie. I have brought these pictures for your inspection in order to let you understand that we are not taking these people and putting them into institutions that we cannot be proud of. (Pictures distributed and examined by the committee.) These schools are conducted under control of the Government, the Government has a contract, a copy of which I have here, and I will leave it for the information of the Committee. The contract is with the Bishop of the [Diocese] or with the Head

306 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools

of the Presbyterian or Methodist churches conducting the schools and they are expected to keep the schools up to a certain standard, the schools are under inspection of our officers, by our agents and inspectors, and in some cases also, particularly day schools, they are inspected by the provisional inspectors. I do not think I can say very much more about the educational clauses. The purpose of the Bill is to give us control over the attendance at the day schools. the acting chairman: Under the present regulations you have simply control of the schools on the reserve? mr. scott: Yes. the acting chairman: Now you extend it to the other schools? mr. scott: Yes, where the Indian pupil fails to attend we can issue a warrant and take him to the industrial school. In the West we have found that the reserve day schools are an absolute failure, we have tried to stimulate attendance in every way, by a warm mid-day meal, sometimes by conveying the children to the school, the distance over which the Indians are [scattered] in the West renders it almost impossible to get any effectual education at the Indian day schools. All the Indian educators, I may say, are in favour of this Bill … I have several letters here from ecclesiastics and others, as follows; … (Exhibit no. 20) 59 Blackwood St. Westminster B.C. April 9 1920 Duncan C Scott, Esq. Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Ottawa, Ont. Dear Mr. Scott – With regard to the Measure now before Parliament which has for its object to make attendance at Residential Indian / Indian Schools compulsory I respectfully beg to inform you that it has my hearty support. On the main land in British Columbia, I have for a number of years been in close touch with our Residential Indian Schools, and therefore I am in a position to speak of them from personal knowledge. Now the knowledge I have gained is, that they are doing a grand work for the moral, intellectual and physical training of the Indian. The parents of the children in nearly all cases realize this full well, and consequently we have little difficulty here, in filling all our Boarding and industrial Schools to their utmost capacity. The strong arm of the law to enforce attendance I confidently assert will be seldom needed in the schools under my jurisdiction. Cases of course will rise where parents or guardians may be too indolent to exercise their obligations; in these cases I quite believe that discretionary power should be vested in the Government to compel such parents or guardians and to give every child the advantage of the education and training such as our schools afford. I have the honour to be, Yours respectfully, (SGD) J. Welch, C.M.I.

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(Exhibit no. 21) Muncey, Ont. April 17 1920 Duncan C. Scott, Esq. Deputy Supt. General Ind. Affairs Ottawa, Ont. Dear Sir – I most sincerely hope that the proposed amendment to the Indian Act will prevail. The Indian is capable and in most cases worthy but he will not move without some compulsion. As I write an Indian seeks admission for two boys about twelve years of age, neither one can speak a word of English although within distance of a good school. Lack of food is now forcing him to action, but it is almost too late for the boys. Ten years intimate association with the Indian has fully convinced me that compulsory education and a steady process of enfranchisement is absolutely necessary in the best interests of the Indian people. Some of the[m] seem afraid, or unwilling to take the step, but it should not be delayed on that account. A child who can walk, but is afraid to try, must be urged or lost. I am, Dear Mr. Scott, Yours respectfully, (SGD) S.R. McVitty (Exhibit no. 22) 434 Confederation Life Bldg. Toronto, April 10 1920 Mr. D.C. Scott Indian Department Ottawa. Dear Mr. Scott – Enclosed please find a copy of a resolution passed at the recent meeting of the Board of our Women’s Missionary Society. You will note the keen interest of the women in the welfare of the Indians and their strong conviction that there must be an aggressive Educational Policy. I trust that the compulsory education clauses of the Bill now before the House may be approved. I am quite convinced that our Women’s Missionary Society are right in stating “that the hope for the future of the Indian is in education.” Not long ago we had before us a resolution from our Synod’s Committee of British Columbia calling for compulsory education of Indian children. I sincerely hope that the new regulations passed will better the lot of the Indian. Yours truly (SGD) J.H. Edmison Toronto, April 1 1920 OUR BOARD of W.M.S. of the Presbyterian Church in Canada while commending the

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legislation before Parliament granting equal franchise to the Indians of Canada would strongly recommend that the interests of the Indian be safe-guarded for at least a quarter or half century longer. If the white man is allowed to go in on the reserves and buy up his lands, the Indian will soon find himself homeless. We strongly recommend that an aggressive educational policy be adopted. The hope for the future of the Indian is education. Faithfully submitted, (SGD) Adelaide Clark, Indian Secty. W.M.S. … (Exhibit no. 23) Garden River, Ont. March 29 1920 To His Excellency The Duke of Devonshire Governor General of Canada Ottawa, Ont. Sir – We beg leave to lay before your Excellency the following resolution which we passed by the Ojibway tribe of Indiana residing at Garden River, Ont. Conveyed at their Councilhouse, March 27, 1920. “Resolved, that this band of Ojibway tribe of Indiana residing in Garden River Indiana Reservation, Ont. do hereby place themselves on record as opposed to the enactment of the Indian Enfranchisement Act as contained in Bill No. 14 Section one hundred and eleven, both inclusive, now before the present session of the House of Commons, because we firmly believe that it will not be conducive to the best interests of the Indians of Canada to have such a law at the present time, and condemning the action of the Government in placing this very important question which concerns the very life of the Indian Reserves, races, rights and privileges, before Parliament without the comment of the Indian in general. We most earnestly to our humanity, honor and duty [sic] to carefully consider our position at this time, and we hope and pray that your Excellency will not fail to maintain the principles mentioned above. George Shingmuk [his X mark], Chief Joseph Belleau [his X mark] John Driver Mr. John Souard, Councillors J. Fellows …

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(Exhibit no. 26) Regina, Sask. 3 April 1920 To Mr. D.C. Scott Superintendent of the Indians Dear Sir: – I arrived from the East only this week. I was willing to go to Lebret and study this law with the priests who for years have lived with the Indians, I think better to write you immediately and tell you, as it is your wish, what I think of this law. I know that you are only willing the good of these poor Indians so worthy of our sympathy. It is sure that they must be obliged to send their children to schools. God only knows what good your industrial schools have done to these poor children, we have only to see what are these children when they enter those schools and what they are when they leave them. And for me, they should be obliged to send their children to industrial schools and not, at least now, allow them to have day schools in their reserve. Now they are still unable to give their children a real good formation which will be lacking if they can send their children to day schools [on the reserves] … Would it not be better also to oblige these children to stay a little longer in the industrial schools? On account of their nature, they require more time than the others to be formed. To allow them to be free at fifteen years is it not too soon? Yours sincerely devoted, (sgd) O.E. Mathieu, Arch. of Regina mr. harold: This Bill does not really affect the Six Nation Indians as far as their education is concerned, except in forcing the attendance at the day schools. mr. scott: Yes, they have a good system, if they would carry it out, of enforcing attendance at day school. They have their truant officers. mr. harold: There is a school at Brantford. mr. scott: Yes, and there is a waiting list of over sixty pupils trying to get into that school. mr. harold: It would be advisable to have an enlargement? mr. scott: Yes, it would. the acting chairman: It is not compulsory there. mr. scott: No. the acting chairman: It would be better if it were. mr. scott: It would give this advantage: That if there were a case of a Six Nations Indian abusing his child, we could step in and take the child under this Bill. mr. harold: That is not any more drastic than our other laws in that regard. mr. scott: No. … mr. harold: Is there not this difference in the treatment of the Indian under this Act:

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That we can separate the children from the parents and send them to the Industrial Schools, you cannot do that with the white children. mr. scott: There is that essential difference, you cannot do it in the case of a white child unless it has been abused by the parent that provision we take it is in the interest of the child and also of the parents. The pressure that came on our Indian schools when the war broke out and the High Cost of Living became general, was very great because the Indian would unload his children on us, for the reason that it immediately became evident to him that it would cost him more to support the child at that period than before the war so that it was purely a matter of self interest. Before that he did not think of it at all. After that he began to think “Well I had better put my children in the schools.” mr. delisle:3 I want to know, in Caughnawaga what would be the outcome if the parents refused to comply with the regulations as to attendance in the day school? How would you take the child? mr. scott: We can go into the home and take the child. mr. delisle: I will have the privilege of exercising the Habeas Corpus and taking that child back. the acting chairman: Sub-section 2 of section 10, vests the truant officer with this power to take the child in case of truancy. mr. hill: I wish to ask Mr. Scott a question regarding Industrial Schools. The children from seven to fifteen are taken. After they are fifteen years of age, what becomes of them? They are let go from the schools[?] mr. scott: No, we keep them until they are eighteen. I think that it is too high and that we keep them too long. That is a matter the Indian educators are not unanimous about. mr. hill: It seems to me the Indians should be [given] more advantage on the lines of education. So it seems to me that the Indians should be given more education. In the Mohawk Institute at Brantford where our people are graduated they receive regular training, and after they have become graduates, they are simply allowed to, drift, but if they were given proper education they would become an asset to the people. It seems to me that if they were given more commercialized education it would be better. the acting chairman: Do you mean to say you object to the age. mr. hill: The clause provides between the age of 7 and 15 they leave at 15 and that is the age at which they should be taken care of … mr. hill: This subsection 4 of section 9, dealing with compulsory education, it seems to me that all the way through this Bill the powers given to the Superintendent General are too great. There is no consulting the Indian in any way, he is [not] given power to make regulations with regard to the inspection of the schools. It seems to me that it ought to be inserted there that the Indians should be consulted. mr. scott: That is all folly. Of course the Indians know what the regulations are, and if they want to have them changed they can ask for it, and if it is reasonable the change will be made, but by restricting the Department to consulting the Indians as to what should be done, in that case we will never get anything done at all. The Indians have absolute freedom, there is no restriction placed upon them at all … mr. wilson: I might say after 27 or 28 years’ experience in western Canada, I went when that country was almost entirely peopled by Indians and I have lived with them almost continually, ever since, and our experience has been that the system of education of the Indians has been a failure, owing to the fact that the people are living in the reserves are scattered

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and it has been almost impossible to get the children to school. There have been a number of attempts made to get the children at the ordinary day schools, and now they are going to the industrial schools as a remedy. There are, as I understand it, different conditions in the West to [those] which exist in the East. The Indians there have not had the privileges and the opportunities for advancement which you have had in the East and it has been found by experience that there must be some method of compelling them to send their children to school. You might talk to them for an hour trying to persuade them without success, and what are you going to do about it? You must have some compulsory law. mr. hill: Our people are advanced people, and they are dissatisfied with the system of education we have on the reserve, and it seems to me that if this committee would make such provisions that we could be given an opportunity under the law to run our own schools in such a way as will meet the desires of the people. the acting chairman: Will you take a note of that suggestion, Mr. Scott? mr. j.m. barnhart: I was a school trustee where I live, now we are handicapped right here in our own school because we have no control of the school. We are handicapped with not having anything to say in regard to the schoolmaster, we found out he was no good, but we could not remove him because the Indian Agent was with him and he had the law. My boy went there for nine years without deriving any benefit, the schoolmaster has taught there for twelve years, but we cannot remove him. mr. scott: It has been stated that the franchise provided for under this Bill is a compulsory franchise, and I have been asked the question whether that is so. I have been asked that question in the hope apparently that I would endeavor to conceal that fact, but it is a compulsory system, and I hope the Committee will support it. The present law as it exists has not been satisfactory, it placed it too much in the hands of the band. In the first place when an Indian wished to be enfranchised he had to undergo a probationary period which imposed upon the Indian by the act, and it forced them out. Under the present system he has to apply for enfranchisement, but he has to be located for a certain piece of land, then his application has to go before the band at a certain time, to see whether or not they approve of his being enfranchised. After all these preliminary steps, and after three years’ probation he gets his share of the capital money of the band, and after another probationary period of three years, during which he must behave himself, he gets a patent on his land. That is to say it is six years before he can take his position as a citizen of the country. The result has been that since confederation we have only been able to enfranchise about 150 individuals, and it is a crying shame that people should not be able to be enfranchised immediately, when they desire to do so. During 1917, I recommended to the Minister that any Indians who have any land located on the reserve may apply for enfranchisement and become immediately enfranchised if they have the proper qualifications. Since the passage of that Act, and it has been in operation less than two years, we have enfranchised nearly three hundred individuals. That shows that there is a class which that amendment certainly reaches, and that they are men who are willing and anxious to take their places as Canadian citizens. It shows that there is such a class of reserves, there is no doubt about it whatever. You have heard evidence from people who are, in all respects, thoroughly qualified to be enfranchised, no matter what their reasons are for not being enfranchised, sentimental and other reasons. You have had oral and visible evidence that there are Indians in this Country who are perfectly able to stand alone whether they are willing or not. The Bill empowers the Superintendent to appoint an officer or person to make enquiry and report, and when

312 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools

that report is satisfactory, the Governor in Council may enfranchise, and from that date the Indian is a Canadian citizen; that is, he takes his place free of any disabilities of the Indian Act as a citizen after having received his equitable share of the property and funds … It is not the intention of the Department that there should be any wholesale enfranchisement. What I want is to have on the statute books a progressive franchise, so that when any Indians ask for it I will have the privilege, or the Department will have the privilege, of saying to the Indian, “Don’t you think it is time you should be enfranchised”? To my mind, the word “investigation” carries with it consultation. They say that there is no measure of consultation in this Bill. There is, because you cannot investigate without consulting. You must consult the Indian. You must know all his personal affairs, and how he is fixed before you allow him to go out. mr. delisle: On that very point, it does not seem very clear that it is on your initiative that you have the power to declare that I should be enfranchised. I would be the first one to suffer. mr. scott: What do you mean by that? mr. delisle: I will be the first one to be enfranchised, and from my point of view I will suffer. mr. scott: The Bill provides for investigation. mr. delisle: Suppose I did not want it. I won’t ask for it, but you know me, and you will say Mr. Delisle should be enfranchised because you consider him fit. mr. scott: Yes. mr. delisle: That is where I consider it is not right. mr. scott: I will not say it; it is the Governor in Council. mr. harold: Our time is very limited, and I think Mr. Scott should be allowed to finish. mr. scott: That is the purpose of the Bill, and if the Committee wish to ask me any questions or to express any opinion upon the evidence, I am at their service. mr. wilson: We are a new country and a great many people are coming to us. After a time they become enfranchised, but we have no law compelling these people to become enfranchised, and I would like you to give us the reason why you wish to obtain the enfranchisement of the Indian by compulsion. mr. scott: I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that this country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. That is my whole point. I do not want to pass into the citizens’ class people who are paupers. That is not the intention of the Bill. But after one hundred years, after being in close contact with civilization it is enervating to the individual or to a band to continue in that state of tutelage, when he or they are able to take their position as British citizens or Canadian citizens, to support themselves, and stand alone. That has been the whole purpose of Indian education and advancement since the earliest times. One of the very earliest enactments was to provide for the enfranchisement of the Indian. So it is written in our law that the Indian was eventually to become enfranchised. It will be many years before this will apply to the Indians in the West … mr. lickers: How far does that word “investigation” mean consultation? the chairman: Perhaps we could insert the word “consultation”. mr. lickers: If you had a band of chickens and you go to feed them, that is investigation, but it is not consultation.

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mr. scott: But you are not chickens. mr. lickers: We are domestic animals. mr. scott: All this feeling is pure fiction. There is no such relation between the Department and the Indians as Mr. Lickers tries to make out … mr. harold: A point has been brought up several times that the old method of enfranchisement was too hard, and that the new one is going to another extreme, and it has always appealed to me that if this were framed along lines so that the Indian had not to make the application, or take the initiative, and have it arranged so that he could automatically become a citizen, it would be better. Why do you approach it the way you do instead of the other method. mr. scott: Because if you understand the Indian mind you would know. Surely we have enough illustrations of it here. These gentlemen are perfectly able to address the Committee – far better than I am – as far as the form goes. But these are the people who will never move … mr. scott: … There is no comparison between our Bill and that of Congress. Just as soon as the affairs of the Six Nations in New York have been adjusted, they will, be enfranchised because the United States are determined not to continue their Indians in a state of tutelage. We are not going as far as that, but I want to safeguard the country, and, at the same time, put on the statute book a provision that will enable us to enfranchise them so that the Indian, well knowing that we have the power to go to him and say “Do you not think it is time to be enfranchised”? will prepare himself for it. mr. harold: It is not the desire to force any one to do anything against their own interests? mr. scott: No. the chairman: And it can only be done after thorough investigation by the Department and by an officer appointed for the purpose. mr. delisle: On the application of the Indian? mr. scott: No. I cannot give up the initiative which must be with the government, because we have had the other way long enough and have made no progress … mr. scott: No, he becomes thoroughly self-supporting and subject to the law of the country and it lifts him from under the shadow of the Indian act; he exercises all his rights as a citizen. Mr. Cook mentioned the enfranchisement Bill of the Wyandottes and I am glad he did so as it is an illustration of the time it takes to make a change such as proposed by this Bill. That Bill was passed 25 years ago, but we did not succeed in accomplishing it until 20 years afterwards … The officer visited every member of the band individually and the facts in connection with it were published in the report because I wanted the public to read it. He found that at that time one member of the band was manager of a large factory in Detroit getting $6,000 a year, and at the bottom of the social scale, as you might say, was a [char] woman supporting herself, as hundreds of other women are supporting themselves here, and there was not one bit of hardship suffered by any member of the band. They had all been absorbed into the life of the country and had disappeared in the mass. Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.

314 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools NOTES 1 Testimony of D.C. Scott, March 1920. Library and Archives Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development fonds, Indian Act, Amendments, RG 10, vol. 6810, file 470-2-3, part 7. 2 The report made by the committee to Parliament in June 1920 observed that it had heard from “thirty-five Indian witnesses from various parts of Canada, and in addition heard long and able addresses from three Counsel learned in the law who appeared for the Six Nation Indians and certain of the allied Tribes of British Columbia.” Journals of the House of Commons of Canada no. 73, 16 June 1920, 351. The report also recommended that the government take measures to implement an electoral system for band councils to replace hereditary councils where support for such a system existed among the adult men of a community. 3 Delisle, who appears to be a Mohawk from Caughnawaga, may have been Joe Delisle (Sose Kentarontie), chief of the Rotiskerewakakaion band. See Gerald F. Reid, Kahnawà:ke: Factionalism, Traditionalism, and Nationalism in a Mohawk Community (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 53.

3. Duncan Campbell Scott, Notes on Indian Education, 19201 In May 1920, Duncan Campbell Scott sent these “Background Notes” to the parliamentary committee reviewing the proposed amendment to the Indian Act that would make residential schooling compulsory (Bill 14, An Act to Amend the Indian Act). The notes anticipate the potential objection that residential schools would separate children from their parents, providing a rationale for dispensing with this objection. Scott sent the notes to the committee after appearing before it himself to give testimony (see appendix A.2, above).

Compulsory Education The amendment [to the Indian Act proposed in Bill 14] provides for the repeal of Sections 9, 10 and 11 of the Act and the substitution of the sections drafted. The Department desires to establish a system of compulsory education at both day and residential schools, which we are advised cannot be done, as the Indian Act now stands, since the regulations which the Governor in Council is authorized to make respecting attendance at residential schools under Section 11 are confined to regulations for the committal only of children to such schools by a Justice of the Peace which is done in the case of neglected or delinquent children. Proposed Amendment 1. Sections nine and eleven of the Indian Act, Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, chapter eighty-one, and section ten of the said Act as enacted by chapter thirty-five of the statutes of 1914, are repealed and the following are substituted therefor: 9. (1) The Governor in Council may establish (a) day schools in any Indian reserve for the children of such reserve; (b) industrial or boarding schools for the Indian children of any reserves or any district or territory designated by the Superintendent General.

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(2) Any school or institution the managing authorities of which have entered into a written agreement with the Superintendent General to admit Indian children and provide them with board, lodging and instruction may be declared by the Governor in Council to be an industrial school or boarding school for the purposes of this Act. (3) The Superintendent General may provide for the transport of Indian children to and from the boarding or industrial schools to which they are assigned including transportation to and from such schools for the annual vacations. (4) The Superintendent General shall have power to make regulations prescribing a standard for the buildings, equipment, teaching and discipline in all schools, and for the inspection of such schools. (5) The chief and council of any band that has children in a school shall have the right to inspect such school at such reasonable times as may be agreed upon by the Indian agent and the principal of the school. (6) The Superintendent General may apply the whole or any part of the annuities and interest moneys of Indian children attending an industrial or boarding school to the maintenance of such school or to the maintenance of the children themselves. 10. (1) Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is physically able shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated by the Superintendent general for the full periods during which such school is open each year. Provided, however, that no Protestant child shall be assigned to a Roman Catholic school or a school conducted under Roman Catholic auspices, and no Roman Catholic child shall be assigned to a Protestant school or a school conducted under Protestant auspices. (2) The Superintendent General may appoint any officer or person to be a truant officer to enforce the attendance of the Indian children at school, and for such purpose a truant officer shall be vested with the powers of a peace officer, and shall have authority to enter any place where he has reason to believe there are Indian children between the ages of seven and fifteen years, and when requested by the Indian agent, a school teacher or the chief of a band shall examine into any case of truancy, shall warn the truants, their parents or guardians or the person with whom any Indian child resides, of the consequences of truancy, and notify the parent, guardian or such person in writing to cause the child to attend school. (3) Any parent, guardian or person with whom an Indian child is residing who fails to cause such child, being between the ages aforesaid, to attend school as required by this section after having received three days’ notice so to do by a truant officer shall, on the complaint of the truant officer, be liable on summary conviction before a justice of the peace or Indian agent to a fine of not more than two dollars and costs, or imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten days or both, and such child may be arrested without a warrant and conveyed to school by the truant officer. … As an answer to an argument which might be raised against the invasion of the rights of the parents over the children, it should be pointed out that all Indians are wards of the Crown, and the western treaties all provide for education as part of the compensation for the cession of the Indian title. As this proviso was inserted at the request of the Indians, and altogether in their interests, it follows that they have certain responsibilities, and must produce their children to be educated. … It is self-evident that there is little use in having schools without pupils, and, except in so

316 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools

far as the Regulations provide otherwise, it rests, at present, with the Indians whether their children shall be sent to school or not. Indian educators and the officials of the Department have been under the necessity of securing attendance by various methods, by moral suasion, by veiled compulsion, which has no force back of it, even by special inducements, which were in the nature of payments or favours shown to the parents. Each Indian child who is now in residence at a boarding or industrial school is placed there with the consent of the parents, given in writing, and, after having once obtained a child, it has a constant struggle to retain it for the required term, as the parents are largely governed by whim, and attempt, for all sorts of specious reasons, to withdraw their children, and interrupt the course of their education. There is a continuous effort to keep our schools full, but they are not now filled, and there is at present no way of overcoming the indifference of the parents. While the proposed legislation [is] radical, it gives the Department control, removes from the Indian parent responsibility for the care and education of his child, and the best interests of the Indians are promoted and fully protected. … Where a day school cannot be properly operated, the child must be taken to an industrial or boarding school. All such schools are open to inspection, and must be conducted according to a standard already in existence; they must be conducted under a contract. A regular summer vacation is provided for, and the transportation expenses of the children are paid by the Department, which latter clause will, I think, go far to remove the present objection to education at residential schools. It has always been advanced as a hardship that parents and children are separated for years without the possibility of any reunion, and that the child grows away from the life of the reserve, and the observation and affection of the parent, and that, when he is discharged from the school, he is an alien in his own home. There are objections to an annual summer vacation from our point of view, but, with the power given us by the proposed amendment to control the movements of pupils, it will be relatively easy to provide for their return, and I think the proposal will do much to popularize education at residential schools. Consideration is shown by the proposed changes, and, I think, rightly so, to the various religious denominations, who have, since the earliest days, devoted themselves to the cause of Indian education. All our residential schools are conducted by these denominations, and the evangelization and education of the Indian are carried on side by side. A fair proportion of the expenditure on the maintenance of these schools is provided by the Churches, and, in the past, the greater share of the responsibility for recruiting pupils has fallen upon their shoulders; it is found to be onerous. Their zealous co-operation with the Department, and the generosity which is shown in the provision of funds, entitle them to the support and assistance which a compulsory system of education will provide. … In the three western provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, day schools have been unsuccessful, owing to the following causes. The schools are in measure inaccessible to Indians. On reserves in which the settlement is widely dispersed, it is difficult to find a suitable location for the school-house, and even then it is apt to be a long distance away from the farthest Indian dwelling. The attendance is irregular owing to various causes, chiefly to the lack of interest and appreciation of the value of education by the parents. Bad weather is another factor in reducing the average at-

Act to Amend the Indian Act, 1920

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tendance, and the custom of Indian hunters is to take their children with them in the winter to the hunting grounds. We have endeavored to improve the attendance by providing a warm mid-day meal for the pupils, and arranging for their transportation to and from school, but in most cases this method has proved an expensive failure. We have experienced great difficulty in securing competent qualified teachers owing to the isolation. Professional qualifications are naturally required to ensure success in an Indian day school. In comparison with these conditions the surroundings at residential schools are ideal. There our children are in residence and are influenced constantly, are instructed both in academic subjects and in matters of morals and conduct. They also receive practical instruction in agriculture, trades, and domestic employments. They are well fed and clothed and their physical needs are under constant supervision.

NOTE 1 D.C. Scott, Notes on Indian Education, 1920. Library and Archives Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development fonds, Indian Act, Amendments, RG 10, vol. 6810, file 470-2-3, part 7.

4. An Act to Amend the Indian Act, 19201 An Act to Amend the Indian Act is a statute that was passed as a result of the introduction of Bill 14 to the general committee at the House of Commons on 12 March 1920. Bill 14 was passed by the Senate without amendment on 29 June 1920. The act was officially assented to on 1 July 1920. This text is the final version of the amendment to the Indian Act that mandated compulsory residential schooling for Aboriginal children from the ages of seven to fifteen.2

CHAP. 50. An Act to amend the Indian Act His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:– 1. Sections nine and eleven of the Indian Act, Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, chapter eighty-one, and section ten of the said Act as enacted by chapter thirty-five of the statutes of 1914, are repealed and the following are substituted therefor:– “9. (1) The Governor in Council may establish, – “(a) day schools in any Indian reserve for the children of such reserve; “(b) industrial or boarding schools for the Indian children of any reserve or reserves or any district or territory designated by the Superintendent General. “(2) Any school or institution the managing authorities of which have entered into a written agreement with the Superintendent General to admit Indian children and provide them with board, lodging and instruction may be declared by the Governor in Council to be an industrial school or a boarding school for the purposes of this Act.

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“(3) The Superintendent General may provide for the transport of Indian children to and from the boarding or industrial schools to which they are assigned, including transportation to and from such schools for the annual vacations. “(4) The Superintendent General shall have power to make regulations prescribing a standard for the buildings, equipment, teaching and discipline of and in all schools, and for the inspection of such schools. “(5) The chief and council of any band that has children in a school shall have the right to inspect such school at such reasonable times as may be agreed upon by the Indian agent and the principal of the school. “(6) The Superintendent General may apply the whole or any part of the annuities and interest moneys of Indian children attending an industrial or boarding school to the maintenance of such school or to the maintenance of the children themselves. “10. (1) Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is physically able shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as may be designated by the Superintendent General for the full periods during which such school is open each year. Provided, however, that such school shall be the nearest available school of the kind required, and that no Protestant child shall be assigned to a Roman Catholic school or a school conducted under Roman Catholic auspices, and no Roman Catholic child shall be assigned to a Protestant school or a school conducted under Protestant auspices. “(2) The Superintendent General may appoint any officer or person to be a truant officer to enforce the attendance of Indian children at school, and for such purpose a truant officer shall be vested with the powers of a peace officer, and shall have authority to enter any place where he has reason to believe there are Indian children between the ages of seven and fifteen years, and when requested by the Indian agent, a school teacher or the chief of a band shall examine into any case of truancy, shall warn the truants, their parents or guardians or the person with whom any Indian child resides, of the consequences of truancy, and notify the parent, guardian or such person in writing to cause the child to attend school. “(3) Any parent, guardian or person with whom an Indian child is residing who fails to cause such child, being between the ages aforesaid, to attend school as required by this section after having received three days’ notice so to do by a truant officer shall, on the complaint of the truant officer, be liable on summary conviction before a justice of the peace or Indian agent to a fine of not more than two dollars and costs, or imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten days or both, and such child may be arrested without a warrant and conveyed to school by the truant officer: Provided that no parent or other person shall be liable to such penalties if such child, (a) is unable to attend school by reason of sickness or other unavoidable cause; (b) has passed the entrance examination for high schools; or, (c) has been excused in writing by the Indian agent or teacher for temporary absence to assist in husbandry or urgent and necessary household duties.” 2. Section fourteen of the said Act is repealed and the following is substituted therefor:– “14. Any Indian woman who marries any person other than an Indian, or a non-treaty Indian, shall cease to be an Indian in every respect within the meaning of this act, except that she shall be entitled to share equally with the members of the band to which she formerly belonged, in the annual or semi-annual distribution of their annuities, interest moneys and rents: Provided that such income may be commuted to her at any time at ten years’ purchase, with the approval of the Superintendent General.”

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3. Paragraph (h) of section two, and sections one hundred and seven to one hundred and twenty-three, both inclusive, of the said Act are repealed and the following are substituted therefor:– “107. (1) The Superintendent General may appoint a Board to consist of two officers of the Department of Indian Affairs and a member of the Band to which the Indian or Indians under investigation belongs, to make enquiry and report as to the fitness of any Indian or Indians to be enfranchised. The Indian member of the Board shall be nominated by the council, and in default of such nomination, the appointment shall be made by the Superintendent General. In the course of such enquiry it shall be the duty of the Board to take into consideration and report upon the attitude of any such Indian towards his enfranchisement, which attitude shall be a factor in determining the question of fitness. Such report shall contain a description of the land occupied by each Indian, the amount thereof and the improvements thereon, the names, ages and sex of every Indian whose interests it is anticipated will be affected, and such other information as the Superintendent General may direct such Board to obtain. “(2) On the report of the Superintendent General that any Indian, male or female, over the age of twenty-one years is fit for enfranchisement, the Governor in Council may by order direct that such Indians shall be and become enfranchised at the expiration of two years from the date of such order or earlier if requested by such Indian, and from the date of such enfranchisement the provisions of the Indian Act and any other Act or law making any distinction between the legal rights, privileges, disabilities and liabilities of Indians and those of His Majesty’s other subjects, shall cease to apply to such Indian or to his or her minor unmarried children, or, in the case of a married male Indian, to the wife of such Indian, and every such Indian and child and wife shall thereafter have, possess and enjoy all the legal powers, rights and privileges of His Majesty’s other subjects, and shall no longer be deemed to be Indians within the meaning of any laws relating to Indians. “(3) An Indian over the age of twenty-one years shall have the right to choose the christian name and surname by which he or she wishes to be enfranchised and thereafter known, and from the date of the order of enfranchisement such Indian shall thereafter be known by such names, and if no such choice is made such Indian shall be enfranchised by and bear the name or names by which he or she has been theretofore commonly known. “(4) Upon the issue of an order of enfranchisement the Superintendent General shall, if any Indian enfranchised holds any land on a reserve, cause letters patent to be issued to such Indian for such land: Provided that such Indian shall pay to the funds of the band such amount per acre for the land he holds as the Superintendent General considers to be the value of the common interest of the band in such land, and such payment shall be a charge against the share of such Indian in the funds of the band. The Superintendent General shall also pay to each Indian upon enfranchisement his or her share of the funds to the credit of the band, including such amount as the Superintendent General determines to be his or her share of the value of the common interest of the band in the lands of the reserve or reserves, or share of the principal of the annuities of the band capitalized at five per centum, out of such moneys as are provided by Parliament for the purpose or which may be otherwise available for such purpose. The land and money of any minor, unmarried children may be held for the benefit of such minor or may be granted or paid in whole or in part to the father, or, if the father is dead, to the mother, or in either case to such person as the Superintendent General may select for such purpose

320 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools

for the maintenance of such minor, and the land and money of the wife shall be granted and paid to the husband, unless in any case the Superintendent General shall direct that the whole or any part thereof be granted and paid to the wife herself, in which case the same shall be granted or paid to the wife. “(5) If such Indian holds no land in a reserve he or she shall be paid from the funds of the band such amount as the Superintendent General determines to be his or her share of the value of the common interest of the band in the lands of the reserve or reserves, and shall also be paid his or her share of the funds or annuities of the band capitalized as aforesaid. “(6) Every Indian who is not a member of the band and every non-treaty Indian who, with the acquiescence of the band and approval of the Superintendent General, has been permitted to reside on the reserve or to obtain a holding or location thereon, may be enfranchised and given letters patent for such land as a member of the band, provided that such Indian or non-treaty Indian shall pay to the credit of the band the value of the common interest of the band in the land for which he receives a patent. “(7) On the issue of the letters patent to any enfranchised Indian for any land he may be entitled to, or the payment from the capital funds or annuities of the band, as above provided, such Indian and his or her minor unmarried children, and in the case of a male married Indian, the wife of such Indian shall cease to have any further claims whatsoever against any common property or funds of the band. “108. Where an Indian is undergoing a period of probation in accordance with the provisions of sections one hundred and seven to one hundred and twenty-two, inclusive, heretofore in force, such Indian may on the recommendation of the Superintendent General be enfranchised by order of the Governor in Council, and given letters patent for the lands held by such Indian under location ticket issued to him or her in respect of such enfranchisement, and paid his or her share of the capital funds at the credit of the band or share of the principal of the annuities of the band capitalized at five per centum as aforesaid, out of such moneys as are provided for the purpose by Parliament or which may be otherwise available for such purpose. “109. When a majority of the member of a band is enfranchised, the common land or other public property of the band shall be equitably allotted to members of the band, and thereafter the residue, if any, of such land or public property may be sold by the Superintendent General and the proceeds of such sale placed to the credit of the funds of the band to be divided as provided in section one hundred and seven: Provided, however, that the Governor in Council may reserve and set apart from the funds of the band such sum as the Superintendent General may consider necessary for the perpetual care and protection of any Indian cemetery or burial plot belonging to such Indians, and any other common property which in the opinion of the Superintendent General should be preserved as such. And provided also that no part of such land or other property shall be sold to any person other than a member of the band except by public auction after three months’ advertisement in the public press. “110. The Governor in Council shall have power to make regulations for the carrying out of provisions of the three sections immediately preceding this section, and subject to the provisions of this Act for determining how the land, capital moneys and other property of a band, or any part thereof, shall be divided, granted and paid, upon the enfranchisement of any Indian or Indians belonging to such band or having any interest in any of the

Confession of the Presbyterian Church, 1994 321

property of such band, and to decide any questions arising under the said sections, and the decision of the Governor in Council thereon shall be final and conclusive. “111. The Minister shall, within fifteen days after the opening of each session of Parliament, submit to both Houses of Parliament a list of the Indians enfranchised under this Act during the previous fiscal year, and the amount of land and money granted and paid to each Indian so enfranchised.”

NOTES 1 An Act to Amend the Indian Act, Statutes of Canada, 1919–1920, c. 50. 2 In the United States, where Aboriginal children were also forcibly removed to distant schools by Indian agents and missionaries, by the 1890s there were wider debates about the necessity of securing parental consent for removal, and more widely circulated public criticism by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers alike of the coercive means used to secure consent. In 1894, Congress passed an appropriations bill stipulating that children could not be removed from reservations to schools outside of the state without voluntary parental consent. Although, as Margaret Jacobs points out, the restriction of this rule to schools beyond the given state provided a loophole, the American context provides a contrast to the Canadian one. By 1934, with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, Indian education in the United States was shifted towards day schools. See Margaret Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2009),166. In the United States, which had only recently outlawed slavery, a discourse that communicated its criticisms of the child-removal policy through comparisons of Indigenous children to slaves and residential schools to enterprises based on a “commerce in human flesh and blood” was particularly forceful. Francis Leupp, commissioner of Indian affairs (1908), quoted in Jacobs, 168.

5. The Confession of the Presbyterian Church as Adopted by the General Assembly, 19941 Before the Government of Canada initiated any form of mea culpa for its role in the administration of Indian residential schools, various church organizations that were involved in the system of “civilizing” and Christianizing Aboriginal children began to offer apologies for their role in the process. The United Church was the first to issue a statement of contrition in 1986, followed by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1991, the Anglican Church in 1993, and the Presbyterian Church in 1994.2 The only religious organization to not follow suit has been the Roman Catholic Church; however, in April 2009, Pope Benedict XVI offered the first papal expression of “sorrow” for the abuses Aboriginal students experienced in residential schools, although the word “apologize” remained absent.3 The apologies offered by religious organizations provide significant counterparts to the discursive strategies of the government: it is interesting to note that in the Presbyterian Church’s statement of contrition below, the language of apology is replaced with the language of confession and the addressees of the message are noted as both God and Aboriginal “brothers and sisters.”

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The Holy Spirit, speaking in and through Scripture, calls The Presbyterian Church in Canada to confession. This confession is our response to the word of God. We understand our mission and ministry in new ways in part because of the testimony of Aboriginal peoples. We, the 120th General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, seeking the guidance of the Spirit of God, and aware of our own sin and shortcomings, are called to speak to the Church we love. We do this, out of new understandings of our past[,] not out of any sense of being superior to those who have gone before us, nor out of any sense that we would have done things differently in the same context. It is with humility and in great sorrow that we come before God and our Aboriginal brothers and sisters with our confession. We acknowledge that the stated policy of The Government of Canada was to assimilate Aboriginal peoples to the dominant culture, and that The Presbyterian Church in Canada co-operated in this policy. We acknowledge that the roots of the harm we have done are found in the attitudes and values of western European colonialism, and the assumption that what was not yet molded in our image was to be discovered and exploited. As part of that policy we, with other churches, encouraged the Government to ban some important spiritual practices through which Aboriginal peoples experienced the presence of the creator God. For the Church’s complicity in this policy we ask forgiveness. We recognize that there were many members of The Presbyterian Church in Canada who, in good faith, gave unstintingly of themselves in love and compassion for their Aboriginal brothers and sisters. We acknowledge their devotion and commend them for their work. We recognize that there were some who, with prophetic insight, were aware of the damage that was being done and protested, but their efforts were thwarted. We acknowledge their insight. For the times we did not support them adequately nor hear their cries for justice, we ask forgiveness. We confess that The Presbyterian Church in Canada presumed to know better than Aboriginal peoples what was needed for life. The Church said of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, “If they could be like us, if they could think like us, talk like us, worship like us, sing like us, and work like us, they would know God and therefore would have life abundant.” In our cultural arrogance we have been blind to the ways in which our own understanding of the Gospel has been culturally conditioned, and because of our insensitivity to Aboriginal cultures, we have demanded more of the Aboriginal people than the gospel requires, and have thus misrepresented Jesus Christ who loves all peoples with compassionate, suffering love that all may come to God through him. For the Church’s presumption we ask forgiveness. We confess that, with the encouragement and assistance of the Government of Canada, The Presbyterian Church in Canada agreed to take the children of Aboriginal peoples from their own homes and place them in Residential Schools. In these schools, children were deprived of their traditional ways, which were replaced with Euro-Canadian customs that were helpful in the process of assimilation. To carry out this process, The Presbyterian Church in Canada used disciplinary practices which were foreign to Aboriginal peoples, and open to exploitation in physical and psychological punishment beyond any Christian maxim of care and discipline. In a setting of obedience and acquiescence there was opportunity for sexual abuse, and some were so abused. The effect of all this, for Aboriginal peoples, was the loss of cultural identity and the loss of a secure sense of self. For the Church’s insensitivity we ask forgiveness.

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We regret that there are those whose lives have been deeply scarred by the effects of the mission and ministry of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. For our Church we ask forgiveness of God. It is our prayer that God, who is merciful, will guide us in compassionate ways towards helping them to heal. We ask, also, for forgiveness from Aboriginal peoples. What we have heard we acknowledge. It is our hope that those whom we have wronged with a hurt too deep for telling will accept what we have to say. With God’s guidance our Church will seek opportunities to walk with Aboriginal peoples to find healing and wholeness together as God’s people.

NOTES 1 “The Confession of the Presbyterian Church as Adopted by the General Assembly, June 9th, 1994,” in The Acts and Proceedings of the One Hundred and Twentieth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Toronto: Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1994), 376–7. Available online from Remembering the Children: An Aboriginal and Church Leaders’ Tour to Prepare for Truth and Reconciliation, http://www.rememberingthechildren.ca/press/pcc-confession .htm. 2 “A Condensed Timeline of Events,” in From Truth to Reconciliation: Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools, ed. M.B. Castellano, L. Archibald, and M. DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 65. 3 “Pope expresses ‘sorrow’ for abuse at residential schools,” CBC News, 29 April 2009, http:// www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2009/04/29/pope-first-nations042909.html.

6. Notes for an Address by the Honourable Jane Stewart, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, on the Occasion of the Unveiling of Gathering Strength – Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, 19981 After more than a century of administrating the Indian residential school system, the federal government began relinquishing control of the remaining institutions during the 1980s. In 1996, just as the last state-operated school on the Gordon Reserve in Saskatchewan closed, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples published its final report.2 The commission’s report called for a public inquiry into residential schooling in order to make this history – and the damages it effected – part of the official record. Instead of answering this call with the implementation of an inquiry, the federal government initially responded in 1998 with the release of Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan – a response that provided $350 million for the establishment of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, an organization designed to promote healing initiatives in Indigenous communities. On 7 January 1998, then Minister of Indian Affairs Jane Stewart announced the Gathering Strength plan and delivered a “Statement of Reconciliation” at a luncheon in Ottawa for politicians and Indigenous leaders. While the minister’s statement has been considered to fall short of a full apology, what is notable about the speech is its recognition of a broader series of injuries suffered by Aboriginal peoples under systemic colonialism that included but was not limited to residential schools. While the “Statement of Reconciliation” has been published elsewhere, it is rarely situated within the context of Stewart’s full speech, which we provide below.

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Thank you Elders for your guidance and spiritual blessing on us all. Introduction Elders, Chiefs, Commissioners, my colleagues, leaders, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen. I have been looking forward to this opportunity to speak to you about the work of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and to speak in the broadest terms about the relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in this country. We are here to share what we have learned from the Commission and outline the direction we intend to take, using the insight we now have as a result of its powerful report. Of the many, many individuals and organizations who spoke to the Commissioners, I am reminded today of the testimony of a young person who said: “One of our great spiritual leaders advises us that we must look back seven generations and look forward seven generations and realize that we are the balance.” The seventh generation philosophy, a traditional way of thinking and decision making, orients us between past and future. It tells us to be conscious of the lasting impact of our decisions today and to do the very best we can for coming generations. I feel that today we are indeed the balance. We have been informed by the past, particularly through the work of the Commission, and we can see opportunity in the future. We must proceed with care, because just as we are living with the past, what we do today will stay with us for generations. Let me begin by putting the Report in context. The Commissioners’ terms of reference were exhaustive. They were asked to review everything from the origins and structures of Aboriginal governments and the nature of claim settlements, to the Indian Act and social, economic and cultural concerns. I would like to thank Chief Commissioners Erasmus and Dussault and all of the other Commissioners, staff and witnesses who made the Report of the Royal Commission such a comprehensive body of work. The Commissioners crossed the country gathering the stories of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. Their report spans five volumes, 3,500 pages and makes 440 recommendations. Their task was daunting; so was the outcome. Having received the report, the federal government found itself in the same position as the Commissioners must have been in at the outset, wondering where and how do we begin? Without question, this historic body of work has had a tremendous personal and institutional impact. From talking with the Commissioners, I know that this work clearly transformed them. It has also transformed the ideas and understanding of others, including myself. Over the last year, we’ve come to understand where we’ve already made progress in line with the Commission’s suggestions. We see now where there is new work to be done; what we can consider in partnership with others down the road; and what we might not ever get to. In a few minutes I will outline four sets of objectives and program initiatives that, guided by the work of the Royal Commission, form the basis of an action plan for this government. However, we first need to understand that over and above hundreds of individual recommendations, the Commissioners directed us to examine the very core of how we have lived together in this country. The Commissioners identify four stages in relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. First, separate worlds – prior to European arrival in Canada. Then, contact

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and cooperation – a time when settlers and Aboriginal people were co-dependent. Next, a deterioration to displacement and assimilation – the period from the early 1800s until about 30 years ago, a time when colonial governments imposed their ways on Aboriginal people. Finally, renewal – our chance now in this generation to correct past wrongs and move forward in cooperative relationships once again. Simply put, the Commissioners had a profound message for us. The Commissioners said, and I quote, “The main policy direction, pursued for more than 150 years, first by colonial then by Canadian governments, has been wrong.” Today we are here to say that we have listened and we have heard. The time has come to state formally that the days of paternalism and disrespect are behind us and that we are committed to changing the nature of the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Canada. Having said that, we cannot look forward without first looking back and coming to terms with the impact of our past actions and attitudes. History cannot be changed, but it must be understood in a way that reflects that people today are living out the legacy of decisions made in a different time. Chief Steven Point of the Sto:lo Nation in British Columbia points to that legacy in describing day-to-day life in his community. As a lawyer, he talks about “Indian Day” at Chilliwack court, the day on which all of the Indian cases are dealt with. He can even laugh a little when he says that these court days are a little like a family reunion because there are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters all there in trouble from the same families. As a Chief, he says there are not enough hours in the day to help members of his community struggling with alcoholism, devastated by suicide, or tempted by crime for lack of anything better to do. He says that trying to cope with it all is like trying to hold water in his hands. And the worst part of all, he says, is that his people have little hope, little confidence, little faith in either him or themselves to regain their pride and sense of self-worth. There is a poverty of spirit, a poverty of the soul. What Chief Point describes is a reflection of the grief and pain of Aboriginal people. But where there is difficulty and distress, there is also leadership and vision. Chief Point and all First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities are determined to restore hope and strengthen their communities. I believe they can and they will. For its part, I believe that the federal government must acknowledge its role in the past relationship so that the transformation can begin. To that end, the Government of Canada wants to make a solemn offer of reconciliation: Statement of Reconciliation As Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians seek to move forward together in a process of renewal, it is essential that we deal with the legacies of the past affecting the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, including the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. Our purpose is not to rewrite history but, rather, to learn from our past and to find ways to deal with the negative impacts that certain historical decisions continue to have in our society today. The ancestors of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples lived on this continent long before explorers from other continents first came to North America. For thousands of years before this country was founded, they enjoyed their own forms of government. Diverse, vibrant Aboriginal nations had ways of life rooted in fundamental values concerning their relationships to the Creator, the environment and each other, in the role of Elders as the

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living memory of their ancestors, and in their responsibilities as custodians of the lands, waters and resources of their homelands. The assistance and spiritual values of the Aboriginal peoples who welcomed the newcomers to this continent too often have been forgotten. The contributions made by all Aboriginal peoples to Canada’s development, and the contributions that they continue to make to our society today, have not been properly acknowledged. The Government of Canada today, on behalf of all Canadians, acknowledges those contributions. Sadly, our history with respect to the treatment of Aboriginal people is not something in which we can take pride. Attitudes of racial and cultural superiority led to a suppression of Aboriginal culture and values. As a country, we are burdened by past actions that resulted in weakening the identity of Aboriginal peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures, and outlawing spiritual practices. We must recognize the impact of these actions on the once self-sustaining nations that were disaggregated, disrupted, limited or even destroyed by the dispossession of traditional territory, by the relocation of Aboriginal people, and by some provisions of the Indian Act. We must acknowledge that the result of these actions was the erosion of the political, economic and social systems of Aboriginal people and nations. Against the backdrop of these historical legacies, it is a remarkable tribute to the strength and endurance of Aboriginal people that they have maintained their historic diversity and identity. The Government of Canada today formally expresses to all Aboriginal people in Canada our profound regret for past actions of the federal government which have contributed to these difficult pages in the history of our relationship together. One aspect of our relationship with Aboriginal people over this period that requires particular attention is the Residential School system. This system separated many children from their families and communities and prevented them from speaking their own languages and from learning about their heritage and cultures. In the worst cases, it left legacies of personal pain and distress that continue to reverberate in Aboriginal communities to this day. Tragically, some children were the victims of physical and sexual abuse. The Government of Canada acknowledges the role it played in the development and administration of these schools. Particularly to those individuals who experienced the tragedy of sexual and physical abuse at residential schools, and who have carried this burden believing that in some way they must be responsible, we wish to emphasize that what you experienced was not your fault and should never have happened. To those of you who suffered this tragedy at residential schools, we are deeply sorry. In dealing with the legacies of the Residential School system, the Government of Canada proposes to work with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, the Churches and other interested parties to resolve the longstanding issues that must be addressed. We need to work together on a healing strategy to assist individuals and communities in dealing with the consequences of this sad era of our history. No attempt at reconciliation with Aboriginal people can be complete without reference to the sad events culminating in the death of Métis leader Louis Riel. These events cannot be undone; however, we can and will continue to look for ways of affirming the contributions of Métis people in Canada and of reflecting Louis Riel’s proper place in Canada’s history. Reconciliation is an ongoing process. In renewing our partnership, we must ensure that the mistakes which marked our past relationship are not repeated. The Government of Can-

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ada recognizes that policies that sought to assimilate Aboriginal people, women and men, were not the way to build a strong country. We must instead continue to find ways in which Aboriginal people can participate fully in the economic, political, cultural and social life of Canada in a manner which preserves and enhances the collective identities of Aboriginal communities, and allows them to evolve and flourish in the future. Working together to achieve our shared goals will benefit all Canadians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike. I have signed this statement today with the Federal Interlocutor, to affirm the government’s commitment to reconciling the past and building a better future together with Aboriginal people. Our words must be supported by concrete actions. We must work together to help Aboriginal individuals, families and communities to heal the wounds caused by physical and sexual abuse in the Residential School system. Today, the federal government commits $350 million for community-based healing as a first step to deal with the legacy of physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. It will be First Nations, Inuit and Métis people themselves, along with health and social professionals, who will help us in shaping support that is culturally sensitive and reflects the experiences of different communities. I believe that much can be learned from the British Columbia Residential Schools Project, which was initiated by the B.C. Summit Chiefs and is supported by the federal government. The project is coordinating support and referral services, and providing for inter-agency co-operation to ensure that the needs of victims of abuse are not compromised by jurisdictional boundaries. Renewal If the past gives us pause, certainly the way ahead gives us hope. This is a time to build; to gather strength. And if we are to seize the opportunities before us, we need to do it together. I am confident that the majority of Canadians support building a new partnership with Aboriginal people. In my travels, I’ve spoken to provincial and territorial ministers, municipal leaders, bankers and business people, scholars and social activists, and individual Canadians. They all clearly see the need for change. We can’t change everything overnight – the Royal Commission itself called for a 20year process of renewal. But we can certainly get started, and that’s what we are here to do today. We are announcing today a comprehensive framework for action based on the following objectives: • First, we will renew the partnership to engage all possible partners and resources so the relationship will be a catalyst to better the lives of Aboriginal people in Canada. • Second, we will strengthen Aboriginal governance so that communities have the tools to guide their own destiny and to exercise their inherent right of self-government. • Third, we will design a new fiscal relationship that provides a stable flow of funds in support of transparent and accountable community development. • Fourth, we will sustain the growth of strong, healthy Aboriginal communities, fuelled by economic development and supported by a solid, basic infrastructure of institutions and services. Let me now outline our thoughts on each of the objectives and our goals in each area for First Nations and Inuit people. My colleague, Ralph Goodale, the Federal Interlocutor for

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Métis and Non-Status Indians, will then speak to our goals related to the Aboriginal people that he serves on behalf of the Government of Canada. Renewing the Partnership Let me begin with our goal of renewing the partnership. Partnership. It’s a word often used without any clear definition of what it really means. The Royal Commission challenged us to construct relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people characterized by mutual respect and recognition, responsibility and sharing. This is the basis of the partnership we seek. It includes Aboriginal organizations and individuals, all levels of government, the private and voluntary sectors, other interested parties and all Canadians. It implies a celebration of our diversity while sharing a common vision. It also implies a practical and constructive working relationship. In this context, and particularly with respect to the working relationship, our commitment to partnership is: • to work out solutions together beforehand, instead of picking up the pieces after the fact; • a commitment to negotiate rather than litigate; • a commitment to communication; • a commitment to meaningful consultation; and • a commitment to prompt action to address concerns before positions get too polarized to move. I see the partners in this working relationship in this room: Leaders of national Aboriginal organizations representing First Nations, Inuit, Métis, Non-Status and off-reserve people and Aboriginal women. Aboriginal youth and Elders; Aboriginal business and social organizations. Representatives of many federal departments – Health, Justice, Human Resources Development, Industry, Natural Resources Canada – who will help make our relationships real and productive. Companies in the banking and resource sectors that are models of how to do business with Aboriginal communities. Representatives of many other labour and social interests who appreciate the need for Aboriginal people to take their rightful place in this country. Together with all levels of government, these are the parties in the broad multilateral relationships we want with Aboriginal people. Our commitment began today with the Statement of Reconciliation and the $350 million for healing to address the legacy of physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. To help renew the partnership, we are also proposing: • a First Nations and Inuit language program to preserve and enhance the use of Aboriginal languages; • a public education campaign to increase the understanding of all Canadians about Aboriginal culture and history; and • a capacity-building program to help Aboriginal organizations in the design, development and implementation of initiatives affecting Aboriginal people. Strengthening Aboriginal Governance I’d now like to turn to our second objective: strengthening Aboriginal governance. Government is about people. It is about making lives better for people. We need to ensure that Aboriginal people have the tools and capacity to improve the lives of those they serve. To be responsive and accountable to community needs, Aboriginal governments

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must have the legitimacy and authority to be effective. That is why we are committed to assisting Aboriginal people to design, develop and deliver the programs and services they need from their governments. Self-government means well-defined, negotiated arrangements with rights and responsibilities that can be exercised in a coordinated way. And the result of this will be that other governments, the private sector, other individuals and institutions can easily establish a relationship with Aboriginal governments and communities and participate in the partnerships we are talking about here. A stronger economic base is absolutely essential to achieving this outcome. That includes working with First Nations to provide increased access to lands and resources. We must also continue to address Aboriginal land claims in a fair and equitable way. Claims settlements in the Yukon provide a good example of how claims and economic development go hand in hand and are the basis for strong self-government. This commitment to strong self-government and to open, inclusive dialogue will also guide us as we and our partners create the new territory of Nunavut and proceed with constitutional development for the western part of the Northwest Territories. Our goal is even greater success, more models of good governance. To that end, we will pursue the following key initiatives: • an Aboriginal governments recognition instrument to guide jurisdictional and intergovernmental relations; • governance transition centres to highlight best practices and maximize shared experience and expertise; • the commemoration of historic treaties and the establishment of additional treaty commissions like the Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Saskatchewan; and • the continuation of work already begun with First Nations to create a new independent claims body. Developing a New Fiscal Relationship Strong governance is in turn closely linked to our third objective of developing a new fiscal relationship. In a relationship based on sharing and mutual responsibility, one government cannot completely depend on the other for all of its revenue and resources. It’s just not workable. We are working to help Aboriginal governments become self-reliant with the fiscal autonomy and financial capacity they need to support their responsibilities. This is a tremendous challenge. It means that our system of transfers must be forwardthinking and predictable so that elected representatives can plan, make informed spending decisions and be accountable for those choices. It also means that we have to look at helping Aboriginal people to develop their own sources of revenue, including taxation. Aboriginal governments, like all governments, must be both politically and financially responsible. The legitimacy of Aboriginal governments depends on their ability to be accountable to the people they represent. Canadians also want to ensure that we are investing in strong, effective and accountable Aboriginal governments. Currently, Aboriginal governments are developing and operating within a framework of financial standards comparable to other levels of government. This is a foundation upon which we shall build to further strengthen transparency and accountability and foster strong, modern governments.

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The following initiatives are part of a new fiscal relationship: • We’ll work with Aboriginal people to develop a system of public accounts and consolidated audits that comply with generally accepted accounting principles but that at the same time make sense to community members. • We’ll work with First Nations to support the establishment of a National Association of First Nations Financial Officers. • Together with Aboriginal people, we’ll develop data exchange mechanisms for timely and accurate information. • We’ll provide assistance to Aboriginal governments to develop their own sources of revenue. • We’ll work with Aboriginal people to design a statistical training program to help improve data collection methods. • And finally, we commit to work jointly with Aboriginal people on an Aboriginal Peoples Survey following the Census in the year 2001. Supporting Strong Communities, People, and Economies Fundamentally, it’s our fourth objective, supporting strong communities, people and economies, that really brings us back to the very essence of what government is all about, and that is making peoples’ lives better. A partnership approach, responsible government and a solid fiscal relationship that I’ve just outlined are the foundation we need to support strong communities and deal with the issues that touch individual daily lives – education, housing, health care, jobs and economic opportunity. As individual Canadians, we’re focused on keeping a roof over our head, putting food on the table and trying to make sure our kids have it even better than we did. But for Aboriginal people, the urgency and uncertainty around these issues are far greater. The Aboriginal population is growing at twice the national rate, and now totals 3.8 percent of the national population. That’s approximately 1.3 million people. Half the Aboriginal population is under the age of 25. Against this backdrop, conditions in many Aboriginal communities are appalling: • Infant mortality rates in Aboriginal communities are nearly double those of other Canadians. • The youth suicide rate is seven times higher than the Canadian average. • The unemployment rate on reserves is three times the Canadian average. • Literacy rates are half the Canadian average. • Most Aboriginal people live below the poverty line. So, the action plan I have laid out for you today really boils down to one simple thing, as I’ve said – making life better for Aboriginal peoples in this country. Together, we need to give hope to the teenager who sees suicide as the solution, end the vicious cycle of welfare dependency, and create jobs for the unemployed. It is time to ease the poverty of spirit. The following specific initiatives are designed to give immediate hope, support and opportunity to Aboriginal people and communities: • We’re going to put more money into improving community infrastructure. Working with our partners at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we’ll speed up repairs to housing and build new houses according to community needs and priorities. • We’ll address a 25 to 30 percent backlog in water and sewer systems.

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• We’ll reform the welfare system and shift our investment to economic development and job creation. • We’re going to invest in children by expanding the Head Start program onto reserves through Health Canada, allowing for the reinvestment of the National Child Benefit and continuing the youth employment strategy through Human Resources Development Canada. • With our other federal colleagues, we’ll find ways to foster economic development by increasing access to markets, capital and resources, as well as developing a human resources strategy. These are just a few highlights of the initiatives that underlie our plan to renew partnerships, strengthen Aboriginal governance, design a new fiscal relationship, and support strong Aboriginal communities and economies. Together with our Statement of Reconciliation and the initiatives to be outlined by Minister Goodale, I believe that what we are presenting here today is a solid framework for progress. What encourages me is that we are not starting from zero in our efforts. We can build on the significant achievements of our first mandate, such as the Inherent Right of SelfGovernment policy; the Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Business; the settling of land claims; the new housing policy; and the building of schools and water and sewer systems across the country. In reflecting on the last four years, I think that when we took office in 1993, we saw a desperate need for action on all fronts and we immediately tested the water with both feet, so to speak. Our focus was to stem the tide of deterioration in living conditions in Aboriginal communities, as well as to jump-start work on settling claims and stimulating economic development. We saw that the federal government couldn’t do it all alone, and that there was a need for partnership. Today we go farther. Partnerships must now be the defining principle of our relationships. They must guide us at every step we take in this generation and the next and the one after that. Partnership is something you have to work at to get it right. And may I say that we would not be here today without the thoughtful advice and counsel of the Aboriginal leadership here with us. My colleague Minister Goodale and I have had a series of excellent discussions with our counterparts Harry Daniels of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples; Okalik Eegeesiak, the newly elected president of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada; Gérald Morin of the Métis National Council; Marilyn Buffalo of the Native Women’s Association of Canada; and Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. Each of you have brought a unique perspective to our discussions, and have helped build the foundation for an ongoing collaborative relationship. We’ve still got room to grow, but we are building a true partnership. Together, we will get there. Conclusion So what comes next? As I agreed at the outcome of the Premiers meeting with Aboriginal leaders in November, in the months ahead, I will be meeting national Aboriginal leaders and my provincial and territorial colleagues to build a common plan of action to make renewed partnerships a reality. This is not the end of the work of the Royal Commission. It is the beginning of how we will conduct ourselves with our newfound insight and knowledge. Just as the Commission

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was struck at a pivotal point in history, I hope that we will look back on this time as an important turning point – not unlike the seventh generation principle – one at which we turned the page to a new and more prosperous future together. Internationally, we pride ourselves as peacekeepers and advocates of what is right and just. Today, I believe our offer of reconciliation was right and just, and offers us the opportunity to move forward. For years, the United Nations has said that Canada is the best place in the world to live. The time has come to make sure that this indeed reflects the reality of all peoples in this country. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people live side by side in this great country. In its recent decision in the Delgamuukw case, the Chief Justice wrote: “Let us face it, we are all here to stay.” This simple but profound statement is one we all need to take to heart. I look to all of you in this room for commitment to partnerships. If we all bring our collective resources and will to the table, we can make significant progress. I hope that Aboriginal people can shortly say with pride that they feel “of” this country and not just marginalized within it. I hope that in gathering strength we can restore the balance and chart a new course in partnership. Thank you.

NOTES 1 “Notes for an Address by the Honourable Jane Stewart, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development on the Occasion of the Unveiling of Gathering Strength – Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, January 7, 1998,” Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ ai/rqpi/apo/js_spea-eng.asp. 2 For an excellent timeline regarding the development and decline of the Indian residential school system, please refer to “A Condensed Timeline of Events,” in From Truth to Reconciliation: Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools, ed. M.B. Castellano, L. Archibald, and M. DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 64–5.

7. “Apology to native people must end ‘denial of truth’”: An Open Letter on Residential Schools to the Prime Minister from Chief Phil Fontaine, 20081 In the wake of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development’s 1998 “Statement of Reconciliation,” many Aboriginal constituencies felt that the government’s response to the devastating intergenerational effects of the Indian residential schools system was insufficient. The proliferation of lawsuits by former students and calls for a full apology and reparations led the Government of Canada and church organizations to negotiate a courtapproved settlement with representatives for residential school survivors, Inuit leaders, and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). In 2007, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement came into effect, providing “Common Experience Payments” to former students at the rate of $10,000 for the first year of school attendance and $3000 for each additional year. In addition, survivors who experienced “sexual or serious physical abuses” were eligible to apply for additional compensation through the Independent Assessment Process.2

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The settlement agreement also provided for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and further funding for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Upon the conclusion of the settlement agreement, Aboriginal leaders advocated that the new policies be accompanied by a formal apology. In response, the Government of Canada was not transparent about when such an apology would be forthcoming. In the months following Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s February 2008 apology for the Stolen Generations and leading up to the commencement of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in June 2008, public speculation regarding an imminent statement of contrition from the Harper Conservatives increased. Concerned regarding the fact that the Assembly of First Nations had not yet been consulted on the process or the text itself, Phil Fontaine, then grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, published an open letter to the prime minister that was published on the AFN website and in leading newspapers. The letter outlines the AFN’s perspective on what such an apology should include and how it should be presented.

In the Oct. 16, 2007, Throne Speech, your government promised to apologize for residential schooling for First Nations, Métis and Inuit children which led to profound harms. Every expression and word of the apology will be of great importance to our peoples and will be carefully studied, as will its timing and place. After 150 years of waiting, nothing less than a complete, unencumbered and honest apology for this dark period in our shared history will do. An apology acceptable to survivors must be offered in the House of Commons where the Prime Minister will address Parliament, the nation and the world. It must be an event as significant and meaningful as the apology to our brothers and sisters of the Stolen Generations of Australia, and our fellow Japanese Canadians. It must incorporate the ceremony and dignity that such a symbolic and historic occasion requires. The galleries must be filled with survivors, their families, as well as church and government representatives who will bear witness. The content of the apology must end denial of truth and history. It must raise the awareness about the residential school policy and its disastrous consequences, admit that it was wrong, accept responsibility and provide us with solemn assurances that it will never happen again. At minimum, the apology will acknowledge that a succession of governments systematically attempted to “kill the Indian in the child” by enforcing policies which separated children from families, prohibited the use of our languages and cultures, and indoctrinated us to believe that who we were and where we came from was not good enough for Canadian citizenship. It must acknowledge that the policies caused profound harm, loss and grief to individuals, families, communities and subsequent generations and recognize the need for reconciliation and healing. It should specify that several generations of children were deprived of day-to-day parental love and support; that mothers, fathers, grandparents, extended family members and communities were equally deprived of their children; that health care, nutrition and emotional needs of the children were neglected; that many lost the ability to speak our languages, practise our cultures; that thousands were scarred for life from deliberate physical,

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sexual and psychological abuse; and that some never returned home leaving their families to mourn their passing not even knowing where they were buried. Canada must apologize for ignoring our treaty rights and our ancestors’ pleas for a good education for their children, acknowledging they were provided inferior education which detrimentally affected employment opportunities and livelihoods for generations. There must also be a clear and unequivocal recognition in the apology that the primary objective of the residential school policy was assimilation founded on racist premises – premises of inferiority, disrespect, discrimination and inequality – premises which were used to justify the attempted destruction of our very identity and that this was profoundly wrong. Finally, the survivors will need assurances that the Government of Canada will never again try to denigrate or destroy our identity as distinct peoples, compromise our languages and cultures or undermine our families and communities. We will look for assurances that Canada respects our rights as peoples, now and in the future, while recognizing and appreciating our differences. As National Chief and a residential school survivor, I sincerely hope that by Canada saying sorry for all of these wrongs, my residential school brothers and sisters will be able to move on with their lives. I hope they will be able to accept the apology and find it in their hearts to forgive. I hope that as a result of the apology, the residential school era may eventually be remembered by all of us without bitterness. To achieve the reconciliatory goals of the apology and ensure it will have a lasting and beneficial effect, it will be necessary for us all – survivors, government and church representatives alike – to embrace attitudes of honesty, generosity, humility, commitment and courage. The power of a sincere apology is in its satisfaction of a basic human need. It can heal wounds of those who have been hurt. It can help establish trust. It can restore human dignity and self-respect. It can take the first step toward reconciliation. A sincere and honest apology given can add to the sum of justice in the world. I truly hope, Prime Minister, that your long awaited apology will meet these goals. Sincerely, Phil Fontaine National Chief Assembly of First Nations

NOTES 1 Phil Fontaine, “Apology to native people must end ‘denial of truth’: An open letter on residential schools to the Prime Minister from Chief Phil Fontaine,” Toronto Star, 22 April 2008, http:// www.thestar.com/columnists/article/416794. 2 “Indian Residential Schools,” Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada, http://www .ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rqpi/index-eng.asp (accessed April 15, 2011).

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8. House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 20081 After much anticipation, on 11 June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper presented an official apology to Aboriginal peoples for the Government of Canada’s role in the administration of the Indian residential schools system. The leaders of various First Nations, Inuit, and Métis political organizations were allowed to make history by witnessing and responding to the apology from the floor of the House of Commons. As a result, what was entered into official public record that day was not only the long-awaited statement by the federal government but also the official responses of Aboriginal leaders, some of which are included here as vital counterparts to the words of the Prime Minister.

right hon. stephen harper (prime minister, cpc): I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools. The treatment of children in these schools is a sad chapter in our history. For more than a century, Indian residential schools separated over 150,000 aboriginal children from their families and communities. In the 1870s, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligations to educate aboriginal children, began to play a role in the development and administration of these schools. Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption that aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as was infamously said, “to kill the Indian in the child.” Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country. One hundred and thirty-two federally-supported schools were located in every province and territory, except Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Most schools were operated as joint ventures with Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and United churches. The Government of Canada built an educational system in which very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes and often taken far from their communities. Many were inadequately fed, clothed and housed. All were deprived of the care and nurturing of their parents, grandparents and communities. First Nations, Inuit and Métis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools. Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools, and others never returned home. The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian residential schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language. While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools, these stories are far overshadowed by tragic accounts of the emotional, physical

336 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools

and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children, and their separation from powerless families and communities. The legacy of Indian residential schools has contributed to social problems that continue to exist in many communities today. It has taken extraordinary courage for the thousands of survivors who have come forward to speak publicly about the abuse they suffered. It is a testament to their resilience as individuals and to the strengths of their cultures. Regrettably, many former students are not with us today and died never having received a full apology from the Government of Canada. The government recognizes that the absence of an apology has been an impediment to healing and reconciliation. Therefore, on behalf of the Government of Canada and all Canadians, I stand before you, in this chamber so central to our life as a country, to apologize to aboriginal peoples for Canada’s role in the Indian residential schools system. To the approximately 80,000 living former students and all family members and communities, the Government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes, and we apologize for having done this. We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions, that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this. We now recognize that in separating children from their families, we undermined the ability of many to adequately parent their own children and sowed the seeds for generations to follow, and we apologize for having done this. We now recognize that far too often these institutions gave rise to abuse or neglect and were inadequately controlled, and we apologize for failing to protect you. Not only did you suffer these abuses as children, but as you became parents, you were powerless to protect your own children from suffering the same experience, and for this we are sorry. The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long. The burden is properly ours as a government, and as a country. There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential schools system to ever again prevail. You have been working on recovering from this experience for a long time, and in a very real sense we are now joining you on this journey. The Government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. We are sorry. [Prime Minister spoke in aboriginal languages] In moving toward healing, reconciliation and resolution of the sad legacy of Indian residential schools, the implementation of the Indian residential schools settlement agreement began on September 19, 2007. Years of work by survivors, communities and aboriginal organizations culminated in an agreement that gives us a new beginning and an opportunity to move forward together in partnership. A cornerstone of the Settlement Agreement is the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This commission represents a unique opportunity to educate all Canadians on the Indian residential schools system. It will be a positive step in forging a new relationship between aboriginal peoples and other Canadians, a relationship based on the knowledge of our shared history, a respect for each other and a desire to move for-

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ward with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us. God bless all of you. God bless our land. … chief phil fontaine (national chief of the assembly of first nations): Prime Minister, Chief Justice, members of the House, elders, survivors, Canadians: for our parents, our grandparents, great grandparents, indeed for all of the generations which have preceded us, this day testifies to nothing less than the achievement of the impossible. This morning our elders held a condolence ceremony for those who never heard an apology, never received compensation, yet courageously fought assimilation so that we could witness this day. Together we remember and honour them for it was they who suffered the most as they witnessed generation after generation of their children taken from their families’ love and guidance. For the generations that will follow us, we bear witness today in this House that our survival as first nations peoples in this land is affirmed forever. Therefore, the significance of this day is not just about what has been but, equally important, what is to come. Never again will this House consider us the Indian problem just for being who we are. We heard the Government of Canada take full responsibility for this dreadful chapter in our shared history. We heard the Prime Minister declare that this will never happen again. Finally, we heard Canada say it is sorry. Brave survivors, through the telling of their painful stories, have stripped white supremacy of its authority and legitimacy. The irresistibility of speaking truth to power is real. Today is not the result of a political game. Instead, it is something that shows the righteousness and importance of our struggle. We know we have many difficult issues to handle. There are many fights still to be fought. What happened today signifies a new dawn in the relationship between us and the rest of Canada. We are and always have been an indispensable part of the Canadian identity. Our peoples, our history, and our present being are the essence of Canada. The attempts to erase our identities hurt us deeply, but it also hurt all Canadians and impoverished the character of this nation. We must not falter in our duty now. Emboldened by this spectacle of history, it is possible to end our racial nightmare together. The memories of residential schools sometimes cut like merciless knives at our souls. This day will help us to put that pain behind us. But it signifies something even more important: a respectful and, therefore, liberating relationship between us and the rest of Canada. Together we can achieve the greatness our country deserves. The apology today is founded upon, more than anything else, the recognition that we all own our own lives and destinies, the only true foundation for a society where peoples can flourish. We must now capture a new spirit and vision to meet the challenges of the future. As a great statesman once said, we are all part of one “garment of destiny.” The differences between us are not blood or colour and “the ties that bind us are deeper than those that separate us.” The “common road of hope” will bring us to reconciliation more than any words, laws or legal claims ever could. We still have to struggle, but now we are in this together. I reach out to all Canadians today in this spirit of reconciliation. Meegwetch. …

338 Appendix A: Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools

ms. mary simon (president inuit tapiriit kanatami): Mr. Prime Minister: [Ms. Simon spoke in Inuktitut] Mr. Prime Minister, I spoke first in my Inuit language because I wanted to illustrate to you that our language and culture are still strong. I have to face you to say this, Mr. Prime Minister, because it comes from the bottom of my heart. It took great courage for you to express your sorrow and apology to our people, the Inuit, to first nations, and to Métis, and we thank you very much for it. [Ms. Simon spoke in Inuktitut] I am one of those people who have dreamed for this day. There have been times in this long journey when I despaired that this would ever happen. However, after listening to the Prime Minister and the leaders of the political parties, I am filled with hope and compassion for my fellow aboriginal Canadians as I stand among them here with you and your fellow ministers today, Mr. Prime Minister. I am also filled with optimism that this action by the Government of Canada and the generosity in the words chosen to convey this apology will help all of us mark the end of this dark period in our collective history as a nation. Let us not be lulled into an impression that when the sun rises tomorrow morning, the pain and scars will miraculously be gone. They will not. But a new day has dawned, a new day heralded by a commitment to reconciliation and building a new relationship with Inuit, Métis and First Nations. Let us now join forces with the common goal of working together to ensure that this apology opens the door to a new chapter in our lives as aboriginal peoples and in our place in Canada. There is much hard work to be done. We need the help and support of all thoughtful Canadians and our governments to rebuild strong and healthy families and communities. This can be achieved only when dignity, confidence and respect for traditional values and human rights once again become part of our daily lives and are mirrored in our relationships with governments and other Canadians. I stand here today ready to work with you, as Inuit have always done, to craft new solutions and new arrangements based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility. Thank you. May wisdom and compassion guide our efforts. … ms. beverly jacobs (president of the native women’s association of canada): [Ms. Jacobs spoke in Mohawk language] What I said in my Mohawk language is, “Greetings of peace to you.” My nation is Mohawk of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Bear Clan, and my real name is Gowehgyuseh, which means “She is visiting.” I am here to represent the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the women that we represent have a statement. It is about the respect of aboriginal women in this country. Prior to the residential schools system, prior to colonization, the women in our communities were very well respected and honoured for the role that they have in our communities as being the life givers, being the caretakers of the spirit that we bring to mother earth. We have been given those responsibilities to look after our children and to bring that spirit into this physical world. Residential schools caused so much harm to that respect and to that honour. There were ceremonies for young men and for young women that were taken away for generations in residential schools. Now we have our language still, we have our ceremonies, we have our

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elders, and we have to revitalize those ceremonies and the respect for our people not only within Canadian society but even within our own peoples. I want to say that I come here speaking from my heart, because two generations ago, my grandmother, being a Mohawk woman, was beaten, sexually beaten and physically beaten, for being a Mohawk woman. She did not pass that on. She did not pass it on to my mother and her siblings, and so that matriarchal system that we have was directly affected. Luckily, I was raised in a community where it has been revitalized by all of our mothers. I want to say that as mothers, we teach our boys and our girls, our men and our women equally. That is what I am here to say, that although it may be the Native Women’s Association, we also represent men and women because that is our responsibility. It is not just about women’s issues, it is about making sure that we have strong nations again. That is what I am here to say. We have given thanks to you for your apology. I have to also give you credit for standing up. I did not see any other governments before today come forward and apologize, so I do thank you for that. But in return, the Native Women’s Association wants respect. I have just one last thing to say. To all of the leaders of the Liberals, the Bloc and NDP, thank you, as well, for your words because now it is about our responsibilities today, the decisions that we make today and how they will affect seven generations from now. My ancestors did the same seven generations ago and they tried hard to fight against you because they knew what was happening. They knew what was coming, but we have had so much impact from colonization and that is what we are dealing with today. Women have taken the brunt of it all. Thank you for the opportunity to be here at this moment in time to talk about those realities that we are dealing with today. What is it that this government is going to do in the future to help our people? Because we are dealing with major human rights violations that have occurred to many generations: my language, my culture and my spirituality. I know that I want to transfer those to my children and my grandchildren, and their children, and so on. What is going to be provided? That is my question. I know that is the question from all of us. That is what we would like to continue to work on, in partnership. Nia:wen. Thank you.

NOTE 1 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 11 June 2008, http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/ Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=2&DocId=3568890.

APPENDIX B ACADIAN DEPORTATIONS 1. Petition to Governor of Nova Scotia from Acadian Inhabitants, 17551 This letter, signed by French-speaking residents of several Acadian communities around Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, was delivered to Governor Charles Lawrence via a local British commanding officer. It responds to the increasingly insecure position of Acadians in the context of ongoing military conflict between Britain and France in North America in the 1750s, and especially under the Lawrence regime. While Acadians became British subjects with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, they had been allowed to maintain a position of political neutrality; it was not until Lawrence became governor of Nova Scotia in 1754 that they came under pressure to take an unqualified oath of allegiance to the British Crown. Lawrence laid the petition he received before the Governing Council of Nova Scotia on 3 July 1755. The signatories were then brought before the council to hear the governor’s rebuttal of their claims. Pressed to immediately take the oath of allegiance as individuals, in the presence of the council, they refused to do so without first returning home to consult “the Sentiments of their Constituents” or what they referred to as “the Body.”2 They were imprisoned in Halifax the next day, and the council resolved that Acadian inhabitants should not be permitted to take the oath “after having once refused so to do, but that effectual Measures ought to be taken to remove all such Recusants out of the Province.”3 By November 1755, Lawrence would write that the council had resolved “for His Majesty’s Honor as [well] as the immediate preservation of the Province … that the whole French Inhabitants, as well those who had not deserted as those who had, should be embarked on board Transports to be sent out of the Province and dispersed among the neighbouring Colonies. By much the greater part of them are sailed, and I flatter myself by this time the whole.”4 See the deportation order in appendix B.2, below.

Mines June 10th 1755 To His Excellency Charles Lawrence, Governor of the province of Nova Scotia or Acadie … We, the Inhabitants of Mines, Pisiquid, and the river Canard, take the liberty of approaching your Excellency for the purpose of testifying our sense of the care which the government exercises towards us. It appears, Sir, that your Excellency doubts the sincerity with which we have promised to be faithful to his Britannic Majesty. We most humbly beg your Excellency to consider our past conduct. You will see, that, very far from violating the oath we have taken, we have maintained it in its entirety, in spite of the solicitations and the dreadful threats of another power. We still entertain, Sir, the same pure and sincere disposition to prove under any circumstances, our unshaken fidelity to his Majesty, provided that His Majesty shall allow us the same liberty that he has granted us. We earnestly beg your Excellency to have the goodness to inform us of His Majesty’s intentions on this subject, and to give us assurances on his part.

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Permit us, if you please, Sir, to make known the annoying circumstances in which we are placed, to the prejudice of the tranquillity we ought to enjoy. Under pretext that we are transporting our corn or other provisions to Beausejour, and the river St John, we are no longer permitted to carry the least quantity of corn by water from one place to another … [W]e hope that your Excellency will be pleased to restore to us the same liberty that we enjoyed formerly, in giving us the use of our canoes, either to transport our provisions from one river to the other, or for the purpose of fishing; thereby providing for our livelihood. This permission has never been taken from us except at the present time. We hope, Sir, that you will be pleased to restore it, especially in consideration of the number of poor inhabitants who would be very glad to support their families with the fish that they would be able to catch. Moreover, our guns, which we regard as our own personal property, have been taken from us, notwithstanding the fact that they are absolutely necessary to us, either to defend our cattle which are attacked by the wild beasts, or for the protection of our children, and of ourselves. … It is certain, Sir, that since the savages have ceased frequenting our parts, the wild beasts have greatly increased, and that our cattle are devoured by them almost every day. Besides, the arms which have been taken from us are but a feeble guarantee of our fidelity. It is not the gun which an inhabitant possesses, that will induce him to revolt, nor the privation of the same gun that will make him more faithful; but his conscience alone must induce him to maintain his oath.5 … We beg your Excellency, on this subject, to have the goodness to make known to us your good pleasure before confiscating our property and considering us in fault. This is the favour we expect from your Excellency’s kindness, and we hope that you will do us the justice to believe that very far from violating our promises, we will maintain them, assuring you that we are very respectfully, Sir, Your very humble and obt. Servants, [Signed by twenty-five of the said inhabitants]

NOTES 1 “Archives Concernant la Deportation et le Grand Dérangement, 1714–1768,” Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/deportation/archives.asp ?Number=ONEII&Page=247&Language=French. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Letter from Governor Charles Lawrence to Sir Thomas Robinson, Secretary of State, November 30, 1755, Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/ deportation/archives.asp?Number=ONEII&Page=247&Language=French. 5 The issue of arms was especially charged, for under a previous governor Acadians had been permitted to take a qualified oath of fidelity to the British Crown, which protected them from being pressed into military service.

342 Appendix B: Acadian Deportations

2. Acadian Deportation Order, 17551 In August 1755, while he was president of the governing council of Nova Scotia (before becoming governor in 1756), Charles Lawrence issued a number of deportation orders in the form of instructions to British military officials stationed around the colony. The instructions below were addressed to Colonel John Winslow, “in the Bason of Mines” or “Les Mines,” one of the most populous Acadian districts in the early eighteenth century. By 1763, as a result of similar orders, approximately 10,000 Acadians had been forcibly removed from their lands in present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and dispersed to the English colonies to the south; others landed in France and the Caribbean.

Destination of the Vessels appointed to rendezvous in the Bason of Mines Colonel Winslow’s Instructions, August 11 1755 To be sent to North Carolina Such a number as will transport Five hundred persons, or thereabout. To be sent to Virginia Such a number as will transport one thousand persons, & To Maryland Such a number as will transport Five hundred persons, or in proportion, if the number to be shipped off should exceed Two thousand persons … When the people are embarked you will please to give the Master of each Vessel one of the letters (of which you will receive a number signed by me) which you will address to the Governor of the Province or Commander in Chief for the time being where they are to be put on shore … And you will in these orders, make it a particular injunction to the said masters to be as careful and watchful as possible during the whole Course of the passage, to prevent the passengers from making any attempt to seize upon the Vessel, by allowing only a small number to be upon the decks at a time …; and that they be particularly careful that the inhabitants have carry’d no arms or other offensive weapons on board with them at their embarkation as also that they see the provisions regularly issued to the people agreeable to the allowance proportioned … As Captain Murray is well acquainted with the people and with the country I would have you to consult with him upon all occasions and particularly with relation to the means necessary for collecting the people together so as to get them on board, and if you find that fair means will not do with them, you must proceed by the most vigorous measures possible not only in compelling them to embark but in depriving those who shall escape of all means of shelter or support by burning their houses, and by destroying every thing that may afford them the means of subsistence in the Country … When you have executed the business of shipping off all that can be collected of the inhabitants in the districts about Mines Bason you will march yourself or send a strong Detachment to Annapolis Royal to assist Major Handfield in shipping off those of that River, and you will so order it as all the stragglers that may be met with by the way may be taken up and carried to Annapolis in order to their being shipped with the rest.

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NOTE 1 “Archives Concernant la Deportation et le Grand Dérangement, 1714–1768,” Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/deportation/archives.asp ?Number=ONEII&Page=247&Language=French.

3. Royal Proclamation Designating “Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” 20031 Following an Order in Council by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson,2 the following royal proclamation designating an annual “Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval” was made at Government House, the official residence of the Governor General of Canada, on 10 December 2003. The proclamation, the federal government’s action on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II, was made with the governor general as witness, and Euclide Chiasson, president of the Société Nationale de l’Acadie (SNA), in attendance. From as early as 1760, Acadians directed their demands for an apology and an impartial inquiry regarding the deportations to the British Crown, for in issuing the deportation orders in 1755, the president of the governing council of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, had acted on the authority of King George II and the British imperial government.3 In 2003, the SNA wrote to Queen Elizabeth II asking for an acknowledgment of the “Grand Dérangement.”4 The reply to this petition was that the queen would defer to the will of the Canadian parliament. The Liberal government of Jean Chrétien had several years before defeated a motion by the Bloc Québécois asking the governor general to request an apology from the queen. However, in December of 2003, under pressures coming from within the governing Liberal party, as well as from the SNA, the federal government agreed to request an Order in Council from the governor general acknowledging the fact of the deportations and designating an annual “Day of Commemoration.” The proclamation explicitly disclaims “legal or financial responsibility by the Crown.” The SNA responded to the proclamation by describing it as “the next best thing” to an apology.5

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories QUEEN, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. To All To Whom these Presents shall come or whom the same may in any way concern, … A Proclamation Whereas the Acadian people, through the vitality of their community, have made a remarkable contribution to Canadian society for almost 400 years; Whereas on July 28, 1755, the Crown, in the course of administering the affairs of the British colony of Nova Scotia, made the decision to deport the Acadian people; Whereas the deportation of the Acadian people, commonly known as the Great Upheaval, continued until 1763 and had tragic consequences, including the deaths of many

344 Appendix B: Acadian Deportations

thousands of Acadians – from disease, in shipwrecks, in their places of refuge and in prison camps in Nova Scotia and England as well as in the British colonies in America; Whereas We acknowledge these historical facts and the trials and suffering experienced by the Acadian people during the Great Upheaval; Whereas We hope that the Acadian people can turn the page on this dark chapter of their history; Whereas Canada is no longer a British colony but a sovereign state, by and under the Constitution of Canada; Whereas when Canada became a sovereign state, with regard to Canada, the Crown in right of Canada and of the provinces succeeded to the powers and prerogatives of the Crown in right of the United Kingdom; Whereas We, in Our role as Queen of Canada, exercise the executive power by and under the Constitution of Canada; Whereas this Our present Proclamation does not, under any circumstances, constitute a recognition of legal or financial responsibility by the Crown in right of Canada and of the provinces and is not, under any circumstances, a recognition of, and does not have any effect upon, any right or obligation of any person or group of persons; And whereas, by Order in Council P.C. 2003-1967 of December 6, 2003, the Governor in Council has directed that a proclamation do issue designating July 28 of every year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” commencing on July 28, 2005; Now know you that we, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council for Canada, do by this Our Proclamation, effective on September 5, 2004, designate July 28 of every year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” commencing on July 28, 2005. Of all which Our Loving Subjects and all others whom these Presents may concern are hereby required to take notice and to govern themselves accordingly. In testimony whereof, We have caused this Our Proclamation to be published and the Great Seal of Canada to be hereunto affixed.

NOTES 1 Proclamation Designating July 28 of Every Year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” Commencing on July 28, 2005. Canada Gazette, vol. 137, no. 27, 31 December 2003, http://gazette.gc.ca/archives/p2/2003/2003-12-31/html/si-tr188-eng.html. 2 Governor of Canada Privy Council Office, P.C. 2003-1967 of December 6, 2003, http://www .pco-bcp.gc.ca/oic-dc.asp?lang=eng&Page=secretariats&txtOICID=&txtFromDate=& txtToDate=&txtPrecis=great+upheaval&txtDepartment=&txtAct=&txtChapterNo=& txtChapterYear=&txtBillNo=&rdoComingIntoForce=&DoSearch=Search+/+List. 3 In 1990, a Louisiana lawyer, Warren A. Perrin, wrote to Queen Elizabeth II and then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, demanding reinstatement of “French neutrals” status for all Acadians; an inquiry on the deportations; annulment of the deportation order; recognition by British authorities of the Great Upheaval’s contravention of international and English law; and the erection of a monument. Éléments tirés du rapport du comité consultative sur la reconnaissance des torts causés aux Acadiens et Acadiennes, report presented to La Société Nationale de l’Acadie, October 2002, “Rapport de la motion M-241,” 2–3, http://snacadie.org/content/ view/59/68/. This report, written by a consultative committee, also points to a number of prec-

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edents for apology, including Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s apology to Italian Canadians for their wartime internment, and Queen Elizabeth II’s 1995 apology to the Maori of New Zealand for “acts perpetrated by the British during their colonial past” on the occasion of the signing of the Waikato Tainui settlement related to historical land confiscation (Éléments, 7). 4 “Acadians,” CBC News Online, 10 December 2003, http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/ acadians/. 5 Ibid.

APPENDIX C BLACK LOYALIST AND AFRICVILLE INJUSTICES 1. Nova Scotia Resolution, 18341 In 1775, Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, offered slaves an opportunity to gain their emancipation by fighting on behalf of the British in the American War of Independence. When the British were eventually defeated, those who had fought against American independence sought refuge in Canada. Loyalist history is thus key to understanding the history of black settlement in Canada, and especially in Nova Scotia, which “saw the largest migration of blacks following both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.”2 Upon relocation north of the 49th parallel, black Loyalists found themselves in living conditions that were substantially inferior to those of their fellow white Loyalists, especially because the land offered to black soldiers was unsuitable for agricultural development. Prejudice towards black immigrants to Nova Scotia was not limited solely to Empire Loyalists migrating to the province from the south; rather, discrimination was levelled at all black residents, including those who came to Canada after gaining freedom from slavery in other British colonies. Nova Scotia’s black population grew when, in 1796, “almost 600 Maroons were deported from Jamaica to Nova Scotia following their rebellion against the colonial government,” and again after the War of 1812, when further Loyalists arrived.3 In 1815, Nova Scotia’s House of Assembly noted “with concern, and alarm, the frequent arrival in this Province of Bodies of Negroes, and Mulattoes, of whom many have already become burthensome to the Public.” The House of Assembly asked John Coape Sherbrooke, lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, to “prohibit the bringing of any more of these people, into this Colony” since “the proportion of Africans already in this country is productive of many inconveniencies; and … the introduction of more must tend to the discouragement of white labourers and servants, as well as to the establishment of a separate and marked class of people, unfitted by nature to this climate, or to an association with the rest of his Majesty’s Colonists.”4 The lieutenant governor did not grant this request, and in March of 1834, Nova Scotia’s House of Assembly again tried to limit the numbers of black immigrants: the Nova Scotia Resolution of 1834 was introduced as the legislative solution to the “problem” of black immigration. Despite the fact that the bill was passed in the province, Britain prohibited its renewal in 1836 “on the ground that it was discriminatory, opposing the purposes of the emancipation bill of 1833 by placing disabilities upon a people now entitled to the same rights as any of His Majesty’s subjects.”5 The Resolution of 1834 is an important document for understanding the deep history of racist attitudes towards black communities in Nova Scotia and Canada more generally – a history that informs the subsequent destruction of Africville in the twentieth century, which will be discussed in the remainder of this section of appendices.

An Act to prevent the Clandestine Landing of Liberated Slaves, and other Persons therein mentioned, from Vessels arriving in this Province. (PASSED THE 16th DAY OF APRIL, 1834) WHEREAS, from the recent Emancipation of the Slaves in the West-Indies, Bermuda and the Bahama Islands, it is apprehended that many of the sick, infirm, idle and dissolute

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of them, may be transported to this Province, and there is also reasons to fear that Felons and Convicts, and others who may have undergone sentence of transportation and been pardoned or liberated, may be also hither, and that thereby burthensome expense may be occasioned to the inhabitants of this Province, and Contagious Diseases be introduced among them: I. Be it therefore enacted, by the President, Council and Assembly, That on the arrival of any Vessel, in any place within this Province, containing or having on board Slaves, liberated Slaves, Felons or Convicts, or Persons having been Felons or Convicts who may have been transported under the Sentence or Judgment of any Court or by other Legal Authority whatsoever, and who may have been pardoned or liberated before or after the expiration of the Term for which they may have been so respectively transported, it shall be lawful for any two Justices of the Peace, if they shall think fit, to station one or more Constables, who are hereby required to obey their directions in that behalf, on board of or near to such Vessel, to prevent the clandestine landing of the said Slaves, liberated Slaves, Felons or Convicts, or Persons having been so transported as herein before mentioned, and that a reasonable allowance, to be fixed by the said Justices, shall be paid by the Master or Owner of such Vessel to the Constable or Constables or other Persons stationed, for their services in attending until security shall have been given as is hereinafter prescribed, or until the said Vessel shall depart from such place, and the amount of such reasonable allowance, so to be fixed as aforesaid, shall and may be recovered with costs in an action of debt to be brought in any Court of Record within the Province, at the suit of the said persons to whom the said allowances shall be made as aforesaid. II. And be it further enacted, That the Master or other Person having charge of any Ship or Vessel so arriving in this Province with Slaves, liberated Slaves, Felons or Convicts, or Persons who may have been so transported as aforesaid on board, shall enter into a Bond or Bonds to His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, in the form prescribed in the Schedule hereto annexed, and marked A, with sufficient Sureties, to be approved of by the Collector of Impost and Excise nearest to the port of place where the Vessel may be, in a penalty of Fifteen Pounds for each Slave, liberated Slave, Felon or Convict or Person who may have been so transported, pardoned or liberated as aforesaid, who may be on board of such Vessel, and who is to be landed. III. And be it further enacted, That if any Master or Commander of any such Vessel shall wilfully, and in violation of this Act, land any one or more of the said Slaves, liberated Slaves, Felons or Convicts, or Persons who may have been transported and pardoned or liberated as aforesaid, such Master or Commander shall forfeit and pay to His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, the sum of One Hundred Pounds, to be recovered by the Attorney-General, or in his absence by the Solicitor-General, in the name of His said Majesty, to his use, in any Court or Record within this Province, and also all costs, damages and expenses; and in case any attempt shall be made to land any of such Slaves, liberated Slaves, Felons or Convicts, or Persons so transported and liberated or pardoned as aforesaid, before such Bond shall be duly executed as aforesaid or any such Slave, liberated Slave, Felon or Convict, or Person transported and pardoned or liberated as aforesaid, shall be actually landed, then it shall be lawful for any two Justices of the Peace, upon complaint on oath duly made before then, to issue a Warrant directed to any Constable or Constables, under their hands and seals, whereby the

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said Master or Commander shall be arrested and holden to bail to answer the said suit of His Majesty, to be prosecuted as aforesaid, in double the said sum of One Hundred Pounds. IV. And be it further enacted, That in case any of the said Slaves, liberated Slaves, Felons or Convicts, or Persons so having been transported and pardoned or liberated as aforesaid, landed under the security hereby prescribed, shall become chargeable to any Township or Townships, place or places, within this Province, by reason of disease, bodily infirmity, age, childhood or poverty, or shall become Paupers or Common Beggars, within one year after he, she or they, shall so land, the said Bond or Bonds shall be sued in the name of His said Majesty in any Court of Record in this Province, by the said Collector, who shall have approved of the said security as aforesaid, and Judgment shall be given therein for a sum equal to Fifteen Pounds for each Slave, liberated Slave, Felon or Convict, or Persons so having been transported and pardoned or liberated as aforesaid, who shall have become chargeable, or become Paupers or Common Beggars as aforesaid, together with costs of suit; and the amount for which Judgment shall be so given shall be paid over to the Overseers of the Poor of the Township or Place in which the said Slave, liberated Slave, Felon or Convict, or Person having been so transported and liberated or pardoned as a foresaid shall have become chargeable, or Paupers of Beggars as aforesaid.

NOTES 1 “Nova Scotia Resolution, April 16, 1834,” Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/africanns/archives.asp?ID=107. 2 Jennifer Nelson, Razing Africville (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 7. 3 “The Decline of Slavery, 1793–1812,” Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http:// www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/africanns/results.asp?Search=&SearchList1=3&Language =English. 4 “Address of the House of Assembly to John Coape Sherbrooke, Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, April 1, 1815,” Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, http://www.gov.ns.ca/ nsarm/virtual/africanns/archives.asp?ID=76&Language=. 5 Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 129.

2. A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 19571 As Jennifer Nelson notes, “In 1815, former lands of the black Loyalists and Maroons were made available to black refugees from the War of 1812.”2 These refugees purchased land along the Bedford Basin near Halifax and, by the 1840s, the community of Africville was born. As early as 1915, the City of Halifax targeted the Africville region as a site for industrial development “not tolerated in other neighbourhoods,” though no significant action was taken until the post-war period.3 In 1947, with the municipal region growing and land for expansion becoming scarce, the Halifax city council “rezoned” Africville as “industrial land” and began the process of attempting to displace Africvillians from their homes.4 To

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support its agenda, the Halifax city council commissioned Gordon Stephenson, a professor of town planning at the University of Toronto, to investigate the city’s housing status and to recommend a course of action. Stephenson submitted his findings as A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia (1957). While the City of Halifax had many economic motives for redeveloping the Africville land, it is interesting to note how many of the documents of the period – including Stephenson’s study – utilize a discourse of paternalistic benevolence that reframes the relocation (arguably more accurately described as forced dislocation) of Africville residents as a humanitarian intervention. Commencing in 1964, Africville residents were removed from their community and their homes were destroyed.

There is a little frequented part of the City, overlooking Bedford Basin, which presents an unusual problem for any community to face. In what may be described as an encampment, or shack town, there live about seventy negro families. They are descendants of early settlers, and it is probable that Africville originated with a few shacks well over a century ago. Title to some of the land will be difficult to ascertain. Some of the hutted homes are on railway land, some on City land, some on private land. There will be families with squatters rights, and others with clear title to land which is now appreciating considerably in value. The citizens of Africville live a life apart. On a sunny, summer day, the small children roam at will in a spacious area and swim in what amounts to their private lagoon. In winter, life is far from idyllic. In terms of the physical condition of buildings and sanitation, the story is deplorable. Shallow wells and cesspools, in close proximity, are scattered about the slopes between the shacks. There are no accurate records of conditions in Africville. There are only two things to be said. The families will have to be rehoused in the near future. The land which they now occupy will be required for the further development of the City. A solution which is satisfactory, socially as well as economically, will be difficult to achieve. Africville stands as an indictment of society and not of its inhabitants. They are old Canadians who have never had the opportunities enjoyed by their more fortunate fellows.

NOTES 1 Gordon Stephenson, A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia (Halifax: Halifax City Council, 1957). 2 Jennifer Nelson, Razing Africville (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 11. 3 Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis W. Magill, Africville: The Life and Death of a Canadian Black Community (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd, 1974), 102. 4 Ibid., 103.

3. Denise Allen, Africville Genealogical Society, “Lessons from Africville,” 20011 Representing the Africville Genealogical Society, one of the major advocacy groups formed on behalf of former Africvillians and their descendants, Denise Allen made the following report to the United Nation’s Plenary Assembly at the 2001 World Conference against

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Racism, in Durban, South Africa. Allen’s speech provides a powerful account of the many discriminatory actions which both shaped Africville’s existence for 150 years and then eventually led to the community’s destruction. After outlining the history of Africville, Allen petitioned UN members for support in seeking reparations for the injustices the community members have suffered. Allen’s request was answered in 2004 with an official recommendation by Doudou Diène, UN special rapporteur on racism, for the Canadian government to engage in forging a redress settlement with Africvillians (see appendix 5 in this section).

Madame Chairperson, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: The United Nations has provided the world with a unique opportunity to hear about the heroic struggles of the people of Africa and African descendants in Canada. In addition to demanding reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, we urge member states to remember the voices of the people of Africville, Nova Scotia, Canada, and ensure that the valid injustice of Africville is addressed within the UN Declaration and Plan of Action documents. Africville is a stark reminder of the ways in which racism operates within and permeates Canadian society. In Africville, Nova Scotia, what is now Sea-view Park, about 80 families lived and worked in a self-reliant community. After having been enslaved, Africvillians had purchased property with deeds by 1848. • On December 6, 1917, a collision between a Belgian and a French ammunition carrier virtually levelled a considerable part of northern Halifax, leaving 1,600 people dead, 9,000 injured and another 6,000 homeless. Tens of thousands of city residents were left with badly damaged and destroyed homes. Immediately the international community responded. An international relief commission, tasked with the restoration of Halifax was established. • The Halifax Relief Commission was entrusted with the task of distributing upwards of thirty million dollars of donations as well as critical medical aid, food, clothing and building materials[,] financial aide and all other supplies that would safe guard the health and safety of Halifax residents. The commission’s work has been described as an incredible example of efficiency and community responsibility. • At the same time as $500,000 remained in surplus restorative funding, Africville residents, though they were hardest hit, saw another dimension of this “heroic” effort. We were denied access to the relief funding. • We experienced full brunt of the explosion, yet the commission deliberately denied our community the necessary financial aide or compensation. We knew then we were on our own and rebuilt our community independently. By 1965, however, the city of Halifax embarked on an urban renewal campaign, which forcibly displaced of the residents of Africville in order to make room for industrial expansion. In this, the people of Africville were faced with a formidable adversary and after 150 years, our community was finally destroyed. The destruction of Africville was part of an agenda that placed the accumulation of capital before people. The hopes and needs of Black citizens were apparently insignificant to government officials.

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During the entire history of African Canadians, we resisted all attempts to take our land, our culture and our heritage away from us. Compiled from two recent conferences, the Black World Response Symposium and “Lesson From Africville,” held in Halifax, participants identified several components of institutional racism: displacement, denial of essential services, environmental degradation, health, segregation, denial of justice in the courts, unemployment/underemployment, economic inequality, cultural assimilation and denial of education. Today, I will address the following: First: The systemic denial of services and human rights. For example Africville residents were subject to the same taxation mechanisms as citizens of Halifax. However, they were never provided with basic amenities. Petitions for public education, water, recreational and play ground facilities, ambulance services[,] firefighters, paved roads, social assistance, garbage pick-up and removal, and even a cemetery were all denied. Second: Environmental Degradation. In this case city officials permitted the following to be established within walking distance of Africville homes and play areas: three systems of railway tracks; an open city dump; disposal pits for Halifax toxic waste; a hospital for infectious diseases; a stone and coal crushing plant; a toxic waste dump; a bone-meal plant; a cotton factory; a rolling mill/nail factory; a slaughterhouse; sewage disposal units; a prison; and a port facility for handling coal. Third: Racist Hiring Practices. For the municipal authorities of Halifax, Africville was used to host a fleet of toxic industries but its residents were to be denied access to wellpaying jobs. In fact, employers reserved and hired whites for the better paying jobs. It was this practice that gave birth to nepotism and tokenism. This created an additional obstacle that only exacerbated the economic situation in Africville. In conjunction with the World Black Response Symposium, Africville delegates worked hard and identified appropriate corrective measures, sustainable, beneficial community economic-developmental solutions that address outstanding, current and predictable legitimate grievances. The Halifax-based Africville Genealogy Society has been fighting for over 30 years for reparations for the onslaught of blatant human rights violations endured by Africville residents and their children, for more than 150 years. Undeniably our experience in Canada concludes that governing authorities failed in their responsibility to safeguard the well being of Africvillians. Their discriminatory actions prevented us from access to full and equitable entitlement to share in the complete enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedom on the same basis as other citizens and peoples, without discrimination. These rights are defined as international law in such basic United Nations instruments as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976). Clearly Africville was a community slowly strangled by the denial of basic services and human rights that most Canadians take for granted. Why were we treated with such disdain? Could it be, that the ocean frontage and natural port-property in question was too valuable for black ownership? You be the judge. In closing I urge you to support us by encouraging the official Canadian delegation to

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correct this injustice by entering into serious and constructive negotiations for settlement with the former residents of Africville to heal this historic open wound that continues to have a detrimental effect on Canada. On behalf of the Africville people, who have been dispersed throughout the world, I would like to thank you for your attention.

NOTE 1 Denise Allen, “Lessons from Africville,” presented to the Plenary Assembly, UN WCAR on 6 September 2001. In Shunpiking Magazine, http://www.shunpiking.com/bhs/Lessons %20from%20Africville.htm.

4. Report on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance: Addendum, Mission to Canada, 20041 In 2004, Doudou Diène, the UN’s special rapporteur on racism, visited Canada “to assess the present situation … with regard to the question of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia.”2 In his subsequent published report, Diène outlined a wide range of ongoing “race”-based injustices and published a list of recommendations for the Canadian government. The excerpt below details the history of discrimination against Canadians of African origin as well as Africville residents in particular and issues a call for reparations to former residents of the Africville region.

Summary At the invitation of the Canadian Government and in accordance with his mandate, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance visited Canada from 15 to 26 September 2003. The purpose of the visit, pursuant to the implementation of the Programme of Action of the Durban Conference, was to assess the present situation in Canada, with regard to the question of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, and hence the state of relations between the various communities, against the country’s characteristically multi-ethnic and multicultural background … The members of Canadian communities of African and Caribbean origin told the Special Rapporteur that they experienced the same feeling of persistent discrimination against them. The contrast between these communities’ strong and deep-rooted feelings of discrimination on the one hand and the political will of the federal and provincial authorities on the other indicates a lack of understanding and sympathy as well as poor communication between the communities concerned and the authorities in charge. The Special Rapporteur has also noted the need for an intellectual and ethical strategy, which could both respond adequately to the deep emotional and psychological experience of discrimination and encourage attitudes to evolve towards a form of multiculturalism, which would not be limited to the mere equalitarian and democratic superimposition of

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communities, but which is likely to facilitate interactions, mutual, interpersonal and intercommunity awareness and respect for cultural differences. The Canadian Government has made it clear, however, that in recent years programmes and measures have been introduced by the federal Government and by the provincial authorities to facilitate civil participation and the exercise of sovereignty based on harmonious intercommunal relations respectful of cultural differences. The Special Rapporteur has therefore put forward recommendations to the Canadian Government which may add credibility, trust and recognition to its genuine political commitment to combating racism, discrimination and xenophobia. These recommendations concern: public recognition, at the highest level, of the fact that these evils persist, despite the efforts accomplished so far; the establishment of a national, multipartite and multiethnic parliamentary commission on racism and discrimination; the elaboration of a national programme to combat racism derived from the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action; and the launch, as a matter of urgency, of an intellectual strategy to back up the legal strategy. This new strategy would be based on three objectives: a better understanding and knowledge of the deep roots of the history, culture and mentality of racism and discrimination, the encouragement of mutual awareness of the history, culture and spiritual background of the different communities, and a better understanding of their interactions and cross-fertilization, with the aim of achieving democratic, equalitarian and interactive multiculturalism. … II. Presentation of Their Situation by the Communities Concerned B. Persons of African origin, particularly Loyalists’ descendants in Nova Scotia 35. The Special Rapporteur has received a plea from descendants of the African-Canadian community in Nova Scotia to tell the story of Africville, which they see as emblematic of the situation of discrimination against Afro-Canadians. Africville was one of the settlements of Blacks who came to the shores of what is now known as Nova Scotia. It dates back to the 1700s and one of the first purchases of property deeds was recorded in 1848. Blacks who settled there came to Nova Scotia bound as slaves of the French, British, and Portuguese. They also came as Black British Loyalists, during the time of the American Revolutionary War in 1776; as Jamaican Maroons in 1796; and as American slaves who were promised freedom by the British during the War of 1812. These diverse groups would eventually settle the area that once stood overlooking the grand Bedford Basin that would grow to be Africville. Eighty families lived and worked in a self-reliant community, on their own property. 36. The period between 1913–1973 saw industrial growth at the expense of the residents of Africville. A bone-meal plant, a cotton factory, a rolling mill/nail factory, a slaughterhouse, and a port facility for handling coal were built within earshot of residential homes. In the 1950’s, the city dump was moved to within 100 metres of the westernmost group of Africville homes. 37. Not only had the city leaders surrounded Africville with unwanted, dirty and dangerous facilities, by 1915 they had made explicit their intention to use land occupied and owned by the people of Africville for industrial expansion. By 1960, the city of Halifax embarked

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on an urban renewal campaign, which would forcibly displace the residents of Africville in order to make room for industrial expansion. After 150 years of collusion between the provincial Government and the business community, including through abuse of power, neglect, encroachment and invasion of hazardous industrial materials, in 1970 all of the community was forcefully removed without proper compensation. 38. The case of Africville is emblematic of the past condition of people of African descent in Nova Scotia. The Black community in Nova Scotia faces numerous challenges, including, the overrepresentation in prisons, a dependence on the welfare system, and increase of representation in low-income housing and other problems in the criminal justice system. 39. The Special Rapporteur hopes that the recent nomination of a Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs is a demonstration of the Government of Nova Scotia’s will to address the issues raised above in close consultation with the people concerned. … IV. Conclusions and Recommendations (h) The Government should conduct an overall assessment of the situation of the Afro-Canadian community, in the areas of employment, habitat, health and education. The cultural and linguistic diversity of the community must be fully taken into account in the preparation of a specific programme of action; (n) In consultation with communities of African origin or their descendants, the Government of Nova Scotia should re-examine the conditions of their relocation, particularly from Africville, taking particular account of their situation regarding human rights and economic and social conditions with a view to granting them reparation.

NOTES 1 UN Commission on Human Rights, Report on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance: Addendum, Mission to Canada, 1 March 2004, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4091000f0.html. 2 Ibid., 2.

5. Bill 213: An Act to Address the Historic Injustice Committed against the People of Africville, 20051 On 16 May 2005, Bill 213, a Private Member’s Bill introduced by Maureen MacDonald, Member of the Legislative Assembly for Halifax Needham, received its first reading in the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly. The bill contained three associated recommendations: first, it proposed that Africville’s former residents and their descendents be issued “a public apology” for the “destruction of Africville”; second, that affected community members be consulted about their experiences and losses; and third, that funding be established to maintain Africville’s former site and to provide for the “social development” and “infrastructure” necessary to benefit former residents and their descendents. The Bill did not receive a second or third reading.2

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Be it enacted by the Governor and Assembly as follows: 1. This Act may be cited as the Africville Act. 2. In this Act, (a) “Africville” means the area of land situate[d] on and around Seaview Park expropriated by the City of Halifax in 1970; (b) “development trust” means monies provided or placed in trust by the Government of the Province to be used by former residents of Africville and their descendants; (c) “Minister” means the Minister of African Nova Scotia Affairs. 3. The Government of the Province shall issue a public apology to former residents of Africville and their descendants for the destruction of Africville. 4. (1) Within eight months of the coming into force of this Act, the Minister shall hold public hearings with former residents of Africville, their designates and their descendants concerning the destruction of Africville, and make a report to the House of Assembly concerning these hearings. (2) The Minister shall table the report in the House of Assembly if it is then sitting or, if it is not then sitting, file it with the Clerk of the House. 5. Subject to Section 6, within twelve months of the coming into force of this Act, the Minister shall establish a development trust to be used for (a) historical restoration, interpretation and preservation of Africville lands; (b) social development to benefit former residents of Africville and their descendants; and (c) development of infrastructure that benefits former residents of Africville and their descendants and achieves the objectives set out in clauses (a) and (b). 6. The moneys required for the purpose of this Act shall be paid out of moneys appropriated for that purpose by the Legislature.

NOTES 1 Nova Scotia, Legislative Assembly, Debates and Proceedings, 16 May 2005, http://nslegislature .ca/legc/bills/59th_1st/1st_read/b213.htm. 2 On 5 May 2006, Maureen McDonald reintroduced the Africville Act with identical wording, but this time under the name of Bill 8, and the proposed legislation received another first reading. Like its predecessor, however, Bill 8 received only a first reading in the legislative assembly.

6. Africville Apology and Agreement to Commemorate the Historic Community, 20101 On 24 February 2010, Mayor Peter Kelly, representing the Halifax Regional Council and Halifax Regional Municipality, delivered a public apology to former Africville residents for the destruction of their community during the 1960s. Mayor Kelly also announced the details of a commemoration agreement negotiated between the municipality and the Africville Genealogy Society. This agreement included $3 million in funding for the reconstruction of the Seaview United Baptist Church as a memorial site along with 2.5 acres of land at Seaview Park, to be overseen by a newly developed Africville Heritage Trust Board.2 In

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addition to these municipal initiatives, the Nova Scotia provincial government offered $1.5 million and the federal government contributed $250,000 in funding towards the development of the church.3 In the wake of Kelly’s announcement, some Africville descendants have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the agreement – specifically, the amount of fiscal reparations and the lack of individual compensation – arguing that the Africville Genealogy Society lacks the authority to represent the community and that the Halifax Regional Municipality has overlooked this concern. Denise Allen, vice-president of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia and former vice-president of the Africville Genealogy Society, has debated organizing support for a legal injunction to halt the Africville settlement, but at this time the matter remains unresolved.4

On behalf of the Halifax Regional Municipality, I apologize to the former Africville residents and their descendants for what they have endured for almost 50 years, ever since the loss of their community that had stood on the shores of Bedford Basin for more than 150 years. You lost your houses, your church, all of the places where you gathered with family and friends to mark the milestones of your lives. For all that, we apologize. We apologize to the community elders, including those who did not live to see this day, for the pain and loss of dignity you experienced. We apologize to the generations who followed, for the deep wounds you have inherited and the way your lives were disrupted by the disappearance of your community. We apologize for the heartache experienced at the loss of the Seaview United Baptist Church, the spiritual heart of the community, removed in the middle of the night. We acknowledge the tremendous importance the church had, both for the congregation and the community as a whole. We realize words cannot undo what has been done, but we are profoundly sorry and apologize to all the former residents and their descendants. The repercussions of what happened in Africville linger to this day. They haunt us in the form of lost opportunities for young people who were never nurtured in the rich traditions, culture and heritage of Africville. They play out in lingering feelings of hurt and distrust, emotions that this municipality continues to work hard with the African Nova Scotian community to overcome. For all the distressing consequences, we apologize. Our history cannot be rewritten but, thankfully, the future is a blank page and, starting today, we hold the pen with which we can write a shared tomorrow. It is in that spirit of respect and reconciliation that we ask your forgiveness.

NOTES 1 Halifax Regional Municipality, “Apology,” 24 February 2010, http://halifax.ca/Africville/ apology.html.

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2 For further details about the agreement, please refer to the Halifax Regional Municipality’s February 2010 news release, available at http://halifax.ca/Africville/ newsrelease.html. 3 “Halifax apologizes for razing Africville,” CBC News, 24 February 2010, www.cbc.ca/canada/ nova-scotia/story/2010/02/24/ns-africvilleapology.html. 4 For more on the opposition to the apology, see Denise Allen, “Africville Settlement: Is This Democracy or a Miscarriage of Justice?” The Coast (Halifax), 17 March 2010, http://www .thecoast.ca/RealityBites/archives/2010/03/17/africville-settlement-is-this-democracy-or-amiscarriage-of-justice.

APPENDIX D CHINESE CANADIAN IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS 1. The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885 and 19231 The “Chinese head tax” legislation was fomented by racist fears that the low cost of hiring Chinese labourers in British Columbia would result in a loss of employment for Euro-Canadian workers, who demanded higher wages.2 The legislation sought to restrict immigration from China through the imposition of an exorbitant fee paid by each immigrant at the port of entry into Canada. In the 1885 version of the law, the tax was set at fifty dollars. Revisions to the law in 1900 and 1903 increased the tax to one hundred dollars and five hundred dollars, respectively. At the time, five hundred dollars would have been the equivalent of “two years’ wages” for an immigrant labourer.3 Ships carrying Chinese persons in excess of an allotted number were also subject to fines that likewise became increasingly restrictive. In 1885, ships carrying more than one Chinese immigrant for every fifty tons of tonnage could be penalized fifty dollars per person in excess. In 1886, the fine increased to one hundred dollars. In 1923, the Chinese Immigration Act (often referred to as the “Chinese Exclusion Act”) putatively ended the head tax. However, in so doing, it ushered in the “Exclusion Era,” severely restricting immigration from China to a select list of classes and professions, and then only with approval from the minister of immigration. After an almost complete ban on immigration from China for twenty years, the Chinese Immigration Act was finally repealed in 1947.

An Act Respecting Chinese Immigration, 1885 Whereas it is expedient to make provision for restricting the number of Chinese immigrants coming into the Dominion and to regulate such immigration; and whereas it is further expedient to provide a system of registration and control over Chinese immigrants residing in Canada: Therefore Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows: – 1. In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, – The expression “master” means any person in command of any vessel: The expression “vessel” means any sea-going craft of any kind or description capable of carrying passengers: The expression” tonnage” means tonnage according to the measurement fixed by the Merchants’ Shipping Acts of the Imperial Parliament: The expression “Chinese Immigrant” means any person of Chinese origin entering Canada and not entitled to the privilege of exemption provided for by section four of this Act: The expression “controller” means any officer charged with the duty of carrying the provisions of this Act into effect. 2. The Governor in Council may, – Appoint one or more persons to carry the provisions of this Act into effect; Assign any duty in connection therewith to any officer or person in the employ of the Government of the Dominion of Canada;

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3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

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Define and prescribe the duty or duties of such officer or person; Fix the salary or remuneration to be allowed to such officer or person. All appointments made under this Act shall be published in the Canadian Gazette. Subject to the provisions of section thirteen of this Act every person of Chinese origin shall pay into the Consolidated Revenue Fund of Canada, on entering Canada, at the port or other place of entry, the sum of fifty dollars, except the following persons who shall be exempt from such payment, that is to say, first: the members of the Diplomatic Corps, or other Government representatives and their suite and their servants, consuls and consular agents; and second: tourists, merchants, men of science and students, who are bearers of certificates of identity, specifying their occupation and their object in coming into Canada, or other similar documents issued by the Chinese Government or other Government whose subjects they are; and every such certificate or other document shall be in the English or French language, and shall be examined and indorsed (visé) by a British Consul or Chargé d’Affaires or other accredited representative of Her Majesty, at the place where the same is granted, or at the port or place of departure: but nothing in this Act shall be construed as embracing within the meaning of the word “merchant,” any huckster, ped[d]ler, or person engaged in taking, drying or otherwise preserving shell or other fish for home consumption or exportation. No vessel carrying Chinese immigrants to any port in Canada shall carry more than one such immigrant for every fifty tons of its tonnage; and the owner of any such vessel, who carries any number in excess of the number allowed by this section, shall be liable to a penalty of fifty dollars for each person so carried in excess. Every master of any vessel bringing Chinese immigrants to any port in Canada, shall be personally liable to Her Majesty for the payment of the fee imposed by section four of this Act in respect of any immigrant carried by such vessel, and shall deliver, together with the total amount of such fee, to the controller, immediately on his arrival in port and before any of his passengers or crew shall have disembarked, a complete and accurate list of his crew and passengers, showing their names in full, the country and place of their birth, and the occupation and last place of domicile of each passenger. Every master of any vessel who lands or allows to be landed off or from any vessel any Chinese immigrant before the duty payable under the provisions of this Act has been duly paid, or who wilfully makes any false statement respecting the number of persons on board his vessel, shall in addition to the amount of the fee mentioned in the next preceding section, be liable to a penalty of not less than five hundred dollars, nor more than one thousand dollars for every such offence, and in default of payment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months; and such vessel shall be forfeited to Her Majesty, and shall be seized by any officer charged with the duty of carrying this Act into effect and dealt with accordingly. No master of any vessel carrying Chinese immigrants shall land any passenger or permit any passenger to land from such vessel, until a permit to do so, stating that the provisions of this Act have been complied with, has been granted to the master of such vessel by the controller, under a penalty of one hundred dollars. No controller at any port shall grant a permit allowing Chinese immigrants to land, until the quarantine officer has granted a bill of health and has certified, after due examination, that no leprosy or infections or contagious disease exists among them, on board such vessel; and no permit to land shall be granted to any Chinese immigrant who is

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10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

suffering from leprosy or from any infections or contagious disease, or to any Chinese woman who is known to be a prostitute. The controller shall deliver to each Chinese immigrant who has been permitted to land, and in respect to whom the duty has been paid as hereinbefore provided, a certificate containing a description of such individual, the date of his arrival, the name of the port of his landing and an acknowledgment that the duty has been duly paid; and such certificate shall be primâ facie evidence of the right of the person presenting the same to enter the Dominion of Canada; but the same may be contested by the Government of Canada, or by any officer charged with the duty of carrying this Act into effect, if there is reason to doubt the validity or authenticity of such certificate, or of any statement therein contained; and such contestation shall be heard and determined in a summary manner by and before any judge of a superior court of any Province of Canada where such certificate is produced. The controller shall keep a register of all persons to whom certificates of entry have been granted. Every Chinese immigrant subject to pay the duty imposed by section four of this Act, who enters Canada otherwise than by disembarking from any vessel, shall forthwith make declaration of his entry to the controller, or in the absence of such officer, to the Customs officer of the nearest or most convenient place, and shall forthwith pay to such controller or officer the duty of fifty dollars imposed by this Act, and the controller or officer shall grant a certificate of such entry and payment, in conformity with the provisions of section ten of this Act; and if the declaration is made to a Customs officer he shall report the fact to the controller at the principal sea port of the Province into which such Chinese immigrant has come, and the controller shall record the same in the register of certificates of entry kept by him. The entrance fee or duty payable under this Act shall not apply to any Chinese person residing or being within Canada at the time of the coming into force of this Act, but every such Chinese person who desires to remain in Canada, may obtain, within twelve months after the passing of this Act, and upon the payment of a fee of fifty cents, a certificate of such residence, from the controller, or from a judge of a superior court, a justice of the peace, a police magistrate, a stipendiary magistrate, a recorder, or from the mayor or secretary-treasurer of the municipality in which he resides, or from any officer charged with the duty of carrying this Act into effect; and the person granting such certificate shall report the fact to the controller at the principal seaport of the Province in which such Chinese person resides. Every Chinese person who wishes to leave Canada, with the intention of returning thereto, shall give notice of such intention to the controller at the port or place whence he proposes to sail or depart, and shall surrender to the said officer his certificate of entry or residence, and shall receive in lieu thereof, on payment of a fee of one dollar, a certificate of leave to depart and return; and the person to whom such certificate is granted shall be entitled, on presentation of the same on his return, to receive from the controller the amount of the entrance fee paid by him on such return and to have his original certificate of entry or residence returned to him: … In case of the loss of such return certificate, and on proof of such loss to the satisfaction of the controller, the person to whom such certificate was granted, and who has paid the entrance fee imposed by section four of this Act a second time, shall be enti-

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16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

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tled to have his second entrance fee returned to him together with his first certificate of entry or residence. The controller shall, on the first day of January in each year, send to the Provincial Secretary of the Province wherein certificates of entry have been granted, a certified list of all Chinese immigrants to whom such certificates have been granted during the year next preceding. Every Chinese person who wilfully evades or attempts to evade any of the provisions of this Act as respects the payment of duty, by personating any other individual, or who wilfully makes use of any forged or fraudulent certificate to evade the provisions of this Act, and every person who wilfully aids or abets any such Chinese person in any evasion or attempt at evasion of any of the provisions of this Act, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months, or to a penalty not exceeding five hundred dollars, or to both. Every person who takes part in the organization of any sort of court or tribunal, composed of Chinese persons, or in carrying on any such organization, or who takes part in any of its proceedings, or who gives evidence before any such court or tribunal, or assists in carrying into effect any decision or decree, or order of any such court or tribunal, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to imprisonment for any term not exceeding twelve months, or to a penalty not exceeding five hundred dollars, or to both: but nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent Chinese immigrants from submitting any differences or disputes to arbitration, provided such submission be not contrary to the laws in force in the Province in which such submission is made. Every person who molests, persecutes or hinders any officer or person appointed to carry the provisions of this Act into effect is guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months, or to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or to both. Every person who contravenes any provision of this Act, for which no special punishment is herein provided, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to a penalty not exceeding five hundred dollars, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months, or to both, in the discretion of the court before which the conviction is had. All dues, pecuniary penalties and other sources of revenue under this Act shall be paid into and form part of the Consolidated Revenue Fund of Canada; but one-fourth part of all entry dues paid by Chinese immigrants shall, at the end of every fiscal year, be paid out of such fund to the Province wherein the same were collected. The Governor in Council may engage and pay an interpreter, skilled in the English and Chinese languages, at a salary of not more than three thousand dollars per annum, to reside in the Province of British Columbia, and may assign to him such duties as he deems meet. All suits or actions for the recovery of dues under this Act and all prosecutions for offences under this Act which are not herein declared to be misdemeanors, shall be tried before one or more justices of the peace, or before the recorder, police magistrate, or stipendiary magistrate having jurisdiction where such dues are exigible or where the offence was committed. This Act, as respects any vessel sailing from a port in the continent of North America, shall come into force one month after the passing thereof, and as respects other vessels and other matters, the same shall come into force on the first day of January, one

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thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, except that certificates under section thirteen may be granted, in accordance with the terms of the said section, and that controllers may be appointed at any time after the passing hereof. 24. This Act may be cited as “The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885.” An Act Respecting Chinese Immigration, 1923 1. This Act may be cited as The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923. … Entry and Landing 5. The entry to or landing in Canada of persons of Chinese origin or descent irrespective of allegiance or citizenship, is confined to the following classes, that is to say: – (a) The members of the diplomatic corps, or other government representatives, their suites and their servants, and consuls and consular agents; (b) The children born in Canada of parents of Chinese race or descent, who have left Canada for educational or other purposes, on substantiating their identity to the satisfaction of the controller at the port or place where they seek to enter on their return; (c) (1) Merchants as defined by such regulations as the Minister may prescribe; (2) Students coming to Canada for the purpose of attendance, and while in actual attendance, at any Canadian university or college authorized by statute or charter to confer degrees; who shall substantiate their status to the satisfaction of the Controller at the port of entry subject to the approval of the Minister, whose decision shall be final and conclusive; provided that no Chinese person belonging to any of the two classes referred to in this paragraph shall be allowed to enter or land in Canada, who is not in possession of a valid passport issued in and by the Government of China and endorsed (visé) by a Canadian Immigration Officer at the place where he was granted such passport or at the port or place of departure. 6. No person of Chinese origin or descent shall enter or land in Canada except at a port of entry. 7. No person of Chinese origin or descent other than the classes mentioned in paragraphs (a) and (b) of section five and sections twenty-three and twenty-four of this Act shall be permitted to enter or land in Canada elsewhere than at the ports of Vancouver and Victoria. Prohibited Classes 8. No person of Chinese origin or descent unless he is a Canadian citizen within the meaning of paragraph (f) of section two of The Immigration Act shall be permitted to enter or land in Canada, or having entered or landed in Canada shall be permitted to remain therein, who belongs in any of the following classes, hereinafter called “Prohibited classes”: – (a) Idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons and persons who have been insane at any time previously; (b) Persons afflicted with tuberculosis or leprosy in any form, or with any loathsome disease, or with a disease which is contagious or infectious, or which may be or become dangerous to the public health, whether such persons intend to settle in Canada or only to pass through Canada in transit to some other country;

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(c) Persons who have been convicted of, or admit having committed, any crime involving moral turpitude; (d) Prostitutes and women and girls coming to Canada for any immoral purpose and pimps or persons living on the avails of prostitution; (e) Persons who procure or attempt to bring into Canada prostitutes or women or girls for the purpose of prostitution or other immoral purpose; (f) Professional beggars or vagrants; (g) Persons who in the opinion of the Controller or the officer in charge at any port of entry are likely to become a public charge; (h) Persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority; (i) Persons with chronic alcoholism, or addicted to the use of drugs; (j) Persons not included within any of the foregoing prohibited classes, who upon examination by a medical officer of the Department of Health are certified as being mentally or physically defective to such a degree as to affect their ability to earn a living; (k) Persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of Canada or of constitutional law and authority, or who disbelieve in or are opposed to organized government, or who advocate the assassination of public officials, or who advocate or teach the unlawful destruction of property; (l) Persons who are members of or affiliated with any organization entertaining or teaching disbelief in or opposition to organized government, or advocating or teaching the duty, necessity, or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of any officer or officers, either of specific individuals or of officers generally, of the Government of Canada or of any other organized government, because of his or their official character, or advocating or teaching the unlawful destruction of property; (m) Persons who have been found guilty of high treason or treason for an offence in connection with the late war, or of conspiring against His Majesty, or of assisting His Majesty’s enemies during the war, or of any similar offence against any of His Majesty’s allies; (n) Persons over fifteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who cannot read the English or the French language or some other language or dialect. For the purpose of ascertaining whether aliens can read, the immigration officer shall use slips of uniform size prepared by direction of the Minister, each containing not less than thirty and not more than forty words in ordinary use printed in plainly legible type in the language or dialect the person may designate as the one in which he desires the examination to be made, and he shall be required to read the words printed on the slip in such language or dialect. The provisions of this paragraph shall not apply to persons residing in Canada at the date of the passing of this Act nor to Canadian citizens; (o) Persons who have been deported from Canada, or the United States, or any other country, for any cause whatsoever. 9. The Minister may authorize the admission to Canada of any person of Chinese origin or descent without being subject to the provisions of this Act, and such admission shall be authorized for a specified period only, but may be extended or cancelled by the Minister in writing. …

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Offences and Penalties 26. Whenever any officer has reason to believe that any person of Chinese origin or descent has entered or remains in Canada contrary to the provisions of this Act or of the Chinese Immigration Act, chapter ninety-five of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, or any amendment thereof, he may, without a warrant apprehend such person, and if such person is unable to prove to the satisfaction of the officer that he has been properly admitted into and is legally entitled to remain in Canada, the officer may detain such person in custody and bring him before the nearest controller for examination, and if the controller finds that he has entered or remains in Canada contrary to the provisions of this Act or of the Chinese Immigration Act or any amendment thereof, such person may be deported to the country of his birth or citizenship, subject to the same right of appeal as is provided in the case of a person applying for original entry to Canada. Where any person is examined under this section the burden of proof of such person’s right to be or remain in Canada shall rest upon him. Where an order for deportation is made under this section and in the circumstances of the case the expenses of deportation cannot be charged to the transportation company, such expenses shall be paid by the person being deported if able to pay, and, if not, by His Majesty. 27. (1) Every person of Chinese origin or descent resident in Canada at the date of the coming into force of this Act, who was admitted under the provisions of any Act now or heretofore in force, and did not secure any admission by fraudulent misrepresentation, and does not belong to any of the prohibited classes of persons described in section 8 of this Act, shall be deemed to be entitled to continue to reside in Canada: Provided, however, that any such person who was, subsequent to the 25th day of July, 1917, admitted without payment of the head tax because of his being a merchant and who has ceased to belong to such class, shall pay into the Consolidated Revenue Fund of Canada the sum of five hundred dollars, and if he refuses or fails to make such payment he shall ipso facto forfeit his right to remain in Canada, and may be arrested by any officer without a warrant and brought before a Controller for examination, whereupon he shall be dealt with to all intents and purposes in the same manner and subject to the same provisions as in the case of a person apprehended under section 26 of this Act. (2) Any person admitted under this Act who at any time after admission ceases to belong to any of the classes admissible under this Act shall, unless he is a Canadian citizen, ipso facto forfeit his right to remain in Canada and may be arrested by any officer without a warrant and brought before a Controller for examination, whereupon he shall be dealt with to all intents and purposes in the same manner and subject to the same provisions as in the case of a person apprehended under section 26 of this Act.

NOTES 1 An Act to Restrict and Regulate Chinese Immigration into Canada, Canada Gazette, 1885, c. 71 s. 24; An Act Respecting Chinese Immigration, Canada Gazette, 1923, c. 38 s. 1. Please note that the full text of the 1885 legislation is included here. For the 1923 Act, however, we have excerpted the sections that contain the most significant legislative changes.

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2 Matt James, “Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: The Case of the ‘Chinese Head Tax,’” Canadian Journal of Political Science 37, no. 4 (2004): 889. 3 Ibid.

2. Draft Letter from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, Victoria, British Columbia, to the Chinese Ambassador to England, 1 January 18861 In the mid-1880s, as the Trans-Canada railroad reached completion, many Chinese in British Columbia found themselves out of work. In Victoria, home to more Chinese immigrants than any other Canadian city, Chinese merchants banded together to assist the influx of unemployed Chinese immigrants to the city’s Chinatown, as well as to petition against increasingly discriminatory legislation being introduced in the provincial legislature and the federal parliament. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the first organization of its kind in Canada,2 was founded in June 1884 to unite and stabilize the community and advocate for Chinese Canadian rights. The CCBA in Victoria functioned as the primary representative organization for Chinese people in Canada “until 1908, when the Chinese consulate was established in Ottawa.”3 In its constitution, the CCBA announced its mandate “to express our feelings of unity, to undertake social welfare, to settle disputes, to aid the poor and the sick, to eliminate evils within the community, and to defend the community against external threat.”4 The political activities of the CCBA included sending petitions to the Chinese ambassador to Great Britain and the United States asking for a diplomatic response against discriminatory legislation. The following letter details some of the means by which the CCBA protested provincial legislation that was intended, like the federal head tax, to curb Chinese immigration to Canada.5

The Honorable Huang, We are Chinese merchants and Directors of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Associations in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. We report to Your Honor to forward our report to the Honorable Zeng, the Chinese Ambassador to England, for protection to fight against the discriminating laws. Since the trade development between China and Canada, we have been residing in Victoria, British Columbia. There are now over 100 Chinese stores, and the total number of Chinese, including railway workers, gold miners, fishers and maids, reaches 17,000. The local people have treated us well. However, in recent years they began to hate us out of jealousy. They passed a law in 1884 that every Chinese should pay [a] head tax for the right to live in British Columbia. It was abolished eventually because of the protest of the Chinese who launched a petition through the former Chinese Consul-General Huang in Francesco [San Francisco] to the Chinese Ambassador to England. Evil stages a comeback only a few years gone by. In September last year, the Legislature again passed a law that every Chinese entering British Columbia should pay [a] $50 head tax, and every Chinese currently living in B.C. should pay $10 annually for a license to live in the province. We were forced to protest to the Provincial Governor, who approved the $50 head tax, and rejected the $10 annual fee. The Parliament was discontented with it, and submitted it

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in February this year to the British Queen for arbitration. Their motion is to compel every Chinese currently living in British Columbia to pay $10 annually, and the gold miners to pay $15 more. We do not know yet whether it would come into force. We are extremely worried: what can we do with it? We come here from so far away to make a living. We work very hard to keep a simple and frugal life. We assume that Your Honor, having been so caring for us, would not reject us. Could you please forward our report to the Honorable Zeng, the Chinese Ambassador to England so that His Honor could issue a protest to the British Government. If it could be successfully done, we shall be eternally indebted. We beg Your Honor to bestow favors. Yours sincerely, The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Associations in Victoria

NOTES 1 Draft of letter from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Associations of Victoria to the Chinese Ambassador of England, 1 January 1886, University of Victoria Archives, Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association fonds, AR030, file 1.2.3. 2. Harry Con et al., From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada, ed. Edgar Wickberg (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), 40. Before the development of the CCBA in Victoria, the CCBA had already established offices in some US cities such as San Francisco. 3 Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association fonds, Canadian Archival Information Network, http://www.archivescanada.ca/english/search/ItemDisplay.asp?sessionKey=1143410008022_206 _191_57_196&l=0&v=0&lvl=1&coll=1&rt=1&itm=140874. 4 Con, From China to Canada, 38. In implementing this mandate, however, the CCBA collected a mandatory $2.00 fee from each Chinese person in British Columbia, and if someone refused to pay, he or she was denied the protection of the association. 5 For more information regarding the discriminatory provincial legislation, see Patricia Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858–1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 54–5, 59.

3. Ruling re Mack et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, 20011 After years of political lobbying for reparations for the Chinese head tax, the Chinese Canadian National Council filed a class-action lawsuit against the Government of Canada in December 2000. The plaintiffs – including a head-tax payer, the widow of a head-tax payer, and the child of a deceased head-tax payer – filed a statement of claim on two grounds: (1) that the federal government had a duty to provide redress for the Chinese head tax based on the equality rights guaranteed in s. 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human-rights conventions; and (2) that the federal government had engaged in “unjust enrichment,” unfairly bettering its financial circumstances at the expense of Chinese immigrants. The plaintiffs sought a public apology as well as compensation in the amount of $320 million, to be paid to head-tax payers and their descendents, as well as

Ruling re Mack et al. v. Attorney General, 2001 367

money for the establishment of an anti-racism foundation.2 However, the defendant countered that the plaintiffs’ statement of claim offered “no reasonable cause of action.” First at the Superior Court of Justice and then at the Ontario Court of Appeal, the court ruled in favour of the Government of Canada. Justice Cumming asserted that, in order to justify redress, the plaintiffs would need to demonstrate a “contemporary application” of the historical law; the Charter could not be applied “retroactively.” Moreover, on the claim of “unjust enrichment,” the court argued that a statutory provision – such as the Chinese Immigration Act – “is generally accepted” as a “valid juristic reason for an enrichment,” regardless of whether such a discriminatory piece of legislation would now be regarded as reprehensible. The plaintiffs filed an appeal in November 2001, but the court affirmed the original decision. The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed a subsequent appeal in 2003. The following document is Justice Cumming’s summary of his legal decision in favour of the defendant’s motion to strike the claim brought by the plaintiffs.3

Mack et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada Superior Court of Justice, Cumming J. July 9, 2001 MOTION to strike a statement of claim. Mary Eberts and Avvy Yao-Yao Go, for plaintiffs/responding party. Paul Vickery, William Knights and Cynthia Koller, for defendant/moving party. [1] CUMMING J.: – The defendant, the Attorney General of Canada, moves to strike out the plaintiffs’ statement of claim pursuant to rule 21.01(1)(b) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, on the ground that it discloses no reasonable cause of action. In the alternative, the defendant asks [that] the court dismiss the action pursuant to rules 21.01(3)(d) or 25.11, on the ground that it is frivolous, vexatious or an abuse of process. [2] This claim raises the controversial issue of the duty of governments to provide redress for historical wrongs. The plaintiffs seek a public apology, damages and other remedies arising out of moneys paid to the Government of Canada in respect of the so called “Head Tax” and other effects of the various Chinese Immigration Acts, enacted between 1885 and 1923. They bring this action on their own behalf and on behalf of a class comprising the surviving payers of the Head Tax and their surviving spouses and descendants. Background [3] The first Chinese Immigration Act, 1885, S.C. 1885, c. 71, was enacted in 1885. Among other provisions, this Act levied a $50 charge upon each Chinese person entering Canada. The Head Tax was increased to $100 in 1900, and to $500 in 1903. In 1923, the levy was abolished and replaced with the final Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, S.C. 1923, c. 38. This final Act effectively prohibited all Chinese immigration to Canada. (The 1885 statute, the amending and replacing statutes, and the final 1923 statute are singularly and collectively referred to herein as the “Chinese Immigration Act.”) The 1923 statute was repealed in 1947 by s. 4 of the Immigration Act, S.C. 1947, c. 19. It was only then that earlier Chinese immigrants who had paid the Head Tax became eligible for Canadian citizenship. [4] The plaintiff Shack Jang Mack, a retired businessman, resides in Toronto. He was born in China in 1907. Mr. Mack immigrated to Canada in 1922. He was obliged to pay the Head Tax of $500. At the time, this amounted to about two years’ wage for a ChineseCanadian worker.

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[5] Mr. Mack returned to China to marry Gat Nuy Na in 1928, but could not bring her to Canada because of the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, even though he was a lawful resident of Canada. Hence, his only contact with his family was through periodic trips back to China. A visit to China of more than two years would result in losing the right to return to Canada. Each time he left Canada he would sell his café business, opening another upon his return to Canada. His wife and family were able to join him in Canada in 1950. [6] The plaintiff Quen Ying Lee resides in Ottawa. She was born in China in 1911, and is the widow of Guang Foo Lee, whom she married in China in 1930. Guang Foo Lee was born in China in 1892 and immigrated to Canada in 1913, paying a Head Tax of $500. He died in 1967. [7] The plaintiff Yew Lee is the son of the late Guang Foo Lee and the plaintiff Quen Ying Lee. He was born in China in 1949. Because of the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, the plaintiffs Quen Ying Lee and Yew Lee were unable to enter Canada until after the repeal of that statute in 1947. They immigrated to Canada in 1950 together with two other children in the family. [8] Because of the Second World War and the civil war in China, Quen Ying Lee and her children were unable to communicate with Guang Foo Lee in Canada, and Mr. Lee was unable to send support for them for some 13 years. During this time, Ms. Lee and her family endured great privation in China. The children did not know their father during their formative years. Yew Lee was the third child in the family, born in China in 1949. Two more children were born in Canada in 1952 and 1954, after the family had been reunited. [9] The plaintiffs’ statement of claim alleges that from 1885 to 1923, the Canadian government collected a total of $23 million from some 81,000 people under the various forms of the Chinese Immigration Act. The plaintiffs claim that the Acts were discriminatory on their face, being directed at members of a single race. [10] The plaintiffs say that in addition to imposing a discriminatory tax, the statutes have had profound and longstanding detrimental effects upon individuals and families in the Chinese Canadian community. These effects include the inability of Chinese Canadian families to form, develop and live normally until the government lifted its prohibition on Chinese immigrants in 1947. The plaintiffs say that the discriminatory Head Tax and the exclusion from Canada of family members through the discriminatory Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 has meant significant financial loss, hardship, emotional distress, family separation, loss of companionship of spouse, child and parent, loss of opportunity and injury to dignity. Further, the statement of claim alleges that the racially discriminatory legislation has created profound and enduring racial prejudice against persons of Chinese descent in Canada. The Test on a Motion to Strike [11] On a motion to strike out a pleading as disclosing no reasonable cause of action, a court must apply the following principles: 1. All material facts as pleaded are taken to be true, unless patently ridiculous or incapable of proof[;] 2. The court should not strike out a claim unless it is “plain and obvious” that the claim could not succeed; and 3. A claim’s novelty is irrelevant to this determination. …

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The motion at hand looks simply to the adequacy of the plaintiffs’ pleading. Does the statement of claim disclose a reasonable cause of action? [12] The plaintiffs’ claim is based upon two grounds. First, they have made a claim in international law, as it has been received into Canada through human rights legislation, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canadian Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c. 11 (the “Charter”), and Canadian jurisprudence. Secondly, they argue the doctrine of unjust enrichment. I will deal with each of these arguments in turn. The Charter and International Law Arguments [13] The plaintiffs first ground their claim in domestic constitutional law and international law. Specifically, they rely on ss. 15 and 24 of the Charter, and various international documents, including the Charter of the United Nations, Can. T.S. 1945 No. 7, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 A (III) (“the UDHR”), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Can. T.S. 1976 No. 46 (“the ICESCR”), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 999 U.N.T.S. 171 (1966) (“the ICCPR”), the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, G.A. Res. 2106 (XX), and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Can. T.S. 1970 No. 28 (the “CERD”). They argue that by applying the Charter while using these international norms and covenants as an aid to interpretation, they can successfully make out a claim for redress. [14] Section 15 of the Charter guarantees the right to be equal before and under the law, and to the equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination, inter alia, based on “race, national or ethnic origin.” The purpose of the equality rights guarantee under s. 15 of the Charter is to prevent the violation of essential human dignity and freedom by imposing limitations, disadvantages or burdens through the stereotypical application of presumed group characteristics rather than on the basis of merit, capacity or circumstance: Law v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration), [1999] 1 S.C.R. 497 at p. 530, 60 C.R.R. (2d) 1. Section 24 of the Charter confers a broad remedial jurisdiction upon the courts. [15] As a starting point, I note that the Charter cannot apply retroactively or retrospectively: Benner v. Canada (Secretary of State), [1997] 1 S.C.R. 358, 42 C.R.R. (2d) 1. … [16] The plaintiffs argue that they are not asking the court to apply the Charter either retroactively or retrospectively. Rather, they contend that their present Charter rights are infringed as a result of the government’s refusal to provide redress relating to the Head Tax. They argue that repealing the Chinese Immigration Act without remedying any of its resulting discriminatory effects violates the Charter s. 15 right to equality. [17] Applying the test articulated in Benner, this court must ask how the plaintiffs’ claim can best be characterized. Here, the claim is founded on a discrete act, that is, the levying of a fee on Chinese immigrants or the outright exclusion of Chinese immigrants under the Chinese Immigration Act in its various forms. It is this discrete act that predominates over any of the Head Tax’s continuing effects. It is impossible to say that the plaintiffs’ claim is grounded in the “contemporary application” of a historical statute, repealed long before 1985, when s. 15 of the Charter came into force. The offending law was repealed in 1947. There can be no contemporary application of a repealed law.

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[18] Rather, this claim seeks redress for events that took place over 50 years ago. Accepting all the facts as pleaded by the plaintiffs, the proposed application of the Charter is retrospective. Therefore, it cannot succeed. [19] It is not sufficient for the plaintiffs to plead that they continue to suffer from discriminatory legislation that existed, but was repelled, prior to the enactment of the Charter. As the court in Benner, supra, recognized at p. 388 S.C.R., quoting Létourneau J.A. in the Federal Court of Appeal below: Otherwise, just about every instance of past discrimination since the turn of the century could be reviewed under section 15, provided the victims still suffer from that past discrimination. [20] The plaintiffs must find a foundation for their claim in the laws applicable to the time of the impugned actions of government. The direct and indirect consequences of acts of discrimination may well last a lifetime and extend beyond to subsequent generations. But the predominating act of discrimination itself ended with the repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1947. [21] The plaintiffs also refer in their statement of claim to the 1988 agreement by Canada to provide redress for a violation of the human rights of Japanese Canadians because of their internment during the Second World War (the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement, P.C. Order 1988-9/2552, dated October 31, 1988). The plaintiffs say that failure to extend redress to the Chinese-Canadian community for the historical wrongs seen with the Head Tax and the exclusionary treatment relating to immigration is a violation of s. 15 of the Charter. [22] This submission cannot succeed. To support an alleged violation of a s. 15 right with respect to the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement, it is necessary that the plaintiffs plead supporting facts as to a discrimination claim framed in the post-Charter period. However, the only asserted facts relating to alleged discrimination in the statement of claim flow from the impugned historical legislation, not from the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement. [23] Moreover, the fact that the government gives redress to one group of Canadians in respect of their claim of discrimination through a voluntary agreement does not in itself provide a legal basis for another, unrelated group in respect of their separate claim of discrimination. The government had a purpose through the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement that was consistent with s. 15 of the Charter, and the exclusion of non-Japanese Canadians from the agreement did not undermine this purpose or demean the claimants’ human dignity. The government had a targeted ameliorative program for a specific group, that being Japanese Canadians. [24] The plaintiffs in the case at hand allege that the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement failed to deal with the disadvantages that Chinese Canadians have experienced, even though those disadvantages are unrelated to the discrimination addressed through the government’s agreement with Japanese Canadians. However, exclusion from a specifically targeted group “is less likely to be associated with stereotyping or stigmatization or conveying the message that the excluded group is less worthy of recognition and participation in the larger society.” See Lovelace v. Ontario, [2000] 1 S.C.R. 950 at p. 1000, 75 C.R.R. (2d) 189. The simple fact is that an “ex gratia payment to compensate certain members of the Japanese Canadian population is not discrimination pursuant to section 15 of the Charter” in respect of other Canadians: R. v. Mayrhofer, [1993] 2 F.C. 157 (T.D.) at p. 175.

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[25] The plaintiffs further argue that their claim can be grounded in international law norms. To this end, they rely on various international covenants and treaties. The plaintiffs contend that the application of these various covenants and norms under international law can support a successful claim for redress. [26] The Charter of the United Nations sets forth the signatories’ reaffirmation of faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the individual. [27] The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by resolution of the General Assembly on December 10, 1948, provides that recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. The UDHR recognizes that human rights must be protected by the rule of law. [28] Article 1 of the UDHR recognizes that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Article 2 provides that every person is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the UDHR, without distinction of any kind, such as, interalia, race or national origin. Article 7 states that all are equal before the law and entitled without discrimination to the equal protection of the law. Article 16 recognizes the family as the natural and fundamental group unit of society and that the family is entitled to protection by the state. Article 29 states that individuals exercising their rights and freedoms shall be subject only to “such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.” [29] The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on December 16, 1966. Article 10 recognizes that the widest possible protection and assistance should be accorded to the family, the natural and fundamental group unit in society, in particular, while it is responsible of the care and education of dependent children. [30] On December 16, 1966, the General Assembly also adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 2 states that each country will respect and ensure to all individuals within its territory the rights recognized by the ICCPR, without distinction based on race or national or social origin. Article 20 provides that any “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” Article 23 affirms that the family is entitled to protection by the state. Article 26 states that all persons are equal before the law and are entitled to the equal protection of the law. [31] On November 20, 1963, the General Assembly adopted by resolution the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Article 1 proclaims that discrimination on the ground of race, colour or ethnic origin is an offence to human dignity. Articles 2, 3 and 4 state that there shall not be any discrimination in matters of human rights and fundamental freedoms because of race, colour or ethnic origin and that efforts shall be made to prevent such discrimination, especially in respect of civil rights and access to citizenship. Article 6 in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination provides the right to seek just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered. [32] All Canadians should unreservedly subscribe to and support the values articulated in the above-mentioned international documents. [33] The July 2, 1993 Final Report of Special Rapporteur Theo van Boven in respect

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of the Study Concerning the Right to Restitution, Compensation and Rehabilitation for Victims of Gross Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, for the SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, United Nations Commission on Human Rights, now under continuing consideration at the United Nations, asserts as a proposed basic principle of international law that the violation of any human rights gives rise to a right of compensation for the victim, including the immediate family. As well, the report states that the prevailing principle should be that claims relating to reparations for gross violations of human rights shall not be subject to any statute of limitations. His discussion of a possible definition for gross violations would include “persecution on … racial … grounds in a systematic manner or on a mass scale.” [34] However, once again there are problems with the plaintiffs’ submission. Primarily, as the Government of Canada has correctly pointed out, international treaties and conventions do not form part of Canadian law unless they have been expressly implemented by statue: Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), [1992] 2 S.C.R. 817 at p. 861, 174 D.L.R. (4th) 193: R. v. Vincent (1993), 12 O.R. (3d) 427 at p. 438, 80 C.C.C. (3d) 256 (C.A.). [35] It is true, however, that international law norms can act as an aid to interpreting domestic law. See National Corn Growers Assn. v. Canadian Import Tribunal, [1990] 2 S.C.R. 1324 at p. 1371, 74 D.L.R. (4th) 449; Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), supra. Yet apart from the Charter, the plaintiffs have pointed to no other domestic law that could apply to their claim. Undoubtedly, the Charter gives effect to many of Canada’s obligations under international law. The norms of international human rights law provide a relevant and important source for the interpretation of the provisions of the Charter … However, as I have already concluded, the Charter cannot be applied in the manner proposed by the plaintiffs. The Charter cannot be given retrospective or retroactive effect. [36] International law norms can also properly inform the development of the common law. The contemporary application of a common law doctrine, that by international standards is unjustly discriminatory, demands reconsideration by a court: Mabo v. Queensland (No.2) (1992), 175 C.L.R. 1 (Aus. H.C.) at p. 35. However, the situation at hand does not involve the common law, but rather federal statues. Moreover, the legal regime created by these repealed statutes expired over a half a century ago. [37] Even accepting that the instruments cited by the plaintiffs could be applied domestically, it is unclear that there currently exists a principle of accepted international law such that governments owe a positive legal duty to provide redress for wrongs involving violations of international norms respecting human rights. The comprehensive review of Special Rapporteur van Boven suggests that there may now be an embryonic international norm in this regard. [38] The international documents and treaties cited by the plaintiffs evince a norm prohibiting racial discrimination. They may also demonstrate that states owe a positive legal duty to redress wrongs by states in this regard. However, to my mind, this is different from showing a positive legal duty to provide redress for historical wrongs that occurred prior to the development of the international norm. [39] On this point, I note that, save for the Charter of the United Nations, signed June 26, 1945, the fundamental documents and conventions relied upon by the plaintiff did not come into existence until after 1947. None of these international norms existed when the

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final Chinese Immigration Act was repealed in 1947. Moreover, many of the international documents relied on by the plaintiffs, including the ICESCR, the ICCPR and the CERD, were not ratified by Canada until after 1970. The crystallizing or predominating events that precipitate the plaintiffs’ action were the payment of the Head Tax and the exclusion of Chinese immigrants under the various Chinese Immigration Acts. [40] The plaintiffs’ proposed analysis of this issue would necessarily involve the application of norms and principles that did not exist at the material times. Even if the international documents referred to in the statement of claim were to have been incorporated into Canadian domestic law, they would have no retroactive effect unless, by their terms, they so provided. Article 28 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Can. T.S. 1980 No. 37 provides: Unless a different intention appears from the treaty or is otherwise established, its provisions do not bind a party in relation to any act or fact which took place or any situation which ceased to exist before the date of the entry into force of the treaty with respect to that party. [41] For these reasons, I find that it is plain and obvious that the plaintiffs’ submissions relating to the Charter and international law cannot succeed. The pleadings in this regard are therefore struck out. [42] I now turn to the plaintiffs’ submissions concerning unjust enrichment. The Unjust Enrichment Argument [43] The test for unjust enrichment, as set out by the Supreme Court in Pettkus v. Becker, [1980] 2 S.C.R. 834 at p. 848, 117 D.L.R. (3d) 257, and Peter v. Beblow, [1993] 1 S.C.R. 980, 88 B.C.L.R. (2d) 1, is a three-part test: 1. The defendant has been enriched; 2. The plaintiff has suffered a corresponding deprivation; and 3. There is no juristic reason for the enrichment, that is, the circumstances are such that it would be unjust to permit the defendant to retain the benefit. … [44] It is true that equitable principles can apply in situations where the plaintiff is alleging unjust enrichment against the Crown. On this point, I note Air Canada v. British Columbia, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1161, 41 C.R.R. 308. In Air Canada, La Forest J. held at p. 1203 S.C.R. that: It is clear that the principles of unjust enrichment can operate against a government to ground restitutionary recovery, but in this kind of case, where the effect of an unconstitutional or ultra vires statute is in issue, I am of the opinion that special considerations operate to take this case out of the normal restitutionary framework, and require a rule responding to the specific underlying policy concerns in this area. La Forest J. later noted at p. 1207 S.C.R. that this rule was an exceptional one, and that situations involving “the element of discrimination, oppression or abuse of authority” might well warrant recovery. [45] The first two requirements of the test to determine when there has been an unjust enrichment have been met in the case at hand. Through the payment of the Head Tax, the Canadian government was enriched at the expense of the plaintiffs. There was a corresponding deprivation on the part of the immigrant payers of the Head Tax. [46] The main issue in dispute is whether the impugned legislation can constitute a

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juristic reason. The starting point for this discussion is that it is generally accepted that a statutory provision constitutes a valid juristic reason for an enrichment and corresponding deprivation: see Peter v. Beblow, per Cory J., supra, at p. 1018 S.C.R. [47] It is not disputed that throughout the time period that they were in force, the various forms of the Chinese Immigration Act were valid statutes. The defendant submits that the Chinese Immigration Act would thus necessarily constitute a juristic reason for the enrichment. However, the plaintiffs contend that racist and discriminatory laws cannot constitute a juristic reason. [48] At the time that the various Chinese Immigration Acts were in force, the modern principles and structure for international human rights protection had not yet come into being. There were, however, some early antecedents. Article 23(a) of the Covenant of the League of Nations, Treaty of Versailles, Part 1, June 28, 1919, provided for principles of fair treatment to persons and this fostered a guarantee system for the protection of minorities. See also Minority Schools in Albania, [1935] P.C.I.J. ser. A/B No. 64 at p. 17. The International Labour Organization emerged after the First World War and its constitutional development subscribed to by many states, enunciated principles for the fair and humane treatment of all peoples, irrespective of race, creed or sex. … [49] The problem with the plaintiffs’ submissions in this regard is much the same as their difficulties with respect to their Charter and international law arguments. To find that a statute does not constitute a juristic reason, it would be necessary to demonstrate that the legislation is unconstitutional or ultra vires. However, as already discussed above, this would entail the retrospective application of modern-day constitutional principles in respect of legislation that was repealed over 50 years ago. As the Charter cannot be applied retroactively or retrospectively, it is impossible to declare the Chinese Immigration Act, in its various forms, unconstitutional. [50] The plaintiffs further contend that international law norms also provide evidence that the Chinese Immigration Act could not constitute a juristic reason so as to defeat the claim of unjust enrichment. For the purposes of this argument, it is accepted that principles of equality and non-discrimination may have taken on the status of international law norms in the relevant time period, being 1885 to 1947. However, it is problematic that such norms could supersede the operation of validly enacted, albeit racist, domestic legislation. As noted above, even today, international law norms and conventions can ground an arguable right in domestic law in the face of an offending domestic statute, constitutionally enacted, only where such norms and conventions have been expressly incorporated into domestic legislation. [51] Since the impugned legislation cannot be challenged on either constitutional or international law grounds, I therefore find that it constitutes a juristic reason for any enrichment and corresponding deprivation. As a result, it is plain and obvious that the plaintiffs’ claim with respect to unjust enrichment cannot succeed. For this reason, it is struck out. Conclusion [52] These findings must not be taken as acceptance of the actions of Canadian governments in creating and implementing the various forms of the Chinese Immigration Act. Quite clearly, these Acts, if enacted today, could not withstand Charter scrutiny. The leg-

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islation in its various forms was patently discriminatory against persons of Chinese origin. By contemporary Canadian morals and values, these pieces of legislation were both repugnant and reprehensible. The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885 and its successors have come to symbolize a period of Canadian history scarred by racial intolerance and prejudice. [53] One should always be mindful of the role that both legislatures and courts have sometimes played in institutionalizing and legitimizing intolerance … It is vital that Canadians acknowledge this regrettable legacy as we strive towards building a society that both celebrates diversity and protects every individual’s right to equality. These are the principles upon which our modern Canadian values, as elucidated in the Charter and other international law norms and conventions, are premised. It is true that the final Chinese Immigration Act was repealed over 50 years ago. Yet discrimination, in its various forms, unfortunately remains an enduring element of Canadian society. True equality will only be possible if all Canadians take on the challenge of eradicating racism and other forms of intolerance. [54] It may very well be that Parliament should consider providing redress for Chinese Canadians who paid the Head Tax or were adversely affected by the various Chinese Immigration Acts. There are, of course, instances where the government has provided an apology and compensation for the wrong and unacceptable treatment of a minority group of Canadians: for example, as mentioned above, the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement. I do not quarrel with the plaintiffs’ basic submission that merely repealing a discriminatory law, without repairing its discriminatory effects, does not necessarily effectuate substantive equality for the disadvantaged group nor redress the negative effects of discriminatory treatment. [55] However, the court’s function is not to usurp the power of Parliament. Rather, its role is to adjudicate claims based upon their legal merit within the framework of Canadian constitutional law. Disposition [56] For the reasons set forth above, I find it plain and obvious that the plaintiffs’ claim cannot succeed. The defendant’s motion is granted pursuant to rule 21.01(1)(b) for the reason that the statement of claim does not disclose a reasonable cause of action. Accordingly, the plaintiffs’ statement of claim in its entirety is struck out. [57] In the given circumstances, there shall be no costs. Motion granted.

NOTES 1 Mack et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, [2000] 55 O.R. 113. www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/ doc/2001/2001canlii27983/2001canlii27983.html. 2 Peter Li, “Reconciling with History: The Chinese-Canadian Head Tax Redress,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 4, no. 1 (2008): 132. 3 For an excellent scholarly resource on the Mack case, refer to David Dyzenhaus and Mayo Moran, eds., Calling Power to Account: Law, Reparations, and the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Case (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).

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4. Open Letter from the Chinese Canadian National Council to Prime Minister Paul Martin on the Subject of the Chinese Head Tax, 20051 The Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) is a national non-profit organization with a mandate to “to promote the rights of all individuals, in particular, those of Chinese Canadians and to encourage their full and equal participation in Canadian society.”2 Since 1984, when the Chinese head-tax redress movement began to take shape, the CCNC has represented surviving head-tax payers and their families in their campaign for recognition and fiscal reparations from the federal government. In the “open letter” to Prime Minister Martin below, the CCNC critiques the limits of the Liberal government of the day’s approach to addressing redress petitions from a variety of constituencies – an approach that consistently offered funding for commemoration programs but refused to pay reparations to individuals. This funding was made available through the Martin administration’s “Acknowledgement, Commemoration, and Education Program” – a program that may be interpreted as symptomatic of what Matt James, in his contribution to this book, terms “neoliberal heritage redress.” The Conservative Harper government has continued a similar policy with the establishment of the “National Historic Recognition Program” and the “Community Historical Recognition Program,” both established to fund commemorative and educational programs regarding a variety of historical injustices in Canada.

March 4, 2005 Right Honourable Paul Martin Prime Minister House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 By fax and email Dear Prime Minister Martin: On behalf of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC), I am writing to express our deep disappointment with how the Canadian Government continues to avoid the issue of redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. Last week’s budget included a fund for “commemorative and educational initiatives.” There is merit in this initiative, but we are alarmed by indications that your government regards this fund as a blanket act of redress towards a number of groups who have been historically wronged by the Government of Canada. This approach appears to favour expediency over respect for people. Our position is that this fund can in no way compensate nor redress the victims of Canada’s Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. When CCNC representatives met with you on March 23, 2003 you acknowledged that our constituency of 4,000 head tax payers was a distinct group apart from the broader Chinese Canadian community. Those affected by the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act were objects of government-legislated racism and injustice. You understood that providing government funds for the Chinese community at large did not address the core issue of

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individual redress. You said that, as prime minister, you intended to act in a significantly different manner than the previous government. You expressed your commitment to bringing resolution to this shameful period of Canadian history while a handful of aging head tax payers and their spouses are still living. You also spoke about your vision of nation building in a culturally rich and diverse Canada where all groups in Canada contribute and share in a sense of belonging. Prime Minister Martin, our sense of belonging and acceptance into the Canadian family is inextricably tied to the resolution of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. The suggestion that our history can be acknowledged then left behind so that we can focus on the future is not in keeping with the depth of understanding of the issue you have previously demonstrated. Last year, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Racism recommended that the Canadian Government restart consultations with the Chinese community and consider compensation to families who were affected by the head tax. The United Nations advised that the government do this in the same spirit as redress for Japanese Canadians who were interned during World War II. Prime Minister Helen Clarke of New Zealand recently apologized to her country’s Chinese community and provided redress for New Zealand’s Chinese poll tax. Meaningful redress and resolution requires the active participation of the wronged parties at the negotiation table. CCNC has a mandate dating from 1984 to represent head tax payers and their families. I am asking that you set up a Table for Reconciliation for Chinese Redress and meet with us as quickly as possible. Let us begin to work together to finally bring closure to this shameful chapter in Canadian history. Yours truly, Colleen Hua National President Chinese Canadian National Council cc. Honourable Raymond Chan Federal Cabinet Ministers Stephen Harper, Leader of the Opposition, Gilles Duceppe, Leader of Bloc Quebecois, Jack Layton, Leader of NDP

NOTES 1 Chinese National Council to Prime Minister Paul Martin, March 4, 2005, Chinese Canadian National Council, http://www.ccnc.ca/newsReleases/newsReleases.html#RedressLetter. 2 “About CCNC,” Chinese Canadian National Council, 2005, http://www.ccnc.ca/about.php.

5. House of Commons Apology for the Chinese Head Tax, 20061 After more than two decades of lobbying, legal petitions, and demonstrations on the part of Chinese Canadian organizations, on 22 June 2006 Prime Minister Stephen Harper for-

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mally apologized on behalf of the Canadian nation for the Chinese head tax legislation and the subsequent exclusion of Chinese immigrants from Canadian society. Harper’s apology was accompanied by a compensation package offering $20,000.00 “symbolic ex gratia” payments to each surviving head-tax payer or their spouse and an additional $34 million for commemoration and educational programming.2 Despite the prime minister’s attempt to inscribe closure, or to “turn the page” upon an event that he claimed “lies far in our past,” not long after the government offered its statement of contrition, redress groups protested the settlement, arguing that due to the fact that a significant percentage of headtax payers were no longer alive, payments should be expanded to include the children of deceased persons who paid the fees. The claim for first-generation descendants of head-tax payers still remains unresolved.3

right hon. stephen harper (prime minister, cpc): Mr. Speaker, I rise today to formally turn the page on an unfortunate period in Canada’s past, a period during which a group of people, people who only sought to build a better life, were repeatedly and deliberately singled out for unjust treatment. I speak of course of the head tax that was imposed on Chinese immigrants to this country, as well as the other restrictive measures that followed. The Canada we know today would not exist were it not for the efforts of the Chinese labourers who began to arrive in the mid-19th century. Almost exclusively young men, these Chinese immigrants made the difficult decision to leave their families behind in order to pursue opportunities in a country halfway around the world they called Gold Mountain. Beginning in 1881, over 15,000 of these Chinese pioneers became involved in the most important nation building enterprise in Canadian history, the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. From the shores of the St Lawrence across the seemingly endless expanses of shield and prairie, climbing the majestic Rockies and cutting through the rugged terrain of British Columbia, this transcontinental link was the ribbon of steel that bound our fledgling country together. It was an engineering feat that was instrumental to the settlement of the west and the subsequent development of the Canadian economy, and one for which the back-breaking toil of Chinese labourers was largely responsible. The conditions under which these men worked were, at best, harsh and at times impossible. Tragically, some 1,000 Chinese labourers died during the building of the CPR, but in spite of it all, these Chinese immigrants persevered, and in doing so, helped to ensure the future of this country. But from the moment the railway was completed, Canada turned its back on these men. Beginning with the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, a head tax of $50 was imposed on Chinese newcomers in an attempt to deter immigration. Not content with the tax’s effect, the government subsequently raised the amount to $100 in 1900 and then to $500 in 1903, the equivalent of two years’ wages. This tax remained in place until 1923 when the government amended the Chinese Immigration Act and effectively banned most Chinese immigrants until 1947. Similar legislation existed in the dominion of Newfoundland, which also imposed a head tax between 1906 and 1949, when Newfoundland joined Confederation. The Government of Canada recognizes the stigma and exclusion experienced by the Chinese as a result. We acknowledge the high cost of the head tax meant that many fam-

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ily members were left behind in China, never to be reunited, or that families lived apart and in some cases in extreme poverty for years. We also recognize that our failure to truly acknowledge these historical injustices has prevented many in the community from seeing themselves as fully Canadian. Therefore, on behalf of all Canadians and the Government of Canada, we offer a full apology to Chinese Canadians for the head tax and express our deepest sorrow for the subsequent exclusion of Chinese immigrants. [Member spoke in Chinese: Gar nar dai doe heem.] This apology is not about liability today. It is about reconciliation with those who endured such hardship and the broader Chinese Canadian community, one that continues to make such an invaluable contribution to this great country. While Canadian courts have ruled that the head tax and immigration prohibition were legally authorized at the time, we fully accept the moral responsibility to acknowledge these shameful policies of our past. For over six decades, these race-based financial measures aimed solely at the Chinese were implemented with deliberation by the Canadian state. This was a grave injustice and one we are morally obligated to acknowledge. To give substantive meaning to today’s apology, the Government of Canada will offer symbolic payments to living head-tax payers and living spouses of deceased payers. In addition, we will establish funds to help finance community projects aimed at acknowledging the impact of past wartime measures and immigration restrictions on the Chinese Canadian community and other ethnocultural communities. No country is perfect. Like all countries, Canada has made mistakes in its past, and we realize that. Canadians, however, are a good and just people, acting when we have committed wrong. Even though the head tax, a product of a profoundly different time lies far in our past, we feel compelled to right this historic wrong for the simple reason that it is the decent thing to do, a characteristic to be found at the core of the Canadian soul. In closing, let me assure the House that the government will continually strive to ensure that similar unjust practices are never allowed to happen again. We have the collective responsibility to build a country based firmly on the notion of equality of opportunity, regardless of one’s race or ethnic origin. Our deep sorrow over the racist actions of our past will nurture an unwavering commitment to build a better life for all Canadians.

NOTES 1 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 22 June 2006, pp. 2863–6. 2 Peter Li, “Reconciling with History: The Chinese Canadian Head Tax Redress,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 4, no. 1 (May 2008): 136. 3 Stephen Winter, “The Stakes of Inclusion: Chinese Canadian Head Tax Redress,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 41, no. 1 (March 2008): 119.

APPENDIX E INDIAN PASSENGERS ON THE KOMAGATA MARU 1. An Act Respecting Immigration, 19101 On 8 January 1908, the federal government first attempted to restrict the numbers of “Japanese and other Asian immigrants” in Canada by passing an Order in Council that required “all immigrants to come directly from their country of origin.”2 Known as the “continuous journey” clause, this regulation made no explicit reference to race, but was in practice designed to limit immigration from Asia. When this first Order in Council was overturned by the courts, the government created two new Orders in Council in May 1908 that re-invoked the continuous-journey clause and established a requirement that each immigrant must possess $200.00. 3 These immigration restrictions were reinscribed in 1910 when a new version of the Immigration Act was legislated into being. The phrase “specified classes” was employed in the act as code for “undesirable” immigrants without explicitly naming Indian citizens as the principal targets of the government’s agenda. This was the climate of racism into which the Komagata Maru, a ship carrying 376 passengers from India, entered when it arrived at Burrard Inlet in Vancouver on 21 May 1914. Those on board were aware of the exclusionary legislation that might bar their entry: in fact, Gurdit Singh, the businessman who chartered the Komagata Maru, told the Canadian press that he and his fellow passengers “are British citizens and we consider we have a right to visit any part of the Empire … We are determined to make this a test case and if we are refused entrance into your country, the matter will not end here.”4 Upon the ship’s arrival, Canadian customs officials promptly ordered the ship’s captain to drop anchor two hundred yards from shore.5 Despite their British citizenship, all but twenty-four of the passengers were refused entry to Canada.6 On 23 July 1914, after three months in difficult conditions with inadequate supplies, the passengers onboard the Komagata Maru agreed to leave the inlet on the condition that the ship be supplied with sufficient food and water to make the return journey to India. When the ship re-entered Indian waters that summer, many of its passengers were arrested and some were shot for supposedly instigating revolt against the British Raj – actions precipitated in part by the fact that Canadian officials informed British authorities that certain passengers were suspected of harbouring revolutionary sympathies for the Ghadr party in India.7 A 1914 inquiry into the events surrounding the Komagata Maru exonerated the government of any wrongdoing, insisting that officials had successfully barred “sedition mongers” from entry into Canada.8

“Regulations as to Monetary and Other Requirements from Specified Classes of Immigrants” … 37. Regulations made by the Governor in Council under this Act may provide as a condition to permission to land in Canada that immigrants and tourists shall possess in their own right money to a prescribed minimum amount, which amount may vary according to the race, occupation or destination of such immigrant or tourist, and otherwise according to the circumstances; and may also provide that all persons coming to Canada directly or indirectly from countries which issue passports or penal certificates to persons leaving such

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countries shall produce such passports or penal certificates on demand of the immigration officer in charge before being allowed to land in Canada. 38. The Governor in Council may, by proclamation or order whenever he deems it necessary or expedient,– (a) prohibit the landing in Canada or at any specified port of entry in Canada of any immigrant who has come to Canada otherwise than by continuous journey from the country of which he is a native or naturalized citizen, and upon a through ticket purchased in that country, or prepaid in Canada; (b) prohibit the landing in Canada of passengers brought by any transportation company which refuses or neglects to comply with the provisions of this Act; (c) prohibit for a stated period, or permanently, the landing in Canada, or the landing at any specified port of entry in Canada, of immigrants belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada, or of immigrants of any specified class, occupation or character.

NOTES 1 An Act Respecting Immigration, Acts of the Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, 1910, c. 27. 2 Patricia Roy, A White Man’s Province (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 212. See Roy for more on the history of race-based immigration restrictions. 3 Hugh Johnston, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 138. 4 Ibid., 37–8. 5 Ted Ferguson, A White Man’s Country (Toronto: Doubleday, 1975), 20. 6 Gurcharn S. Basran and B. Singh Bolaria, The Sikhs in Canada: Migration, Race, Class, and Gender (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 100. 7 The Ghadr (or Mutiny) Party, as Hugh Johnston explains, was a movement that sought an end to British rule in India. Johnston quotes the text of an article printed in a 1913 Ghadr publication, which succinctly explains the party’s aims: “What is our name? Mutiny. What is our work? Mutiny. Where will this mutiny break out? In India. When will it break out? In a few years. Why should it break out? Because the people can no longer bear the oppression and tyranny practised under British rule and are ready to fight and die for freedom” (15–16). 8 Canada, Commissions of Inquiry, Commission to Investigate Hindu Claims Following Refusal of Immigration Officials to Allow over 300 Hindus Aboard the S.S. Komagata Maru to Land at Vancouver, 1914. Chair: H.C. Clogston, http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/pco-bcp/commissionsef/clogston1914-eng/clogston1914-eng.htm.

2. The Court of Appeal: Re Munshi Singh, 19141 When the Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver in the spring of 1914, a group of local South Asian Canadians organized themselves into a Shore Committee, dedicated to arguing for the rights of those on board. The Shore Committee hired lawyer J. Edward Bird to represent the ship’s passengers and challenge the government’s attempts to restrict immigration according to race and nation of origin. The petitioners were confident that they had a strong case, largely because thirty-five men from India had been admitted to Canada

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only one year earlier under similar circumstances.2 Though local officials were intent on the ship’s immediate departure,3 Bird was eventually successful in arranging for a test case. On 25 June, lawyers for the government agreed that Munshi Singh would be brought ashore to stand before the board of inquiry as a test case. The board of inquiry, which was composed of local immigration officials, assumed that many of the Komagata Maru’s passengers were unskilled labourers, a class of migrant barred entry to British Columbia by an Order in Council passed in March 1914, “in view of the present overcrowded condition of the labour market in the Province of British Columbia.”4 Although Singh testified to the fact that he was a farmer and landowner in India, and intended to work as a farmer in Canada, the board concluded that he was in fact an unskilled labourer. On 6 July 1914, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision on the case of Munshi Singh. Countering the actions of Supreme Court Justice Murphy, who had one year earlier denied the authority of the 1910 additions to the Immigration Act, the Court of Appeal decided in response to Munshi Singh’s case to uphold the immigration restrictions, asserting that “no Court shall have jurisdiction to review or reverse the decision of any Board of Inquiry.”5 Thus, the Court of Appeal affirmed the board of inquiry’s earlier decision, finding that Munshi Singh was an unskilled labourer and thus prohibited from entering Canada. Furthermore, the court found that no person could be guaranteed entry to Canada on the basis of status as a British subject.

Re Munshi Singh [From the findings of J.A. McPhillips:] This is an appeal by Munshi Singh – the applicant for a writ of habeas corpus – and for his discharge from detention for deportation by the immigration authorities of Canada, Mr. Justice Murphy, to whom the application was made, having dismissed the same. The appellant, Munshi Singh (son of Wazair Singh), of Gulupore, India, Asia, has been ordered to be deported by the Board of Inquiry at the Port of Vancouver, B.C., the order being of date the 25th of June, 1914. … The appellant has been held by the Board of Inquiry to be an immigrant entitled to be deported under the provisions of all of the three in part-recited orders in council. The appellant is specifically held to be entitled to be deported and is ordered to be deported for the following reasons: that his last place of residence was Gulupore, Hoshiarpur District, Punjab, India, Asia, seeking to enter Canada at the Port of Vancouver, B.C., ex Steamship Komagata Maru, from China, Asia, arriving at the Port of Vancouver on the 22nd of May, 1914; that he is an immigrant within the meaning of The Immigration Act and the regulations (i.e., orders in council), and is not a Canadian citizen and has not Canadian domicil, and has not been landed in Canada within the meaning of the said Act, and belongs to one of the prohibited classes enumerated in section 3 of the Act and the orders in council, P.C. No. 24, P.C. No. 23, and P.C. No. 897; that he is of the Asiatic race and does not possess $200; has not come by continuous journey and is an unskilled labourer and specifically is not entitled, in pursuance of the orders in council, to land in Canada, and is a person entitled to be deported as determined by the Board of Inquiry after due and proper inquiry, and has been so ordered to be deported.

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Upon the facts as adduced, it is plain that the decision of the Board of Inquiry has been arrived at in accordance with law, and upon good and sufficient evidence, and the decision of the Board of Inquiry, even if subject to review, has been rightly arrived at and in no way offends against any rule of evidence, nor can it be said that it is a decision which in any way offends against natural justice. … It has been argued that the appellant being a British subject by birth, cannot be prevented from landing and cannot be deported, that he is now in Canada although still upon the ship – being in Canadian waters within the three-mile limit – and that it is an interference with his civil rights. … The Immigration Act is, as has been previously pointed out, an Act passed in pursuance of the power conferred by the British North America Act, and applies to all persons coming to Canada, irrespective of race and nationality, and, in my opinion, the British subject has no higher right than the alien in coming to the shores of Canada, nor does the Parliament of Canada in its enactment differentiate in any way. The only privileged persons are those who in accordance with natural justice should be allowed free entry – by any nation – being her own Canadian citizens and persons who have Canadian domicil. These are permitted to land in Canada as a matter of right (section 18). … It is plain upon study of the question, the Hindu race, as well as the Asiatic race in general, are, in their conception of life and ideas of society, fundamentally different to the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic races, and European races in general. Further acquaintance with the subject shews that the better classes of Asiatic races are not given to leave their own countries – they are non-immigrant classes, greatly attached to their homes – and those who become immigrants are, without disparagement to them, undesirables in Canada, where a very different civilization exists. The laws of this country are unsuited to them, and their ways and ideas may well be a menace to the well-being of the Canadian people. … The Parliament of Canada – the nation’s Parliament – may be well said to be safeguarding the people of Canada from an influx which it is no chimera to conjure up might annihilate the nation and change its whole potential complexity, introduce Oriental ways as against European ways, eastern civilization for western civilization, and all the dire results that would naturally flow therefrom … … In that our fellow British subjects of the Asiatic race are of different racial instincts to those of the European race – and consistent therewith, their family life, rules of society and laws are of a very different character – in their own interests, their proper place of residence is within the confines of their respective countries in the continent of Asia, not in Canada, where their customs are not in vogue and their adhesion to them here only give rise to disturbances destructive to the well-being of society and against the maintenance of peace, order and good government. Lord Watson, in Abd-ul-Messih v. Chukri Farra, supra, said at p. 91, dealing with the law of India: “By the law established in India, the members of certain castes and creeds are, in many

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important respects, governed by their own peculiar rules and customs, so that an Indian domicil of succession may involve the application of Hindu or Mohommedan law; but these rules and customs are an integral part of the municipal law administered by the territorial tribunals.” It is apparent that it will not conform with national ideals in Canada to introduce any such laws into Canada, or give them the effect of law as applied to people domiciled in Canada, and this, probably, would be the germ of discontent that would be brought to this country with any considerable influx of people so different in ideas of family life and social organization. Better that peoples of non-assimilative – and by nature properly non-assimilative – race should not come to Canada, but rather, that they should remain of residence in their country of origin and there do their share, as they have in the past, in the preservation and development of the Empire. In my opinion, the Immigration Act and the orders in council referred to constitute full and justifiable warrant for the detention of the appellant by the immigration authorities, and for his deportation, the deportation order being good and sufficient in law even were the decision of the Board of Inquiry reviewable, and no grounds are made out for the appellant’s discharge. But in so holding, I am not to be understood as holding that there is any power of review, or the right to invoke habeas corpus proceedings to effect the discharge of the appellant, as my opinion is that section 23 is an absolute inhibition upon the Court, and there is no jurisdiction in the Court to grant a writ of habeas corpus and thereupon discharge the appellant from custody. Appeal dismissed.

NOTES 1 Re Munshi Singh, Court of Appeal, British Columbia Reports, 6 July 1914, 243–92. 2 In the 1913 case of Narain Singh, Justice Murphy of British Columbia’s Supreme Court “held that he was not barred by section 23 from hearing and deciding the matter,” and “also held that both the Orders in Council passed in 1910 were ultra vires, as not strictly complying with the language of the section of the ‘Immigration Act’ under which they were purported to be made.” Robie L. Reid, “The Inside Story of the ‘Komagata Maru,’” British Columbia Historical Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1941): 5. Under Justice Murphy’s order, Narain Singh and his fellow passengers were permitted entry to Canada. Government lawyer Robie Reid, writing in 1941, suggests that “the effect of the decision in the Narain Singh case was not confined to Canada, nor to the admission of the thirty-five applicants affected by it. News that East Indians had been allowed to enter Canada soon reached India and the China Coast. Many Indian nationals had heard of the prosperity of those of their countrymen who had emigrated to British Columbia before the restrictive legislation had been passed, and they yearned to go to what seemed to them to be a land of promise” (ibid., 6). 3 Hugh Johnston, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada’s Colour Bar (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 52. 4 Re Munshi Singh, Court of Appeal, 246. 5 Ibid., 244.

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3. British Columbia Legislative Assembly: Acknowledgment and Apology for the Komagata Maru Case, 20081 British Columbia’s premiers had been petitioning the federal government since at least 1884 to reduce the number of Asian immigrants allowed entry to the province.2 In the summer of 1907, after the federal government refused another BC appeal to limit immigration, angry Vancouver residents formed the Asiatic Exclusion League and organized a mass protest for 7 September. The league targeted Vancouver’s Chinese and Japanese communities, and the result was a night of violence and property destruction that would be “Canadian history’s largest race riot.”3 On 23 May 1914, the London Times printed an interview with British Columbia premier Richard McBride, who attempted to legitimate the government’s actions: “It would be idle to ignore the attitude of the people of British Columbia, and it is our desire to strengthen the hands of the Dominion Government in its efforts to oppose, as far as possible, further immigration of Orientals to Canada. It is with no feeling of hostility towards the Asiatic races that we take this stand, but we realize that Western and Oriental civilizations are so different that there never could be any amalgamation of the two, nor could the Asiatics conform to our ways and ideals. To admit Orientals in large numbers would mean the extinction of the white peoples, and we have always in mind the necessity of keeping this a white man’s country.”4 On 23 May 2008, exactly ninety-four years after those on board the Komagata Maru were denied entry to Canada, the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia passed a unanimous resolution offering an acknowledgment of and official apology for the discriminatory policies directed towards the South Asian passengers seeking to enter Canada.5 It is interesting to note that British Columbia’s official apology preceded the federal government’s by more than two months.

Motions on Notice: KOMAGATA MARU hon. m. de jong: Motion 62: [Be it resolved that this Legislature apologizes for the events of May 23, 1914, when 376 passengers of the Komagata Maru, stationed off Vancouver harbour, were denied entry by Canada. The House deeply regrets that the passengers, who sought refuge in our country and our province, were turned away without benefit of the fair and impartial treatment befitting a society where people of all cultures are welcomed and accepted.] I wonder what people were thinking in the spring of 1914. I wonder if they knew that the world stood on the brink of a cataclysm – the likes of which had never been seen before or that the guns of August would ignite with a fury that would see empires crumble and the lives of millions impacted forever. I doubt it. I doubt it. In Canada, a country not yet 50 years old, and a Vancouver where trolley cars carried a growing population along the tree-lined boulevards, no one was thinking about the cauldron of hatred that was simmering in the Balkans or the orgy of death and destruction that would be unleashed by two gunshots in Sarajevo. But in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, our own toxic mix of intolerance, suspicion and racism was about to boil over and reveal itself in a very different way.

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On May 23, 1914, a boat arrived. A Japanese steamer sailing from Hong Kong slipped through the narrows between Stanley Park and the North Shore. Unlike the passengers on the countless cruise ships that sail into our harbour today, the lights on the yet-to-be built Lions Gate Bridge did not welcome them. In fact, for these 376 passengers from the Punjab, there was to be no welcome at all. For these passengers, their odyssey at sea began on April 4, 1914, and remarkably, for most of them, that odyssey at sea would last for nearly six months. The decision to deny entry to these people searching for a better life derived from the application of myriad Canadian laws and regulations – things like the continuous journey requirement that had been built into immigration regulations. There can be no doubt that these laws were deliberately designed to camouflage a more sinister objective: to restrict immigration from Asia, to restrict immigration from India and to promote a white Canada policy. For the passengers of the Komagata Maru, their forcible expulsion from our shores on July 23, 1914, was not the end of the saga. While the world’s attention shifted to events taking place in Europe, the Komagata Maru sailed on with its cargo of human misery, sailed on for Calcutta, where it arrived at the end of September 1914. There, at a place called Budge Budge, the final act in this transcontinental tragedy played out with the violent deaths of 20 individuals who resisted their forced repatriation to the Punjab. … [T]his day has been made possible because of the people and the groups who have worked so hard to keep the memory of this dark chapter in our history alive. We heard them referred to just a moment ago: the Komagata Maru Heritage Foundation, the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation, the Komagata Maru Foundation and a myriad of others who understood that to properly embrace the history of a nation is to embrace all of the history, to understand it and to acknowledge it. It’s ironic that today as we work feverishly to forge closer ties with India, the efforts of Baba Gurdit Singh, organizer of the Komagata Maru voyage, would probably have been regarded as visionary. Happily, times have changed. Unhappily, the ability to present this apology directly to the victims of the events of 1914 no longer exists. But if we could today, through descendants, through people that continue to care, we would say: Ah-seen kƗmăn dƗ jaa-chack hăăn, Thu-hăă-nuu jee-Iyan-nnj kƗn-dƗ hăăn. [Punjabi text provided by Hon. M. de Jong.] Forgive us. You are welcome. … j. nuraney: Let me, first of all, offer my warm welcome to the members of the Sikh community who have come here to witness what they have been waiting for, for a long time. Today we are witnessing a gesture by this government which redeems, to a certain extent, the injustice that was meted out to the passengers of Komagata Maru on May 23, 1914 … This incident is recorded in our British Columbia history as a stain on the ethics and values that we hold so dearly – that is, inclusiveness and respect for others. This act of racism has become an indelible memory in the minds of the pioneers and Canadians who worked so hard to make our province what it is today. The contribution of the Sikh community in the development of our province is well known, not only in the past as the pioneers in the industries of forestry and agriculture, but today they continue to be very valuable members of the Canadian society and continue to play a very significant role in what Canada stands for.

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We could say that this outrageous act, which violated the rights of individuals to seek out their destiny, was outrageous. Today, as we offer our apologies to those affected, we must also take this opportunity to look within ourselves and ask the fundamental question: have we really eradicated racism? Each one of us has a duty to be vigilant and to guard against any act of racism in our society. I would submit that such acts of racism are a result of ignorance. Let me quote from the holy Koran in reference to the entirety of the human race. It says: “O mankind, be careful of your duty to your Lord, who created you from one single soul and … created its mate, and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women.” Madam Speaker, as I congratulate our government for this noble act of apology, let me say that we should consider this tragic incident as a lesson to develop tolerance, respect and understanding for others and to inculcate these values in our children and in the next generation so that such acts of racism may never take place in our society. h. lali: Like my colleagues on both sides of the House, I join in support of Motion 62. As you know, the Komagata Maru incident was a real black mark in the history of Canada in terms of race relations that took place … It reminds me of the stories that my mom and dad used to tell me about 1947, when the partition of India took place into India and Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of people were massacred. It reminds me of aboriginal people I talk to who went through the whole residential school system and also the folks that were massacred in 1984 in Delhi in the riots that took place after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. They all talk about the same thing. They felt shame. They felt guilt. They felt anger. That’s what had happened. There are folks – and I’ve seen some editorials out there, even in the last few days – suggesting that there was no need for Canada or British Columbia to apologize. What were we apologizing for? What do apologies do, when you’re dealing with people – whether it’s the aboriginal people that were apologized to by this Legislature in the late 1990s in terms of what happened to the aboriginal people in the residential school system …? What it offers is healing. It offers healing, even though it’s ninety-four years late. Even for someone like me and for others who were not around at that time, to read about it brings about that feeling of shame and guilt. It also is an acknowledgment that yes, our racist policies were racist at the time, and yes, there were a lot of wrongs done at that time. That’s what this is all about, whether you’re talking about any of those instances where those apologies were offered. Finally, before I sit down, it is important to offer this apology, because, as we see on epitaphs when we see Remembrance Day celebrated, it says: “Lest we forget.” Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and we don’t want to repeat that racist history again. … hon. c. taylor: I have the rather unusual privilege to be in my second layer of government service that is acknowledging the situation of the Komagata Maru incident. In 1989 I was an elected member of Vancouver City Council at a time where we acknowledged this shameful incident and in fact created a memorial so that we would remember it. Here we are nineteen years later, once again and at a different level of government, in our provincial legislature, acknowledging and apologizing for something that is, as others have said, a very dark period in our history. It has been said very eloquently what the facts are from the situation, so I think that

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it’s left for me just to look with amazement, dismay and anger at what actually happened. Imagine! My Canada, which I’m so proud of, had a policy that was actually whites-only immigration. It was done very carefully, of course. It was a very carefully unspoken but very insidious policy that ensured that immigration would come primarily from white European countries … It is a shame for all of us to remember that our country did this, but I think that part of the healing process is to go through this, where we apologize for it. To those individuals who have been affected directly or indirectly, to those in India whose future was determined by this policy of discrimination and to the world who watched Canada with dismay as we perpetuated this whites only policy – to everyone – we say: “We apologize.”

NOTES 1 British Columbia, Legislative Assembly Debates, 23 May 2008, pp. 12790–4. 2 According to James W. St G. Walker, British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly “passed nine immigration acts restricting Asian immigration; under the authority of the BNA Act the federal government disallowed eight and the lieutenant-governor reserved one in 1907 … Ottawa was motivated by the perceived need for Chinese labour on the railroad.” “Race,” Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 69. 3 Ibid., 68. 4 “The East and the West,” The Times, 23 May 1914. 5 This motion was initiated by MLA Jagrup Brar on 12 May 2008, and was reintroduced by Michael de Jong, then minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation, on 23 May 2008.

4. House of Commons Motion M-469: Recommending an Official Apology for the Komagata Maru Tragedy, 20081 On 2 April 2008, Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla (Brampton-Springdale) introduced Motion M-469 into debate at the House of Commons. The motion asserted that “in the opinion of the House, the government should officially apologize to the Indo-Canadian community and to the individuals impacted in the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which passengers were prevented from landing in Canada.”2 A similar request had been issued by Canadian Alliance MP Gurmant Grewal (Surrey Central) on 12 December 2002. Grewal presented a petition in the House of Commons, which contended that the “sad story of the Komagata Maru … was a result of a racist, discriminatory and exclusionist Canadian immigration policy.” The petition asked “that Parliament issue an apology to correct the wrong that remains a black scar on Canadian history, and hurts the community,” and warned that “justice delayed or forgotten is justice denied.”3 More than five years later, when an apology had still not been issued, petitioners again called for official recognition. Conservative MP Nina Grewal (representing Fleetwood– Port Kells, and Gurmant Grewal’s wife) presented a second petition calling for an apology, this time organized by the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation of Canada. Grewal summarized the petition in the House, explaining that “the petitioners contend that the Komagata Maru incident is illustrative of racist policies. The petitioners are calling

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upon the government to formally recognize the tragedy and to make an official heartfelt apology to redress it.”4 On 15 May 2008, the same day on which Grewal made her presentation, the House resumed discussion of Dhalla’s 2 April motion and, after speeches of support from many members, voted to adopt it. Motion M-469, therefore, was a key factor leading to Prime Minister Harper’s subsequent apology on 3 August 2008. The excerpts from the House debates below provide an interesting glimpse into the multiple investments and partisan politics that have influenced and motivated state gestures of reconciliation in Canada.

The House resumed from April 2 consideration of the motion. mr. raymond gravel (repentigny, bq): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Motion M-469 introduced by my Liberal colleague, which calls on the Conservative government to officially apologize to the Indo-Canadian community and to the individuals impacted in the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which passengers were prevented from landing in Canada. Although some progress has been made, most notably the acknowledgement of this incident by the Prime Minister, the federal government still has not made an official apology. Canada should therefore apologize officially in order to close this sad chapter in Canadian history. In so doing, Canada would recognize the important contribution Indians have made to society in Canada and Québec. In addition to official recognition, Canada could consider other means of acknowledging this incident, such as a commemorative monument or a museum, because of the tragic outcome. The federal government has officially apologized for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants. Since the Komagata Maru incident is similar, we believe that the government can take the same approach. Considered in the light of our modern values, the Canadian government’s actions in 1914 were reprehensible. For that reason, the Bloc Québécois believes that an apology is warranted. However, other equally tragic events require official apologies. I will mention these events at the end of my speech, but I am thinking in particular of the native residential schools and the 1918 suppression of anticonscription demonstrators. The Bloc Québécois has always called on the government to officially apologize for these two events. … mrs. nina grewal (fleetwood–port kells, cpc): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of the constituents of Fleetwood–Port Kells to participate in the debate on Motion No. 469. Although the member for Brampton-Springdale is now aggressively working to have her motion passed, during her first term she was part of a Liberal government that refused to apologize for the Komagata Maru tragedy. Now, along with a couple of other MPs, including one from the NDP, she seems to have suddenly woken up, and they are racing before one another to take credit after our prime minister had already announced in August 2006 that this government would consult with the community on redressing this issue. The current prime minister is the first prime minister to acknowledge the Komagata Maru tragedy. For years, Liberal leaders have rejected our calls for justice and fair treatment. The issue of a Komagata Maru apology was first brought to the floor of the House in Oc-

390 Appendix E: Indian Passengers on the Komagata Maru

tober 1997 and many times after by then-MP Gurmant Grewal. He also tabled a petition in 2002 asking for the government to apologize. The petition was signed by thousands at the Gadri Babiyian Da Mela and organized by Sahib Thind, president of the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation. I commend the Conservative government and our prime minister, who has been working on redressing Komagata Maru since 2006. Last weekend in Surrey, B.C., the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity laid out the policy of our government when he said: [“]Our government is working toward an official apology for the Komagata Maru incident. [The apology] will flow directly from the Prime Minister’s historic recognition of the tragic nature of the Komagata Maru incident, as well as the spirit of the Historical Recognition Programs, whose goal is to ensure that immigration restrictions are properly recognized and commemorated.[”] This government has already kept its promise and has apologized to the Chinese Canadian community for the discriminatory head tax. Canada’s history is filled with tales of racism. No one is proud of the expulsion of the Acadians, residential schools for aboriginal children, the wartime internment of Japanese Canadians, or the turning away of the Komagata Maru. … Historical wrongs can never be undone, but they need to be acknowledged, confessed and corrected. There can never be enough compensation or compassion expressed and there is no way, now, that complete justice can be served. The consensus in the south Asian community is that a sincere official apology is sufficient and it is not demanding any compensation. Redressing a historical wrong is difficult and controversial, but it is important to do the right thing to heal the wounds, restore community pride, and console the descendants of the victims. It will help in serving as a caution and preventing such incidents, actions and behaviour from happening in the future. It will help in the healing process and clear the air. The oppressed remain oppressed until redressed. With redress, future generations and new Canadians will be able to raise their head in pride as their dignity is restored. They will salute their forefathers, provide loyalty, dedication and commitment, and contribute and move forward as equal and patriotic citizens of Canada. The painful memory of the Komagata Maru inspires us all to continue to build on our nation’s reputation as a land that embraces tolerance above intolerance, diversity above discrimination, and openness above exclusion. The Komagata Maru tragedy is a reminder of just how far we have come as a society since that incident. We are a stronger and better country than we were ninety-four years ago. We are better and stronger precisely because of the contribution of all those who have crossed oceans to share this land. Today, there are more than one million people of Indian descent living in Canada. They have worked hard and prospered, and Canada has prospered because of them. Our society is richer and more inclusive today because of the different waves of new immigrants. Successive governments have failed to offer redress for the Komagata Maru for nearly a century. It is this Conservative government that has stood and addressed this issue. The

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Prime Minister has acknowledged the Komagata Maru incident. He announced that the government would consult with the community to readdress the issue, and he has kept his promise. Last month, at the Vaisakhi celebration hosted by me on Parliament Hill, the Prime Minister commended the contribution of the Sikhs to Canada. He said, “As Canadians we believe we learn from history, but we are not enslaved by it. We put old arguments behind us, in order to focus on the opportunities that lie before us and I especially know that Canadians of Sikh faith will always be leaders in moving our country forward unified, strong and free.” He was absolutely correct. … the acting speaker (mr. royal galipeau): The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion? some hon. members: Agreed. (Motion agreed to)

NOTES 1 Canada. House of Commons Debates, 15 May 2008, http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/ Publication.aspx?DocId=3504905&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=2. 2 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 2 April 2008, p. 4390. 3 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 12 December 2002, p. 2597. 4 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 15 May 2008), http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/ Publication.aspx?DocId=3504905&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=2.

5. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Apology for the Komagata Maru Tragedy, 20081 On 3 August 2008, Stephen Harper, on behalf of the federal government, apologized for Canada’s involvement in the mistreatment of those on board the Komagata Maru. Harper was speaking at the 13th annual Gadri Babiyan Da Mela (or gathering) in Surrey, BC.2 Citing the unanimous decision in the House of Commons to “officially apologize to the Indo-Canadian community and to the individuals impacted in the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which passengers were prevented from landing in Canada,”3 Harper said, “Today, on behalf of the Government of Canada I am officially conveying, as Prime Minister, that apology.” The apology was promptly rejected by members of the South Asian Canadian community, who insisted that Harper’s statement should be presented in Parliament and thus entered into the official record. Jaswinder Singh Toor, president of the Descendents of Komagata Maru Society, called the apology “unacceptable”: “We were expecting the prime minister of Canada to do the right thing. The right thing was … like the Chinese Head Tax,”4 meaning a full apology in the House of Commons. To this response, Jason Kenney, minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, said, “The apology has been given and it won’t be repeated.”5

392 Appendix E: Indian Passengers on the Komagata Maru

stephen harper: Good afternoon, bon après midi, Namaste … Thank you Jason for that introduction; greetings to my colleagues … I’d like to begin today by thanking the president of the Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation, Sahib Thind, for inviting me once again to this spectacular showcase of Punjabi culture. The vibrant dance and musical traditions, exquisite art, and timeless literature being celebrated here today are the fruits of a millennial-old civilization whose influence spans the globe. Canada now shares this rich cultural legacy. It has become an integral part of our own cultural diversity. [French reading of the preceding paragraph.] Today over one million Canadians are of South Asian descent. These hardworking men and women, passionately devoted to their families and communities, are helping make our country even stronger for the generations yet to come: our country, that affords opportunity to all regardless of their background; our country that offers sanctuary to victims of violence and persecution; our country, of freedom and democracy, of prosperity and peace, second to none in the world. As Canadians we have before us and before our children and grandchildren a future of literally unlimited possibility. A lot of that promise stems from the confidence, the ideas, and the energies, brought here by successive waves of newcomers drawn to our shores by the promise of a new and better life. Canada is renowned the world over for its welcoming embrace of immigrants. But like all countries our record isn’t perfect. We haven’t always lived up to our own highest ideals. One such failure, as has been mentioned, was the detention and turning away of the Komagata Maru in 1914, an event that caused much hardship for its passengers, 376 subjects of the British crown from Punjab, and which for many of them, ended in terrible tragedy. Two years ago I stood before you and made a commitment, and since then we have acted on that. [French reading of the preceding paragraph.] This May, the government of Canada secured passage of a unanimous motion in the House of Commons recognizing the Komagata Maru tragedy and apologizing to those who were directly affected. Today, on behalf of the Government of Canada I am officially conveying, as Prime Minister, that apology. Now friends, many Canadians have worked long and hard to secure recognition for this historic event. I’d like to thank from this community the Professor Mohan Singh Foundation, the Khalsa Diwan society, the Komagata Maru Descendents’ Association, and community leader Tarlok Sablok, for their persistent and passionate dedication to this issue over the years. I also wish to acknowledge my own colleagues, Nina and Gurmant Grewal, Parliamentary Secretary Jim Abbott, and Minister Jason Kenney for the work they have done to help all Canadians come to terms with this sad chapter in our history. We cannot change the events of the past. We cannot undo the misdeeds committed against those long deceased. But we can bring Canadians together in the present to unite our country and to set us on a course to accomplish greater things in the future. In closing I’d like to once again thank the organizers of this event for inviting me to once again be part of this tremendous festival. One of the most rewarding things about being Prime Minister is being able to travel across our great country and to meet the hardworking men and women of all faiths and cultures who are making Canada such a success. We should all be proud of our country and of each other and work together to build an even stronger Canada for all of us. Please enjoy the rest of the festivities, thank you, merci beaucoup, God bless our land.

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NOTES 1 The text of the apology has been transcribed from a video recording of the event. Through her doctoral research, Alia Somani located a recording made by Jasbir Sandhu, a founding member of the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation of Canada, and they have graciously allowed us access to this video. We owe a debt of gratitude to them. Currently, no record of Harper’s apology can be found in official government web or print sources. Matt James, a political scientist at the University of Victoria and a contributor to this collection, submitted a formal “Access to Information” request to obtain the apology text, but his application was denied. For further information regarding Matt James’s request, please see note 83 in his essay in this collection. 2 The Mela is an annual event organized by the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation. It was on 5 August 2006, at the 11th annual Gadri Babiyan Da Mela, that Harper first acknowledged the Komagata Maru history and pledged to “undertake consultations with the IndoCanadian community on how best to recognize this sad moment in our history.” Quoted in Jason Kenney, “Historical Recognition Program to the Indo-Canadian Community,” 10 May 2008, http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/discours-speeches/kenney/2008/20080510-eng.cfm. 3 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 15 May 2008, http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/ Publication.aspx?DocId=3504905 &Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=39&Ses=2. 4 “Sikhs unhappy with PM’s Komagata Maru Apology,” CBC News, 3 August 2008, www.cbc.ca/ canada/british-columbia/story/2008/08/03/harper-apology.html. 5 Ibid.

APPENDIX F FIRST WORLD WAR INTERNMENTS 1. The War Measures Act, 19141 In order to bolster security against a perceived domestic threat, the War Measures Act granted the federal cabinet extraordinary executive powers and also provided local authorities with wide discretionary powers in determining just cause for arrest and detention of potential “enemies” or un-naturalized immigrants. The bill was passed by parliament with little debate.

His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows: – … 2. All acts and things done or omitted to be done prior to the passing of this Act and on or after the first day of August, A.D. 1914, by or under the authority of or ratified by, – (a) His Majesty the King in Council; (b) Any Minister or officer of His Majesty’s Imperial Government; (c) The Governor in Council; (d) Any Minister or officer of the Government of Canada; (e) Any other authority or person; Which, had they been done or omitted after the passing of this Act, would have been authorized by this Act or by orders or regulations hereunder, shall be deemed to have been done or omitted under the authority of this Act, and are hereby declared to have been lawfully done or omitted. 3. The provisions of sections 6, 10, 11 and 13 of this Act shall only be in force during war, invasion, or insurrection, real or apprehended. 4. The issue of a proclamation by His Majesty, or under the authority of the Governor in Council shall be conclusive evidence that war, invasion, or insurrection, real or apprehended, exists and has existed for any period of time therein stated, and of its continuance, until by the issue of a further proclamation it is declared that the war, invasion or insurrection no longer exists. 5. It is hereby declared that war has continuously existed since the fourth day of August, 1914, and shall be deemed to exist until the Governor in Council by proclamation published in The Canada Gazette declares that it no longer exists; but any and all proceedings instituted or commenced by or under the authority of the Governor in Council before the issue of such last mentioned proclamation, the continuance of which he may authorize, may be carried on and concluded as if the said proclamation had not issued. 6. The Governor in Council shall have power to do and authorize such acts and things, and to make from time to time such orders and regulations, as he may by reason of the existence of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection deem necessary or advisable for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada; and for greater certainty, but not so as to restrict the generality of the foregoing terms, it is hereby declared that the powers of the Governor in Council shall extend to all matters coming within the classes of subjects hereinafter enumerated, that is to say: –

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(a) censorship and the control and suppression of publications, writings, maps, plans, photographs, communications and means of communication; (b) arrest, detention, exclusion and deportation; (c) control of the harbours, ports and territorial waters of Canada and the movements of vessels; (d) transportation by land, air, or water and the control of the transport of persons and things; (e) trading, exportation, importation, production and manufacture; (f) appropriation, control, forfeiture and disposition of property and of the use thereof. 2. All orders and regulations made under this section shall have the force of law, and shall be enforced in such manner and by such courts, officers and authorities as the Governor in Council may prescribe, and may be varied, extended or revoked by any subsequent order or regulation; but if any order or regulation is varied, extended or revoked, neither the previous operation thereof nor anything duly done thereunder, shall be affected thereby, nor shall any right, privilege, obligation or liability acquired, accrued, accruing or incurred thereunder be affected by such variation, extension or revocation. 7. Whenever any property or the use thereof has been appropriated by His Majesty under the provisions of this Act, or any order in council, order or regulation made thereunder, and compensation is to be made therefore and has not been agreed upon, the claim shall be referred by the Minister of Justice to the Exchequer Court, or to a Superior or County Court of the province within which the claim arises, or to a judge of any such court. 8. Any ship or vessel used or moved, or any goods, wares or merchandise dealt with, contrary to any order or regulation made under this Act, may be seized and detained and shall be liable to forfeiture, at the instance of the Minister of Justice, upon proceedings in the Exchequer Court of Canada or in any Superior Court. 9. Every court mentioned in the two preceding sections shall have power to make rules governing the procedure upon any reference made to, or proceedings taken before, such court or a judge thereof under the said sections. 10. The Governor in Council may prescribe the penalties that may be imposed for violations or orders and regulations made under this Act, but no such penalty shall exceed a fine of five thousand dollars or imprisonment for any term not exceeding five years, or both fine and imprisonment, and may also prescribe whether such penalty be imposed upon summary conviction or upon indictment. 11. No person who is held for deportation under this Act or under any regulation made thereunder, or is under arrest or detention as an alien enemy, or upon suspicion that he is an alien enemy, or to prevent his departure from Canada, shall be released upon bail or otherwise discharged or tried, without the consent of the Minister of Justice. 12. Section 3 of the Immigration Act, chapter 27 of the statutes of 1910, is amended by adding thereto the following subsection: – “2. No resident of Canada, whether he is a Canadian citizen or not, and whether he has a Canadian domicile or not, who leaves Canada to perform any military or other service for any country then at war with His Majesty, or for the purpose of aiding or abetting in any way His Majesty’s enemies, shall be permitted to land in Canada. Or remain therein, except with the permission of the Minister. If any such person is also prosecuted for any offence of which he may have been guilty, he shall be liable to undergo any punishment imposed upon him under such prosecution before he is deported.”

396 Appendix F: First World War Internments NOTE 1 An Act to confer certain powers upon the Governor in Council and to Amend the Immigration Act, Canada Gazette 1914, c. 6 s. 6. The 1927 emendation of this Act changed its long title so that “and to amend the Immigration Act” was replaced with “in the event of War, Invasion, or Insurrection,” thus emphasizing the conditions under which the measures could be applied. The 1927 revision also omitted sections 2, 5, and 13, and organized items 7, 8, and 9 under a new subheading, “Procedure.”

2. Order in Council of 28 October 19141 The Order in Council of October 1914, which launched the process of civilian internment during the First World War in Canada, required “aliens of enemy nationality” to report to local registry offices and outlined the conditions under which they could be detained as prisoners of war. This order marked Canada’s departure from international norms for the treatment of resident “enemy aliens” in wartime insofar as it called for a sweeping registration, deployed internment as an “intentional and purposeful” tactic, and opened the door for the use of internee labour on public and private projects.2 The order justifies its ordinances in terms of the protection of “public safety”; however, it also acknowledges widespread unemployment as another pressing condition. As Bohdan S. Kordan has written, by the spring of 1914 the government was forecasting an unemployment crisis that would affect the “ethnic labourer” most severely.3

The Committee of the Privy Council have had before them a report, dated 28th October, 1914, from the Minster of Justice, stating that it is expedient and necessary to take measures to prevent espionage and also to prevent alien enemies in Canada who are likely to render effective military assistance to the enemy from returning to the enemy’s service, and to provide for the proper supervision and control of such aliens as may be so prevented from leaving Canada, and the detention under proper conditions and maintenance where required of such of said aliens as it may be found necessary to intern as prisoners of war, and that it is likewise desirable considering the lack of opportunity for employment that aliens of enemy nationality who are not likely to add to the strength of the enemy’s forces and who desire and have the means to leave the country be permitted to do so; The Minister observes that it is considered probable that aliens of both classes will be found grouped in particular localities, principally within or in the immediate neighbourhood of the large cities and towns, The Minister, therefore, recommends that it be enacted by the Governor in Council under the authority of the War Measures Act as follows: – (1) One or more offices of registration shall be established in such cities, towns and other places as may be from time to time designated by the Minister of Justice, and an officer shall be appointed by the Governor in Council for each of the offices so established who shall be called “Registrars of Alien Enemies.” (2) The Registrars shall be under the immediate direction of the Chief Commissioner of Dominion Police who shall exercise general supervision over them in the performance of

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their duties and to whom they shall report as may be required. The Minister shall appoint such assistants to such registrars, clerks and other officers as may be necessary for the proper carrying out of the provisions of the present order. (3) It shall be the duty of a registrar to examine each alien of enemy nationality attending before him, and to register in a book to be provided for the purposes the name, age, nationality, place of residence in Canada and in the country of nationality, occupation, desire or intention to leave Canada and the names of the wife and children (if any) in Canada of every such alien and such other particulars necessary for the identification of such alien of enemy nationality or otherwise as may seem advisable. (4) Every alien of enemy nationality residing or being within any of the cities, towns or places so designated as aforesaid or within twenty miles thereof, shall as soon as possible after the publication in the Canada Gazette of a proclamation designating such city, town or place as one wherein a registry office is to be established under this ordinance, attend before the registrar or one of the registrars, for the city, town or place within or near which he is or resides and truly answer such questions with regard to his nationality, age, residence, occupation, family, intention or desire to leave Canada, destination, liability and intention as to military service, and otherwise, as may be lawfully put to him by the registrar. (5) No alien of enemy nationality shall be permitted to leave Canada without an exeat from a registrar; provided that the Chief Commissioner of Dominion Police may in any case, grant or cancel an exeat to an alien of enemy nationality who is registered. (6) The registrar may issue an exeat to an alien of enemy nationality if satisfied upon the examination and registry that such alien of enemy nationality will not materially assist, by active service, information or otherwise, the forces of the enemy. (7) If it appears to the registrar that any alien of enemy nationality who is not permitted to leave Canada may consistently with the public safety be suffered to remain at large, such alien of enemy nationality shall be required to declare whether or not he desires and has the means to remain in Canada conformably to the laws and customs of the country, subject to obligation to report monthly to the Chief of Police of the city where or in the neighbourhood of which he is registered. If yea, such alien of enemy nationality may be permitted his liberty, subject to the conditions aforesaid and the provisions of this ordinance. If nay, he shall be interned as a prisoner of war. The registrar shall report to the Chief of Police the names and addresses of those who elect to remain at liberty. Any alien of enemy nationality who in the judgment of the registrar cannot consistently with the public safety be allowed at large shall be interned as a prisoner of war. (8) If any alien of enemy nationality who is by the terms of this ordinance required to register, fails to do so within one month after publication of the proclamation referred to in section 4 of this ordinance or within seven days after the date when he shall by reason of his residence come within the description of those required to register, whichever date shall be last, or if he refuse or fail to answer truly any of the questions put by the registrar, or if, being registered he fail to report as hereinbefore required or to observe any of the conditions on which he is permitted to be at liberty, he shall in addition to any other penalty to which he may be therefore by law liable be subject to internment as a prisoner of war. (9) Where any alien of enemy nationality interned under the provisions of this order has wife or children living with and dependent on him, such wife and children shall be permitted to accompany him. (10) Such provision as may be necessary for the maintenance of aliens of enemy nation-

398 Appendix F: First World War Internments

ality interned as prisoners of war shall be made by the military authorities who may require such prisoners to do and perform such work as may be by them prescribed. (11) No alien of enemy nationality who is required to register shall be naturalized unless in addition to other requirements he produces and files with his application a duly certified certificate of a registrar that he is registered pursuant to the provisions of this ordinance and that his application for naturalization is approved by the registrar.

NOTES 1 Privy Council Order 2721, Canada Gazette, 1914, vol. 48. An Order in Council is the means by which the federal government can enact or alter legislation without having to obtain the approval of Parliament. It is an official decision declared by the “Governor in Council” or Governor General at the request of the federal cabinet and then published in The Canada Gazette, after which the order has the force of law. The “exeat” referred to in items 5 and 6 means an official permission to leave the country for a prescribed period. 2 Bohdan Kordan and Craig Mahovsky, A Bare and Impolitic Right: Internment and UkrainianCanadian Redress (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 20–3. 3 Bohdan S. Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War: Internment in Canada during the Great War (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 25.

3. Report on Internment Operations, 1914–19201 This report was presented to the minister of justice in September 1920 by Major-General Sir William Dillon Otter, who had been appointed as officer commanding internment operations following the Order in Council of 28 October 1914, which called for the registration and internment of “aliens of enemy nationality.” Otter was responsible for the care of internees from November 1914 on, when “the prospect of a large addition to the ‘interned’” meant that arrangements could no longer be conducted, as he wrote, “in a more or less haphazard way” and would need to be formalized and upgraded to meet the regulations of the Hague Convention (and to provide reliable intelligence to the Bureau of Information of England).2 Although Otter’s report refers to the international laws for the treatment of prisoners of war agreed upon in the Hague Conventions, historians such as Bohdan S. Kordan have observed that Canadian practice flouted these standards through its treatment of resident “enemy aliens” as captive military prisoners, subjecting them to extraordinary work regimes and abuses of power in the administration of the camps.3

Prisoners The total of male prisoners actually interned numbered some 8,579, the nationalities were various … Accompanying them were 81 women and 156 children; their families who were also provided with quarters and food in the camps to which the men were sent … They were arrested generally throughout the Dominion, many at the border leaving or coming into the country, while 817 were received from the British Islands of Jamaica, Barbadoes [sic], Bermuda, St Lucia and Newfoundland, with four from British Guiana,

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those from outside British possessions being maintained at the expense of their respective Governments.4 Of the total interned not more than 3,138 could be correctly classed as prisoners of war, that is captured “in arms” or belonging to enemy “reserves,” the remainder being “civilians” who under The Hague Regulations became liable to internment if considered to be “agents” attached to, the army or persons whose “activity is of service in the war.”5 It is also suspected that the tendency of municipalities to “unload” their indigent was the cause of the confinement of not a few.6 In trade or calling they were of all sorts, including ministers of the gospel, officers of navy and merchant service, and of the army reserves, merchants, professional men, mechanics, seaman and labourers. Administration Upon assuming charge of the “interned” my first duty was the promulgation of Regulation or Standing Orders for the administration of the several internment camps or stations, the foundation of which were the Rules of the Hague Convention, together with such additions or amendments as were particularly applicable to conditions in Canada. … Owing to the difference existing in their previous occupation and in order to observe the Hague Regulations, which call for a better quartering and subsistence of those of the officer class or its equivalent, it became necessary to divide our prisoners into 1st and 2nd classes.7 Again, many of the prisoners had wives and families dependent upon them for support, consequently when the bread winners were interned their women and children had to be cared for. This was accomplished in two ways, either by allowing families to remain at their former homes and issuing to them a monthly sum for rent, food and fuel, in which manner 40 women and 81 children were cared for, or by permitting them to accompany the men to the internment station and there providing for them. … [T]he necessary additional accommodation was only available at the Spirit Lake and Vernon camps. Discipline … Commenting upon the behaviour of those coming within the jurisdiction of Internment Operations, and considering the number, but little complaint can be made. There were of course a number of very vicious and insubordinate characters with whom stringent measures had to be adopted, particularly when the daily ration of food was reduced, and again over a question of what constituted obligatory and what voluntary labour, resulting in each instance in an incipient insurrection easily quelled.8 The Insane Insanity was by no means uncommon among the prisoners, many being interned it was suspected to relieve municipalities of their care, while in others the disease possibly developed from a nervous condition brought about by the confinement and restrictions entailed. In all instances such individuals were at once placed in insane asylums, being for the time supported by Internment Operations, and ultimately deported to their native countries,

400 Appendix F: First World War Internments

except three who have now been turned over to proper institutions in the provinces from which they came, the Federal Government being relieved of their charge … The Sick … As might be supposed under the circumstances the claims for admission to hospital were very numerous, every trifling ailment being made an excuse therefore. So many instances of tuberculosis appeared among the prisoners, that it was thought advisable to establish a separate hospital for their special treatment. This was first done at the Spirit Lake camp then later transferred to Kapuskasing, and in both places with great advantage owing to the climatic conditions of those locations. Altogether some 41 of such patients were treated, of whom 26 unfortunately died. Employment The Hague Regulations permit of three classes of employment by prisoners according to their rank and capacity, vis.: – 1 For the prisoners own comfort, cleanliness and health (obligatory) 2 For the advantage of the Government (paid) 3 For the service of private individuals or corporations (paid). Under the first is embraced self-cleanliness, ventilation and the order of their own quarters, together with the preparation of the food issued them. The second covers the erection and repairs to buildings, the clearing, draining, etc., of the property of the interning Government, and carries with it the “working pay” authorized for the soldier, which in Canada is 25 cents per day. For the third the conditions and rates of pay, it is prescribed, shall be settled in agreement with those in authority. As it happened all three modes came into operation and were prosecuted with more or less success, though at times objection was taken by many to doing their own chores; and while much work for the Government was performed … and considerable advantage gained, the enthusiasm shown was not very great as might be expected. … In connection with the third mode numerous individuals with a few municipalities and corporations made application for the prisoners’ labour, but difficulties occurred either in the wages offered or the provision of the necessary escorts by the militia force, that prevented their consummation, except in the case of the National Railways which when deprived of a large number of their road-gangs by the operation of the Military Service Act had recourse to the Internment camps and many prisoners were employed. … Another advantage arising from this employment of the prisoners labour was a direct benefit to the Government in the relief from all expense during the time employed likewise that of the subsistence of their escorts, besides affording a way of distracting the individual mind from the monotony and restraint of his internment. … Parole or Release Power is given by the Hague Rules for the paroling or releasing of interned prisoners upon certain conditions and during the years 1916 and 1917 when the most strenuous call of rein-

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forcements was made by the Allies, the depletion of men in many of the large corporations of the country was so keenly felt that application made for the services of our prisoners to supply the want, and as many of those were suitable for the purpose some 6,000 of Austrian nationality were released from confinement on signing a “parole” which demanded loyalty and obedience to the laws and a periodical report to the nearest police authority. This system proved a great advantage to the organization short of labour, and save with very few [exceptions], all those given freedom complied with the terms of their undertaking.

NOTES 1 Sir William Otter, Report on Internment Operations, 1914–1920 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1921). 2 Ibid., 77. 3 See Bohdan S. Kordan, Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War: Internment in Canada during the Great War (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s, 2002), 59–60. 4 Otter refers here to merchant marines, many of German origin, who were transferred to Canada from the Caribbean at the request of Britain. 5 On the “legally ambiguous position of the interned enemy alien – neither civilian nor military prisoner,” a position which “allowed a policy of systematic exploitation,” see Kordan, Enemy Aliens, 60. Most of those interned during the 1914–20 period were un-naturalized resident immigrants – ethnic Ukrainians coming from territories which had been absorbed by the AustroHungarian Empire – who were, as Kordan points out, “individuals existing outside the body politic” in Canada during an especially vulnerable period of deepening economic recession and unemployment (36–7). As Ukrainian immigrants gravitated towards cities in Western Canada, some municipalities concerned with a growing “indigent” or transient and unemployed population as a potential strain on resources and source of social unrest, as well as a source of “foreign” competition for scare work, used arrest and internment as a solution. 6 Otter here comments on this misuse of internment, but as Kordan notes, “What Otter failed to appreciate … was that the municipal governments had taken their cue from federal authorities, who had not only accepted internment as a legitimate policy option for dealing with the social effects of the economic crisis,” but had even gone so far as to prescribe internment and forced labour as fair treatment of those dependent upon the state’s charity. See Kordan, Enemy Aliens, 39. 7 The application of this Hague Conventions stipulation in Canada involved a distinction between Germans, seen as genuine prisoners of war, and Austro-Hungarians, who were seen as “civilian indigents,” members of an alien working underclass. See ibid., 75. 8 Lubomyr Luciuk cites a report written by G.C. Woodward, the American vice consul at Vancouver, describing the nature of the complaints made by prisoners at the internment camp in Morrissey, BC: “Without exception, the prisoners all complained regarding their imprisonment, as they claimed they had done nothing to warrant it and did not consider it in keeping with the Dominion order issued at the commencement of the war that alien enemies would be permitted the same rights as others in Canada so long as they complied with the registration laws and were peaceable and law abiding. A number of the prisoners had been residents of Canada, or the United States, for a long period, ranging from one to twenty years.” In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence: Canada’s First National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians,

402 Appendix F: First World War Internments 1914–1920 (Kingston: Kashtan Press/Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, 2001), 76. At the Otter Internment Camp in British Columbia, 50 internees in 1916 attempted to escape by tunnelling out below their shared tent at night. The article reporting the incident in the local newspaper, the Golden Star, explained: “For some time the prisoners have been unruly and surly, having refused to work on the road … Recently the Germans and Austrians refused to cut wood even for the camp, and as punishment were put on short rations and deprived of certain privileges” (Quoted in Kordan, Enemy Aliens, 110). For the text of two letters addressed by groups of prisoners at the Morrissey camp to the Swiss consul and the imperial German foreign office, appealing for their intervention and detailing conditions of unremitting forced labour, abuse, and ill treatment of sick internees, see ibid., 86–7 and 124–5.

4. Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, 20051 Bill C-331, introduced in 2001 by Inky Mark, Conservative MP for the Manitoba riding of Dauphin–Swan River–Marquette, received royal assent on 25 November 2005. The act represents the culmination of at least seventeen years of demands for acknowledgment and redress by Ukrainian Canadian organizations, beginning with the presentation of a brief by the Civil Liberties Commission of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee to a House of Commons Standing Committee on Multiculturalism in December 1987.2 The act itself acknowledges the internment that occurred under an Act of Parliament during the First World War and provides for negotiations between the government and specified Ukrainian Canadian organizations on commemorative measures. Although the act expresses Parliament’s “sorrow,” it rejects liability. In August 2005, representatives of the Ukrainian Canadian community signed an agreement-in-principle with the Government of Canada to accept symbolic redress in the form of funding through the Acknowledgement, Commemoration and Education (ACE) Program, to be administered by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko. With a subsequent change of government and replacement of ACE with the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP), funding allotments to particular groups were reduced and standardized, and the administration of these funds was transferred to the federal bureaucracy. The Ukrainian Canadian community voiced objections to these changes as paternalistic and homogenizing.3 In 2008 the Conservative government created a separate $10 million endowment for projects relating to the First World War internment, placing the endowment under the administration of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.4

Whereas persons of Ukrainian descent and other Europeans were imprisoned, disenfranchised and dispossessed of their assets without just cause at the time of the First World War and were kept there from 1914 to 1920; and Whereas it is beyond time that public recognition be made of this injustice and appropriate commemoration and public education undertaken; Now, Therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows: 1. This Act may be cited as the Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act.

Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, 2005

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Memorial plaques and museum 2. (1) The Minister of Canadian Heritage shall (a) cause memorial plaques to be installed at any of the twenty-four concentration camps at which persons of Ukrainian descent and other Europeans were interned during and after the First World War, which do not yet have such plaques, describing the events at that time and the regrets of present-day Canadians, written in Ukrainian, English and French; (b) ensure that all memorial plaques at concentration camps, whenever installed, are properly maintained; and (c) establish a permanent museum in Banff National Park, at the site of the concentration camp that was established there, with signage in Ukrainian, English and French, providing information on (i) the operation of all the concentration camps established in Canada at the time of the First World War; and (ii) the role that Ukrainian Canadians have played in the building of Canada since that time. (2) The Minister of Canadian Heritage shall arrange for suitable ceremonies at the time of installation of each memorial plaque and at the opening of the museum. 3. (1) The Minister of Canadian Heritage, in cooperation with the Minister of Finance, shall negotiate with the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association a suitable payment in restitution for the confiscation of property and other assets from Ukrainian Canadians. (2) The restitution payment shall be applied to (a) the development and production of educational materials that cover Canada’s past internment policies and activities and their distribution to schools, colleges and universities, with the objective of widening understanding of the harm of ethnic, religious or racial intolerance and discrimination, and the importance of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in protecting all Canadians from such injustice in the future; and (b) such other educational projects as are agreed to in consultation with the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. 4. The Minister of Public Works and Government Services shall instruct Canada Post Corporation to issue a stamp or set of stamps to commemorate the internment of persons of Ukrainian descent and other Europeans during the First World War. 5. The Minister of Justice shall undertake a review of the Emergencies Act and report to Parliament within a year of the date this Act comes into force with recommendations on any legislative changes necessary to ensure that unjust internment such as that described in the preamble never again occurs in Canada.

NOTES 1 Bill C-331, An Act to Acknowledge that persons of Ukrainian origin were interned in Canada during the First World War and to provide for recognition of this event, 1st sess., 38th Parliament, 2005 (assented to 25 November 2005), Statutes of Canada, 2005, c. 52. 2 The history of organized resistance to the internment is much longer and stretches back at least

404 Appendix F: First World War Internments as far as July 1916, when a mass meeting of Ukrainian Canadians in Winnipeg led to the drafting of a letter, signed by six Ukrainian Canadian newspaper editors, objecting to the mistaken classification of Ukrainians, a subject population of the Austro-Hungarian empire, as “Austrians.” The letter was published in the Manitoba Free Press and is reprinted in Loyalties in Conflict: Ukrainians in Canada during the First World War, ed. F. Swyripa and J.H. Thompson (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1983), 166–8. For the brief presented to the Standing Committee on Multiculturalism in 1987, see Lubomyr Luciuk, A Time for Atonement (Kingston, ON: Limestone Press, 1988). It should be noted that in September 1991, Peter Milliken, Liberal MP for the Ontario riding of Kingston and the Islands, put forward a motion that parliament acknowledge, commemorate, and undertake negotiations to redress the internment and disenfranchisement of Ukrainian Canadians between 1914 and 1920. In discussing this motion, members of Parliament unanimously agreed that Ukrainian Canadians had been wilfully misrecognized as “enemy aliens” during the First World War. Interestingly, the statements of MPs also echo each other in affirming the justice of the motion as a recognition of the exemplary status of Ukrainian Canadians as an ethnocultural group with a demonstrable history of contributing to Canada’s identity as a multicultural mosaic. See Government of Canada, House of Commons Debates, 27 September 1991, pp. 2867–72. Although the motion was passed unanimously in 1991, it was not until 2005 that a first agreement with representatives of the Ukrainian Canadian community was reached over the details of symbolic redress, under the ACE program of the Liberal government of Paul Martin. 3 See “Ukrainian Canadian Internment – Redress,” InfoUkes, http://www.Infoukes.com/ newpathway/11-2007_Page-7-2.htm. 4 Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association media release, “Establishment of a $10 Million Endowment,” http://www.uccla.ca/media.htm.

APPENDIX G SECOND WORLD WAR INTERNMENTS I. Italian Canadian Internment 1. Defence of Canada Regulations, 19391 The Defence of Canada Regulations of 3 September 1939 extended the emergency legislation of the War Measures Act, which had been put in force on 25 August 1939. The regulations outline a set of specific measures that would be required “in the event of war.” Below are laid out those for the treatment of “enemy aliens,” requiring their registration, their pledge not to commit or encourage acts of hostility towards Canada or its allies, and their subjection to examination by a local registrar. The regulations give the minister of justice the power to detain without trial those thought to be acting against Canada. They invoke the category of “enemy aliens,” without differentiating between those naturalized as British subjects and those remaining citizens of other states. Respecting Enemy Aliens 24. 1. All enemy aliens in Canada, so long as they peacefully pursue their ordinary avocations shall be allowed to continue to enjoy the protection of the law and shall be accorded the respect and consideration due to peaceful and law abiding citizens, and they shall not be arrested, detained or interfered with, provided they comply with the requirements in respect of registration prescribed in the next following Regulation, unless there is reasonable ground to believe that they are engaged in espionage, or are engaging or attempting to engage in acts of a hostile nature, or are giving or attempting to give information to the enemy, or unless they otherwise contravene any law, Order in Council, or Proclamation. 2. All enemy aliens who – (a) are members of enemy armed forces who attempt to leave Canada; (b) attempt to leave Canada, and in regard to whom there is reasonable ground to believe that their attempted departure is with a view to assisting the enemy; and (c) are engaged or who attempt to engage in espionage or acts of a hostile nature, or who give or who attempt to give information to the enemy, or who assist or attempt to assist the enemy, or who are on reasonable grounds suspected of doing or attempting to do any of the said acts; shall be arrested and detained. 3. The power to effect the arrest and detention of all or any person or persons coming within any of the classes mentioned in paragraph (2) of this Regulation shall be vested in the Commissioner, officers and constables of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and in such other persons as may be authorized so to do by the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 4. The authorities and officers mentioned … shall be authorized to release any such person so arrested or detained as aforesaid of whose good faith and responsibility they may be satisfied on his signing an undertaking …2 5. Any such person so arrested and detained as aforesaid, of whose good faith and responsibility the officer or authority making the arrest is not satisfied, or who refuses to sign such

406 Appendix G: Second World War Internments

undertaking or who, having signed such undertaking, fails to abide by its terms, shall be interned by such authorities and officers according to the usages and laws of war in such place as may be provided by the Department of National Defence; and, if it be deemed necessary that guards be placed on persons so interned, such guards to be furnished by the Department of National Defence. Pending internment any such person may be confined without warrant in any police station, lock-up or gaol, and the keeper or person in control of such police station, lock-up or gaol shall take and safely keep any such person so committed until he is interned or released. 6. All such authorities and officers who may exercise any of the powers prescribed in this Regulation shall report in each case to the Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, stating the name, address, and occupation of the person detained or paroled … 25. 1. … Offices of registration shall be established … and officers shall be appointed by the Minister of Justice for each of the offices so established, who shall be called Registrars of Enemy Aliens … 4. It shall be the duty of a Registrar to examine each enemy alien attending before him and to register in a book, to be provided for the purpose, the name, age, nationality, place of residence in Canada and in the country of nationality, occupation, desire or intention to leave Canada, the names of the wife and children, if any, in Canada of every such alien, and such other particulars necessary for identification of such enemy alien or otherwise as may to the Registrar seem advisable. Provision may be made by the Registrar General for the issue to each enemy alien registered in accordance with the provisions of this regulation of an identification document for which a fee sufficient to cover the cost thereof may be charged. 5. Every enemy alien shall … attend before the Registrar or one of the Registrars in the city, town or place within or nearest to which he is or resides, and truly answer such questions with regard to the matters referred to in paragraph (4) of this Regulation as may be put to him by the Registrar. 6. No enemy alien shall be permitted to leave Canada without an exeat3 from the Registrar General, but the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police may in any case grant or cancel the exeat to an enemy alien who has been registered. … 8. … Any enemy alien who in the judgment of the Registrar cannot consistently with the public safety be allowed at large shall be interned as a prisoner of war and any enemy alien who has been allowed at large by a Registrar may, upon the order of the Minister of Justice if in his judgment such alien cannot consistently with the public safety be at large, be interned as a prisoner of war. 9. If any enemy alien who is by the terms of this Regulation required to register, fails to do so within one month of the notice referred to in paragraph (5) of this Regulation or within seven days after the date when he shall by reason of his residence come within the description of those required to register, whichever date shall be last, or if he refuse or fail to answer truly any of the questions put by the Registrar, or if being registered he fail to report as hereinbefore required or to observe any of the conditions upon which he is permitted to be at liberty, he shall, in addition to any other penalty to which he may therefor by law be liable, be interned as a prisoner of war. 10. Where any enemy alien interned under the provisions of this Regulation has a wife

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and children living with or dependent upon him, such dependents may be permitted to accompany him. … 26. 1. Any enemy alien who has been interned under the provisions of this Part, may within thirty days of such internment, appeal against such internment to the nearest person designated by the Minister of Justice for the purpose of hearing such appeals, hereinafter referred to as “the Tribunal.” 2. A written notice of appeal signed by the appellant shall be filed with the Tribunal by the person having the custody of such appellant, who shall transmit a copy thereof to the Registrar General of Enemy Aliens.4 … 5. The release of the appellant, after the finding of the Tribunal, shall be in the absolute discretion of the Minister of Justice and he may, with or without the assigning any reason, order the release of the appellant or order the continued or further internment of the appellant for such period of time as he may think proper. … 8. A copy of this Regulation shall be posted in a conspicuous place in every place of internment.

NOTES 1 Defence of Canada Regulations (Ottawa: King’s Printers, 1939), 18–22. 2 The text of the “Undertaking” follows in the regulations, and requires signatories to report to officials; to obey any rules of conduct specially prescribed for them; and to abstain from taking up arms, committing acts of violence, communicating information about the Allies’ war efforts, or committing any act that would cause injury to Canada, Britain, or the Allied forces. 3 An exeat is an official permission to leave. 4 Internees who embarked on this appeals process were to have this notice recorded in their files.

2. Order in Council of 10 June 19401 This Order in Council of 10 June 1940 adds to the Defence of Canada Regulations of 1939 by placing special restrictions and requirements on German Canadians and Italian Canadians, whether of “alien” or “naturalized” status. The order names Germans and Italians specifically, referring to their “racial origin” (and indeed placing the burden of proving that one is not, in fact, of German or Italian “racial origin” on the individuals believed to be so). Whereas the Defence of Canada Regulations prohibited “enemy aliens” from “taking up arms,” this order prohibits the possession of firearms, even by Germans and Italians naturalized as British subjects. Japanese Canadians are not named, as the dislocation and internment of Japanese Canadians did not begin until December 1941, after the Japanese air-force attack on the American military base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

408 Appendix G: Second World War Internments

Whereas the Minister of Justice reports that it is considered desirable to require all aliens of German, or Italian racial origin and all persons of German or Italian racial origin who have become naturalized British subjects since the first day of September, 1929, to register in accordance with the provisions of regulations 24, 25 and 26 of the Defence of Canada Regulations: … Now therefore His Excellency the Administrator in Council, on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice and under and in virtue of the provisions of the War Measures Act, 1927, is pleased to amend the Defence of Canada Regulations 1939 as follows: … 2. By adding as regulation 37A the following: (1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in the Criminal Code the possession of firearms or any ammunition therefore or of any dynamite, gunpowder or other dangerous explosive within Canada by any person who is an alien or any person of German or Italian racial origin who has become a naturalized British subject since the first day of September 1929 is prohibited. (2) It shall be the duty of every such person within Canada having in his possession or upon his premises any firearm within ten days from the publication of this regulation in the Canada Gazette to cause such … to be delivered to a justice of the peace residing in or near the locality where such … is had in possession, or to an officer or constable of a police force of the province or city in or near such locality or to an officer or constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. … (4) If any such person within Canada is reasonably suspected of having in his possession or upon his premises any firearm … he may be searched or his premises or any place occupied or believed to be occupied by him may be searched by any peace officer or by any officer or constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police without warrant and if any firearm … be found upon the premises or person of any such person or in any such place as aforesaid the same shall be seized and if such search and seizure shall have taken place after the expiration of the period of ten days hereinbefore mentioned the property so seized may be forfeited to the Crown and the person upon whom or upon whose premises or in whose possession any such firearm … is found shall be guilty of an offence against this regulation. … (6) If any question arises under this regulation, or in any proceeding instituted thereunder, or with reference to anything done or proposed to be done under the authority thereof as to whether any person is an alien or a person of German or Italian racial origin who has become a naturalized British subject since the first day of September, 1929, the onus or proof that any person so suspected or charged is not an alien or is not a person who is naturalized as aforesaid shall lie upon the accused in such proceeding. 3. By adding as regulation 60A the following: (1) … [A] person who is detained under regulation 21 of these Regulations, or who is in lawful custody, charged with or convicted of any offence against these Regulations, may be photographed and measured by any constable or prison officer.

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NOTE 1 Privy Council Order 2505, Canada Gazette, 1940, vol. 73. An Order in Council is an official decision declared by the Governor General at the request of the federal cabinet. It is the means by which the federal government can enact or alter legislation without having to obtain the approval of Parliament.

3. “A National Shame: The Internment of Italian Canadians,” Brief Presented by the National Congress of Italian Canadians to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, 19901 With this brief, the National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC) launched its campaign for redress for the mistreatment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War, a campaign that would secure its most immediate goal of obtaining an apology from the government of Canada only ten months later.2 Encouraged by the successful campaign of the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) in obtaining an apology and compensation in 1988, the Montreal-based Canadian Italian Business and Professional Men’s Association (CIBPA) and the Toronto leadership of the NCIC came together to form a campaign for apology, with the intention of pursuing financial redress at a future point. As Franca Iacovetta and Robert Ventresca observe, internment provided a theme that could advance the role of the NCIC in particular as the “ethnic advocate” of a national constituency. The focus on apology was an attempt to avoid the potential divisiveness of the subject of financial compensation.3 The research for the brief drew on journalism and historiography, but not on individual testimony “because those involved thought it best initially to highlight ‘objective’ data, rather than personal reminiscences.”4 The brief “reads like a defence submission in a court case,” enumerating “incontrovertible historical ‘facts’” to establish the innocence of the interned in the face of the enduring stigmatization felt by internees, their families, and communities. 5 It stresses their loyalty to Canada, their ordinariness as men from “all walks of life,” and the absence of any “record of sabotage, insurrection, subversion or espionage.”6 As one of the less quantifiable but no less real “human costs” of internment, it emphasizes the emasculation of the family breadwinner. The full 26-page brief insists on the parallel between the treatment of Japanese Canadians and Italian Canadians during the Second World War and cites three paragraphs from the 1988 apology to Japanese Canadians, in which the government formally acknowledges the injury, pledges to prevent such events from recurring, and recognizes the “fortitude” and the contribution of Japanese Canadians “to the development of the Canadian nation.”7 A similar statement, the brief declares, “would go a long way towards resolving a difficult chapter in the history of Canada.”8 The choice of these paragraphs from the apology to Japanese Canadians is significant in terms of the demand for equitable payment in the symbolic good of state acknowledgment that it stresses. The citation of the Japanese Canadian apology is also important insofar as the language of acknowledgment and recognition anticipates the language of the programs that later Canadian governments would create in lieu of compensation payments of the kind made to Japanese Canadians.9

410 Appendix G: Second World War Internments

Introduction Canada to most of its citizenry and to the world is viewed as a noble country which embodies the highest democratic principles. These include respect for the individual, the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair hearing. And, while we may be admired, and justly so, by other nations, there is a period in our history which does not do us credit, for during World War II, none of the values noted above was visible or respected for a substantial number of Canadians. Thus Japanese Canadians, German Canadians and Italian Canadians, among others, were treated as enemies in their own country and suffered greatly at the hands of their fellow citizens and their government. As Canada moves into the twenty-first century, the time has come to make amends to the injured so that we may learn from our past and move confidently forward as a nation … “Enemy Aliens” On September 3, 1939, the Government of Canada issued the Defence of Canada Regulations … … As a result, the Italian Canadian population became the target of government, police and public attacks. Many lost their jobs, were separated from their families, had their houses vandalized and their children traumatized … On June 10, 1940, the very day that Italy entered the war against the Allies, the Canadian authorities launched a vast operation aimed at Italian Canadian individuals and groups among others.10 … … The actions taken by the government were outrageous, arbitrary and lacked factual proof of any subversion or danger to the State. Italian Canadians were on the whole law-abiding residents in comparison to other groups in Canada … W. Burton Hurd documents that a comparison of the 1921 and 1931 Canadian Census figures showed that the incidence of criminal activity was lower in southern, eastern and central European immigrants than in Anglo-Saxon, French and northern Europeans. If there was any apparent fascination with Fascism as was suggested in the years leading to June 10, 1940, this is dismissed by Joseph Anthony Ciccocelli in his Master’s thesis for the University of Western Ontario, 1977. He argues convincingly that “what many EnglishCanadians had mistaken to be an affinity for Fascism was in actuality a feeling of pride in the revitalization of Italy …”11 … Internment … Canadian Civilian Internment Statistics from September 4, 1939 to August 18, 1945 … report a total of 632 internees of Italian origin. These figures do not include people of Italian extraction sent to Canadian camps from England. The figures are also exclusive of the legitimate prisoners of war also held in Canadian camps. … Of this number, 552 or 87% were Canadian citizens. The harshness of the Canadian reaction can be seen when Canadian statistics are compared with those of the United States.12 …

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Immediately upon their arrival, the prison atmosphere was impressed upon these previously law-abiding and productive residents of Canada as their clothing was taken away from them and substituted with a uniform emblazoned with large red circles on the back for the purpose of giving the guards a visible target should anyone attempt to escape. No one ever did … Who were these internees? Firstly, they were all men between the ages of 16 and 70. Secondly, they encompassed all walks of life … Despite the attempt to fill their days, camp morale remained low. This is aptly documented by Mario Duliani in his account of his internment in La Ville sans Femmes …13 The most noticeable symptom was depression caused by the total lack of family interaction and the frustration at being unable to provide for their families in men whose foundation was the family. When any individual was finally released, he was required to sign an undertaking which was almost an admission of guilt, a guilt for crimes for which he had never been prosecuted and which he had not committed. … … They were neither granted the right to a fair hearing nor to seek legal counsel. They were at first denied any contact with their families who were frantic about the disappearance of their men. They were made to feel like prisoners in their own country. They were deprived of the warmth and consolation of their families. They worried about the economic deprivation their families had to endure without the salary of the main breadwinner. Their sense of purpose and their self-esteem were deeply eroded. They had no idea of what they had done to deserve their fate and when they would be released. The procedures for internment had been arbitrary: no court charge, no warrant of arrest. The “reasonable grounds” required for internment by the Order-in-Council of June 10, 1940 in fact consisted of suspicious reports by paid informers of dubious credibility, membership in associations with Italian names and, involvement with organizations roughly equivalent to the heritage language classes of today.14 … No one was ever charged! … The Human Cost … Many “enemy aliens” soon lost their jobs. … The harshness of these resolutions15 is all the more apparent if one considers that the jobs held by the Italian Canadians were manual in nature: cleaners, janitors, construction workers. They were hardly positions likely to be involved with sensitive, classified information … … For those who owned their own businesses, the situation was not much better. They soon became the targets of physical and economic violence. Numerous reports documented the smashing of windows of stores owned by individuals of Italian origin and … the physical and verbal abuse which they had to endure … For the families of internees, the situation was no better. The federal government froze their bank accounts. Women who could not rely on their husbands’ income could now also

412 Appendix G: Second World War Internments

not use their accumulated savings. Their properties were administered by the Custody of Enemy Alien Property constituted by authority of the federal government … Families were forced to subsist on $12.00 per month given to them by way of government assistance … … Redress Italian Canadians reacted with consternation both to the declaration of war by Italy and to the repressive measures against them in Canada. A typical reaction was that of the Piedmontese Society of Fort William which passed a resolution which repudiated the actions of Mussolini and the Fascist party in declaring war on the British empire and its allies … … Their response to the rounding up, the registration as “enemy aliens,” the sequestration of their properties, the economic hardships, the loss of family homes and businesses, the physical violence, the verbal abuse, the internment and the humiliation was one of measured stoicism. … Internment meant separations, humiliations, uncertainties about the future, worries about the economic and physical well-being of wives and children and loss of self-esteem. These costs can never be measured. Other costs of internment could be measured although no assessment has yet taken place. The loss of income for over 600 heads of families for an average period of 15.8 months can be quantified more readily. It would be much more difficult to assess the loss of income of those Italian Canadians who were not interned but who were fired from their jobs because of anti-Italian sentiment … The losses suffered by the Italian Canadian community must of necessity also include missed opportunities. This is particularly true of the education of children whose families required their labours to survive and who could not therefore afford to give them the luxury of going to school. These losses have had an unalterable effect on the individuals involved and their families but they are also losses suffered by all of Canada whose human resources have been so carelessly squandered. … What form of redress can ever be considered satisfactory for the grave injustices and serious losses suffered by Italian Canadians during and after World War II? To the extent that individual claims can be quantified, they should be compensated. It is, however, of paramount importance that recognition be given to the fact that a bleak page in Canada’s history has not yet been dealt with by Canadians. For this reason, it would be appropriate for the Government of Canada to express its regrets at the treatment of Italian Canadians during the Second World War. This the Government has already done in the case of Japanese Canadians. … Recommendations The National Congress of Italian Canadians therefore urges the Government of Canada to address this issue which has for so long been a blight on our national history by according to the Italian Canadian the same verbal redress as was given to the Japanese Canadian community … …

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… Ken Adachi refers to the Japanese Canadians as “The Enemy That Never Was” …16 That is an apt characterization, borne out by official documentation, of Italian Canadians as well. The time has come to recognize this, to rectify the errors of the past and to restore the positive image of Italian Canadians as significant contributors to this country of ours in this century.

NOTES 1 “A National Shame: The Internment of Italian Canadians,” brief by the National Congress of Italian Canadians, January 1990. Unpublished document on file with editors. Thanks to the NCIC for providing access to the document. The brief itself does not attribute its authorship to individuals, but Franca Iacovetta and Robert Ventresca indicate that it was written by Annamarie Castrilli, then NCIC president, and Alfred Folco. “Redress, Collective Memory, and the Politics of History,” in Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, ed. F. Iacovetta, R. Perin, and A. Principe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 407 n. 21. 2 See appendix G.I.4, below: “Address by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to the National Congress of Italian Canadians and the Canadian Italian Business Professional Association, November 4, 1990.” 3 Iacovetta and Ventresca, “Redress, Collective Memory, and the Politics of History,” 385. 4 Ibid., 386. Iacovetta and Ventresca are citing Castrilli’s use of the word “objective” in an interview; p. 407 n. 22. 5 Ibid., 389. The NCIC brief claims that community organization and advancement was hampered by this enduring stigmatization, until “the influx of a new wave of immigrants in the 1950’s.” NCIC, “A National Shame,” 21. 6 “A National Shame,” 10, 19. 7 Ibid., 22. 8 Ibid. 9 See appendix G.II.6, above: House of Commons Apology, 1988. 10 The brief provides 1941 census statistics to demonstrate the loyalty of Italian Canadians in the period: “90% of those described [in the census] as having Italian roots were Canadians either by choice or by birth.” “A National Shame,” 2. 11 Iacovetta and Ventresca note that the NCIC brief relies heavily upon the Ciccocelli thesis, along with a book chapter by Bruno Ramirez and a book by Kenneth Bagnell. “Redress, Collective Memory, and the Politics of History,” 407 n. 22. 12 Citing the work of Luigi Pennacchio, a University of Toronto doctoral student, the brief goes on to observe that while the United States government interned “10% of its Italian population … the Canadian government proceeded to constrain 34%.” “A National Shame,” 8. 13 Mario Duliani, The City without Women: A Chronicle of Internment Life in Canada during the Second World War, trans. Antonino Mazza (Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 1994). 14 These claims are qualified by Iacovetta and Ventresca, who note that at least before the war with Italy, the RCMP “had an accurate grasp of the nature of fascism” in local Italian Canadian communities, through the information it had collected by means of both paid and volunteer informants, some anti-fascists. They argue for careful differentiation between internees who actually held “prominent positions in satellite fascist organizations,” those who were “moderately involved in fascist activities,” and the “bootleggers” and “ordinary immigrants,” who were indeed wrongly interned. “Redress, Collective Memory, and the Politics of History,” 402–3.

414 Appendix G: Second World War Internments 15 The brief cites a 1989 Windsor Star article by Grace Macaluso that provides an account of the city council’s passing of several resolutions to exclude “enemy aliens” from employment by the city and to ban use of the Italian language in local church services. “A National Shame,” 15. 16 The brief here cites the title of Adachi’s monograph on Japanese Canadian internment, The Enemy That Never Was (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976).

4. Address by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to the National Congress of Italian Canadians and the Canadian Italian Business Professional Association, 19901 This apology was delivered to a luncheon meeting of the National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC) in the town of Concord, Ontario. The apology was secured through the work of the NCIC campaign for redress launched in January 1990 with a brief submitted to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (see appendix G.I.3, above). The timing of the apology may have been affected by the recent failure of the Meech Lake Accord on Canadian constitutional reform and controversies over ethnic representation on the contemporaneous Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future, a task force on national unity also known as the Spicer Commission.2 The NCIC campaign did not focus on the issue of financial compensation and Mulroney’s speech does not mention it. On the day following the apology, however, the NCIC announced that it would seek financial compensation “for the insult and injury” to Canadian citizens of Italian origin who were designated enemy aliens, as well as a form of community redress, “in the order of $10 million,” for commemorative and educational projects.3 Fifteen years later, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin promised funding for precisely such projects of public memory and pedagogy through a new Acknowledgement, Commemoration, and Education Program, which would, in turn, be superseded by the Conservative government’s Community Historical Recognition Program.

I am pleased and deeply honoured to have been invited to be with you here today. The theme of your conference – “Our Canadian Identity” – could not be more timely or more important. Whatever the “opinion poll of the month” might say, no issue facing Canada can be more crucial than our continuing as one country from sea to sea to sea. Over the past couple of decades, the ties that bind Confederation have frayed to a point that should be viewed with genuine concern by all Canadians. The future of this magnificent country of ours is at risk. We are in need of a new consensus on what kind of country we want. The patriation of the Constitution in 1982 without Quebec’s endorsement has had serious consequences for the attachment of the people of that province to Canada. The collapse of the Meech Lake Accord, after it had been unanimously agreed to by 10 Premiers, has further weakened that attachment. The failure of four First Ministers’ Conferences to resolve the issue of aboriginal self-government has provoked serious dissatisfaction, apparent across the country this summer. Economic policies that have been seen as protecting Central Canada at the expense of the West and Atlantic region have had an important impact on attitudes towards national institutions. The anger apparent across the country can also be traced to the fiscal policies

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of recent decades, which gave Canadians much more in government services than we paid for in taxes. The shortfall was covered by borrowing. Although it was nice while it lasted, the bills on that borrowing are coming due. We are all feeling the consequences of a $358 billion debt – dependence on foreign borrowing, increased taxes and limits on government services as Canada struggles just to pay the compound interest on our huge national debt. When the federal government most needs its economic strength to be able to reinforce unity, Ottawa is forced instead to focus on restoring the fiscal health of the nation. Canada’s financial ills seriously impair the federal government’s capacity to use economic levers to help strengthen Confederation, redress disparities or reduce the sense of grievance that individuals, communities and regions feel. It is not surprising that governments are criticised in these circumstances. Taken together, our current economic situation is exacerbating past grievances and current problems. But, we need to remind ourselves that Canada has had serious problems before. Exactly 100 years ago, Sir Wilfrid Laurier predicted the imminent collapse of Canada. In fact, every generation in Canadian history has faced difficult challenges – and has overcome them. It is now up to us to create a new consensus about what kind of country Canada is and how it must change with the times. Consensus can only come from the people. It cannot be imposed by governments. That is why, last Thursday, I announced the creation of an independent Citizen’s Forum under the leadership of Keith Spicer, to stimulate a new dialogue among Canadians about what unites us, and what we can and must do to preserve our unity and chart a new future. Canada’s great strength has been its capacity to renew itself – to build on the values of its past and to reinvigorate itself. This process has been aided enormously by the cultural, intellectual and economic transfusions of wave after wave of immigrants. The new immigration policy4 announced by Barbara MacDougall 10 days ago is an expression of our conviction that immigration continues to be a source of strength and growth for Canada, as it has been for our entire history as a country. When I became Prime Minister 6 years ago, Canada accepted 71,000 immigrants and 14,000 refugees per year. Since then, we have increased these numbers significantly each year. This year, Canada is expecting to welcome 158,000 immigrants and 42,000 refugees. In 1992, we are forecasting 197,000 immigrants and 53,000 refugees for a total of 250,000 new arrivals. Sadly, some critics of the new policy appear not to believe that Canada gains from immigration. My colleagues and I are convinced we do. Canadians who have chosen this country are often more fervently proud of it than people who were born here. In a time of national self-doubt, we have to learn from those who have uprooted their lives, crossed oceans and made sacrifices to come to our shores. A spirit of courage, self-reliance and hard work is what populated and built this country in the first place. It’s a spirit that is alive and well in the Italian Canadian community. And it is a spirit that underlies your community’s growing contribution to Canada. Countless numbers of distinguished Italian Canadians are making important contributions to this country. Annamarie Castrilli, your chairperson – who serves as Vice Chair of the Governing Council of the University of Toronto is one. Frank Iacobucci – whom I appointed to serve as Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Canada because he has one of the best legal minds in Canada, is another. Con Di Nino whose life-long commitment to the public service

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and to this community influenced my decision in appointing him to the Senate – and not because he was handy with a whistle or good on a kazoo! Vincent Della Noce, the M.P. for Duvernay, my colleague in the House of Commons has been serving as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Revenue and has emerged both as a fighter for justice in Parliament and a fighter for Canadian Unity in Quebec. Toronto itself is a prime example of the richness that flows from dozens and dozens of different cultures and backgrounds coming together. You only have to think about the Toronto of the 1950s and the Metropolis of today to see the difference. When President [Francesco] Cossiga visited Toronto and marveled at its Skyline, I told him, only partly in jest, that the first generation of Italian immigrants to Canada built those buildings – and the second generation owned them. The remarkable transformation of Toronto we have witnessed in recent years flowed directly from the diversity of the population, and the empowerment of newer communities. This flowering is a constant reminder of how Canada benefits when we have the wisdom to accept what is best from abroad, and the wisdom to preserve what is best from our past. The challenge we all face as a society of immigrants is to know what to accept and conserve and what to reject and discard. Our diversity implies openness to new blood and new ideas. In this sense, Canada is the prototype for the 21st Century. Our diversity is a source of immense pride for Canadians. And rightly so. But, the challenge we all face is to make sure that in respecting our diversity and our heritage we do not fragment our citizenship. Diversity cannot be an end itself, because by itself it means we have nothing in common. If Canada is to work and Canadian citizenship to mean something, we must affirm our common values – as the theme of your conference implies. The purpose of the new Citizen’s Forum under Mr. Spicer’s leadership is to stimulate discussion by Canadians of the values and interests and characteristics of this country and to renew our sense of common interest and common purpose. I cannot over-emphasise the importance of that task. I sincerely hope that those gathered in this hall today will participate in the Forum and share with other Canadians your own perspectives and reflections about what it is that should bring us together as Canadians. Building national unity is a process of replacing walls with bridges. Of replacing mistrust with tolerance. Of respecting diversity, and affirming a common identity. Renewal also requires facing up to the past. Renewal demands we build on what is valuable in our past, without flinching from acknowledging the regrettable. In this context, I want to discuss a particularly sad chapter of our history that directly affected some of you here today. And that concerns all Canadians. I am speaking, of course, about the harassment and internment of Canadians of Italian origin under the War Measures Act during World War II. It was not an isolated case. In fact, it was part of a pattern of discrimination practiced by the Government of Canada over a period of many years against Chinese-Canadians, Ukrainian-Canadians and others. Arbitrary immigration restrictions were imposed by the Government of Canada in the early 1940’s to bar the entry of European Jews at a time when they were desperate for refuge. And most blatant of all was the treatment of Japanese-Canadians. Silence kept our school children from learning about these practices, and meant the Government never admitted fault or responsibility. That silence has become as much a part of the discrimination, and as much a cause for shame, as the original deeds themselves.

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The silence ended on September 22, 1988. On that day, I was honoured to announce in the House of Commons that the Government of Canada had agreed with representatives of Japanese Canadians on a series of measures to right the extraordinary wrongs done to virtually the entire Japanese Canadian community during and after World War II, and to ensure that they were never repeated. On March 8 of this year I stated that the record would not be complete until we addressed ourselves to the wrongs suffered by other groups of Canadians. On May 23, in the House of Commons, I made clear this commitment included the indignity suffered by the Italian Canadian community between 1940 and 1943, a community that traces its Canadian roots back a hundred years. I am here today in part to advance that process. In the 1940s, more than 100,000 people of Italian origin called Canada home. These people – children, parents and grandparents, neighbours and friends were proud Canadians whose contributions to our country were enormous. Nevertheless, starting in June 1940 when Canada went to war with Italy, many Canadians of Italian origin were declared to be enemy aliens and were subjected to house searches, surveillance by the police, mandatory registration, employment discrimination and the denial of social services. About 700 were interned in camps – including twenty-one year old Julius Molinaro who is present here today. Following his release, he served honourably with the allied forces – and later enjoyed a distinguished career as a Professor at the University of Toronto. No doubt some people were possible security risks. They exist in all societies. Canada was engaged in a global struggle for freedom and democracy. The country had to defend itself. They were very difficult times. But it is in difficult times that our rights and freedoms mean the most. It is in difficult times we are put to the test. Canada, in 1940, was put to the test – and was found wanting. What happened to many Italian Canadians is deeply offensive to the simple notion of respect for human dignity and the presumption of innocence. The brutal injustice was inflicted arbitrarily, not only on individuals suspected of being security risks but also on individuals whose only crime was to being of Italian origin. In fact, many of the arrests were based on membership in Italian Canadian organisations – much like the ones represented here today. None of the 700 internees were ever charged with an offence and no judicial proceedings were launched. It was often, in the simplest terms, an act of prejudice – organised and carried out under law, but prejudice nevertheless. In 1988 my Government revoked the War Measures Act – so that never again will such injustices be inflicted on innocent and unsuspecting Canadians. By creating the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, we are also saying “never again.” But to say “never again” without explicitly and formally recognising as well that a wrong has been done is not enough. Forty-five years of silence about these wrongs is a shameful part of our history. The silence was maintained by Governments who thought the internments were either right or inconsequential. Well, we know they were neither. They were legally wrong and morally offensive. They showed as well that, when things got tough, the Government of Canada was not above blaming the newcomers with unusual-sounding names, not beyond scapegoating minorities still struggling in many cases to learn English or French. This is a crucial issue and I want to be clear. This kind of behaviour was not then, is not now, and never will be acceptable in a civilized nation that purports to respect the rule of law. On behalf of the government and the people of Canada, I offer a full and unqualified apology for the wrongs done to our fellow Canadians of Italian origin during World War II.

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I am pleased to announce today that, during this session of Parliament, I will rise in the House of Commons and extend a formal apology to all Members of the Italian Community for this unspeakable act, and to other Canadians who have suffered similar grievances. Too often prejudice still stains our reputation as a country devoted to the protection of human rights. Bigotry still often lurks in the darkest corners of the human mind. But Canada is no longer the country that interned its own people in two world wars and that discriminated against immigrants from many parts of the world for a century. We have learned from our mistakes. It is to recognize and cement that change of attitude that my colleague, the Secretary of State and Minister of State for Multiculturalism and Citizenship, will begin discussions with representatives of the Italian-Canadian community and of other aggrieved ethno-cultural groups to discuss how best to symbolize our recognition of the discrimination some Canadians suffered at the hands of the government.5 That Canadians were interned unjustly must never be forgotten. It’s a matter of simple justice. It is in that spirit that we will proceed. Thank you very much.

NOTES 1 Government of Canada, “Notes for an Address by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to the National Congress for the Italian Canadians and the Canadian Italian Business Professional Association, Toronto, November 4, 1990.” Unpublished document on file with editors. Thanks to Matt James and Alan Cairns for providing access to this document. 2 Franca Iacovetta and Robert Ventresca make this point about the timing of the apology in “Redress, Collective Memory, and the Politics of History,” in Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, ed. F. Iacovetta, R. Perin, and A. Principe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 383. 3 John Deverell and Jonathan Ferguson, “Italians to seek wartime redress,” Toronto Star, 5 November 1990. This position was voiced by the new NCIC president, Alfred Folco, on the day following the apology. As Iacovetta and Ventresca observe, most of the immediate media responses were celebratory, including those in the Italian-language media. However, the NCIC quickly responded to the apology’s skirting of compensation by forming a Redress Committee that held public hearings in four Canadian cities. While internees had not been interviewed by the researchers who wrote the 1990 NCIC brief to the government (see appendix G.I.3, above: “A National Shame”), these public hearings heard testimony from former internees and their families, and also discussed the issue of financial redress. Iacovetta and Ventresca, “Redress, Collective Memory, and the Politics of History,” 381, 386. In the mid-1990s, in its negotiations with government, the Redress Committee pushed for a state response to the internments that was comparable to the Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement. These negotiations failed as the government offered less substantial, largely symbolic, gestures of commemoration. In 1994, without consulting the Redress Committee, the NCIC at its biennial convention passed resolutions to close the campaign for financial compensation. Ibid., 387. 4 Providing demographic and economic rationales, the Conservative government raised immigration levels from 175,000 to up to 250,000 a year with this five-year immigration plan. The policy referred to a projected decline in the growth rate of the Canadian population and to data associating new immigrants with positive economic outcomes. Daiva Stasiulis, “Symbolic Representa-

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tion and the Numbers Game: Tory Policies on ‘Race’ and Visible Minorities,” in How Ottawa Spends: The Politics of Fragmentation, ed. F. Abele (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991), 236–7. The announcement also followed discussion within the Conservative party on the question of how to improve the party’s links with “ethnic communities.” Hugh Windsor, “McDougall wins source of voters for Conservatives,” Globe and Mail, 24 October 1990. 5 In fact, four years later, the secretary of state for multiculturalism, Sheila Finestone, would issue a letter rejecting redress claims from a number of communities claiming historical injuries. See appendix G.I.5, below.

5. Letter from Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Rejecting Redress Claims, 19941 This letter presents the decision by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney to reject claims for financial redress made by eight ethnic advocacy organizations for historical injustices experienced by their communities in Canada. The letter was tabled in parliament on 14 December 1994. Signed by Sheila Finestone, secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women, the letter was sent to the presidents of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Chinese Canadian National Council, the National Congress of Chinese Canadians, the German Canadian Congress, the National Association of Canadians of Origins in India, the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. This blanket rejection of claims for financial compensation was superseded by the approach formulated a decade later, and crystallized in Liberal and Conservative government programs focused on the distribution of targeted funding for commemorative public-pedagogy projects.

As Canadians, we are proud that our citizens trace their origin to every part of the world. Together, we have built this country on the principles of fairness, generosity and compassion. Our history records the remarkable success we have achieved by applying those principles. Our history also records that, at times, we have strayed from them. There have been episodes that have caused suffering to people. In the crisis atmosphere of war, some Canadian ethnocultural communities found their loyalty questioned, their freedom restrained and their lives disrupted. In the past, Canada enforced some immigration practices that were at odds with our shared commitment to human justice. Canadians wish those episodes had never happened. We wish those practices had never occurred. We wish we could rewrite history. We wish we could relive the past. We cannot. We can and we must learn from the past. We must assure that future generations do not repeat the errors of the past. Seeking to heal the wounds caused by the actions of previous governments, six ethnocultural communities have requested redress and compensation totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The Government understands the strong feelings underlying these requests. We share the desire to heal the wounds. The issue is whether the best way to do this is to attempt to address the past or to invest

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in the future. We believe our only choice lies in using limited government resources to create a more equitable society now and a better future for generations to come. Therefore, the Government will not grant financial compensation for the requests made. Indeed, we believe our obligation lies in acting to prevent these wrongs from recurring. The Government will continue to take concrete measures to strengthen the fabric of Canadian life by combating racism, prejudice and discrimination through education, information and the promotion of the value of fairness. We have already made progress. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms now guarantees equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination. Through the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, we are committed to the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in shaping Canada’s destiny. Through passage of the Canadian Human Rights Act and through our upholding of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, we have moved ahead in entrenching the precept of equality. A further major step forward is the establishment of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. The Government will proclaim the Act establishing the Foundation in the Spring of 1995. The Foundation, first proposed a decade ago, will play a fundamental role in moving towards the elimination of racial discrimination in Canada. We honour the contribution of all those communities whose members, often in the face of hardship, persevered in the building of our land. Together, we must ensure that all Canadians can face the future with pride in Canada, in our values and in their own heritage. We are a nation of inclusion. Our task is to strive together to guarantee that the actions of this country match the principles of its people.

NOTE 1 Sessional Papers, 14 December 1994, Letter tabled in Parliament on 14 December 1994, signed by Sheila Finestone, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, rejecting redress claims by several minority groups. PAC RG 14, 1995–1996/668, box 13, 8525-351-22.

6. Agreement-in-Principle between the Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community, 20051 This agreement was signed on 12 November 2005 by the government of Liberal prime minister Paul Martin and an Italian Canadian community represented by the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the National Federation of Canadian Italian Business and Professional Associations, the Order of Sons of Italy of Canada, and La Fondation communautaire canadienne italienne du Québec.2 In spite of the former prime minister’s 1990 speech (see appendix G.I.4, above), this agreement stresses that funding for commemorative initiatives under a new Acknowledgment, Commemoration and Education (ACE) Program stands as a substitute for apology and compensation. 3 The ACE strategy of marrying official acknowledgment of past injustice with celebration of the group’s historical contribution to nation building is evident in government press releases announcing the program. In his announcement of the agreement, Martin praised the Italian community’s national

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contribution in terms of “diversity as a source of strength and innovation.”4 The language of the agreement is notable for its stress on the links between public memory making and the fostering of social cohesion.

Canada is one of the world’s most ethnically and culturally diverse societies and recognizes diversity as a source of strength and innovation. However, Canada’s past includes actions that are inconsistent with the values Canadians hold today. As a result of the Second World War, Italians in Canada were designated as enemy aliens. As well, under the authority of an Act of Parliament, some Italians in Canada and some persons of Italian origin were interned. Members of the Italian Canadian Community have a strong interest in commemorating and educating Canadians on the unique and significant contributions of Italian Canadians to shaping Canada’s history. The Government of Canada is committed to learning from the past, and to efforts and resources for a forward-looking approach aimed at strengthening social cohesion and Canadian identity. To demonstrate its commitment, the Government of Canada, in its 2005 Budget, announced funding of $25 million over three years to the Multiculturalism Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage to acknowledge, commemorate and educate Canadians about the historical experiences of ethnocultural communities affected by wartime measures and immigration restriction. Initiatives funded through this program will seek to highlight the contributions made by impacted communities in the building of our country. The Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community have developed this Agreement-in-Principle, premised on the principles of “no compensation” and “no apology.” This is a first step in articulating their shared vision for the acknowledgement, commemoration and education of Canadians on the historic experience of Italians in Canada who were designated as enemy aliens and some of which, as well as some persons of Italian origin, were interned. It also highlights the contributions that the Italian Canadian Community has made to building Canada. It is the intention of both parties that a final agreement, including additional funding and an appropriate acknowledgement by the Government of Canada of national internment operations, will be concluded as soon as possible. The Government of Canada plans to provide an initial amount of $2.5 million to the National Congress of Italian Canadians Foundation through the Acknowledgment, Commemoration and Education (ACE) Program. The National Congress of Italian Canadians Foundation will co-ordinate, in consultation with the National Federation of Canadian Italian Business and Professional Associations, the Order Sons of Italy of Canada and La Fondation communautaire canadienne italienne du Québec, the implementation of commemorative projects over the next three years on behalf of the Italian Canadian Community. This initial amount will enable the community to commence work on forward-looking proposals that will help commemorate their historical experience and educate Canadians about these experiences; highlight and commemorate the contributions that the Italian Canadian Community has made to Canada; and promote cross-cultural understanding and a shared sense of Canadian identity. The Government of Canada, through the Minister of State (Multiculturalism), and the Italian Canadian Community, through its designated representatives, agree to continue to

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work together toward a formal agreement to help build a better understanding among all Canadians. The Government of Canada’s contribution pursuant to this Agreement-in-Principle is subject to: 1 the approval of the terms and conditions and the funding for the ACE Program by Treasury Board; 2 the annual appropriation by the Parliament of Canada for this purpose; 3 the conclusion of a contribution agreement. This Agreement-in-Principle shall not be interpreted as a full and final agreement nor as constituting an admission by the Government of Canada of the existence of any legal obligation of the Government of Canada nor as foregoing/limiting any person(s) right to advance or initiate an action/claim against the Government of Canada, nor shall this Agreement-in-Principle be interpreted by any of the signatories as representing the interests of all Italian Canadians.

NOTES 1 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Agreement-in-Principle between the Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community,” 2005, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/ laws-policy/agreements/italy/italy.asp 2 A similar “Agreement-in-Principle” was signed later the same month with the National Congress of Chinese Canadians to fund public pedagogy projects regarding the imposition of the head tax. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/laws-policy/agreements/china/china.asp. 3 In May 2008, the Liberal government’s ACE program was superseded by the new Conservative government’s Community Historical Recognition Program. In March of 2009, claiming that the “deal” with Italian Canadian organizations initiated by the previous government was neither completed nor formalized, Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney said $5 million in funding for commemorative projects by the Italian Canadian community would now have to be negotiated through the CHRP (CBC Radio, “The World at Six,” 24 March 2009). Like the former ACE program, the CHRP accepts proposals for projects commemorating wartime measures and immigration restrictions; however, these proposals are now reviewed by appointed community advisory committees who advise the minister on the merits of the proposals. In a 23 March 2009 news release, the NCIC objected to the government’s appointment of an advisory committee within the CHRP to represent Italian Canadians as a move that was undemocratic and unfair, arguing that according to the 2005 agreement-in-principle, it was the NCIC Foundation that was to administer a settlement of $12.5 million. “The National Congress of Italian Canadians Responds to Minister Kenney’s Announcement Regarding the Community Historical Recognition Program: A Shameful Attempt to Divide and Conquer,” Canadian News Wire, 23 March 2009, http://newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2009/23/c3498.html. As of April 2011, no act of Parliament acknowledging the wartime internment of Italian Canadians has been passed; however, Bill C-302, “An Act to recognize the injustice that was done to persons of Italian origin through their ‘enemy alien’ designation and internment during the Second World War, and to provide for restitution and promote education on Italian Canadian history,” had passed through third reading in the House of Commons and was at the second reading stage in the Senate.

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4 Angelo Persichilli, “Ottawa announces $2.5 million for internment ‘fund,’ but offers no apologies,” Tandem News [Toronto], 20 November 2005, http://www.tandemnews.com/viewstory. php?storyid=5754.

II. Japanese Canadian Internment and Relocation 1. National Emergency Transitional Powers Act, 19451 The many wartime Orders in Council passed by the Government of Canada to contain and displace Japanese Canadians have been published and discussed at length elsewhere.2 For the most part, this group of appendices foregrounds, instead, the long genealogy of resistance work by a range of Japanese Canadian organizations. To begin this section, however, we include one crucial piece of legislation that sought to extend into the post-war period the “state of emergency” fomented to discriminate against Japanese Canadians. Passed on 18 December 1945, the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act remained in force until 31 March 1947, at which time the Constitution of Transitional Measures Act was ratified to further prolong specific wartime strategies of control.3 The draft of the 1945 National Emergency Transitional Powers Act included the authority to deport Japanese Canadians to Japan after the war, despite the fact that they were Canadian citizens. Due to strong resistance in parliament, the clause regarding forced deportation was removed. And, yet, Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King found a way to bypass parliament by convening his cabinet “just before the expiry of the War Measures Act,” and passing an Order in Council that invested the government with the “power to deport.”4 As Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi note, “Orders in council made under the War Measures Act were extended automatically” and, most importantly, were not subject to parliamentary approval.5 Thus began the post-war policy of compelling Japanese Canadians to “‘choose’ between ‘dispersal’ east of the Rockies, or ‘repatriation’ to Japan.”6

… And whereas the national emergency arising out of the war has continued since the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan and is still continuing; And whereas it is essential in the national interest that certain transitional powers continue to be exercisable by the Governor in Council during the continuation of the exceptional conditions brought about by the war and it is preferable that such transitional powers be exercised hereafter under special authority in that behalf conferred by Parliament instead of being exercised under the War Measures Act; And whereas in the existing circumstances it may be necessary that certain acts and things done and authorized and certain orders and regulations made under the War Measures Act be continued in force and that it is essential that the Governor in Council be authorized to do and authorize such further acts and things and make such further orders and regulations as he may deem necessary or advisable by reason of the emergency and for the purpose of the discontinuance, in an orderly manner as the emergency permits, of measures adopted during and by reason of the emergency: Therefore His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows: –…

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Powers of Governor in Council 2. (1) The Governor in Council may do and authorize such acts and things, and make from time to time such orders and regulations, as he may, by reason of the continued existence of the national emergency arising out of the war against Germany and Japan, deem necessary or advisable for the purpose of (a) providing for and maintaining the armed forces of Canada during the occupation of enemy territory and demobilization and providing for the rehabilitation of members thereof, (b) facilitating the readjustment of industry and commerce to the requirements of the community in time of peace, (c) maintaining, controlling and regulating supplies and services, prices, transportation, use and occupation of property, rentals, employment, salaries and wages to ensure economic stability and an orderly transition to conditions of peace; (d) assisting the relief of suffering and the restoration and distribution of essential supplies and services in any part of His Majesty’s dominions or in foreign countries that are in grave distress as the result of the war; or (e) continuing or discontinuing in an orderly manner, as the emergency permits, measures adopted during and by reason of the war (2) All orders and regulations made under this Act or pursuant to authority created under this Act have the force of law while this Act is in force and, together with orders and regulations made under the War Measures Act or pursuant thereto, shall, for the purposes of the Interpretation Act, be deemed to be regulations. … 3. (1) The Governor in Council may prescribe penalties by way of fine or by way of imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or by way of both fine and such imprisonment, that may be imposed for violation of orders or regulations made under this Act and may also prescribe whether, and the circumstances in which, the said penalties shall be imposed upon summary conviction or upon indictment or upon either summary conviction or indictment. (2) Any goods, wares or merchandise dealt with contrary to any order or regulation made under this Act may be seized and detained and shall be liable to forfeiture at the instance of the Minister of Justice, upon proceedings in the Exchequer Court of Canada, or in any Superior Court, and any such Court may make rules governing the procedure upon any proceedings taken before such Court or a Judge thereof under this section. 4. Without prejudice to any other power conferred by this Act, the Governor in Council may order that the orders and regulations lawfully made under the War Measures Act or pursuant to authority created under the said Act … shall, while this Act is in force, continue in full force and effect subject to amendment or revocation under this Act. … NOTES 1 An Act to confer certain transitional powers upon the Governor in Council during the National Emergency arising out of the war, Statutes of Canada, 1945, c. 25.

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2 See Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991). 3 The Constitution of Transitional Measures Act was kept in force until 1951. 4 Miki and Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time, 25. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 49.

2. “We Must Fight Deportation,” The New Canadian, 19451 The New Canadian: Voice of the Nisei was established in November 1938 by members of the Japanese Canadian Citizens’ League in an attempt to “educate the public about Japanese Canadians’ loyalty to their country and belief in democratic values.”2 The newspaper “became a major vehicle in the formation of a ‘nisei voice’” – the voice of the first generation of Canadian-born Japanese children.3 As Euro-Canadian discrimination and xenophobia towards the Japanese Canadian community intensified during the Second World War, The New Canadian became a powerful platform for asserting Japanese Canadian rights and articulating resistance to the government’s discriminatory policies. Despite the fact that the paper fell under the censorship of the B.C. Security Commission after 1942, it continued publishing during the internment years, operating out of the internment camp in Kaslo, BC.4 In the post-war era, The New Canadian became a forum for the redress movement and continued its activist work until it ceased publication in 2001. The article featured here protests the forced “repatriation” of Japanese Canadians back to Japan. Distributed by the RCMP in internment camps, repatriation request forms were often signed under coercion, since government officials presented the Japanese Canadian community with only two options: families could request to be “repatriated” to Japan, or they could immediately move themselves and their families east of the Rockies. As Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi note, “repatriation” is a misnomer, a “euphemism for what was, in actuality, a forced exile; the ‘patria’ or country of birth for the majority of these citizens was Canada, so they could not, in this sense, be ‘repatriated’ to Japan.”5

There is an urgent need for Japanese Canadians everywhere in Canada to back the fight to prevent the deportation of over 10,000 people of Japanese origin who signed documents requesting repatriation but who now wish to remain in Canada. The reasons for signing those documents are best known to us who shared their anxiety, fears and bewilderments since evacuation. We have shared their despairs as a series of injustices were added to law-abiding aliens and loyal Canadian citizens. We know that some gave up hoping for justice and signed in despair. Some became bitter and signed in protest of injustices, and some because they were misguided by a small minority of unthinking, irresponsible leaders in British Columbia’s interior towns. But we know that the greatest number signed because they believed that was the only alternative to being pushed into a dark and uncertain future. The registrations for repatriation carried out this year was [sic] not a fair test of determining those who wanted to return to Japan after the war. Strong influences were exerted, not only in the terms laid down during the registration, but in the painful memories of treatment accorded these people since Pearl Harbor.

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Now the government is seeking powers to proceed with the revocation of nationality and deportation of these people, none of whom have been charged with any acts of disloyalty during the war. We must not allow that to happen within a re-examination of the whole sordid affair. Why were only the people of Japanese race, including Canadian citizens, asked under highly unfavorable circumstances to sign documents requesting repatriation? Why were they threatened in British Columbia to be cut off the Commission payroll if they did not sign those documents? Why were they not permitted to go apple-picking, to work in sawmills, to seek any employment in British Columbia if they did not sign? And why were those documents provided immediately, before the dates set for registration, for those [who] wished to sign and thereby be allowed to seek employment in British Columbia? Why were those who did not sign required to go east when there was no assurance that they could remain in the east after the war, and when so many who had been made destitute or deprived of their means of livelihood through evacuation were not provided with reasonable financial aids needed for re-establishment? Why were there so many requesting repatriation in Canada when there were so few in the United States and Hawaii? These are some of the questions that have been raised to which we must demand satisfactory answers from the government. It is not our intent to prevent the deportation of disloyal people. But it is the moral responsibility of each of us to demand a fair trial for those who wish to retain their Canadian citizenship and wish to remain in Canada, and for those who claim, with supporting evidences, that they signed the documents unwillingly, or through a belief that they would be allowed to change their minds after the war when the hysteria caused by war had subsided. It is necessary to bring to light all the details of Canada’s treatment of Japanese Canadians since Pearl Harbor, and the distresses they suffered which in some cases clouded their judgments. What is clearly needed is a re-examination of the whole affair and a fair trial to all those now under threat of deportation. Surely it is not unreasonable to ask these privileges for a minority group in a democratic country. It is also our duty as loyal Canadians to see that Canada shall not be guilty of an act so tainted with racialism that it would irretrievably damage Canada’s reputation in the regard of other nations. Some thousands of Niseis and their families are under threat of exile in an alien land, which can only mean suffering, diseases and hunger. They need our support. The danger is not theirs alone – the fundamental rights of all Japanese Canadians is [sic] being threatened. The Japanese Canadian Committee for Democracy is conducting a vigorous protest movement against compulsory deportation, and it is successfully rallying public opinion in Toronto. But so far there has been little active participation in the protest by other Nisei organizations on whose members and executives a grave responsibility has been placed. … It is time for emergency meetings, and to join our efforts in a concerted protest against the government’s action which disregards the basic principles of humanity and justice.

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NOTES 1 “We Must Fight Deportation,” The New Canadian, 10 November 1945. 2 Roy Miki, Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004), 36. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 45. 5 Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991), 49.

3. Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, “Memorandum for the Members of the House of Commons and Senate of Canada on the Orders-inCouncil P.C. 7355, 7356, 7357, for the Deportation of Canadians of Japanese Racial Origin,” 19461 This memorandum was prepared by the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians (CCJC), a “broad-based national coalition of over thirty organizations, including labour and church groups, civil liberties and professional associations,” created in 1945 to lobby against the government’s persecution of Japanese Canadians.2 Prior to the submission of this memorandum, in consultation with the Japanese Canadian Committee for Democracy (a group of nisei formed in 1943 to petition for Japanese Canadian civil rights), the CCJC had challenged the government’s decision to deport those who had earlier signed repatriation request forms.3 The matter had been presented to the Supreme Court of Canada which ruled, in February 1946, that the federal government did have the “legal right, under the War Measures Act, to deport Japanese Canadians, but with one exception: the wives and dependent children who had not signed for ‘repatriation’ were exempt.”4 Following that ruling, the CCJC distributed to Members of the House of Commons and Senate this memorandum deploring the deportation orders, a document that also served as notification of an appeal of the Supreme Court’s decision. Though the Privy Council would uphold the Supreme Court’s findings, the political pressure effected by the CCJC’s protest eventually pushed then prime minister Mackenzie King to cancel the deportation orders; by that point, however, more than 4000 persons had already been sent to Japan.5 The memorandum was given a second life when an excerpt was reproduced by Joy Kogawa at the end of her 1981 novel of Japanese Canadian internment experience, Obasan.

To the Honourable the Members of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada: 1. The Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians is a committee of Canadian citizens and organizations which has co-operated to oppose injustice to Canadians of Japanese origin. Branches of the organization exist in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Guelph, Brantford, Hamilton and London … They represent the widespread feeling of concern by Canadians of every walk of life,

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2.

3.

4.

5.

political party and province, that the deportation of Japanese-Canadians would be a blot upon Canada’s record. The Governor in Council passed three Orders-in-Council on December 15th, 1945. These orders provided for the “deportation” to Japan of five different classes of people. (1) Japanese Nationals who signed requests for repatriation. (2) Naturalized persons of the Japanese race who signed a request for “repatriation” and did not revoke it before September 1, 1945. (3) Canadian-born citizens of the Japanese race who did not revoke the request before the making of orders for deportation. (4) Wives and children under 16 of any to be deported under the above classes. (5) Japanese Nationals or naturalized persons of the Japanese race recommended by the Loyalty Commission (not yet appointed by the Government) to be deported after inquiry as to their activities, loyalty and extent of co-operation with the Government of Canada. On November 21, 1945, the Minister of Labour made an announcement to Parliament that there were a total of 10,347 involved in the voluntary requests for repatriation. Of this number, 6844 actually signed requests, and the remainder (3503) were dependent children under the age of 16, of those who signed. Of the 6844, 2923 were Japanese Nationals, 1461 naturalized Canadians, and 2460 Canadian born. These Orders-in-Council were passed under the authority delegated to the Governorin-Council by Parliament under the War Measures Act, to make orders and regulations deemed necessary by reason of war. The War Measures Act ceased to have effect on the 1st of January, 1946, but the Orders remained in force by reason of the National Transitional Emergency Powers Act which permitted the Governor-in-Council to continue Orders made under the War Measures Act. The Governor-in-Council accordingly passed P.C. 8418 continuing all Orders-in-Council in effect. The legality of these Orders was referred by the Government to the Supreme Court of Canada who decided by a majority that the Orders-in-Council were invalid insofar as they applied to the wives and children of those concerned. A majority of the Court, however, held that they were valid in respect to the other classes to be deported. The Co-operative Committee have entered an appeal to the Privy Council. The Orders are not sub judice in any respect except as to the narrow question of legal power. As the Judgments in the Supreme Court of Canada make abundantly clear, the Courts are only concerned with the legality of the Orders and not with the policy or the moral justice of the policy. For this the Government are responsible subject to control of Parliament itself. The fact that the Courts are considering the legality of the Orders does not absolve the Government or Parliament from this responsibility. Attention is called to the Judgment of the Chief Justice of Canada, in which quoting the language of Chief Justice Duff he states “The final responsibility for the acts of the Executive Government rests upon Parliament. Parliament has not abdicated its general legislative powers nor abandoned its control. The subordinate instrumentality which it has created for exercising the powers remains responsible directly to Parliament and depends upon the Will of Parliament for the continuance of its official existence. Parliament has not effaced itself and has full power to amend or repeal the War Measures Act or to make ineffective any

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of the Orders-in-Council passed in pursuance of its provisions, and if at any time Parliament considers that too great a power has been conferred upon the Governor-in-Council, the remedy lies in its own hands.” It is respectfully submitted that Parliament must assume its full responsibility for the decision whether Canadian citizens of the Japanese race are to be exiled. The Committee respectfully submits that Parliament should exercise this duty by calling on the Government to withdraw the Orders-in-Council. The history of the Orders-in-Council must be carefully considered in this connection. In the original Bill 15 to continue the extraordinary powers of the Governor-in-Council after the end of hostilities, an express clause was inserted giving the Governor-in-Council power to make Orders for deportation and for the cancellation of naturalization. Owing to the widespread expression of disapproval of this proposed power throughout the country, this clause was withdrawn, and the National Transitional Emergency Powers Act which was passed by the House of Commons on the 8th of December, omitted any reference to such powers. The Act, however, did give to the Governor-in-Council, the power to continue what has been done under the War Measures Act, and the War Measures Act was to stay in effect until the 1st day of January 1946. Availing itself of this gap, the Governor-in-Council passed the Orders in question on the 15th day of December, and then continued them after the 1st of January by P.C. 8418. Parliament has therefore never had the opportunity to approve or disapprove of these Orders and in fact by implication from the omission of the power of deportation from the new Act, withheld the power of deportation from the Governor-in-Council. It is urgently submitted that the Orders-in-Council are wrong and indefensible and constitute a grave threat to the rights and liberties of Canadian citizens, and that Parliament as guardian of these rights and the representative of the people, should assert its powers and require the Governor-in-Council to withdraw the Orders, for the following reasons. (1) The Orders-in-Council provide for the exile of Canadian citizens. The power of exile has not been employed by civilized countries since the days of the Stuarts in England. So seriously was it then viewed that the Habeas Corpus Act makes it a serious offense for any official to exile a British subject. (2) The Orders and the proposed exile of Canadian citizens constitute a violation of International Law and as Mr. Justice Kellock and Rand have stated, involves invasion of another’s territory, and the violation of sovereign rights. The Congress of the United States has no power to exile citizens, and the British Parliament has not even in the gravest emergency, found it necessary to assume such a power. (3) The Orders-in-Council put the value of Canadian citizenship into contempt. They cancel naturalization in a wholesale manner, and without any reason. At this time when the Parliament of Canada will be considering legislation designed to enhance the value and dignity of Canadian citizenship, these Orders will have precisely the opposite effect. (4) The Orders-in-Council are based upon racial discrimination. Deportation on racial grounds has been defined as a crime against humanity, and the war criminals of Germany and Japan are being tried for precisely this offense, amongst others.

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(5) The proposed deportations are in no way related to any war emergency. The necessity of removing persons of Japanese origin from the coastal regions during the war, was referable to the emergency, but now that hostilities have ceased for some time, it cannot possibly be suggested that the safety of Canada requires the injustice of treating Canadian citizens in the manner proposed. The Prime Minister has himself made it clear that no instances of sabotage can be laid at the door of Japanese Canadians. If any of those concerned have been disloyal, there is ample power under the Immigration and Naturalization Acts for their deportation after proper inquiry into individual cases. Many Japanese-Canadians have already settled in the Prairie Provinces and in Eastern Canada and have no desire to return to B.C. There is therefore no need for fear of concentration on the Pacific Coast as in the past. (6) The Orders for deportation purport to be based on alleged requests to be sent to Japan. It is suggested that the signing of these requests indicated disloyalty. This is far from the truth. The signing of the forms was encouraged as an act of cooperation with the Government of Canada. The very form used, implied that the Government approved and sought the signing of these forms. Those who refused to sign were described as unco-operative, and denied privileges accorded to those who did sign. For the Government, which through its agents obtained and sought the signing of these forms, to claim now that they indicated disloyalty, would be to implicate the Government itself in the encouragement of a disloyal attitude. (7) The Orders constitute a threat to the security of every minority in Canada. (8) The Orders cannot be enforced without grave injustice and inhumanity to innocent persons. (9) The effect of these Orders will be to cause lasting hostility to Canada throughout the Orient where racial discrimination is deeply resented. The future of Canada’s international relationship may depend upon the revocation of these Orders. (10) The Orders are directly in contradiction of the language and spirit of the United Nations Charter, subscribed to by Canada as well as the other nations of the world and are an adoption of the methods of Nazism. Respectfully submitted, James M Finlay, Chairman Andrew Brewin Hugh MacMillan

NOTES 1 Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, “Memorandum for the Members of the House of Commons and Senate of Canada on Orders-In-Council P.C. 7355, 7356, 7357, for the Deportation of Canadians of Japanese Racial Origin”, April 1946. McMaster University, Library, Archives and Research Collections, CCJC-MAC, folder 13. 2 Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991), 53.

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3 The Japanese Canadian Committee for Democracy was an early precursor to the National Association of Japanese Canadians. 4 Miki and Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time, 55. The Supreme Court case in question was referred to as “In the Matter of a Reference as to the Validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356, and 7357).” 5 Ibid.

4. National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, “Submission to the Prime Minister and Members of the Government in the Matter of Japanese Canadian Economic Losses Arising from Evacuation,” 19501 In 1947, regrouping in the aftermath of the discriminatory policies enacted during the Second World War, Japanese Canadians began to file claims for property that was seized and sold during the war. To respond to these demands, the government appointed a royal commission that became known as the Bird commission for its chair, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Henry Bird. From the outset, the commission’s scope was limited: rather than considering claims for the overarching losses of forced “evacuation,” including “income, business assets, stolen personal belongings, bank interest and perhaps even disruption of education,” not to mention emotional or psychological suffering, the commission considered only “property losses” where the Custodian of Enemy Property mismanaged property or failed to achieve “market value” for liquidated property.2 Moreover, the terms of the commission circumvented the important question as to why property that was to be held “in trust” on behalf of “evacuees” was, in fact, liquidated in the first place.3 Justice Bird released his final report in 1950, allocating $1.2 million in compensation to those who had individually filed claims – a sum that fell far short of the real economic losses suffered by Japanese Canadians.4 However, the government utilized the Bird commission as evidence that justice had been restored to Japanese Canadians and that no other form of redress was necessary. In response, the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association submitted the following report to the prime minister contesting the findings of the commission and its limited scope.

To the Right Honourable Louis St Laurent, Prime Minister, and Honourable Members of the Government of Canada. This submission is made by the National Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association and its component chapter organizations in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. This national body was founded by a conference of representatives of various Japanese Canadian organizations through Canada on September 2, 1947. It has as its primary aims the protection of the economic and social welfare of persons of Japanese ancestry in the Dominion and the development of a truly democratic society wherein fundamental rights and liberties are preserved for all citizens. After Pearl Harbour in December, 1941, it was deemed expedient to evacuate all persons of the Japanese race from the Pacific Coast of Canada. It was considered to be essential to carry out this task with the least possible delay. Some 22,000 persons were evacuated within 6 months. Being an emergency measure, emergency methods had to be employed. The B. C. Security Commission was vested with the responsibility of the physical re-

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moval of this mass of persons. The immensity of the task and the haste required left little room for the protection of individual rights and humanitarian consideration. To the Secretary of State, acting as Custodian, fell the onerous and difficult task of protecting the personal chattels and real property of the evacuated population from vandalism, depreciation and destruction. The task was difficult by reason of: (a) the necessity to hurriedly organize a large staff; (b) the removal on short notice of families, particularly from remote and isolated areas, without adequate provision for recording or protecting their property; (c) the strong anti-Japanese attitude in the community which lowered the moral barriers to condone theft, destruction and exploitation in acquiring assets; (d) the panic of uncertainty amongst the evacuees which influenced them to overlook the taking of many precautions for the protection of their property which might have assisted in its preservation. Prior to evacuation these persons were allowed to dispose of their own assets. In certain cases they were encouraged by the Custodian to do so. However, being under notice to evacuate, many improvident sales were made, and all such sales were as if made on a forced liquidation and were not free sales in a normal market. Heavy losses were sustained. Exploitation was rampant and the Government by various Orders-in-Council recognized the need for protective action. P.C. 288 of January 13, 1942 creating the Japanese Fishing Vessels Disposal Committee, recognized the need for protection from duress in the sale of vessels. However, other types of property were sold at heavy sacrifices. Once evacuated, all property of evacuees were vested in the Custodian except cash and securities and until August, 1942, vessels. At first it was the intention of the Government to preserve the property of these hapless people. In good faith and in reliance upon this frequently stated policy of the Government and the Custodian, many persons left their properties in his care. In this expectation, many persons after leaving their belongings, if they had time, did not make full inventories. In the same expectation, the Custodian’s field men often made only general inventories when they were able to get around to the property. They, too, worked under haste and pressure. After a year’s experience with the impossible task of protecting all this property, the Government changed its policy to one of “orderly liquidation.” In the meantime vandalism, theft and depreciation had had their toll. Had this policy been established at the time of evacuation and had time permitted, the Japanese could have made full inventories and obtained valuations of their property. However orderly the liquidation of all of the property of 22,000 people to the last kitchen chair may be, such a sale, it is submitted, must remain a liquidation. The essential difference in price between a liquidation and voluntary sale is universal knowledge. Such sales are the happy hunting ground of bargain seekers, dealers and speculators. … Recognizing that injustices had been done, the Government in mid-year, 1947, after study of the problem by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons, set up a Commission under the Public Inquiries Act to determine the losses suffered and to recommend just and equitable awards … … Mr. Justice Bird, a Judge of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, was appointed Commissioner. The Commission held hearings and discussions for over two years and the Commissioner has reported his findings.

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With respect to the Bird Commission and the awards recommended by the Commissioner, having regard to the immensity and difficulty of the problem, we believe the vast majority of the persons of Japanese ancestry in Canada regard these awards as a measure of rough justice within the limited terms of reference. We respectfully submit, however, that the people of Canada will fall far short of providing “reasonable and just compensation” to evacuees if that compensation is limited to the results of the enquiry … … 3. Proposals – In the light of the circumstances we have recounted we propose to the Government that over and above the awards made by the Commissioner within the terms of reference, further compensation should be allowed fully to remedy the injustices suffered by the claimants. (a) A percentage of Sale Price allowance on all real properties sold subject to rental regulations. (b) A percentage of Sale Price allowance on all real properties to cover depreciation. (c) A percentage of Sale Price allowance for goodwill on all businesses subject to sale. (d) Percentage of all uncollected accounts receivable. (e) Establishment of an adjustment agency to adjust losses on forced sales on claims filed within 12 months with an appeal to the Attorney General for Canada. (f) A grant of monies to each adult evacuee to compensate for general losses. (g) Interest on all awards from date of sale. (h) Adjustments on Real Property not sold to Veterans Land Administration where no special award at a rate equal to the percentage which the average special award bears to the average sale price of properties on which special awards were made. 4. Conclusion – This submission has been concerned with drawing to your Government’s attention issues which are relevant under the Royal Commission inquiry on Japanese property and issues which were completely excluded or given little attention due to the inadequate terms of reference of the Inquiry. We tender as an appendix to this submission, the Association’s submission to the Royal Commission on Japanese Canadian Property, dealing with the broad aspects of the evacuation property losses and the deeply human and significant experience of a people in Canada which no Canadian citizen would bear without the utmost sense of grave injustice. We therefore respectfully suggest a broad appreciation of all the circumstances which shaped the problem into its present form is fully merited, if it is the intent of your Government to provide for a measure of justice which is equal to the standards of a truly democratic, Canadian way of life. Respectfully submitted, HAROLD A. HIROSE, President, GEORGE TANAKA, Executive Secretary, National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, 61 College Street, Toronto 2, Ontario. September twenty-second, Nineteen hundred and fifty.

434 Appendix G: Second World War Internments NOTES 1 National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, “Submission to the Prime Minister and Members of the Government in the Matter of Japanese Canadian Economic Losses Arising from Evacuation,” 22 September 1950. University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Japanese Canadian Research Collection, box 5, folder 7. 2 Roy Miki, Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004), 113. 3 Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991), 58. 4 Ibid., 59.

5. National Association of Japanese Canadians, Democracy Betrayed: The Case for Redress, a Submission to the Government of Canada on the Violation of Rights and Freedoms of Japanese Canadians during and after the Second World War, 19841

In the post-war period, the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) petitioned for national recognition and redress of the injustices of internment, forced relocation, seizure of property, and deportation and revocation of citizenship committed against Japanese Canadians between 1941 and 1949. The NAJC’s redress movement gained momentum in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984, the organization submitted a report to the federal government, detailing the range of injustices committed against Japanese Canadians during and after the Second World War and issuing a “Call for Redress.” This document became instrumental to shaping the terms of the redress agreement that was reached between the NAJC and the federal government in 1988.

Between 1941 and 1949 the Canadian government forced 21,000 Canadian residents of Japanese ethnic origin from their homes, confined most in detention camps, sold off all their real and personal property and forced them to scatter across Canada or be shipped to war-torn Japan. Over 17,000 of those victimized by the Canadian government were Canadian citizens. The government claimed that this denial of the civil and human rights of these Canadians was necessary to ensure Canada’s security. Today, government documents show this claim to be completely false. They show that the treatment of Japanese Canadians during and after the Second World War was motivated by racism and political opportunism. They show: (1) that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada’s senior military officers opposed the removal of Japanese Canadians from the Pacific Coast as unnecessary and unwarranted, and, in the case of the military, left the uprooting to civilian authorities; (2) that the Cabinet Ministers directly responsible for the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians knew that Japanese Canadians were no threat to Canada’s security; (3) that those Ministers instituted policies that violated the civil and human rights of Japanese Canadians in the hope of winning the approval and support of Canada’s hardcore minority of bigots;

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(4) that to implement those policies the responsible Ministers systematically distorted the information they gave their Cabinet colleagues concerning the need for and the reasons behind the policies they were proposing; (5) that these Ministers exploited the powers granted them under the War Measures Act to achieve objectives that had nothing to do with the peace, order and good government of Canada. This brief documents how Ministers of the Crown used their emergency powers to achieve a political objective: the destruction of the Japanese Canadian community in British Columbia. It documents how they persuaded their Cabinet colleagues to uproot 21,000 innocent people, to strip them of their property, and then tried to exile 10,000 to war-torn Japan by clothing the orders-in-council implementing those policies in the mantle of “national security,” or by alleging that they were necessary for the protection of Japanese Canadians. It shows how those Ministers even defied Parliament to achieve their ends, and succeeded, because there is no way in law that victims of repression under the War Measures Act can appeal the orders abusing them. This brief also calls for justice. It calls for an end to the 42 year wait on the part of the victims for a public acknowledgement of the wrongs done them. It calls for redress of those wrongs in a meaningful manner that will ensure that no other Canadians will experience denials of their civil and human rights at the hands of ambitious politicians. It calls on the Government of Canada to acknowledge its responsibility to compensate Japanese Canadians for injustices suffered.

NOTE 1 National Association of Japanese Canadians, Democracy Betrayed: The Case for Redress (Winnipeg: NAJC, 1984).

6. House of Commons Apology to Japanese Canadians, 19881 On 22 September 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, speaking on behalf of the Canadian government, announced an official acknowledgment and redress package for Japanese Canadians who suffered injustices during and after the Second World War. The redress settlement agreement included an official apology delivered in the House of Commons, $21,000 in fiscal compensation to each surviving internee, $12 million to the NAJC in support of its educational and human rights programs, and $12 million to establish the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.2 In addition, Canadian citizenship was restored to those individuals who had been deported to Japan during and after the Second World War and “those convicted [of crimes] under the War Measures Act” could apply for pardons.3 Mulroney’s statement in the House of Commons constituted the first official apology to a marginalized constituency in Canada and set the precedent for future redress movements.

right hon. brian mulroney (prime minister): Mr. Speaker, nearly half a century ago, in the crisis of wartime, the Government of Canada wrongfully incarcerated, seized the prop-

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erty, and disenfranchised thousands of citizens of Japanese ancestry. We cannot change the past. But we must, as a nation, have the courage to face up to these historical facts. The issue of Japanese-Canadian redress is one which I raised in the House of Commons more than four years ago with the Prime Minister of the day when I was Leader of the Opposition. I said then in this House: There is a world of difference between regret and a formal apology. Canadians of Japanese origin had their rights trampled upon. The reputation of this country was besmirched. Since then, Mr. Speaker, the present Government has sought a settlement with the Japanese-Canadian community to put things right between them and their country; to put things right with the surviving members of the Japanese-Canadian wartime community of 22,000 persons; to put things right with their children, and ours, so that they can walk together in this country, burdened neither by the wrongs nor the grievances of previous generations. It is fitting that representatives of the National Association of Japanese Canadians are present in the visitors’ gallery on this solemn occasion because today I have the honour to announce, on behalf of the Government of Canada, that a comprehensive redress settlement has been reached with the National Association of Japanese Canadians on behalf of their community. some hon. members: Hear, hear! mr. mulroney: Perhaps the most important element of this redress is the official acknowledgement of the wrongs of the 1940s. But redress must go beyond words and laws – important as they are for our present understanding and our future actions. The Minister of State for Multiculturalism and Citizenship (Mr. Weiner) will be announcing the details of the settlement, and I pay special tribute today to his skill and resolve in this matter, and to the Secretary of State (Mr. Bouchard) who, immediately after his swearing in as a Minister of the Crown, made the resolution of this important moral issue a matter of the highest priority for him and his colleagues. In a special way, I readily acknowledge the strong moral leadership on this particular question and, indeed, others, that has long been provided by the Hon. Member for Vancouver South (Mr. Fraser), the very distinguished Speaker of the House of Commons. some hon. members: Hear, hear! mr. mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I think all Members of the House know that no amount of money can right the wrong, undo the harm, and heal the wounds. But it is symbolic of our determination to address this issue, not only in the moral sense but also in a tangible way. In that spirit, we will accept applications for the granting of Canadian citizenship to eligible persons of Japanese ancestry who were expelled from Canada or had their citizenship revoked during these years. We will also accept requests for the clearing of names of eligible persons of Japanese ancestry who were convicted of violations under the War Measures Act – thankfully now gone from our texts of law in Canada – and the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act. As well, in commemoration of all who suffered these injustices, we will establish a Canadian Race Relations Foundation to foster racial harmony and cross-cultural understanding in Canada. Mr. Speaker, not only was the treatment inflicted on Japanese-Canadians during the War both morally and legally unjustified, it went against the very nature of our country, of Canada. We are a pluralistic society. We each respect the language, opinions and religious

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convictions of our neighbour. We celebrate our linguistic duality and our cultural diversity. We know that the strength of our country lies in the collective energies of its regions. We are tolerant people who live in freedom in a land of abundance. That is the Canada of our ancestors. That is the Canada our ancestors worked to build. That is the kind of country we want to leave our children, the Canada of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the new Official Languages Act and the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. A Canada that at all times and in all circumstances works hard to eliminate racial discrimination at home and abroad. A Canada, Mr. Speaker, that is able to face up to the mistakes of the past, and so become better prepared to face the challenges of the future. I am tabling at this time the specific terms of the Government’s historic agreement with the National Association of Japanese Canadians. I will meet later this morning with the President of the National Association of Japanese Canadians and some of his colleagues who are with him today to formalize this special agreement. Most of us in our own lives have had occasion to regret certain things that we have done. Error is an ingredient of humanity, so too is apology and forgiveness. We all have learned from personal experience that as inadequate as apologies are they are the only way we can cleanse the past so that we may, as best we can, in good conscience face the future. I know that I speak for Members on all sides of the House today in offering to Japanese Canadians the formal and sincere apology of this Parliament for those past injustices against them, against their families, and against their heritage, and our solemn commitment and undertaking to Canadians of every origin that such violations will never again in this country be countenanced or repeated. some hon. members: Hear, hear! … hon. edward broadbent (oshawa): Mr. Speaker, I listened with great pleasure to the Prime Minister’s speech today. Forty-six years ago, the Government of Canada took measures against Japanese-Canadians that were unjust and unacceptable. Today, at last, we have started to make amends. In the 1940s our Government, a democratically elected Government, did a great injustice to some 22,000 of our citizens, a permanent injustice to those who are no longer living. This was done, not because of what they had done, but because of who they were. These Japanese Canadians had their families broken up, their property confiscated, their businesses destroyed. They were forced to abandon their homes on the coast of British Columbia and they were forced to move to the interior and to elsewhere in Canada. They, as Canadian citizens, had done no wrong. They were the victims of intolerance and racism brought about, not because we were at war with them but because we were at war with the land of their ancestors. They had done no wrong to any of their fellow citizens. It was an inglorious moment in our, on the whole, proud history. Today we are formally acknowledging this wrong, and I am pleased that today’s representatives of Canadians of Japanese ancestry have been able to reach an agreement with the Government of Canada. On behalf of all members of my Party and, I am sure in a sense I speak for everyone in the House of Commons and Canadians wherever they may live, I bid a special welcome to those Canadians of Japanese ancestry who are with us today in the House of Commons. some hon. members: Hear, hear! mr. broadbent: I would like to stress that when we talk about the grievous injustice that

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was inflicted, we are not talking about an abstract breaking of an abstract right. We are talking about profound, serious human suffering. As an example, I would like to cite a quotation from an extremely moving Canadian novel by a Canadian of Japanese ancestry. It is called Obasan, and it is written by Joy Kogawa. It is a story of the life experience of families at this time. It is noted that the families are fictional but all experiences are very real. At one point the heroine of the novel, who is in her thirties, describes the impact this has had on her life. I know it is a true story. She says: The fact is I never got used to it and I cannot, I cannot bear the memory. There are some nightmares from which there is no waking, only deeper and deeper sleep. There is a word for it. Hardship. The hardship is so pervasive, so inescapable, so thorough, it’s a noose around my chest and I cannot move anymore. I repeat, Mr. Speaker, these have been real experiences in real lives for which our parliamentary ancestors have to assume responsibility because they made those decisions that led to that experience. As the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) has said, we all make errors. Our predecessors in this great Chamber of ours made errors. One of the important and fundamental ways of addressing these errors is at least to apologize publicly and acknowledge the serious wrong that was done, and that we are doing. However, in so doing, we must keep in mind that it does not mitigate at all the horrible experience that has been inflicted upon those victims. The Prime Minister quite appropriately alluded to the work that has been done by present generations in redressing this wrong here in the House. I think it might have been appropriate to cite those people who stood up at the time because they were present. They were Canadians who said it was wrong, who went against the force of public opinion, who fought for civil liberties at a time when it was important to do the fighting and not talk about redressing wrongs that were done by others. It is easy for us in one sense, although appropriate, to do that. I would like to cite a few words of a distinguished member of Parliament at that time. He had this to say, clearly in the face of public opinion: If we are to have harmonious and friendly relations between the oriental population and the rest of our British Columbia citizens, we must stop discriminating against and abusing the orientals. We must find some common ground on which we can work, and I think it can be found … I am satisfied that if we treat the Japanese and our other oriental citizens right, we shall get their loyalty, … He went on to say: I know them, speak to them; I visit them and have them in my home, and I have not the slightest doubt that what I say is correct. If we are to avoid the troubles that other countries have had with racial minorities, then we must take a realistic view of the situation in British Columbia and attempt to make these people feel at home among us. We will secure their loyalty by fairness and kindness and by the practice of those other attributes which we exercise in our relations with other people. He was speaking of fellow Canadian citizens. That speech was given in this House on February 25, 1941, by Angus MacInnis, the then Member for Vancouver-Kingsway. I want simply to conclude by complimenting the Government of the day on behalf of my Party in reaching this agreement and by saying, as one politician: I hope this kind of experience for us as a nation will never ever be repeated. some hon. members: Hear, hear!

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NOTES 1 Canada, House of Commons Debates (September 22, 1988), 19499-19501. 2 Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991), 138–9. While the government provided $12 million to help establish the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the NAJC also agreed to contribute $12 million of its own funds towards the CRRF. 3 Roy Miki, Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004), 307.

7. Terms of Agreement between the Government of Canada and the National Association of Japanese Canadians, 19881 In addition to the formal apology delivered in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed an official “Acknowledgement” on 22 September 1988 that listed the many components of discriminatory measures implemented against Japanese Canadians between 1941 and 1949. In this document, Mulroney also offered a “pledge” of assurance that “such events” would not occur again in Canada.

Acknowledgement As a people, Canadians commit themselves to the creation of a society that ensures equality and justice for all, regardless of race or ethnic origin. During and after World War II, Canadians of Japanese ancestry, the majority of whom were citizens, suffered unprecedented actions taken by the Government of Canada against their community. Despite perceived military necessities at the time, the forced removal and internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II and their deportation and expulsion following the war, was unjust. In retrospect, government policies of disenfranchisement, detention, confiscation and sale of private and community property, expulsion, deportation and restriction of movement, which continued after the war, were influenced by discriminatory attitudes. Japanese Canadians who were interned had their property liquidated and the proceeds of sale were used to pay for their own internment. The acknowledgement of these injustices serves notice to all Canadians that the excesses of the past are condemned and that the principles of justice and equality in Canada are reaffirmed. Therefore, the Government of Canada, on behalf of all Canadians, does hereby: (1) acknowledge that the treatment of Japanese Canadians during and after World War II was unjust and violated principles of human rights as they are understood today; (2) pledge to ensure, to the full extent that its powers allow, that such events will not happen again; and (3) recognize, with great respect, the fortitude and determination of Japanese Canadians who, despite great stress and hardship, retain their commitment and loyalty to Canada and contribute so richly to the development of the Canadian nation.

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As symbolic redress for those injustices, the Government offers: (a) $21,000 individual redress, subject to application by eligible persons of Japanese ancestry who, during this period, were subjected to internment, relocation, deportation, loss of property or otherwise deprived of the full enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms based solely on the fact that they were of Japanese ancestry; each payment would be made in a tax-free lump sum, as expeditiously as possible; (b) $12 million to the Japanese-Canadian community, through the National Association of Japanese Canadians, to undertake educational, social and cultural activities or programmes that contribute to the well-being of the community or that promote human rights; (c) $12 million, on behalf of Japanese Canadians and in commemoration of those who suffered these injustices, and matched by a further $12 million from the Government of Canada, for the creation of a Canadian Race Relations Foundation that will foster racial harmony and cross-cultural understanding and help to eliminate racism; (d) subject to application by eligible persons, to clear the names of persons of Japanese ancestry who were convicted of violations under the War Measures Act or the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act; (e) subject to application by eligible persons, to grant Canadian citizenship to persons of Japanese ancestry still living who were expelled from Canada or had their citizenship revoked during the period 1941 to 1949, and to their living descendants; (f) to provide, through contractual arrangements, up to $3 million to the National Association of Japanese Canadians for their assistance, including community liaison, in administration of redress over the period of implementation. Only persons alive at the date of the signing of these Terms of Agreement would be entitled to the redress in paragraphs (a), (d) and (e), except that the redress in (e) would also apply to descendants living at the date.

NOTE 1 Canada, House of Commons, Unpublished Sessional Papers, “Acknowledgement: Terms of Agreement between the Government of Canada and the National Association of Japanese Canadians,” 22 September 1988, 332–4/62. microfilm.

8. Emergencies Act, 19881 As part of their campaign for redress, the National Association of Japanese Canadians lobbied for the repeal or at least revision of the War Measures Act (1914), which enabled the abuses directed against the Japanese Canadian community on the basis of a purported national emergency.2 The Mulroney government also had further incentive to rewrite this legislation, since Pierre Trudeau’s invocation of the act during the FLQ crisis of the 1970s had reawakened public concerns about the legislation’s implications for civil rights. In 1988, a few months before the federal apology, the War Measures Act was accordingly replaced by the Emergencies Act. This new legislation includes assurances against preju-

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dicial treatment and provides a mechanism for seeking compensation for any person who suffers loss, injury, or damages as a result of the government’s actions during a national emergency.

An Act to authorize the taking of special temporary measures to ensure safety and security during national emergencies and to amend other Acts in consequence thereof [Assented to 21st July, 1988] WHEREAS the safety and security of the individual, the protection of the values of the body politic and the preservation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the state are fundamental obligations of government; AND WHEREAS the fulfilment of those obligations in Canada may be seriously threatened by a national emergency and, in order to ensure safety and security during such an emergency, the Governor in Council should be authorized, subject to the supervisions of Parliament, to take special temporary measures that may not be appropriate in normal times; AND WHEREAS the Governor in Council, in taking such special temporary measures, would be subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights and must have regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly with respect to those fundamental rights that are not to be limited or abridged even in a national emergency; NOW THEREFORE, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows: SHORT TITLE 1. This Act may be cited as the Emergencies Act. APPLICATION AND CONSTRUCTION 2. (1) This Act is binding on Her Majesty in right of Canada or a province. (2) For greater certainty, nothing in this Act derogates from the authority of the Government of Canada to deal with emergencies on any property, territory or area in respect of which the Parliament of Canada has jurisdiction. 3. For the purposes of this Act, a “national emergency” is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that (a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or (b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada. 4. Nothing in this Act shall be construed or applied so as to confer on the Governor in Council the power to make orders or regulations (a) altering the provisions of this Act; or (b) providing for the detention, imprisonment or internment of Canadian citizens or permanent residents as defined in the Immigration Act, 1976 on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. …

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PART V … Compensation 48. (1) Subject to subsection (2) and the regulations made under section 49, the Minister shall award reasonable compensation to any person who suffers loss, injury or damage as a result of any thing done, or purported to be done, under any of Parts I to IV or any proclamation, order or regulation issued or made thereunder. (2) No compensation shall be paid to a person unless that person, in consideration of the compensation, signs, in a form provided by the Minister, a release of any right of action that the person may have against the Crown as a result of any thing done, or purported to be done, under any of Parts I to IV or any proclamation, order or regulation issued or made thereunder.

NOTES 1 Emergencies Act, Statutes of Canada, 1988, c. 29. 2 The War Measures Act was also used to implement the internment of Ukrainian Canadians during the First World War and Italian Canadians during the Second. Please refer to appendix F.1, above, for an excerpt from this legislation.

APPENDIX H JEWISH REFUGEES ON THE SS ST LOUIS 1. Canadian Government Policy Brief on Jewish Refugees, 19381 This confidential letter is a policy brief issued by Frederick Blair, director of the Immigrant Branch of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, under the Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King. On 6 June 1938, it was sent to W.R. Little, commissioner of European emigration in London, in preparation for his role at the July 1938 Évian Conference on the question of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Austria and Germany.2 Little attended that conference as technical adviser to the Canadian representative, Humphrey Hume Wrong.3 The letter outlines the position of the Canadian government on Jewish refugees a year before the St Louis ship carrying 937 German Jewish refugees was turned away from Cuba, then the United States, and finally Canada. It has been suggested that the anti-Semitic attitudes of Canadian officials and advisers to the prime minister affected the decision, the most widely cited example of these attitudes being a senior official’s statement at the conclusion of the war that “none is too many,” in reference to the number of Jewish refugees that Canada should be willing to admit.4 In articulating the reasoning behind that statement, this letter demonstrates the extent to which the attitude was institutionalized in policy.

… [Y]ou will immediately conclude that what this special Committee will have to deal with is mainly political refugees of the Jewish or Hebrew race. Your acquaintance with the issues, some of them largely peculiar to Jewish immigration, makes it unnecessary that I discuss at any length Canada’s powers of absorption of these people. The pressure of Jewish people here and in Europe, to secure entry is probably greater today than at any time in our history and this applies not only to political refugees but to [those emigrating from] European States outside Nazi influence. In being represented at the Conference, it is believed we will secure valuable information and may be able to make some useful contribution to the discussions of the Committee. The refugee problem is not a new one to this Department. You will recall that in September 1925 …, the Jewish people of this country secured consent to bring 5,000 Jewish refugees from Roumania and this number was very considerably exceeded. For several years that refugee movement continued and I suppose that we received upwards of 7,000 of these people. … With the change in the Immigration Regulations that took place in August 1930, immigration from Europe was very much restricted and outside of three classes: – (a) Farmers with capital (b) Wives and children with family heads here, and (c) Fiancees All those admitted from Europe had to be named in special Orders-in-Council. To show the extent to which Canada extended special consideration to Jewish immigrants admitted by special Orders-in-Council, the following figures are supplied for the calendar years 1931 to 1937 inclusive …

444 Appendix H: Jewish Refugees on the SS St Louis

When you consider that the Jewish population of Canada is one of the minor groups, it must be recognized that we have shown Jewish people special consideration … … I suppose there may be some ground for fearing that a successful effort on the part of immigration countries in finding homes for the political refugees of Austria and Germany, may encourage other States to adopt repressive measures towards unwanted minorities in the expectation or hope that these would also be received by those countries now invited to co-operate in finding homes for political refugees. It is understood that while taking part in the work of the Committee …, we are not prepared to receive any material increase in the number of refugees from Europe but will continue our present policy of sympathetic consideration where circumstances are favourable. It is apparent that so far as Jewish political refugees are concerned, there is a growing disposition to take from them both capital and citizenship[:] in our view two essentials of immigration. Without capital there is little hope of absorption in immigration countries and without a recognition of citizenship which will allow return to country of origin in the event of trouble arising shortly after migration, the acceptance of immigrants becomes almost impossible. It is suggested that immigration countries could well afford to stand together in refusing to accept immigrants without either capital or recognized citizenship … If the political refugees were of the agricultural class and the matter of capital and citizenship could be adjusted, we could show much greater consideration in their admission to this country. Since Confederation, and indeed before that date, encouragement of immigration has been limited to the agricultural classes … … According to the census of 1931 about 1½% of our Jewish population was connected in some way with agricultural pursuits. It is a curious fact in view of the present relations existing between German and Jew that the former should be at the top of the agricultural list and the latter at the bottom. … One might conclude from the applications that reach us from week to week that there is an impression abroad that the professional classes are in demand here or at least that Canada could well afford to open her doors to a considerable number of these classes who are no longer welcome to pursue their avocations in their own country. Our educational institutions are turning out many well trained men and women who are dependent upon finding openings in this country.

NOTES 1 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Employment and Immigration fonds, RG 76, vol. 432, file 644452, pt. 1. 2 The Évian Conference, attended by delegates from 32 countries and 24 voluntary organizations, failed to pass a resolution condemning the German treatment of Jews. 3 Humphrey Hume Wrong was the son of George M. Wrong, the University of Toronto historian who would petition Prime Minister Mackenzie King in June 1939, arguing that Canada should admit the German Jewish refugees on board the St Louis (see appendix H.2, below). 4 The statement is sometimes attributed to Frederick Blair, but Irving Abella and Harold Troper attribute the statement to “an anonymous senior Canadian official.” This official, they write, “in

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the midst of a rambling, off-the-record discussion with journalists in early 1945, was asked how many Jews would be allowed into Canada after the war. His response, though spontaneous, seems to reflect the prevailing view of a substantial number of his fellow citizens: ‘None,’ he said, ‘is too many.’” None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982), ix. In November 2000, Frederick Blair’s great-nephew apologized to a meeting of Holocaust survivors for his great-uncle’s inaction during and after the war. See “Hate at the Top,” CBC, 2000, http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP13CH4PA2LE.html.

2. Petition to Allow the S.S. St Louis to Land in Canada, 7 June 19391 In the spring of 1939, the ship S.S. St Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, destined for Cuba, with 937 German Jewish refugees on board. All had valid Cuban visas, but upon arrival almost all the visas were declared invalid. The ship was redirected to the United States, where it was turned away, and then to Canada, where it was turned away again. Most of the refugees on board the ship were sent back to Europe in a return that proved to be a “death sentence for about one quarter” of the passengers.2 The petition below, demanding that Canada accept the refugees out of “Christian charity,” was signed by 37 male and female members of Toronto’s educated and professional elite, including lawyers, doctors, and clergymen. George MacKinnon Wrong, who organized the petition, was a professor of history at the University of Toronto with connections to the Liberal party.3 Wrong had written to the prime minister in February about the desperate situation of German Jewish refugees, noting that Canada had “vast empty territory,” but that its population suffered from “a sense of remoteness from the urgency of the problem.”4 In a letter of reply, Mackenzie King had promised that Canada would contribute in some way to solving “the most baffling of our international problems,” but also introduced a vague qualification, noting it would be necessary to determine “how far it is possible to go, without raising a condition which it may be more difficult to meet than the one it is intended to cure.”5

Toronto, Ont, June 7 Right Hon W.L. McKenzie King P.C. As a mark of gratitude to almighty God for the pleasure and gratification which has been vouchsafed the Canadian people through the visit [of] their Gracious Majesties King George and Queen Elizabeth and as evidence of the true Christian charity of the people of this most fortunate and blessed country we the undersigned as Christian citizens of Canada respectfully suggest that under the powers vested in you as Premier of our country you forwith [sic] offer to the 907 homeless exiles on board the Hamburg American ship St Louis Sanctuary in Canada. George M. Wrong Elizabeth Wrong [etc.]

446 Appendix H: Jewish Refugees on the SS St Louis NOTES 1 Library and Archives Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King fonds, vol. 282, file 238579. 2 Oliver Moore, “A sorry episode in Canadian history,” Globe and Mail, 18 June 2009, A10. France, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands had agreed to provide temporary residence to numbers of passengers, but as temporary residents they were prohibited from working. Some of these German Jewish refugees may have been interned by their host countries as “enemy aliens” after the German occupation of Poland. Later, in those countries occupied by Germany, they would have faced anti-Jewish legislation and deportation to the death camps. See “Voyage of the St Louis,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/ online/stlouis/story/intro/. 3 Wrong was ordained as a priest in the Church of England and lectured in ecclesiastical history before being appointed as professor of history. He promoted Canadian history as a legitimate field of study and was responsible for founding the Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada, which became the Canadian Historical Review. Wrong married Elizabeth Blake, the daughter of Edward Blake, a very prominent member of the Liberal party who was premier of Ontario from 1871 to 1872, and a member of Canada’s first Liberal government from 1873 to 1882. Wrong’s connections to the Liberal government of Mackenzie King were thus considerable. Wrong’s son, Humphrey Hume Wrong was a prominent diplomat who served as Canada’s representative at the 1938 Évian Conference on the question of German Jewish refugees. See appendix H.1, above. 4 Letter from George M. Wrong to Mackenzie King, 17 February 1939, Library and Archives Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King fonds, vol. 282, file 238576. 5 Letter from Mackenzie King to George M. Wrong, 25 February 1939, Library and Archives Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King fonds, vol. 282, file 238578.

3. Letter from O.D. Skelton to George M. Wrong, 19 June 19391 This letter constitutes the official response of Mackenzie King’s government to the petition organized by George M. Wrong demanding that Canada accept the refugees on the St Louis. It is signed by Oscar Douglas Skelton, whom Mackenzie King had appointed undersecretary of state for external affairs in 1925. While the letter states that Canada has not received any requests to land from the ship, it also offers a summary of Canada’s immigration policy – focused on permanent, agricultural immigrants and persons with investment capital or technical and scientific expertise – as justification for the government’s decision to refuse Wrong’s demand that the refugees be admitted to Canada. In an earlier confidential memorandum to Mackenzie King dated 9 June, a memorandum which notes that the ship had reportedly already set sail on its return voyage to Europe, Skelton provided a similar summary of the immigration policy. He also advised that, since January 1939, of the 1200 immigrants admitted to Canada under special Orders in Council because they did not fit regular immigration criteria, “jews comprised 60 per cent of their list,” “while no publicity has been given it.”2 He reports that the minister of justice (Ernest Lapointe) is “personally emphatically opposed to assenting to proposals in Toronto telegram.”

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Ottawa, June 19th, 1939 Dear Dr. Wrong, I wish to refer to your telegram of June 7th to the Prime Minister and the further exchange of telegrams on June 8th regarding the proposal that the Canadian Government should admit to Canada the 907 refugees on board the Hamburg-American Line’s “St Louis.” The proposal was given immediate consideration. While every sympathy was felt with the unfortunate position in which the refugees in question found themselves, it was regretted it was not possible to recommend their admission en bloc into Canada. The refugees on board the “St Louis” were in practically all cases seeking admission into the United States … They had secured or thought they had secured permission to land in Cuba and remain there temporarily while qualifying for admission to the United States. The Cuban authorities declined to admit them on the ground that their permits had been issued irregularly in Europe; notification of their cancellation was stated by the Cuban authorities to have been notified to the steamship authorities before the vessel sailed. In addition to the “St Louis” other vessels sailing from German ports have recently carried considerable numbers of passengers to America or Asiatic ports who on arrival were found ineligible for immediate entry. None of the passengers on the St Louis, so far as our authorities were aware, had previously indicated a desire to enter Canada and no request for permission to land here was received from the ship or passengers or from the Joint Distribution Committee in charge of their movements. The immediate difficulties in which they found themselves were due to the working of the United States quota system in conjunction with the revision of the Cuban system of temporary admission. The Canadian Government has not adopted the quota system of admission as the United States has done. It does not admit immigrants for temporary purposes in order to qualify themselves for entrance to other countries as has until recently been the practice in Cuba. Neither does it admit immigrants temporarily as was done in a number of the Western European countries subject to the provision that they must not seek employment. While the Canadian Government has not adopted any of the policies to which I have referred, it has endeavoured in conformity with our own system of selective immigration to admit as many immigrants as can be effectively absorbed under the existing economic conditions. Refugees admitted to Canada come under two heads: first those who can comply with existing immigration regulations and who are admitted freely without regard to number, second, those who are unable to comply and whose entry must be covered by naming them in special Orders in Council. In the first group upwards of 250 families of German Czech refugees have been admitted within the past few weeks for settlement on the land with the aid of a special fund secured for that purpose, while many other agricultural families are immigrating with their own resources. The second group includes: – (a) Family remnants in Europe joining families already settled here; (b) Persons with considerable capital for investment in productive enterprises; (c) Persons coming in connection with the establishment of new industries; (d) Scientists and technicians whose admission is likely to be beneficial not only to themselves but to this country. Approximately 1,200 in this second group have been approved in the past five months.

448 Appendix H: Jewish Refugees on the SS St Louis

In the circumstances there is reason for feeling that Canada is already making a substantial contribution to the solution of a very distressing problem that presents great difficulties, particularly perhaps in the case of the admission of those who wish to settle in Canadian cities where our own unemployed are mainly congregated. yours sincerely, O.D. SKELTON

NOTES 1 Library and Archives Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King fonds, vol. 280, file 237108. 2 O.D. Skelton to W.L.M.K., Library and Archives Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King fonds, vol. 280, file 237095.

APPENDIX I DOUKHOBOR RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS 1. Righting the Wrong, Report of the British Columbia Ombudsman on the Confinement of Doukhobor children, 19991 Conflicts between Doukhobor communities and the state over the regulation of matters such as school attendance, land ownership, and the registration of births and deaths, began to occur soon after the emigration of this group of Russian peasants to Canada from 1899 to 1902.2 The forced removal and confinement of Doukhobor children in a residential school in the Kootenay Region of British Columbia in the mid-twentieth century was one of a number of attempts made by federal and provincial governments to end conflicts with (and often among) Doukhobors through measures of forced assimilation, which also included fines, seizure of land and other assets, criminal charges, and imprisonment. In 1953, 104 Doukhobor children were made wards of the provincial superintendent of child welfare after the arrest of their parents, members of the radical splinter group, the “Sons of Freedom,” for public nudity in a protest against compulsory education at Perry Siding, BC. The arrests and child removals were part of the governing Social Credit Party’s hardline program for dealing with “the Doukhobor problem” through “rehabilitation” and “relocation.”3 The initial 104 children (and other Sons of Freedom children who were later apprehended by the RCMP under a provision of the Protection of Children Act permitting the removal of children “liable to grow up without a proper education”) were taken to a tuberculosis sanatorium in New Denver that was redeployed as a residential school, and held there until 1959.4 Through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the “Sons of Freedom” protested the imprisonment of their group members through organized marches, protest camps, and demands for commissions of inquiry; they also engaged in a campaign to preserve what they saw as a pure form of Doukhoborism from the influences of other factions, through arson and bombing.5 Some of the conflict between Doukhobors and non-Doukhobors, especially during the two world wars and the Cold War era, arose from non-Doukhobor suspicion of the traditions of pacifism and communalism, which were seen by non-Doukhobors as unpatriotic and ideologically dangerous. In 1979, the attorney general of British Columbia announced the formation of the Kootenay Committee on Intergroup Relations (KCIR), a multiparty consultative forum composed of local non-Doukhobors, representatives of Doukhobor factions, government officials, and police, with a mandate to resolve the inter- and intra-group conflict outside of the criminal justice system, through the cultivation of “an improved social climate in which protest and depredation would not flourish.”6 The KCIR proceedings, which heard narrative testimony from the groups involved, lasted eight years and produced an interim accord in 1984, in which the parties agreed to work together to end a pattern of violence and destruction. During the following decade, however, new conflicts arose between the state and Doukhobors, and between generations of Doukhobors, as younger families living in the Sons of Freedom settlement rejected the tradition of communal land ownership. In this period, a group of former New Denver students, the New Denver Survivors Committee, now representing an older generation of Sons of Freedom, began to discuss the apprehension and confinement of the Sons of Freedom children in the 1950s as an unresolved issue. In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which laid out the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural

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rights of children. Then, in the course of the 1990s, the ombudsman of British Columbia, Dulcie McCallum, released a number of reports on the institutional abuse of children. In light of these developments, former students of the New Denver institution asked the ombudsman to investigate and report on their experiences of maltreatment at New Denver and the forced-removal policy’s violation of their civil rights. Righting the Wrong, released in 1999, recommended a “restorative justice” model that would “promot[e] healing, forgiveness and well-being for the individuals and the community.”7 In 2004, Howard Kushner, who succeeded McCallum as the provincial ombudsman, issued a follow-up report, which observed that several of the recommendations of the 1999 report, including those calling for a clear public acknowledgment of and apology for wrongdoing by the government, had not been implemented. The follow-up report also observed that while discussions of proposals to commemorate the children’s confinement were under way, some former residents of New Denver had announced their intention to file a lawsuit against the government of British Columbia.8

I. INTRODUCTION … This report is about the confinement of children in an institution located in New Denver in the Kootenay Region of British Columbia during the years 1953 to 1959 … The passage of time has enabled these children, now adults, to come forward and tell their stories. They are, in my opinion, entitled to an explanation, an apology and compensation for their confinement in a form that permits them the opportunity to heal … Neither the Ombudsman Act nor the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was in place or signed at the time of these material events … However, since the wrong perpetrated against these children is being investigated and assessed today, it is appropriate to use the Ombudsman Act to investigate the historical claim, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as a guide to the rights that have been infringed. … This Ombudsman Report is not about legal liability. It is about historical and systemic abuse of a group of children, resulting from confinement … This Report is about how the placement of these children in a confined facility affected them over the many years they were required to stay there, isolated from their parents, families and communities. Since the release of the children from the New Denver institution, these people adversely affected have at no time been given any explanation for the actions taken, or been offered any compensation from government. The complainants, who are now adults, have lived in silence with their pain and humiliation for approximately 40 years. Only now are they able to tell the story of what happened to them while institutionalized. Only now are they requesting, in their quiet and respectful way, redress for the harm done … This Report is solely about the effect on the children of the actions taken by government. These children came from intimate family settings in a close-knit religious and cultural community. Their first and only language was Russian. They were taken away from their parents. The children went from total immersion in the family setting to total absence of parents and adult relatives. … Clearly, children have considerable capacity to cope with adversity. We recognize, however, that to grow and flourish, children need connection with their parents or primary

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caregivers, and a firm spiritual foundation. Both of these were starkly eliminated from the lives of these children. You will see in this Report that the children had very limited visits with their parents and, from the summer of 1956, the visits were conducted through an eight foot high chain-link fence. … For a number of reasons, this historic claim presents a more challenging fact pattern for government to address. First, most historic claims that have resulted in a criminal prosecution, inquiry, commission or investigation have been primarily about abuse referred to as “sexual.” The public’s understanding and empathy for victims of “sexual” abuse is rightfully heightened. There are far fewer reported cases about psychological maltreatment, particularly of children who have been totally isolated from their parents. Some may consider this form of child abuse not so repugnant and the resulting damage impossible to assess and quantify. This is simply not true. In this case, the long-term harm results from the fact that the children were isolated from their parents and had no escape from the institution. … II. THE POLICY … In the Report of the Sons of Freedom Situation September 1953 to May 1954, prepared by [a Local Committee on Doukhobor Affairs in Nelson, B.C. and the Deputy Ministers’ Committee on Doukhobor Affairs], are the following comments: Your Committees gave thought to recommending the building of schools in these strictly Sons of Freedom communities but discarded the idea for the following reasons: … The children will become good Canadians most rapidly if they associate with other Canadian children in regular schools. It is the belief of your Committees that the major hope of solving the Sons of Freedom problem is by a generation or two (25 to 50 years) of compulsory education of children. In 1955, the government began to consider the idea of keeping the children of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors in New Denver until they reached the age of eighteen years … The Social Welfare Branch wrote to the Department of Child Welfare on January 17, 1955, discussing the rationale for the policy …: We wonder if this suggested policy makes the Protection of Children Act a means to an end which seems to include a broadening out from a concern about School Attendance to an all inclusive though partly obscured attack on the religious beliefs and culture of this troublesome sect. This appears to be based on a belief in the power of education to break family ties. We believe this is a scientifically and sociologically false assumption. It is doubtful to us that this will ever sever cultural and family ties so that the children will be “assimilated” and “Canadianized.” We do not question the value of any amount of education which these children might receive but we do question their receptivity under conditions that to them and to their parents can only appear false and odious. …

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The proposal of expanding the policy to encompass children from fifteen to eighteen years of age was eventually rejected. Responsibility for the implementation of the policy can be traced to the Department of the Attorney General, the Department of Education and the Department of Welfare. A letter from the Department of Education to the Department of the Attorney General, dated July 29, 1953, written prior to the placement of any children in New Denver, reads, in part: As you know, many Doukhobor children of the “Sons of Freedom” in Krestova, Gilpin, Glade and elsewhere have not been attending school. When the necessary facilities and arrangements have been completed it is planned, as part of Government policy, to place these children in school. … III. THE APPREHENSIONS … This Report will not deal with the actions of the government in removing the adult members of the Sons of Freedom. What I will do is give two accounts of how this action was perceived by the children who experienced the event first-hand …: … I was there in the prayer tent. The adults arranged us towards the back or the sides of the tent and so the police eventually attacked the tent and started beating up the adults or parents … Myself being just eight years old, it was the most terrifying experience I have ever had in my life before or after that … Somehow some of us kids got underneath the side of the tent and ran screaming in total shock across the fields and hid in the forests … until evening time … [when] some of the older children found us … So they took us on buses to the New Denver. It was late at night when we got in and that was my home for the next three years. … It appears that midnight raids may have eventually come to an end in 1959. Despite this change, many children lived in fear. We have heard accounts of children hiding from the police in all kinds of places … IV. THE COMPLAINTS … I have categorized the complaints under the following headings: Loss of Love, Nurturing, Guidance and Childhood; Physical and Psychological Maltreatment; General Living Conditions at New Denver; Loss of Privacy, Dignity, Self-respect and Individuality; and Loss of Civil Liberties … (a) Loss of Love, Nurturing, Guidance and Childhood (Refer to Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (“Convention”), Appendix A.) The most significant loss expressed by those who have come to us with their complains is that of the parent-child relationship for a significant period of their childhood.9 …

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V. INVESTIGATION FINDINGS … My findings pursuant to s. 23 of the Ombudsman Act are as follows: 1. The government’s decisions, acts and omissions that resulted in the institutionalization and maltreatment of the children of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors violated subsections (a) (ii), (a) (v), (a) (vi) and (b) (iii) of s. 23 of the Ombudsman Act, particulars of which include: (a) alienating the children of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors from, and denying access to, their parents, religion, culture and language; (b) allowing the children of Sons of Freedom Doukhobors to suffer significant harm as a direct result of being confined in New Denver, forced to live in an institutional setting, being removed from their communities, and abused through neglect, lack of love and nurturing and harsh discipline; (c) failing to counsel or assist in healing the trauma of the children of Sons of Freedom Doukhobors who were subjected to harm by being witness to a serious confrontation between their parents and public officials at Perry Siding, BC; (d) permitting the children of Sons of Freedom Doukhobors, through no fault of their own, to be treated as if they were criminals, many of whom, now adults, continue to suffer the long-term effects of arbitrary, discriminatory and unjust confinement. 2. The actions, decisions and omissions of the government caused irreplaceable loss to the children of New Denver by removing them from parents, alienating them from family and community life and forcing them to live in an institutional setting, particulars of which include: (a) loss of love and nurturing; (b) loss of parental and community guidance; (c) loss of childhood; (d) loss of dignity from living in an institutional setting, from suffering abuse and neglect, and from deprivation of affectionate caregivers; (e) loss of self-respect from unfair and harsh punishment and living conditions and being denied access to parents and family; (f) loss of privacy from living in an institutional setting; (g) loss of individuality from living in an overcrowded institution and having significantly restricted access and visiting to parents and family; (h) and loss of civil liberties, including loss of language, religion, and culture. 3. As a result of the maltreatment, those who were institutionalized in New Denver suffered harm and continue to suffer from the long-term ill effects of this trauma. 4. The acts and omissions of the government in relation to the 15 children confined in New Denver under the incorrect provision of the Protection of Children Act were contrary to law and/or based on a mistake of law once the parents of these children had returned to their homes. VI. OMBUDSMAN RECOMMENDATIONS As a result of these findings, I hereby recommend that the Attorney General, on behalf of the government:

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1. Provide a clear acknowledgement that the government was wrong in the manner in which it apprehended and confined the children of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors in the New Denver institution. 2. Provide the complainants with as full and adequate an explanation as is reasonable and appropriate, given the passage of time, for why, as children, they were apprehended and confined in New Denver. 3. Make an unconditional, clear and public apology to the complainants on behalf of the government, in the Legislative Assembly, for the means by which they were apprehended and for their confinement in New Denver. The essential elements of the apology include: (a) an acknowledgement by government that the children were, by being institutionalized in New Denver, treated unfairly and unjustly both as a group and as individuals, and that harm resulted; (b) a full and comprehensive explanation of why the children were institutionalized and detained in New Denver; (c) acknowledgement that the harm was not intended and that the government expresses regret for the harm done; and (d) a clear statement that government offers reparation for the harm done. 4. Consult with the complainants as a collective to determine the means by which they want to be heard, and the appropriate form of compensation … 5. Refer this Report to the Commanding Officer “E” Division and urge him to consider the role of the RCMP in the matter and the appropriate action to take.

NOTES 1 British Columbia, Office of the Ombudsman, Righting the Wrong: The Confinement of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children, Public report to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia 38, April 1999, http://www.ombudsman.bc.ca/images/resources/reports/Public_Reports/ Public%20Report%20No%20-%2038.pdf. 2 Originally formed as a group through a split from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 16th century, the Doukhobors were persecuted for several centuries in Russia for their religious dissent, their communalism, and pacifism. At the end of the nineteenth century, when Doukhobors were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled for their refusal to obey the tsarist government’s conscription laws, they sought a country of refuge. Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, was an important advocate of their cause in England and helped to secure Canada’s agreement to accept Doukhobor immigrants and to grant them military exemption. A first group of Doukhobors settled in Saskatchewan in 1899. When conflicts arose over land grants (which required individuals to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown), resulting in imprisonments and the divestment of the Doukhobors of much of the land they had settled in Saskatchewan, groups began moving to British Columbia. 3 Gregory J. Cran, Negotiating Buck Naked: Doukhobor, Public Policy, and Conflict Resolution (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 14. 4 Righting the Wrong, 14. 5 Numerous commissions of inquiry have been held in the long history of state-Doukhobor conflict in Canada. In 1947, Judge Harry J. Sullivan, commissioner of a second inquiry into Doukhobor

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7 8

9

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unrest, observed the “terrorism and fear of injury to their fellow Christian neighbours” caused by the violent tactics of some Doukhobors (quoted in Cran, Negotiating Buck Naked, 12). His inquiry was followed by numerous investigative and reconciliatory initiatives: the appointment of a Doukhobor Research Committee in 1950 to research the “Doukhobor problem”; the formation during the same decade of the Consultative Committee on Doukhobor Affairs, which included representatives of Doukhobor factions, provincial and federal governments, and law-enforcement agencies; and, in 1979, the creation of the similarly multiparty Kootenay Committee on Intergroup Relations, which would reach a historic accord in 1984. See Cran, Negotiating Buck Naked. Ibid., 17. Cran cites this description of what was to become the KCIR mandate from A Proposal for Community and Government Involvement in Doukhobor Affairs, the 1979 report that Cran and co-author Hugh Herbison prepared for the attorney general of British Columbia, recommending the creation of a forum like the KCIR. Righting the Wrong, 4. British Columbia, Office of the Ombudsman, Righting the Wrong: A Progress Report (follow-up report to Righting the Wrong: The Confinement of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children), Public report 43, March 2002, p. 5. http://www.ombudsman.bc.ca/images/resources/reports/Public_Reports/Public%20Report%20No%20-%2043.pdf. Each of the sections under “Complaints” refers the reader to a corresponding article of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (articles 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 25, 29, 31, 21, reprinted in the appendix to the report itself).

2. Statement of Regret to Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children by Attorney General of British Columbia, 20041 On 4 October 2004, a Statement of Regret was read by the attorney general of British Columbia, Geoff Plant, in the provincial legislature. A news release by the Ministry of the Attorney General noted that “discussions about methods of healing and reconciliation with the former residents of New Denver are ongoing. The Ministry of Children and Family Development provides a counselling program to those affected by offering family therapy and individual counselling.”2The Canadian Race Relations Foundation issued a statement in response the following day, expressing its disappointment with the “offer of ‘regret’” following the 2002 ombudsman’s follow-up report which had called for an apology, and suggesting that the failure to make “an unconditional, clear and public apology” was related to the attorney general’s fears that such “an apology would trigger lawsuits.”3 In 2005, the provincial government’s preparations to create a monument and picnic site to commemorate the experience of the Sons of Freedom children were aborted because of resistance from Doukhobors who found “plaques … about our suffering” fundamentally opposed to their principles of anti-materialism and anti-iconism.4 In 2008, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada designated Peter Vasilevich Verigin (who helped organize the Doukhobor emigration to Canada and was the leader of the first group of Doukhobor settlers in Saskatchewan) a “National Historic Person of Canada” 5 and designated the Doukhobor migration to British Columbia – “the largest organized internal migration in Canadian history undertaken by a cultural community” – a “National Historic Event.”6

456 Appendix I: Doukhobor Residential Schools

I rise in the House with the honour of paying tribute to special guests joining us today: Irene Popoff, Elsie Eriksen, William Sherstobitoff, Shirley Sherstobitoff, Joe Sherstobitoff, Fred Konkin, Walter Swetlishoff, Naida Hamoline, Georgina Kootnikoff, Naida Stoochnoff, Grace Worrall; representatives of a special group of British Columbians, known as the New Denver Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children. I would like to take a few moments to talk about a sad chapter in B.C. history. The Provincial Ombudsman brought this chapter to the attention of government and the public in her 1999 report, “Righting the Wrong: The Confinement of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children.” This report details the events that occurred some fifty years ago when 104 Sons of Freedom Doukhobor children were removed from their parents who were arrested during a protest in the West Kootenays. In 1953, some 104 children were taken by bus to New Denver where those of school age were kept in a residential care facility and those who were not of school age were returned to their families. Over the next 6 years – from 1953 to 1959 – the government enforced a policy of mandatory school attendance and approximately 200 children were placed in the New Denver institution during this period. Many Sons of Freedom parents, determined not to surrender their children, hid them from the police. Initially the children went to school in the institution, but eventually they were integrated into the local public school in New Denver. No doubt the New Denver experience affected these children and their families in profound ways. In many cases these children were kept from their parents for extraordinary periods of time. Some children were not allowed to return home during the summer or at Christmas because of uncertainty that their parents would return them to New Denver. This was not an easy story to hear nor is it an easy story to tell. I commend all those who came forward after all these years to talk about what must be extremely personal and painful memories. Many of these people, we have since come to learn, have buried their past and they even felt it necessary to hide their Sons of Freedom background and their association with New Denver from their friends, their neighbours and their employers. The challenge that we, as [a] government today, face in understanding what happened half a century ago is not as simple as one might expect. What we do know is that these were frightening times for the residents of the Kootenay and Boundary regions of British Columbia. Bombings and burnings had been occurring throughout this part of the province for over three decades. Fear and anger had escalated among both the Doukhobor and non-Doukhobor communities. And to this end, the government of the day was under tremendous pressure to end the violence. Mr. Speaker, we can’t fully understand or explain the motives of a government of fifty years ago. We can, though, recognize the circumstances under which these events occurred and acknowledge how things might be done differently if we were to do them today. I would like to thank those who had the courage to come forward to remind British Columbians about this history. Many of us were unaware or had forgotten about the conflicting values and the political turmoil that involved the government and these communities over half a century ago and in particular, too many of us were unaware, that you as innocent children were taken from your homes and your communities. We recognize that as children, you were caught in this conflict through no fault of your own. So on behalf of the Government of British Columbia, I extend my sincere, complete

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and deep regret for the pain and suffering you experienced during the prolonged separation from your families. We recognize and regret that you were deprived of the day-to-day contact with your parents and the love and support of your families. We recognize and we regret the anguish that this must have caused. We will continue to offer counselling to former residents and your relatives including your siblings, your offspring and your spouses who wish to access this service. And we hope that this acknowledgement will enable you to work with us toward continued reconciliation and healing. Thank you Mr. Speaker.

NOTES 1 British Columbia, Ministry of Attorney General, “Backgrounder: Statement of Regret to Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children,” 2004AG0031-000793, 4 October 2004, http://www.llbc.leg .bc.ca/public/pubdocs/bcdocs/371785/bcaa_nr_oct_04_04.pdf. 2 British Columbia, Ministry of Attorney General, “News Release: Statement of Regret to Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children,” 2004AG0031-000793, 4 October 2004, http://www.llbc.leg .bc.ca/public/pubdocs/bcdocs/371785/bcaa_nr_oct_04_04.pdf. 3 Canadian Race Relations Foundation, “CFFR Disappointed in B.C. Government’s Regret Statement to Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children,” 5 October 2004, http://www.crr.ca/index2 .php?option=com_content&do_pdf =1&id=394. 4 “Doukhobor Monument on Hold,” CBC.ca via ancestry.com, 6 March 2005, http://boards .rootsweb.com/topics.religious.doukhobor/1010/mb.ashx. 5 “Directory of Designations of National Historic Significance of Canada,” Parks Canada, 22 February 2005, http://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/lhn-nhs/det_E.asp?oqSID=2186&oqeName=Verigin% 2C+Peter+Vasilevich&oqfName=Verigin%2C+Peter+Vasilevich. 6 “Canada’s Ethnocultural Communities: Recognizing Diversity in Our Nation’s Past,” Parks Canada, 7 April 2009, http://www.pc.gc.ca/culture/proj/ cec/page05/page05c_e.asp.

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Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following copyright holders for permission to reproduce material in this text: Page 200 “What Is Remembered” from In the Name of Narid by Andrew Suknaski © 1981; reprinted with the permission of the author. Page 222 “A Smallpox Issue”; reproduced with the permission of the estate of Bob Boyer. Page 225 “COSMOSQUAW”; reproduced with the permission of Lori Blondeau. Page 304 Testimony of D.C. Scott, March 1920; copyright © Government of Canada; reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2010). Page 314 Background notes on Indian Education, D.C. Scott, May 1920; Government of Canada; reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2010). Page 321 Confession of the Presbyterian Church; reprinted by permission of the Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives; available online from Remembering the Children: An Aboriginal and Church Leaders’ Tour to Prepare for Truth and Reconciliation, http://www. rememberingthechildren.ca/press/pcc-confession.htm. Page 323 Notes for an Address by the Honourable Jane Stewart, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development on the occasion of the unveiling of Gathering Strength – Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, 7 January 1998, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada; this reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by the Government of Canada, and has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, the Government of Canada. Page 335 House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 2008; reprinted by permission of the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons, Canada. Page 340 Petition to Governor of Nova Scotia from Acadian inhabitants, 1755; reprinted by permission of Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. Page 342 Acadian Deportation Order, 1755; reprinted by permission of Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. Page 343 Royal proclamation designating 28 July of every year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval,” 2003; Canada Gazette, vol. 137, no. 27; this reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by the Government of Canada, and has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, the Government of Canada. Page 346 Nova Scotia Resolution, 1834; reprinted by permission of Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. Page 348 A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1957; reprinted by permission of Halifax Regional Municipality Archives. Page 349 “Lessons from Africville”; reprinted by permission of

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Denise Allen. Page 352 Report on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance: Addendum Mission to Canada; copyright © United Nations, 2004; reproduced with permission. Page 354 Bill 213, An Act to Address the Historic Injustice Committed against the People of Africville; reprinted by permission of the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly, Speaker’s Administration Office. Page 365 Draft letter from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, Victoria, British Columbia, to the Chinese Ambassador to England, 1 January 1896; University of Victoria Archives, Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Fonds, AR030 file 1.2.3. Page 366 Mack et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, 2000; reprinted by permission of the Canadian Legal Information Institute. Page 376 Open letter from the Chinese Canadian National Council to Prime Minister Paul Martin on the Subject of the Chinese Head Tax, 2005; reprinted by permission of the Chinese Canadian National Council. Page 377 House of Commons Apology for the Chinese Head Tax, 2006; reprinted by permission of the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons, Canada. Page 381 The Court of Appeal: Re Munshi Singh, 1914; permission to reprint granted by The Law Society of British Columbia and Canada Law Book. Page 385 British Columbia Legislative Assembly: Acknowledgement and Apology for the Komagata Maru Case, 2008; reprinted by permission of the British Columbia Premier’s Office. Page 388 House of Commons Motion M-469, 2008; reprinted by permission of the Honourable Bill Barisoff. Page 391 Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Apology, 2008; reprinted by permission of the Professor Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation of Canada and Alia Somani. Page 409 “A National Shame: The Internment of Italian Canadians”; reprinted by permission of the National Council of Italian Canadians. Page 414 Address by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to the National Congress of Italian Canadians and the Canadian Italian Business Professional Association, 1990; reprinted by permission of the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney. Page 419 Letter tabled in Parliament on 14 December 1994, signed by Sheila Finestone, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, rejecting redress claims by several minority groups; Sessional Papers, 14 December 1994; PAC RG 14, 1995–1996/668, box 13, 8525-351-22; this reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by the Government of Canada, and has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, the Government of Canada. Page 420 Agreement-in-Principle between the Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2005; this reproduction is a copy of an official work, Acknowledging Our Past to Build Our Future, that is published by the Government of Canada, and has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, the Government of Canada. Page 425 “We Must Fight Deportation,” New Canadian, 1945; reprinted by permission of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario. Page 427 Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, Memorandum for the Members of the House of Commons and Senate of Canada on Orders-in-Council P.C. 7355, 7356, 7357, for the Deportation of Canadians of Japanese Racial Origin, April 1946; McMaster University, Library, Archives and Research Collections, CCJC-MAC, folder 13. Page 431 National Japanese Citizens Association, Submission to the Prime Minister and Members of the Government in the Matter of Japanese Canadian Economic Losses Arising from Evacuation, 22 September 1950; University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Japanese Canadian Research Collection, box 5, folder 7. Page 434 National Association of Japanese Canadians, Democracy Betrayed: The Case for Redress, a Submission to the Government of Canada on the Violation of Rights and Freedoms of Japanese

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Canadians during and after World War II, 1984; reprinted by permission of the National Association of Japanese Canadians. Page 435 House of Commons Apology to Japanese Canadians, 1988; reprinted by permission of the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons, Canada. Page 439 “Acknowledgement: Terms of Agreement between the Government of Canada and the National Association of Japanese Canadians,” 22 September 1988, Canada, House of Commons, Unpublished Sessional Papers, 332-4/62.microfilm; this reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by the Government of Canada, and has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, the Government of Canada. Page 443 Canadian government policy brief on Jewish refugees, 6 June 1938, Government of Canada; reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2010). Page 446 Letter from O.D. Skelton to George M. Wrong, 19 June 1939, Government of Canada; reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2010). Page 449 Righting the Wrong, report of the British Columbia Ombudsman on the Confinement of Doukhobor children, 1999; reprinted by permission of the Office of the Ombudsman, British Columbia. Page 455 Statement of Regret to Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children by Attorney General of British Columbia, 2004; copyright © Province of British Columbia; all rights reserved; reprinted with permission of the Province of British Columbia, www.ipp.gov.bc.ca.

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Contributors

Anna Carastathis is currently an assistant professor of Feminist Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles, specializing in critical race theory, anti-colonial and postcolonial thought, and Marx/Marxism. She received her PhD from McGill University and spent a year as a postdoctoral scholar at the Centre de recherche en éthique de l’ Université de Montréal, where she conducted research on reasonable accommodation. She immigrated to Turtle Island from her birthplace, Greece, in 1990. Lily Cho is an associate professor of English at York University. Her recent publications include “Citizenship and the Bonds of Affect: the Passport Photograph,” Photography and Culture (2009), “The Materiality of Melancholia: Madeleine Thien’s Simple Recipes,” Narratives of Citizenship (2011) and “Underwater Signposts: Richard Fung’s Islands and Enabling Nostalgia,” Cultural Grammars of Nation, Diaspora and Indigeneity in Canada (2012). Her book, Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada (2010) examines the relationship between Chinese restaurants and diaspora culture. Amber Dean is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies and the Gender Studies and Feminist Research program at McMaster University. Her research and teaching interests include cultural studies, contemporary feminist theory, trauma and memory studies, and visual cultures of violence, suffering, and loss. Recent essays can be found in the journals Public and Affinities (with Phanuel Antwi). Julia Emberley is a professor of English and Women’s Studies, member of the Indigenous Health and Well-Being Initiative and a member of the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction at Western University. She has published several books including Thresholds of Difference (1993), The Cultural Politics of Fur (1998), and Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal: Cultural Practices and Decolonization in Canada (2007). She has published widely in the field of testimony studies, postcolonial and Indigenous literatures, and cultural studies. Her forthcoming book is titled Indigenous Storytelling and Testimonial Discourse in a Neo-liberal Age of Redress and Reparations. Len Findlay is a professor of English, Director of the Humanities Research Unit, and member of the Indigenous Humanities Group at the University of Saskatchewan, and President of Academy One of the Royal Society of Canada. His recent publications include

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Contributors

“Can the Institution Speak? The University as Testimony in Canada Today” (Humanities Review), “Extraordinary Renditions: Translating the Humanities Now” (Retooling the Humanities), and a major CAUT report on the Ramesh Thakur affair. Jennifer Henderson is an associate professor in the Department of English at Carleton University. She is the author of Settler Feminism and Race Making in Canada (2003), as well as numerous articles and book chapters in Canadian cultural studies. With Pauline Wakeham, she co-edited a special issue of English Studies in Canada on Aboriginal redress (2009). Her current research concerns genres of public discourse in late liberalism. Matt James received his BA (Honours) in Political Studies and History from Queen’s University at Kingston and his MA and PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. A student of social movements, constitutionalism, and citizenship, his current research focuses on questions of reparation, social memory, and transitional justice. He is the author of Misrecognized Materialists: Social Movements in Canadian Constitutional Politics (2006) and has published several articles on reparations in scholarly journals and edited collections. Lindy Ledohowski completed her BA (Honours) at the University of Manitoba, and her BEd, MA, and PhD at the University of Toronto. Her SSHRC-funded doctoral dissertation theorized Ukrainian Canadian identity politics in post-multicultural Canada. She then completed a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Ottawa and began work as an assistant professor in the Department of English at St Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo as a specialist in Canadian literature. Now, she owns her own diversity consulting firm, is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University. Eva Mackey is an associate professor in the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University. She is the author of House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (2002), and numerous essays and chapters. She is currently completing a manuscript entitled Unsettled Expectations: Coloniality, Land Rights, and Decolonizing Strategies. Roy Miki, a professor emeritus in the English Department at Simon Fraser University, is the author of Broken Entries: Race, Subjectivity, Writing (1998) and Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (2004), as well as five books of poems. His third book of poems, Surrender (2001), received the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. He is also the editor of Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol (2001) and two works by Roy Kiyooka: Pacific Windows: The Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka (1997), which received the poetry book award from the Association for Asian American Studies, and The Artist and the Moose: A Fable of Forget (2009). His most recent books are Mannequin Rising (2011), a collection of poems and photo collages, and In Flux: Transnational Shifts in Asian Canadian Writing (2011), an essay collection. He received the Order of Canada in 2006 and the Order of British Columbia in 2009.

Contributors

465

Dian Million is Tanana Athabascan. She has been an assistant professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, since 2001. She is currently active in researching community mental health issues in intersection with race, gender and biopolitics in both Canada and the United States. Recent publications include “Intense Dreaming: Theories, Narratives and Our Search for Home” in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and “Felt Theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History” in Wicazo Sa Review. Her first book Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights will be published in 2013 in University of Arizona Press’s Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies series. The chapter in this volume is an early version of this work. Roger I. Simon was a professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Simon published broadly on critical approaches to culture and education. Over the last twenty years his research addressed questions of the pedagogical and ethical dimensions of practices of cultural memory, particularly as these applied to the remembrance of mass systemic violence. Simon’s work on practices of remembrance and the development of historical consciousness formed part of a body of writing and research in which he explored the intersections of social and political theory, cultural practice, and pedagogy. Dale Turner is a Teme-Augama Anishnabai from northern Ontario. He is an associate professor of Government and of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Turner has a PhD in philosophy from McGill University and works in Indigenous politics in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. He is the author of This Is Not a Peace Pipe: Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy (2006). He lives in Sharon, Vermont with his partner Stephanie and his two boys, Benjamin and Dylan. Pauline Wakeham is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario, where she researches and teaches in the fields of Indigenous and Canadian literary and cultural studies. She is the author of Taxidermic Signs: Reconstructing Aboriginality (2008) and co-editor, with Jennifer Henderson, of a special issue of English Studies in Canada on Aboriginal Redress (2009). James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson is an internationally recognized authority in Indigenous knowledge, heritage, and jurisprudence, constitutional rights, and human rights. He is a member of the Chickasaw Nation. He is the research director of the Native Law Centre of Canada and teaches Aboriginal law at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan. His achievements in national and international law have been recognized by the Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel (2005), the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Law and Justice (2006), and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Carleton University (2007).

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Index

Aboriginal (Australia): 83n66, 100–11, 173n11; and Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 130; and Bringing Them Home report, 130–2; and the Stolen Generations, 76n8, 100, 142n38, 333 Aboriginal (Canada): 4, 5, 22n5, 50, 136, 338; culture, 16, 17, 50, 51, 53, 54, 75; and colonial violence, 195n26; and constitutional reconciliation, 115–23; Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 6, 23n7, 35, 56, 172; and development, 69; Federal Framework for Aboriginal Development, 68, 69; Deskaheh, 172; First Nations jurisprudence, 219; Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, 68, 105, 112n6, 323–32; and genocide, 141n23, 174n17; and House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 3, 8, 12, 13, 19, 47–50, 55–9, 100; and John Duncan, 24n26; land claims, 4, 50–1, 67, 105, 139, 329, 331; Legacy of Hope Foundation, 67, 80n43, 130, 139n5; National Aboriginal Achievement Awards, 217–31, 228; nationalism, 173n11; Native Council of Canada, 191; Native Law Centre of Canada, 219; organizations, 67; and reconciliation, 9, 20, 56, 60n19, 100–11, 131, 232nn15 & 16; redress movements, 67, 71, 73, 217–31; “Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds,” 299–303; residential schools, 64, 66, 70, 76, 77nn10 & 16, 78n22, 80n43, 140n18, 387–8, 321n2, 390; residential schools and violence,

143–55, 156n13, 299–339; rights, 113n38, 125n24, 159–75, 235n50; sovereignty, 20, 52, 65, 79n25, 237; and “Statement of Reconciliation,” 6; youth, 68, 80n37. See also Aboriginal women (Canada); Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 4, 105, 333 Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, 228 Aboriginal women (Canada): 53, 68, 196n42, 224, 233n35, 328, 338; and Beverly Jacobs, 57, 192, 234nn38 & 45, 338–9; missing and murdered, 21, 181–94, 196n43, 226, 234nn38 & 46; and Native Women’s Association of Canada, 4, 57, 68–9, 186, 234n45, 331, 338–9; and Quebec Native Women’s Association, 57, 240; and sex-trade workers, 224; and “Sisters in Spirit,” 186, 195n20–1, 196n43; and Valentine’s Day Memorial March, 193 Abou-El-Maati, Ahmad, 288 Abu-Laban, Yasmeen, 31, 33–5, 44n48, 279, 291n6 Acadian Deportations, 340–5 accommodation: 236–52; and Aboriginal peoples, 107, 124n18; and Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, 236, 238; and “cultural accommodation,” 250–1; and “duty of accommodation,” 243, 244, 245, 256n46; and Quebec, 236–52; and “reasonable accommodation,” 21, 236–8, 240–8, 251–2, 252nn1 & 3, 253n5, 255n30

468

Index

Acknowledgement, Commemoration, and Education Program (ACEP), 82n55, 376, 414 Act to acknowledge that persons of Ukrainian origin were interned in Canada during the First World War and to provide for recognition of this event, An, 77n10, 403n1 Act to Amend the Indian Act, An. See Indian Act Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes, An, 51 Act to prevent the Clandestine Landing of Liberated Slaves, An, 346–8 Act Respecting Immigration, An, 257n75, 380–1 Adam, Howard, 167, 176n41 African Canadian Legal Clinic, 37 Africville: 9, 13, 25n39, 37, 357n4; and Apology and Agreement to Commemorate the Historic Community, 355–7; and A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 348– 9; and Bill 213, 354–5; and Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, 356; and “Lessons from Africville,” 349–52; and Nova Scotia Resolution, 346–8; and Report on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 352–4; and Seaview United Baptist Church, 355–6 Africville Genealogical Society, 349 Africville Heritage Trust Board, 355 Agamben, Giorgio, 94, 98n24, 278–9, 286–7, 291n9, 295n57 Ahmed, Sara, 21, 191–2, 237–40, 248, 252 Air India bombing, 21, 181, 185, 188–90, 194n16, 196n34 Alfred, Taiaiake, 24n25, 173n11, 218, 231n8 Allen, Denise, 349, 352, 356, 357n4 Allen, Paula Gunn, 148, 150, 168 Almalki, Abdullah. See Arar, Maher Amoss, Pamela, 164 Annual Report on the operation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. See multiculturalism Antoine, Interim Grand Chief Gerald, 57 apology: 3–22; and age of apology, 9, 21, 27; and Beverly Jacobs, 57, 192, 234nn38 &

45, 338–9; and non-performative speech act, 49, 55, 59, 237–9; and quasi-apology, 41, 46n81; and rhetoric of “pastness,” 49, 60n13, 289 Arar, Maher: 21, 278–90, 291n2, 292n13, 294n50; and Abdullah Almalki, 281, 288, 294nn48–9; and Canada v. Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, 283, 291n5; and Dr Monia Mazigh, 280, 283; extraordinary rendition, 278, 280, 282, 284, 286, 287, 291n5; and Project A-O Canada, 281, 288; and Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar, 281, 292n13 Arat-Koc, Sedef, 281–2 Archibald, Jo-ann/Q’um Q’um Xiiem, 143, 147–52, 155 Aretxaga, Begoña, 7, 24n18 Asch, Michael, 52, 60n19, 61nn34 & 38 Ashoona, Suvinai, 221 Asian Canadian, 6, 263–74, 391 Assembly of First Nations, 4, 9, 77n16, 113n28, 168, 331–4; and Phil Fontaine, 47, 57, 67, 331, 333, 337 Austin, J.L., 238–9 Australia, 111n2, 272, 294n50 Bachinsky, Elizabeth, 202, 205 Bacon, Francis, 230 Balibar, Étienne, 249 Bannerji, Himani, 8, 14, 42n2, 253n4 Baum, Rachel, 130, 139n6 Bell, John Kim, 228 Belmore, Rebecca, 223, 224, 233n33 Benjamin, Walter, 290 Berger, Carl, 92 Black Loyalists, 18, 37, 346–57 Blackstock, Cindy, 140n18, 240, 253n5 Blackwater, Willie, 148 Blaeser, Kimberley, 147 Blaise, Clarke, 185, 194n16 Bloch, Ernst, 134–5 Blondeau, Lori, 217, 223–7, 234nn37 & 39, 234nn41–2 Bloodlines: A Journey into Eastern Europe, 203

Index B’nai Brith Canada, 41, 46n79 Borrows, John, 61nn34 & 38, 113n33, 126n37, 218 Bouchard, Gérard, 236–7, 241–7, 249–52, 252n4, 255n30, 436 Boyer, Bob, 221–3, 233n30 Brant, Beth, 153, 157n36 Brass, Eleanor, 145, 146 Braveheart, Maria Yellow Horse, 169, 176n47 Breaking Ground, 208, 213n82 Breaking the Silence. See Indian Residential Schools Britzman, Deborah, 136, 139n4 Brodie, Janine, 17, 64, 69 Brown, Wendy, 12, 200, 207, 212n45, 213n74, 257n74 Buck-Morss, Susan, 287 Bush, George W., 27n57, 278, 281, 285–7, 290, 293n40 Butler, Judith, 27n52, 182–3, 186, 191, 193 Canadian Citizenship Act, 87, 88, 91, 96 Canadian Constitution Act, 100, 111 Canadian Jewish Congress, 419 Canadian Museum for Human Rights, 7 Canadian Museum of Civilization, 223, 233n27 Canadian Race Relations Foundation: 11, 37, 44n51, 73, 95, 417; and House of Commons Apology to Japanese Canadians, 435; and Statement of Regret to Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children by Attorney General of British Columbia, 456; and Terms of Agreement between the Government of Canada and the National Association of Japanese Canadians, 440 Canadian War Museum, 72 capitalism: 69, 220, 221, 227, 230; in Canada, 80n37; on global scale, 63, 171 Cardinal, Harold, 167 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 59, 92, 132 Charest, Jean. See Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 82n52, 369, 403, 420, 437, 441; and reasonable accommodation, 242, 247; and redress claims, 5, 90, 366

469

Charter of the United Nations. See United Nations Cheng, Anne Anlin, 201, 207 child, the: 63–76; and “An Act to Revise the Indian Act,” 304, 305, 309, 310; and House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 335; and Mack et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, 366; and neoliberalism, 77n11; and “Notes on Indian Education,” 314, 316, 318; and “Open Letter on Residential Schools to the Prime Minister from Chief Phil Fontaine,” 333; and “Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and HalfBreeds,” 301, 303; and residential schools, 77n16, 106, 145, 147, 156n13, 240, 300; and Righting the Wrong, 450, 452; and Ukrainian Canadians, 82n57; and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 449; as victim, 83n69, 132 Chinese Canadian: 87–7; and Chinese Canadian National Council, 36, 40, 46n72; and Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 365–6; and Colleen Hua, 377; and House of Commons Apology, 96–7, 377–9; and Mack et al. v. Canada (Attorney General), 90, 366–75; and National Congress of Chinese Canadians, 40, 422n2; and redress for head tax, 5, 19, 39, 41, 45n65, 375, 376–7 Chinese Immigration Act: 87–97, 358–64, 367–9, 373–5, 378; and Exclusion Act, 36, 39, 43n33, 87, 376, 377 Cho, Lily, 5, 19, 115, 189 Chorus of Mushrooms, 273 Chow, Rey, 270 Chrétien, Jean, 35, 36, 167, 343 Chuh, Kandice, 274 Church, T.L., 91–3 Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future, 414–16 citizenship: 17, 64; Aboriginal, sui generis, 24n23, 219, 220, 232; and Air India bombing, 185; and Canadian federal government, 26n48, 33, 37, 40, 43n34, 45n53, 81nn48 & 50, 259n117, 372, 418, 422n3, 436; and Chinese Canadian head tax, 87–97, 362, 364, 367, 371; and Indigenous communi-

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Index

ties, 4, 115, 116, 136, 143, 229, 300, 333; and Japanese Canadians, 264, 266, 274, 434, 435: and Jewish Refugees on the SS St Louis, 444; and Komagata Maru, 380, 391; and Maher Arar, 284; and nationhood, 19, 98n23, 416, 426, 429, 440 Claxton, Dana, 223–4 Coleman, Daniel, 25n34, 91, 93, 199 colonialism: 19; and Aboriginal sovereignty, 4, 20, 33, 104, 120, 132, 141, 160, 165, 172; and Aboriginal women, 192; and Africville, 350; and Asian Canadians, 263; and Canada, 8, 49, 92, 94, 187, 218, 230, 235n50; and citizenship, 93; in culture, 228; and humanism, 220; and Indigenism, 173n11; and Presbyterian Church, 322; and Quebec, 238, 246, 247; and reconciliation, 171, 255n41; and residential schools, 50, 67, 321n2, 323; and revolution, 88; and trauma in Aboriginal communities, 160, 166, 169 commemoration: 14, 21, 38, 41, 73; and Aboriginal land claims, 329, 343–4; and Acknowledgement, Commemoration, and Education Program (ACEP), 35, 36, 43n32, 82n55, 402, 414, 420; and Africville, 355–6; and Air India disaster, 190; and Chinese Canadians, 376–7, 378; and Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, 48, 159, 190, 192, 196n41; and Italian Canadians, 418n3; and Japanese Canadians, 269, 271, 275n9, 276nn28 & 33, 436, 440 Committee on the Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society. See multiculturalism Community Historical Recognition Program, 6, 14, 45n53, 72, 414, 422n3 confession: 49, 55, 56, 170, 271, 279; in relation to Maher Arar case, 282, 283; in relation to Presbyterian Church, 321–2 Constitution of Transitional Measures Act, 291n9, 423 Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (CCPARDC), 21, 236, 238, 259n106 Convention on the Rights of the Child. See United Nations

Cook, Haruko Taya, 269 Cook, Theodore F., 269 COSMOSQUAW, 220, 224–7 Courtois, Christine A., 166 Crey, Ernie, 159 Cuthand, Ruth, 223, 233n34 Daily, Brenda, 166 Das, Veena, 161, 171 Dear Canada: Prisoners in the Promised Land, 207 DeBruyn, Lemyra, 169, 176n47 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. See United Nations Defence of Canada Regulations, 405–7, 408 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 107, 108, 118, 119, 125n20, 332 Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. See Aboriginal (Canada) Department of Canadian Heritage, 14, 34, 35, 43n32, 421 Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 281, 443 Derrida, Jacques, 3, 279, 286 dialogic governance, 219 Diefenbaker, John, 91, 92, 94, 95 Diène, Doudou, 350, 352 Disappearing Moon Café, 273 Doukhobor residential schools: 449–57; and Dulcie McCallum, 450; and Geoff Plant, 455; and Howard Kushner, 450; and Kootenay Committee on Intergroup Relations, 449, 455n6; and New Denver Survivors Committee, 449; and Peter Vasilevich Verigin, 455; and Protection of Children Act, 449, 451, 453; and Righting the Wrong, 449– 54; and Statement of Regret to Doukhobor Children, 455–7; and “Sons of Freedom,” 449, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456 Dower, John, 269 Dunmore, Lord, 346 Durkheim, Émile, 163 Dyzenhaus, David, 90, 375n3 Earhart, David C., 268 Eisenberg, Avigail, 244

Index Elias, Robert, 165 Emergencies Act, 403, 440–1 Equality Now! 33, 34 Erasmus, George, 71, 112n15, 113n16, 324 Failler, Angela, 188, 194, 197n55 Felman, Shoshana, 149, 175n35, 201 Finestone, Sheila, 419 First World War: 75, 374; and other potential redress movements, 23n13; and Ukrainian Canadian internment, 6, 21, 36, 40, 64, 65, 66, 72, 73, 77n10, 198, 204, 207, 208, 209, 210n3, 394–403, 442n2 Fontaine, Phil. See Assembly of First Nations forgiveness: 55–6, 230, 291n8; in Africville Apology and Agreement to Commemorate the Historic Community, 356; and apology, 49, 50, 55–6, 58, 236; in Confession of the Presbyterian Church, 321, 323; and “globalisation of forgiveness,” 3, 21, 236, 279, 280; in House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 335; in House of Commons Apology to Japanese Canadians, 435; and Inuit culture, 13; and postcolonialism, 235n47; and redress movements, 212n45 Foucault, Michel, 170 Freud, Sigmund, 152, 166, 182, 183, 227 Furniss, Elizabeth, 8, 144, 176n42 Gabriel, Christina, 31, 33–5, 44n48 Gagné, Marie-Anik, 169 George, Pamela, 191, 192 German Canadian Congress, 419 Gibney, Mark, 23n14, 44n38, 80n38, 285, 286 Gill, Stephen, 31 Glen, James Allison, 90–1 Globe and Mail, 39, 56, 184, 198, 209 Go, Avvy, 90, 95 Gooderham, G.K., 162 Gordon, Avery, 188 Goto, Hiromi, 273 Goulding, Warren, 197n50 Green Library, The. See Kulyk Keefer, Janice Grekul, Lisa, 199, 206, 207, 210n4, 211n11 grief: 9, 15, 17, 76n8, 169, 194n7; and Abo-

471

riginal peoples, 325, 333; and Air India bombing, 185; and Freud, 182; and grievance, 198, 201, 207; and mourning, 21, 182; unresolved, 169 Griffiths, Kurt, 165 Guantánamo, 287, 294n50, 295n57 Hague Conventions, 65, 398, 401n7 Haida Nation v. British Columbia (Minister of Forests), 120, 124n18 Haig-Brown, Celia, 146, 168, 176n42 Hall, Vivian, 199 Hardt, Michael, 287 Harootunian, Harry, 271 Harper, Stephen: 81n50, 82n55, 129, 333, 376, 337; and apology for Chinese head tax, 40, 89, 96, 97, 280, 285, 378; and apology for Komagata Maru, 6, 189, 388, 391, 392, 393n2; and apology to Maher Arar, 21, 278, 283, 284, 286, 288, 289, 290, 294n50; and claim of absence of colonial history in Canada, 49, 235n50; and Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP), 35, 41; and death of RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, 184; and House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 47, 48, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 100, 105, 154, 240, 289, 335; and public monument for Air India Flight 182, 185, 188, 190 Hatch, John, 55, 56 Hawrelak, Nancy, 208, 213n82 Hayner, Priscilla, 160, 173n6 Hein, Laura, 266 Henderson, James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood: 24n23, 51, 80n37, 173n11; and “constitutional reconciliation,” 20, 231n3; and Indigenous culture, 148, 174; and legal scholarship, 217–21, 224, 226, 229, 231, 232n15 Henderson, Jennifer, 19, 50, 60n18, 213n75, 272 Herman, Judith, 166, 168, 175n31 Hickson, Letitia, 48 High Arctic Relocation Reconciliation Agreement. See Inuit; reconciliation

472

Index

Highway, Tomson, 230 Hirsch, Marianne, 203, 204, 207 Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, 455 Hodgsen, Maggie, 166 Holodomor famine: 21, 201, 203, 204, 211n32; in Bachinsky’s poem “Holodomor,” 202, 205; in Kulyk Keefer’s novel The Green Library, 205 Honey and Ashes. See Kulyk Keefer, Janice “honour of the Crown,” 116, 119, 122, 220, 230 Humphrey, John, 231 Humphreys, Adrian, 159 Hussain, Nasser, 287 Iacovetta, Franca: 77n9, 81n47, 413n14, 418n2–3; and the National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC), 409, 413nn1 & 11 immigration: 8, 11, 44n48, 257n75; and Africville, 346; and Canadian redress claims, 419, 421; and Chinese Canadians, 6, 39, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 285, 358–79; and Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 14, 45n53, 259n117, 422n3; and Emergencies Act, 441; and Harper government, 6, 35, 43n34, 44n44, 81n50, 97, 285, 418n4; and India, 188; and Italian Canadians, 415, 416; and Japanese Canadians, 430; and Jewish Refugees on SS St Louis, 443, 444, 446, 447; and Komagata Maru, 41, 380–92; and landing fees, 96; and Maher Arar case, 291n5; policy in relation to UN Charter, 248; in postcolonial France, 249; and Quebec, 241, 242, 246, 247, 250, 251, 256n44; and “safe third country” agreement, 189; and Ukrainian Canadians, 40, 208; and wartime measures, 37, 72, 394–5, 396n1 imperialism: 246; and Britain, 92, 93, 120, 272; and colonialism, 153; and Euroimperialism, 221, 224; and Japan, 267, 272; and Ukrainian Canadians, 72; and the West, 245 In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence. See Ukrainian Canadians In the Name of Narid, 200

Indian Act: 126n37, 144, 162, 165, 223, 233n34; and Aboriginal women, 191, 224, 227; and amendments, 304, 307, 312–44, 317–21, 324, 326; and apology, 58, 240; and assimilation, 51 Indian Enfranchisement Act, 51, 308 Indian residential schools: 48, 50–1, 53–4, 58, 65–7, 79nn27–8, 144, 323; and abuse, 77n16, 78nn21 & 24, 130, 144, 145–7, 154, 160, 162, 165, 326; and Bagot Commission Report, 299; and Breaking the Silence, 67, 157n33, 168–9, 176n42; and class action, 79n26; and colonialism, 143, 144–5, 147, 160–1, 162, 191, 279, 289, 333, 387; and Common Experience Payment, 10, 48, 332; and confession of Presbyterian Church, 321–3; and House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 47, 53, 50, 56, 57, 75, 79n25, 100, 190, 221, 240, 289, 294n54, 332–4, 335–9; and Indian Act, 304–13, 314–21 (see also Indian Act); and “Indian child,” 70, 71, 73, 106–7 (see also child); and Legacy of Hope Foundation, 80n43; and Mary Simon, 57, 338; and Nicholas Flood Davin, 299–303; and “Notes on Indian Education,” 314–17; and public history, 135–8, 141nn24 & 34, 142n37, 192; and public inquiry, 43n31; and redress, 10, 64, 67, 75; and “Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds,” 299–303; and settlement agreement, 4, 10, 48, 68–9, 77nn10 & 16, 105, 110, 112nn6 & 11, 113n37, 114n40, 159, 172, 190, 192, 196n41; and testimony, 156n13, 165, 166, 167, 168; and Where Are the Children, 67, 71, 130. See also Aboriginal women (Canada); trauma; Truth and Reconciliation Commission Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. See Indian residential schools Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives in Canadian Art, 223 Indigenism, 161, 164, 173n11 Indigenous diplomacy, 219 Indigenous Renaissance, 218, 223, 229

Index Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, The. See Ukrainian Canadian Inuit: 3, 4, 22n5, 68, 171, 331; and claims for reparation, 7, 217; and High Arctic Relocation Reconciliation Agreement, 6–7; and Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, 112; and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 4, 57, 338; and Qikiqtani Truth Commission, 13; and reconciliation process, 160; and residential schools, 3, 132, 142n37, 229, 325, 326, 327, 328, 332, 333, 335, 338; and Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 113–14n38 Irvine, William, 87, 89 Italian Canadian: 45, 73, 405–22; and Agreement-in-Principle between the Government of Canada and the Italian Canadian Community, 420–2; and Canadian Italian Business Professional Association, 414–18; and Defence of Canada Regulations, 405–7; and La Fondation communautaire canadienne italienne du Québec, 421; and National Congress of Italian Canadians, 45n53, 409, 412, 414, 419, 420, 421; and A National Shame: The Internment of Italian Canadians, 409–13; and Order of Sons of Italy of Canada, 420 Ivasiuk, Volodymyr. See Ukrainian Canadian Jacobs, Beverly, 57, 192, 234n38, 321n2, 338–9 James, Matt: 5, 7, 19, 418n1; and apologies, 44n38, 393n1; and Chinese head tax, 95; and redress claims, 23n14, 43n31, 44n36, 288–9, 292n11, 376 Jamieson, Roberta , 228, 234n43 Japanese Canadians: 89, 274n2: and the Bird commission, 431–4; and Canadian Race Relations Foundation, 11, 25n30, 37, 44n51, 73, 417, 435, 439n2, 440; and Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, 427–31; and cultural identity, 263–74; and Democracy Betrayed: The Case for Redress, 434–5; and enemy aliens, 21, 264, 266, 401n5, 406, 407; and internment during Second World

473

War, 4, 279, 289, 290, 291n9, 333, 370, 377, 390, 407, 409, 410, 412, 413, 417, 423–42; and House of Commons apology, 4, 5, 6, 15, 89, 435–9, 439–50; and Irene Tsuyuki, 264, 274n2; and Japanese Canadian Committee for Democracy, 426, 427, 431n3; and Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan, 15, 26n48, 70, 273; and kamikaze pilots, 264–8, 274; and National Association of Japanese Canadians, 5, 17, 33, 409, 434, 436, 437, 439, 440; and National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, 431–4; and New Canadian, 425–7; and nisei, 268, 425–7; and Redress Advisory Committee, 265; and redress settlement, 5, 11, 15, 17, 25n30, 26n48, 45n56, 37, 73, 265, 274, 275n4, 418n3, 435, 436, 439-40; and repatriation, 425-6; and sansei generation, 5, 72, 264 Jenness, Diamond, 163, 174n17 Jenson, Jane, 32, 42 Jewish refugees on SS St Louis: 6, 443–7; and Canadian government policy brief on Jewish refugees, 443–5; and Ernest Lapointe, 446; and Évian Conference, 443, 444n2, 446n3; and Frederick Blair, 443, 444n4; and George MacKinnon Wrong, 444n3, 445, 446n3, 446–7; and Humphrey Hume Wrong, 443, 444n3; and Oscar Douglas Skelton, 446–7; and W.R. Little, 443 Jilek, Wolfgang, 164 Joe, Rita, 146 John, Grand Chief Edward, 57 Johnston, Basil, 146, 176n42 Joseph, Chief Lawrence, 57 Journal de Montréal, 240, 248 Kalyna’s Song, 206 Kappa Child, The, 273 Kazimi, Ali, 189, 196n33, 227 Kelly, Peter, 355 Kenney, Jason, 45n53, 391, 392, 393n2, 422n3 King, Richard, 163 Kirmeyer, Laurence, 167 Kleinman, Arthur, 159, 160, 161, 171 Kobayashi, Audrey, 11, 23n9, 25n32, 37, 44n51

474

Index

Kobayashi, Cassandra, 274n2, 423, 439n2 Kogawa, Joy: 15, 26n48, 70, 273, 274n3. See also Obasan Komagata Maru: 6, 21, 188, 196nn31 & 33; and Access to Information request, 41, 393n1; and An Act Respecting Immigration, 380–1; and Alia Somani, 393n1; and apology, 41, 189, 391–3; and Asiatic Exclusion League, 385; and British Columbia Legislative Assembly Apology, 385–8; and Court of Appeal, Re Munshi Singh, 381–4; and Descendents of Komagata Maru Society, 391; and Edward J. Bird, 381–2; and Ghadr, 380, 381n7; and Gurdit Singh, 188, 380, 386; and Gurmant Grewal, 388–90; and House of Commons Motion M-469, 388–91; and Jasbir Sandhu, 393n1; and Jason Kenney, 391, 392, 393n2; and Nina Grewal, 388–90; and Richard McBride, 385; and Ruby Dhalla, 388–9 Komulainen, Shaney, 224 Kootenay Committee on Intergroup Relations. See Doukhobor residential schools Kordan, Bohdan: 81n46, 396; and Ukrainian Canadians, 46n77, 65, 77n14, 210n3, 401nn5–6 Kostash, Myrna, 203, 204, 205, 209 Kulyk Keefer, Janice: 210nn4 & 6, 211n11; and The Green Library, 205, 206, 207; and Honey and Ashes, 208; and Ukrainian Canadians, 199, 201 Kushner, Howard. See Doukhobor residential schools Kymlicka, Will, 23n14, 33, 38, 45n63 Laclau, Ernesto, 18 Lai, Larissa, 273 Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada, 223 Larocque, Bradlee, 224 Laub, Dori, 147, 151–3, 175n35, 201 Lawrence, Bonita, 51, 60n19, 196n42 Lawrence, Charles, 340, 342, 343 Lawson, Alan, 94 Lee, SKY, 273 Little Bear, Leroy, 174n11, 231

loss: 194nn7–8; and Aboriginal peoples, 193, 322, 333; and Africville, 354, 356; and Air India bombing, 189, 191, 194n16; and Bringing Them Home report, 131; and Chinese Canadians, 97, 356, 360, 368; and colonial violence, 17; and cultural loss, 27n54, 53, 77n16; and disappearance, 70; and Doukhobor residential schools, 452, 453; and Freud, 182–3; and Italian Canadians, 412, 431, 432, 433, 440, 441, 442; and Japanese Canadians, 89; and national loss, 181, 184, 185, 186, 187; and racial ideologies, 21; and redress settlements, 76n4; in relation to rights, 17; and representational mistakes, 188, 192; and spectacle, 132; and trauma, 166, 169; and Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 130; and Ukrainian Canadians, 199, 200, 213n82 MacDonald, John A., 299 MacDonald, Maureen, 354 Mack et al. v. Canada (Attorney General). See Chinese Canadian Mackenzie King, William Lyon, 443, 445, 446 Mackey, Eva: 60n19, 248, 289; and Aboriginal culture, 16, 75, 78n21, 79n25, 132, 135, 172, 289; and The House of Difference, 24n19, 42n2; and “official multiculturalism,” 26n43, 248, 258n95; and reconciliation, 19, 289 Macklin, Audrey, 282, 283 Mahovsky, Craig, 46n77, 65, 77n14, 81n46, 210n3 Mahrouse, Gada, 249, 253n5 Mark, Inky, 35–6, 39, 44n35, 402 Marten, Tony, Brenda Daily, and Maggie Hodgsen, 166 Martin, Paul: 403n2, 414, 420; and the Acknowledgement, Commemoration, and Education Program (ACE), 35, 36, 82n55; and the Chinese Canadian Nation Council (CCNC), 376–7; and RCMP officer shootings in Mayerthorpe, 184, 187; and Ukrainian Canadians, 403n2 Maslan, Susan, 94 Massey report, 92–3 Mayerthorpe, Alberta, 181–7

Index Mazigh, Dr Monia. See Arar, Maher McElhinney, Lora, 193 McMaster, Gerald, and Lee-Ann Martin, 223, 233n27, 234n36 Meech Lake Accord, 414 memory: 21, 37, 41, 153, 231n3; and Canadian collective memory, 38, 123; collective memory, 45n59, 170; and countermemory, 188, 192, 193; and “the growth of memory culture,” 207; and historic memory, 198; and the Holocaust, 167; intergenerational memory, 17; and Italian Canadians, 413nn1 & 11, 414, 418nn2 & 3, 421; and Japanese Canadians, 438; and Japanese culture, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275n9, 276n33; and Komagata Maru, 386, 390; and Lori Blondeau, 227; and “memory-work,” 15; and “postmemory,” 203, 204; and public memory, 138; and residential schools,133, 135, 145, 146, 156n13, 326; and trauma, 152, 169, 175n36, 212n39; and Ukrainian Canadians, 208 Mercredi, Morningstar, 146 Merton, Robert King, 164 Métis: 22n5, 51; and Aboriginal entrepreneurship, 68; and Gathering Strength, 325, 326, 327, 328; and House of Commons Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 3; and the Métis National Council, 4, 57, 331; and the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards, 229; and reconciliation processes, 160; and redress for Indigenous peoples, 217, 221; and residential schools, 132, 333, 335, 338; and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 102, 113n38 Miki, Roy: 15, 21, 23n9, 26n48, 80n42; and Aboriginal peoples, 218, 234n39; and Japanese Canadians, 89, 423, 425n2; and redress politics, 33, 45n56 Miller, James, 50 Million, Dian, 20, 54, 59, 77n16 Million, Louise, 168 Monture, Patricia, 218 Moran, Mayo, 90, 375n3 Morningstar: A Warrior’s Spirit. See Mercredi,

475

Morningstar Morriseau, Norval, 221 Moses, Daniel David, 230 Moses, Ted, 231, 232n12 Moss, Laura, 9, 92 Motyl, Alexander, 200, 203, 205, 210n10, 211n24, 212n53 Mouffe, Chantal, 18 mourning: 7, 21; and “grievability,” 181, 182, 184, 186; in Japanese culture, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 275n9; and melancholia, 182; and protest, 193; and public mourning, 181–94, 195n26 Mukherjee, Bharati, 185, 194n16 Mulroney, Brian: 112n14, 344n3, 409; in relation to Italian Canadians, 414, 409; in relation to Japanese Canadians, 435, 436, 438, 439, 440; in relation to redress claims, 419 multiculturalism: 23n14, 42nn2, 8, & 12, 43n25–6, 210n10; and Annual Report on the operation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, 26n46; and anti-multiculturalism, 39, 45n63; and Australian culture, 83n66; and Canadian culture, 5, 14; and Canadian government, 24n28, 26n48, 34, 35, 36, 46n78, 81n48, 199, 352, 353, 390, 391, 418, 419, 421, 422, 436; and Canadian multiculturalism, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 253, 263; and Committee on the Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society, 33; and empathy, 140; and interculturalism, 236, 241, 250, 251, 253n5, 254n7, 256n45, 259n119; and Japanese Canadians, 33, 265; and Multiculturalism Act, 14, 26n46, 38, 420, 437; and neoliberal multiculturalism, 32, 35, 36, 41; and “official multiculturalism,” 7, 13, 14, 16, 32, 33, 38, 75, 92, 248, 258; and socialmovement multiculturalism, 39, 40, 41; and Standing Committee on Multiculturalism, 46n78, 402, 403n2; and status of women in Canada, 10, 11; and Trudeau government, 33, 199; and Ukrainian Canadians, 199; and violence, 291n6; and white supremacy, 47, 189, 248 Multiculturalism Act. See multiculturalism Myre, Nadia, 223, 233n34

476

Index

Nath, Nisha, 279, 291n6 National Association of Canadians of Origins in India, 419 National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC), 45n53, 409, 412, 413n1, 414, 419–21 National Emergency Transitional Powers Act, 292, 423–4, 436 National Historical Recognition Program, 40 “National Historic Person of Canada,” 455 National Post, 68 nationhood: 19; and Aboriginal peoples, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108–11, 164; and Indigenous peoples, 60n19, 196n42; and Ukrainian Canadians, 199 Native Love, 224 neoliberalism: 19, 31, 50; and Canadian context in the 1970s, 172; and discourse of heritage, 34; and figure of the child, 69, 77n11; and redress movements, 63, 64, 65; and social movements, 31, 77n11 neoliberal multiculturalism. See multiculturalism Negri, Antonio, 287 New Zealand: 76n8, 100, 173n11, 345n3, 377; and Treaty of Waitangi, 27n57, 62n63, 111n3 Niro, Shelley, 223–4 Nurreddin, Muayyed, 288 Obama, Barack, 111n4, 290 Obasan: 15, 70, 273, 274n3; and apology to Japanese Canadians, 428; in Canadian parliament, 80n42; and the deportation memorandum, 427 Obomsawin, Alanis, 228 Odjig, Daphne, 221 “official multiculturalism.” See Mackey, Eva; multiculturalism Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, 268, 275n11 Oka Crisis, 102, 112n13, 167 Okazaki, Steven, 267 Olick, Jeffrey, 38, 45n59 One Hundred Million Hearts, 263–8, 274 Otter, Major-General Sir William Dillon, 398, 401nn4 & 6

Padolsky, Enoch, 199 Paine, Tom, 228 Paul, Ngozi, 229 Pearl Harbor, 417, 441 Pearson, Lester B., 231 performance: 15, 21, 58, 107, 149, 163, 219; of apology/reconciliation, 59, 240, 280, 284, 286; and performance art, 217–18, 220–1, 223, 224, 227, 234nn39 & 45; and performative utterance, 238; and spaces of, 229 Phillips, Susan D., 32, 42, 382 Pickton, Robert, 191 Pinard, Roch, 91–6 Plamondon, Antoine Sébastien, 221 Plant, Geoff. See Doukhobor residential schools Poitras, Edward, 224 Ponomarenko, Fran, 202–3 post-traumatic stress disorder, 166, 212n39 Professional National Indian Artists Inc., 221 Protection of Children Act. See Doukhobor residential schools Quebec: 91, 92, 236–52, 252nn & 4, 256n41, 414, 416, 431; and Action Démocratique du Québec, 241; and Antoine Sébastien Plamondon, 221; and Asmahan Mansour, 241; and Britain, 134; and Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation, 236–7, 252n4, 255n41; and Charter of French Language, 247; and Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, 21, 236, 238, 259n106; and “cultural communities,” 238, 242, 279, 419, 421; “de souche” Québécois, 241–4, 255n39; and French Canadian identity, 250; and “Hérouxville Affair,” 240; and immigrants, 242, 251, 252n3, 257nn75 & 78, 259nn109 & 117; and Immigrant Workers’ Centre (Montreal), 250; and interculturalism, 253n5, 254n7, 256n45; and Italian Canadians, 420, 421; and Jean Charest, 240–1, 246, 251; and Komagata Maru incident, 389; and “managing diversity,” 238–9, 242, 245–6; and multiculturalism, 258n95; and niqab, 241–2, 255n44; and Oka crisis,

Index 102, 167; and Palais de Congrès, 251; and Pikogan First Nation, 74; and Quebec Native Women’s Association, 57, 240; and Québec Solidaire, 251; and “reasonable accommodation,” 252n1, 253n5; and sex equality, 258n81; and Sûreté du Québec, 102; and Ukrainian Canadians, 74, 208; and Young Men’s Christian Association, 244; and xenophobia, 250, 258n102 R. v. Sparrow, 118, 125n20 R. v. Van der Peet, 20, 101, 106–11, 119, 125nn20 & 24 race: 11–12, 16, 150, 221; and Aboriginal peoples, 300, 301, 302, 308, 321n2; and critical race theory, 17, 249; and Canadian citizenship, 94, 95, 98n23, 165; and Canadian nation, 60, 91, 93, 162, 195n25, 418n4; and Chinese Canadians, 88, 95, 362, 368, 369, 371, 374, 379; and cultural racism, 248–9; and Doudou Diène, 352; and Immigration Act, 441; and Indian passengers on Komagata Maru, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 387; in relation to COSMOSQUAW, 224, 234n39; and Japanese Canadians, 264, 265, 426, 428, 429, 431, 439; and Jewish Refugees on SS St Louis, 443; and “melancholy of race,” 201; and multiculturalism, 248; and racialized identities, 189; and “race relations,” 14, 44n51; and “racism spectrum,” 248, 249; and redress claims, 10, 18; and treaty making, 231n3. See also Canadian Race Relations Foundation Razack, Sherene, 191–2 reconciliation: 8–10, 15–22, 24nn25–6, 60n19, 63, 291n8; in Aboriginal politics, 100–11, 232n15; and Africville, 356; and apology, 48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 141n25; and the Canadian state, 7, 12, 14, 35, 43n31, 57, 175, 181; and Chinese head tax, 377, 379; and closure, 7, 8, 13, 15, 181, 183, 229, 289, 290, 294n54, 337, 378; and colonial exploitation, 3; and “constitutional reconciliation,” 51, 52, 53, 55, 115–23, 125n20; and Gathering Strength, 113n28; and global trend, 4, 5, 212n45; and High Arctic Relocation

477

Reconciliation Agreement, 6; and historical injury, 12, 25n39, 72, 236; and Indigenous storytelling, 155, 230; and International Year of Reconciliation, 3; in Japanese culture, 275n9; and Komagata Maru, 389; and Maher Arar case, 278–90; and “official reconciliation,” 13, 16, 22; and public mourning, 181–94; in Quebec, 236–52, 252n4, 256n41; and redistribution, 8, 16, 23n14, 42n12, 237; and remedies for injuries, 6, 14, 27n57; and residential schools, 49, 112n6, 234n38, 235n46, 332n2, 336, 337, 338; and role of commissions, 129–39, 170, 172, 333; and Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children, 456, 457; and “Statement of Reconciliation,” 4, 6, 323, 325–32, 332; and teleology of progress, 237; and trauma, 54, 59, 169, 171; and Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 144, 145, 154, 157n33, 159–60, 229, 333; and Ukrainian Canadians, 200 redress: 4–7, 24n29, 115, 117, 167; and Aboriginal peoples, 133; and Africville, 350; and Building the Future, 236; and campaigns, 23n14; and Chinese Canadians, 46n72, 87– 97, 366, 367, 369, 370, 371, 372, 375, 376, 377, 378; and colonialism, 116, 160; and “culture of redress,” 8–22, 26n48, 63–76, 76nn3 & 7, 116, 123, 181–94, 207, 237, 242; and Doukhobor residential schools, 450; and global context, 212n45; and healthrelated claims, 24n28; and international human rights, 212n41; and Italian Canadians, 45n53, 77n9, 409, 412, 413nn1 & 11, 414, 415, 418n3; and Japanese Canadians, 25n30, 45n56, 80n42, 263–74, 274n2, 275n4, 425, 431, 434, 435, 436, 438, 440; and Komagata Maru, 389, 390; and Maher Arar, 278–90, 291n6; and modern state, 76n4, 239, 292n11; and neoliberal heritage, 31–42, 43n31; and performance, 217–31, 234n41; and rejection of claims by Mulroney government, 419–20; and residential schools, 50, 60n18, 78n24, 133, 155; and trauma, 171; and Ukrainian Canadians, 46n77, 77n14, 78n20, 81nn47–8, 82n54, 198, 200, 203, 204, 207, 208, 209, 210n3, 402, 403n2

478

Index

Regan, Paulette, 137 Re Munshi Singh, Court of Appeal. See Komagata Maru reparations: 8, 9, 15, 18, 23n14, 27n54, 60n19, 63–76, 80n38, 170; and Aboriginal peoples, 4, 63–76, 79n25, 123, 160, 161, 218; and Africville, 13, 350, 351, 352, 356; and Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF), 11, 25n30; and Chinese Canadians, 5, 87–97, 366, 375n3, 376; and Doukhobor community, 13; and fiscal/financial reparations, 6, 15, 50; and heritage-construction, 14; and Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, 323; in relation to apologies, 239; in relation to reconciliation, 236; and Inuit claims, 7; and redress movements, 14, 15, 288; and Sons of Doukhobor Children, 455; and Ukrainian Canadians, 6, 63–76, 81n47 Riel, Louis, 221, 326 Righting the Wrong. See Doukhobor residential schools Royal Canadian Mounted Police: 195n25, 405, 406, 408, 434; and death of officers in Mayerthorpe, 184–7; and Doukhobor residential schools, 449; and Italian Canadians, 413n14; and Japanese Canadians, 425; and Maher Arar, 278, 281, 282, 284, 286, 292n19; and Project A-O investigation, 288; and sled dogs, 13 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP): 4, 20, 100–11, 112n14, 113n17, 150; and Assembly of First Nations, 67, 113n28; and definition of “reconciliation,” 19, 100–1, 111; and Gathering Strength, 68, 323, 324; and mandate, 113n38; and testimony, 151, 166, 167, 168; and “treaty peoples,” 51, 59; and Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s mandate, 110, 112n6, 144–5 Royal Proclamation of 1763, 50 Rudd, Kevin, 100, 333 Rymhs, Deena, 183, 291n8 “Safe Third Country” Agreement, 189, 259n117 Sakamoto, Kerri, 264–8, 270–4 Salt Fish Girl, 273

Schaffer, Kay, and Sidonie Smith, 132, 152n38 Schmitt, Carl, 286, 293n30 Scott, David, 88 Scott, Duncan Campbell, 67, 78n22, 79n27, 314–17 Seaton, Philip, 272, 277n33 Second World War: 160, 268, 291n9; and Anne Frank, 208; and Chinese Immigration Act, 368; and “‘globalisation’ of forgiveness,” 3, 279; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 264, 267, 269–71, 274; and Holocaust, 3, 139n6, 149, 151, 166, 169, 176n47, 203, 205–8, 213n57, 247, 249, 279, 291n9, 444n4, 445n2; and internments, 405–42; and Italian Canadians, 6; and Japanese Canadians, 4, 21, 72, 263, 370; and Ukrainian Canadians, 206, 207. See also Jewish refugees on S.S. St Louis sexism, 226, 247 sexual politics, 227 Sherbrooke, John Coape, 346 Simon, Roger, 20, 59, 182–3, 187, 194nn3 & 8, 197n56 Simpson, Cori, 167 Skelton, O.D., and George M. Wrong, 446–7 Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk, 205, 207–8 Slemon, Stephen, 104–5 Slowey, Gabrielle, 172 Smallpox Issue, A, 221, 222 Smith, Adam, 63, 76 social justice: 5, 8, 77n8, 170, 175n31, 272; and Aboriginal peoples, 21, 161, 219, 224; and Chinese Canadians, 88, 96; in relation to Canadian society, 9, 24n26; in relation to “culture of redress,” 17 Société Nationale de l’Acadie, 343, 344n3 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. See Ukrainian Canadians Sons of Freedom. See Doukhobor residential schools South Africa: 10, 104, 131, 169, 350; and apartheid, 131 sovereignty: 61n34, 79n25, 126n32, 291n9; and Chinese Immigration Act, 93; of the Crown, 55, 106, 107, 108, 111, 119, 120, 125n20, 126n33; and culture, 16; and Emergencies Act, 441; and House of Commons

Index Apology to Inuit, Métis, and First Nations Peoples for Residential Schools, 19; and Indigenous peoples, 4, 9, 51–3, 57, 59, 67, 75, 103, 104, 110, 120, 121, 122–3, 133, 161, 172; in relation to Maher Arar case, 288; and Quebec, 238, 241, 256n44, 258n95; and the state, 56, 110, 353; and Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 10, 20; and United States, 286, 287, 288, 293n37 Soyinka, Wole, 170, Spearchief, Wilma, 168 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 10 Sprei, Judith, 166 Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, 36 Standing Committee on Multiculturalism. See multiculturalism “Statement of Reconciliation.” See reconciliation Statement of Regret to Doukhobor Children. See Doukhobor residential schools Steiner, Niklaus, 285, 286 Stephenson, Gordon, 449 Stewart, Jane, 105, 323–32 Stimson, Adrian, 237 Subtelny, Orest, 203, 206, 211nn24 & 32 Sugars, Cynthia, 9, 92 sui generis citizenship. See citizenship Suknaski, Andrew, 200–3, 211n28 survivance, 131, 133 Tait, Caroline, 167 Tavuchis, Nicholas, 49–50 Taylor, Charles, 236–7, 241–7, 249–52, 252n4, 255n30 Taylor, Drew Hayden, 230 terrorism: 35, 41, 281, 286–7, 294n50; and counter-terrorism, 284–7, 288; and Patriot Act, 287; and Smart Border Declaration, 281; and “War on Terror,” 21, 46n77, 249, 278–81, 283–8, 290 Thien, Madeleine, 273 Thobani, Sunera, 60n29, 186, 205n25, 247–8 trauma: 159–72, 175n36, 199–209, 212n44; in Aboriginal communities, 54, 59; and the child, 70, 77n16, 146; and cultural genocide, 147; and healing, 54, 151, 152, 153; and

479

historical trauma, 173n9, 176n47; in reference to Canadian nation, 144; in relation to children of Sons of Freedom Doukhobors, 453; and Italian Canadians, 410; and Japanese Canadians, 265, 268; and melancholia, 166; and post-traumatic stress disorder, 77–8n16, 212n39; and reconciliation processes, 123; and theory about the effects of, 20, 143, 175n31, 176n47, 227; and therapeutic subject, 171; and Ukrainian Canadians, 199–209 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 49, 60n13 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 5, 32–3, 440 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC): 3–4, 6, 23n6, 114n39, 129–39, 142n37, 154, 159–60, 172, 196n41, 229, 333, 336; and Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, 105, 112n6; and mandate, 20, 100, 45n58, 109–11, 113n37, 139n3, 154, 157n33, 167; and meaning of reconciliation, 9, 10, 24n26, 101; and National Aboriginal Achievement Awards, 229; and neoliberal heritage redress, 43n31; and Remembering the Children, 70; and testimony, 144–5, 150–1, 154, 170 Turner, Dale: 10, 16, 19–20, 61n35, 75, 79n25; and Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action, 68; and This Is Not a Peace Pipe, 61n31 Turpel-Lafond, Mary Ellen, 21 Ukrainian Canadians: 6, 12, 21, 25n33, 196– 209; and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 201; and cultural identity, 199, 201, 203–9, 210n4, 212n53, 310nn4 & 6, 403n2; and Canadian First World War Recognition Fund, 198; and Canadian Race Relations Foundation, 12; and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 5, 6; and First World War internment, 40, 65, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78n20, 81nn44, 46, & 52, 198, 210n3, 401n8, 442n2; and “Flowers for Nellie,” 74; and In Fear of the Barbed Wire Fence, 73, 81n46, 82n55, 401n8; in relation to Aboriginal peoples, 75, 76; and Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, 72, 77n10, 81n52, 198,

480

Index

199, 210n3, 402–3; and Prisoners in the Promised Land, 74; and Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, 25n33, 46n76, 73, 81n46, 403, 419; and Ukrainian Canadian Congress, 12, 35, 36, 40, 77n14, 81n48, 82n54, 419; and Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, 40, 46n78, 77n14, 402; and Volodymyr Ivasiuk, 201. See also Holodomor famine United Nations: 164, 172, 248, 332, 350, 377; Charter, 91, 369, 372, 430; and Commission on Human Rights, 372; and Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 13; and Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 141n23, 162; and Convention on the Rights of the Child, 449; and Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, 22n5, 132, 172, 173n11, 219, 220, 231, 233n22; and International Year of Reconciliation, 3, 22n1; and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 231, 351, 371; and Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 219; and World Conference on Racism, 78n24 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. See United Nations University of Saskatchewan, 217, 224, 233n35, 234n37

Ventresca, Robert, 409, 413nn1 & 11, 413n14, 418n2–3 Verigin, Peter Vasilevich. See Doukhobor residential schools victimology, 165, 166, 168, 171 Vincent (Telariolin), Zacharie, 221, 233n25 Vizenor, Gerald, 131 Wadden, Marie, 138 Waitangi Tribunal, 100, 111n3 Wakeham, Pauline, 21–2, 26n44, 35, 38, 272 War Measures Act: 33, 290, 394–6, 408, 417, 423–4; and Italian Canadians, 405; and Japanese Canadians, 290, 423, 427–9, 435, 436, 440; and Ukrainian Canadians, 210n3, 442 War-time Elections Act, 66 When Fox Is a Thousand, 273 Wiesel, Elie, 161 Williams, Andrea J., 192, 234n38 Williams, Tanya Lee, 239 Wood Mountain Poems, 200 Woolford, Andrew, 64, 141n23 “Yellow Peril,” 266, 290 Yoneyama, Lisa, 270–1 Zentner, Henry, 163 Žižek, Slavoj, 42n8