Abel Kerry Margaret - Roots of entanglement: essays in the history of native-newcomer relations

MYRA RUTHERDALE, P. WHITNEY LACKENBAUER, AND KERRY ABEL

Reconciliation is about establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country. In order for this to happen, there has to be an awareness of the past.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

In 2007, the largest class-action lawsuit ever pursued in Canada was settled. Among the provisions of the agreement was the requirement that the Canadian government establish a commission to inquire into the experiences of thousands of Indigenous children who had passed through the residential school system that had been established and maintained as part of the official policy to assimilate First Nations into the social, political, and economic systems of the settler-society that was Canada. The result was the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008, loosely modelled on the commission of that name in South Africa. It would work for six years, travelling the country, hearing from nearly 7,000 witnesses, and gathering the heart-wrenching stories of residential school survivors. Late in the spring of 2015, the final report was presented during a week of ceremony and symbol in the nations capital.

Fundamental to the commissions mandate was a project of historical research and interpretation: in the words of the commission, to reveal to Canadians the complex truth about the history and ongoing legacy of the schools. stories of physical and sexual abuse; younger people who had grown up believing Canada was an inclusive and multicultural society were perplexed by the obvious disjuncture. How could this have happened? History became a convenient shorthand explanation. For example, sociologist James S. Frideres proposed this idea in a text for use in introductory university courses:

The view that First Nations played no significant part in Canadas history was first set in place when non-Aboriginals began to write the history of Canada. Today we find that the majority of written historical sources, from which First Nations history is constructed, are from elites who had an interest in representing First Nations social life in negative terms The dynamic of concealment (consciously and unconsciously) has ultimately served the settler population in covering up the violence that has been visited upon First Nations people.

Such a view of the role of history and historians certainly applies to generations past, but since the 1970s, the writing of Canadian history has undergone a profound series of changes. One of the most significant has been a reappraisal of the role of Indigenous peoples in the national narrative. Throughout the 1970s, a growing list of publications provided insight in many new directions: studies of the processes of early contact by both historians and anthropologists such as Robin Fisher, Cornelius Jaenen, and Bruce Trigger; analyses of economic interaction in the fur trade by Arthur Ray and others; an influential examination of the ideas of European colonizers by Olive Dickason; and studies of the social dimensions of the fur trade by Sylvia Van Kirk and Jennifer Brown. Clearly, the growing interest was influenced by the constitutional debates and Indigenous rights activism that were reshaping the political and legal landscape.