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Canada's history wars: indigenous genocide and public memory in the United States, Australia and Canada

 
Translator disclaimer

In this article, I explore the slow development of a national debate in Canada about genocide in the Indian residential schools, which I compare to earlier ‘history wars’ in Australia and the United States. In the first section I begin with a brief introduction to the history of the IRS system and some of its legacies, as well as attempts at redress. These include financial compensation through the 2006 IRS Settlement Agreement, an official apology and the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which has been a nodal point for articulating claims of genocide. I follow this in the second section with an analysis of the history wars in the United States and Australia over indigenous genocide, before engaging in the third section with debates about genocide in Canada. Overt debates about genocide have been relatively slow in developing, in part because of the creation of a TRC, mandated with collecting the ‘truth’ about the IRS system while similarly engaging in ‘reconciliation’ (a contested term) with settler Canadians. While Canada's history wars may seem slow in getting off the ground, the TRC's more ‘balanced’ approach and wide-ranging engagement with non-Aboriginal societal actors may have a greater effect in stimulating national awareness than in the United States and Australia.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Guelph for funding this research. Thanks also to Paulette Regan, Murray Sinclair, Shelagh Rogers, A. Dirk Moses, Jim Miller, Mike DeGagne, Andrew Woolford, Ry Moran, Brad Morse, Bernie Farber and Tony Barta. I dedicate this article to the Survivors who are in many ways heroes to me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

David B. MacDonald is professor of political science at the University of Guelph, and was formerly a faculty member at the University of Otago and the Graduate School of Management—Paris. He has written three books related to issues of genocide, nationalism, collective identity and the politics of memory, as well as numerous book chapters and articles on similar themes. He has also co-edited three books, and recently co-authored a political science textbook with Oxford University Press. His books include Thinking history, fighting evil (2009) and Identity politics in the age of genocide (2007). Much of his work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

 

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