 So welcome this evening to the latest of our installments in the mini law school a series of public lectures Held here at the Schulich School of Law. We're so happy that you're here with us this evening My name is Jennifer Llewellyn the Dean Kim Brooks who usually introduces these as unable to be here with us tonight But sense her greetings and and is looking forward to hearing your feedback on this series of lectures And the lecture you've attended tonight We're very keen to think of ways in which we can be Of service to the community and and build relationships and ties to the community So you'll notice at the end of the rows that you're sitting in there are comment sheets And so we'd look forward to hearing your comments and having you be in touch with us About the lecture and Elizabeth will collect them at the end of the at the end of the evening As I said, my name is Jennifer Llewellyn I'm a professor here at the Schulich School of Law and I teach in the areas of constitutional law and public law and Restorative justice and it's my pleasure tonight to be giving this lecture co lecturing with Mike de Gaunier and Just by way of introduction Mike's gonna start the lecture, but I get to say a few words about him Which should make him very nervous Mike is the executive director of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation a national Aboriginal Organization that's dedicated to addressing the legacy of Canada's Indian residential school system He's worked in the field of addiction and mental health for the past 25 years First as a community worker on reserve in Northern Ontario and later with addiction research foundation The Canadian Center on substance abuse and the national average the national native alcohol and drug abuse program Mike lectures nationally and internationally on issues of Aboriginal health residential schools Reconciliation and governance. He serves as a member of of the board of Champlain local health integration network He's currently the chairman of the child welfare League of Canada and past chairman of Ottawa's Queensway Carlton Hospital His PhD focused on Aboriginal post-secondary education and you might be wondering how we compelled him to have to participate in a mini law school lecture to be given by By members of the law school and that's because we also count him as an extended member of the law school family Mike's been traveling to the law school each year of the last ten to provide a special lecture to all of our second-year students on Residential schools and Aboriginal rights and he's a special lecturer here having given an intense of course here last year Which he will come and give a gain this coming fall So we're very pleased to count him among our number and I'm particularly pleased tonight That the two of us will have the opportunity to talk to you about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission And it's work in response to the legacy of residential schools Thanks very much It's a real pleasure for me to be to be here. There's something about Dalhousie University and my long-standing Visits to to the University. There's something about the community that's here and something about the law school student body I can't really put my finger on it, but this is the only Regular lecture that we provide for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. We come we come here every year and provide this lecture It's a it's a treat for us My bio will Sort of brushed a little bit about my background in the addictions field the addictions in mental health and one thing about And many of you may some of you may know about addiction mental health field if that's the field you work in There's lots of stories involved. There's lots of story personal stories stories that people will tell you about How they got into the circumstances that they they arrived in The circumstances of their life the circumstances of their recovery Addiction mental health is a really story rich Process In the last 13 years that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has been operating to a certain extent our Biggest job is to collect people's stories so we had an opportunity 36 times in 13 years to go across the country and What we did was as we Collected people's stories gave them a forum to talk In a completely sort of unscripted way so we would say look we're gonna have a public forum We're with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. We deal with Aboriginal issues mental health addiction Why don't you come tell us first of all what you think of our programs if you're aware of them What you think about Aboriginal people if if you have an opinion What you think about some of the challenges that Aboriginal people face in the future and We have collected Literally tens of thousands of pages of documentation of people with opinions in this matter. So there's it's a very story rich area stories matter And often one compelling story can change Can change everything? I mean I can in the last six months. We can talk about the story of of a young man in Tunis who sells fruit and is beaten and Changes the world. You never know I mean that may be the catalyst for for real-world change We are seeking Through the work that we do the one compelling story that we think Will help all Canadians understand the Aboriginal condition in this country and Rewrite a part of the history Now when I look around at during these lectures, I know that people come for different reasons You come here because you're student because you have to Because you're interested Because you have a relative maybe that worked in residential schools, and that's very common one of my greatest friends when she graduated as a young Social worker in Mississauga many years ago her first job and only job offer She got was in a small residential school in Saskatoon where she went from being you know a 23 year old student living at home with mom and dad to being the The caretaker for 20 little girls and a in a tiny little ward in a residential school where she was Responsible for teaching them and talking them in at night and so that it changed her life Was she a good person? You bet she was a good person. She was a good worker. She's a good person Good friend, but she worked and she acknowledged she worked in a system that Almost destroyed Aboriginal people and Aboriginal culture in this country so What the story that we're trying to find the story maybe the story we're trying to tell at the Aboriginal Healing Foundation is a really nuanced one I wish it was black and white. I wish I could come and talk to you about history that you know Where there's winners and losers and everything's very clearly documented and there's bad guys and good guys But that's not the way it is The at the residential school system started and operated in the mid-1800s operated for a hundred years In one form or another with the intent to assimilate young native children Into a more modern Western Tradition wave life that was its purpose its purpose was predicated however on the notion that what you are today What you were then is not good enough That no matter who you are as a native person who your family is the traditions and culture you hold the language you speak That isn't good enough It has to be changed and the churches that participated and the government policy that dictated the residential schools Were put in place to make that change That's the that's what the system was intended to do. It was often operated by very good people in a misguided system Okay Other complicating factors here is that this system was a perfect place for abuses of many kinds and when we talk about abuse we're talking about physical sexual emotional and We sometimes ignore the cultural abuse the loss of language all of those things There was a perfect forum for that often isolated areas children without without parental supervision And that and that's how it operated If I go all the way back to the beginning we we talk about a Process called aggressive civilization. This was aggressive civilization of Aboriginal peoples and it's it's its most natural form When First Nations Inuit Métis peoples across the country first encountered non-Aboriginal people. We were already organized into fairly sophisticated societies In many cases we were talking about large agglomerations of People's who live together and had their own laws had their own rules had their own ways of organizing society There's a great shot for those of you who have seen that Canada peoples history of Of the explorer who comes up to St. Lawrence and stands on the beaches and plants the flag and says I claim this And you know in this land in the name of the king and behind him is six thousand, you know Mohawk's up Mount Royal all of whom are already organized Thank you very much and have discovered themselves quite successfully and and are and are living You know in relative peace and harmony with the people around them So it's a it's a really curious sort of a of a of a contact point that we have Between Aboriginal non-Aboriginal people in this country and then it developed from there into one of relative mutual respect Because we both needed each other the newcomers needed to native people the native people knew that participation In fur trading and other trades was was beneficial There was a tipping point however when the newcomers became more numerous and Aboriginal people became an impediment and To to expansion West to settlement of new areas and when that occurred then Action had to be taken an action had to be taken Perhaps some might say for benevolent reasons to assimilate Aboriginal people into a better way of life And others would say that for genocidal reasons race-based cultural genocide Whichever you believe whichever one of those Polarities that you believe there's a nuance answer for you in the middle there But that's that's the way it occurred through the hundred years of Indian residential schools The other complicating factor is is that when we talk about abuse We took we hit we have this picture of of a senior clergyman abusing little kids That was often the case. There are many court cases of have borne that out But there's also a culture of abuse that was incubated in Indian residential schools where students abuse each other Cycles of abuse where you enter the school maybe at five years old You were abused by the older kids and when you became older in that institutional environment You were you were given the opportunity to abuse the younger ones and cycles like that that begin to roll have persisted for many generations and Lie at the heart. I believe in a lot of the dysfunction we see in in some of our communities today so we have this this system that is often Equated with the the plight of new Canadians, you know, and I got here looked out my hotel room and there's you know The place where new Canadians arrived many years ago, you know the museums and the docks I mean here it is. We're in Halifax, right? How was it different? many of the new Canadians that arrived at how and here in the harbor experienced all kinds of racial prejudice Discrimination difficulty speaking their languages, but they organized themselves into, you know, cultural groups cultural areas Tried to keep their culture alive they had though At the core the opportunity to to draw within their own culture for strength Kept languages alive kept cultural practice alive lived with each other Learned about their family systems and kept those family systems alive and that's how they you know Many have persisted in Canada to today But for Aboriginal people was much different because all of those underpinnings all of those cultural underpinnings here Your relationship with your mom and dad The relation you're being raised in an institution being forced to not speak your language Being forced to not practice your culture and told in fact that the culture as practiced by your parents was was wrong and Had to be replaced by a different tradition usually Christian religions So all of those things that we rely on in hard times all of those things we rely on and when we're in trouble We're taken away and now what we see in our own communities of people trying to rejuvenate Their culture and it's a long and arduous process To rejuvenate our culture we need a story we need a story within our own community and Sometimes we can draw upon an event for inspiration when we talk about even the late 1980s when very few residential schools were still around and we had probably a hundred and twenty five hundred thirty thousand people in Canada who had Attended residential schools when we go back to the time We never talked about residential schools because of all the shame around abuse the student-on-student violence The notion that we wanted to put it behind us We there was a there was a great deal of discomfort around residential school issues And it wasn't something that we talked about at every conference. We attended like we do today So it took a few acts of courage a few people who who are still working in the field today who? Went around to to large gatherings and say you know what we got to start talking about residential school That's the heart of it all for us if we're going to bring our culture back if we're going to bring back the things that make us strong We've got to start talking about residential school. I Often refer to and I know many people refer to Phil Fontaine our former national chief and a speech that he made in the early 1990s as a bellwether event for a beginning discussions around residential schools and Phil had Phil Fontaine had gone to a conference and he's talked about residential schools talked about how important it was for all of us to Begin to grapple with the issues loss of culture and then he said We also have to talk about the hardest parts which are abuse and he's Said I was abused in residential school and that admission was very very powerful, right? It allows us all licensed to begin to talk about residential school in a different way If you fast forward just a few years, this was in the early 1990s if you fast forward just a few years we then encountered the ochre crisis and the ochre crisis was Arm conflict between Mohawk warriors and the government of Canada troops the Surrey Tata Quebec at a small reserve just outside of Montreal and The conflict began over the expansion of land is so much of the conflict between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples Begin, it's about land and who owns it and who controls him and so this conflict starts and a person dies and Blockades go up and we have the summer of 1990 where many of us who were observers in that time through the window of television can recall People standing, you know nose-to-nose ready to kill each other over over the issues at stake And that generated this idea when the ochre crisis was was put down Amongst many Canadians that there's something terribly wrong here You know, I'm not I think many observers said, you know, I don't really have an opinion about Aboriginal issues, but surely there's something very wrong here if these people are willing to fight and die here for For small tracts of land or for points of principle And the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples was started now I have the really unique pleasure of Working with the Commissioner from the Royal Commission, George Erasmus. He's my chairman today and May you all be so lucky is to work with one person in your life was a great inspiration and a great leader It's it's or it's been a real treat for me for the last 12 years. I'd never say that if he was here but George said that when he would go around to small communities He had a hard time getting people to open up and he'd go as a sort of traveling commissioner they visit all kinds of communities and He said, you know people have a really good grasp of the problems that face them And so they go to the communities they sit as commissioners and it's a tell us tell us about your community tell us your story What's the story here in this in this little in this little reserve? What what shall we do to make things better for you? And everybody had this grasp in this long list of problems. This is problem. This is problem This problem and they'd say well, what do you propose as a solution? Say hey, we're not in the solution business. That's your game. You're the commissioner, right? You're the hired expert from a way who's going to tell us how how everything would be a better so They tried to engage the community in in different ways sort of positive base positive oriented solution based and and What he told me was at the end of every day Virtually every day on the road and they spent hundreds of days on the road listening to people at the end of every day discussion would turn to residential schools and and and in what had it done to our communities what had done to our culture And in what had I done to the things that we value that Help us be resilient in the face of you know everything we face in modern life So the Royal Commission has bits in it in its report from 12 years ago 15 years ago. I guess now Well 15 years ago there's pieces of it that Talk about Indian residential schools and some of the ways we can some of the mitigating factors We can use to help put Indian residential schools in context and help Canadians understand what happened in those institutions After the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples report was filed the government of Canada was given the report and Was asked to respond to it in some meaningful way and I think it was it was healthy and positive that in 1998 early 1998 Jane Stewart then Minister of Indian Affairs Gave a statement of reconciliation that some of you may remember as having been read on national television and At that time gave money principally for Residential schools and healing from residential schools. So I think the government at that point realized That at the at the core of Aboriginal Problems and at the core of salute any solutions We might find there was residential schools again and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation where I've been working all these years Was created from from her response from Jane's response I want to show you just a little Video clip because I think it's important that when we speak about Indian residential schools that we hear from people who went to schools and I want to talk first just to set this up because any time we talk about Showing clips of people speaking of their own abuse I don't think it's it's healthy for any of us to sort of just throw it up on the screen and let's all have a look I mean some of us in the crowd may be closer to Issues of abuse than others So I warn you now that this is there's a people in a very in a very gentle way talking about what happened to them in residential school This is the end of a project that the Healing Foundation has been involved with along with the Legacy of Hope Foundation for Oh God probably six or seven years now and what we do is is we ask People who attended residential schools to tell their stories on camera and then Provide releases to us to use them in a respectful way for the education of the Canadian public So there we are these are some of the stories that we've collected and So I want to show you these two clips one is of a man who and the audio Goes up and down because it's it's it's an edited actual interview and he's speaking about his own abuse and it involves a Senior person in his school and other students and then there's an older woman who also speaks and She talks about the impact that her time in residential school has had on the rest of her life So I'll show these two clips and then we'll talk about it a bit more my hats off to them for the courage to not only tell their story But allow it to be shown to others. So I just wanted to acknowledge that These stories are very typical One of the things that you'll see that's very typical with these stories and we have some 800 of these on video and audio The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is collecting others is the is some of the themes that you just saw in this and there's a Show this to a social work class and you have to be there for a month the process at all But for our purposes, what do you see you see the the idea that? There's a prepared preparedness to forgive There's a very strong affiliation abiding affiliation with the church Catholic Anglican Presbyterian United a strong affinity the church don't ever let it be said that because of residential schools Aboriginal people have turned away from the church quite the opposite. It is replaced the the church is operating the schools and operating them in in a Christian Christian way has replaced many native cultures and the church is very important to Aboriginal people Especially to older Aboriginal people You see it in the north you see them you can go to a very small community and have you know Half a dozen churches all of different denominations So there's the willingness to forgive the the importance of church and new cultures in in our lives and the great struggles that people have had Throughout their lives with the abuse that was that they endured and the times they spent in school. I mean These people have been out of school now for well over 30 years 40 years and still it's right there. It's right on the surface. It doesn't go away How do you How do you begin to address this kind of a problem? How do you begin to address the 50 60,000 people that are still with us here in Canada that went to these schools and how they and and more importantly how they raise the next generation of Aboriginal peoples their their children With a complete lack of ability or understanding of what parenting meant So all of these are real issues for our community to face That said I think there's a great willingness to get beyond forgiveness and not to see ourselves as victims Not simply to say residential schools is a thing of the past and we want to go back to there so that we We can express that victimhood or beyond that. It's an important part of our history to recognize what happened But it's just as important to us now to move forward with all the things that we all want right education and a good way of life security for our families We want this to be a positive story, but Without the acknowledgement of our history will all be will all be impoverished Part of this begins with apology and as a challenge to you Many of you have read the apologies to native peoples that have been offered through the churches and governments and it's it's interesting we have a volume of Reflections on reconciliation and healing that have the apologies in them and if you want them Just give me your address and I'll I'll send you a copy of that document To your home or wherever But I invite you to take a look at that apology because if we're ever going to move forward with redress It's got to start with the sincere admission of an understanding by all peoples of what happened and how we might be able to make it better so I've set the stage now for where the solutions might lie and that's what my colleagues going to talk about all the solutions How they all might be tied up in the next half hour, so I'll turn it over to professor Llewellyn to tell us how to To lay the breadcrumbs for us to find our way out of the maze. So thank you very much Well, I was going to thank Mike, but Maybe I'll hold off on that I was adding him to the list of people you should never try and follow Especially when he then makes promises you cannot deliver on but The story that's Mike Mike has conveyed to you and and so powerfully is the story of how we began to talk about what was happening in residential schools And and Aboriginal peoples and communities and survivors did start to talk and start to talk to the government and to the churches and To seek ways to move beyond this to try to find some solutions And that conversation wasn't very successful in the early days. We had our cap and the recommendations from our cap We had acknowledgments of responsibility but still no Reparation to individual survivors very little acknowledgement and response to the systemic Legacies of residential schools and so in the wake of that Many survivors turned to the courts and to the legal system not after a very significant effort to find another way forward And so we saw individual Lawsuits we saw class action lawsuits. We saw an utterly inadequate Attempt by the federal government when they were worried about the scope and the potential harm that those might do To settle them through the through the development of an alternative dispute resolution system That was unsuccessful for a variety of reasons And that ultimately though in some ways was one of the better things that happened was that they designed an alternative System to settle this that was so Inadequate that was so problematic that was so complex that was filled with meat charts that differed depending on what province You lived on that was so singularly focused on settling legal claims and ignoring all of the holistic issues around the lawsuits That it actually precipitated The government having to come to the table with the various parties who were concerned In a process of negotiation to find a different way forward and that set of negotiations Resulted in the negotiated settlement agreement Out of which emerged the Truth and Reconciliation Commission So the settlement agreement has a number of component parts And you can find it on the Truth Commission website among other places and also at the government of Canada's website It included a common experience payment, which was granted to all Aboriginal people who attended residential school And so there are that that settlement as you will be hearing no doubt in the news is Restricted to those who attended residential school and not day school And and only first nations and so there are ways in which that settlement doesn't settle the entire story Of the experience in schools and with assimilation practices But for those who are covered under the settlement it provides a common experience payment Which is provided to all students Calculate on a basis of how many years that they spend in the schools There's also another kick of the Canada an alternative dispute resolution process that was intended to be Easier more accessible more survivor oriented It's called the independent assessment process and it was the place That individuals could go to receive compensation for specific abuses that they suffered beyond The systemic harms caused by being dislocated from one's family From being denied access to one's culture and language those kinds of abuses were meant to be Reflected in the common experience payment it included a modest amount for healing and And an extremely modest amount that went to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation To continue some of its ongoing works with the variety of community-based projects that were funded by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation You may know that recently the the subsequent funding needed to continue those projects across the country was Was ended by government. It was not refunded Which is in and of itself an interesting question to reflect on in the midst of a journey We're supposed to be traveling through truth toward reconciliation Which implicates healing in a whole variety of ways that we would find this to be the timing to reduce The supports and the capacities that communities have found for themselves related to healing So that may be a whole other topic upon which you could get Mike to opine after we're finished the formal part the agreement also provided some funds for commemoration and And notably also for a truth and reconciliation Commission So the commission is what I want to talk to you a little bit About this evening before we have time to talk together About the subject the Commission has sketched out in the agreements mandated to hold seven national events one of which was in Winnipeg in 2010 the next of which in June July will be in a new Vic and This fall this coming fall. We think in October. There'll be a national event here in Halifax One of the seven events it's mandated to hold over the course of the life of the Commission It is to support community events across the country Oriented towards reconciliation. It's to take statements from survivors conduct research facilitate commemoration activities Establish a research center and make a report with recommendations All of this is to be accomplished within a five-year mandate by three commissioners a survivor Regional liaisons and a staff The Commission began its work in 2008 with the appointment of three commissioners It had a bit of a false start as you may know those commissioners resigned amid some disagreement about both the approach to the mandate of the Commission and The role as between the commissioners themselves a slate of new commissioners was appointed in 2009 And the work of the Commission is now underway and the clock restarted with the appointment of those new commissioners as the works begun a number of Really serious questions remain that weren't clear from the outset and have also emerged with new strength About the Commission's mandate and about how it will actually achieve what is expected of it And this evening I want to talk to you a little bit about some of those Significant issues and to suggest in particular that if we take a relational approach To these issues it will provide a useful way to think about both the mandate and the work of the Commission and Help us address some of the challenges that face the Commission in its work So from this starting point, I think we can better understand both the substance and the nature of the mandate of the TRC So first the substance of the TRC's mandate So as reflected in its name It's concerned with both truth and reconciliation And so that begs the questions that are in the title of the talk for tonight, right? What truth what reconciliation and just what's the relationship between the two? This scope of the Commission's mandate reflects the role It was intended to play in the settlement agreement, which was aimed at achieving a holistic and comprehensive response to the abuses and legacies of residential schools It's the vehicle that's Intended to hear the voices of those involved or affect it by the residential school system through which they can be heard It's broadly focused on all of the harms related to or flowing from the residential school system And it's mandated to construct a comprehensive picture or in the words of the settlement as Complete a historical record as possible of the residential school system and its legacies This focus of the Commission then is intended to provide the necessary Context so that there can be meaning and legitimacy to the common experience payments and to the independent assessment process Parts of the settlement and it's from this picture of the past that the Commission is intended to then recommend ways through to a future marked by new reconciled relationships within Aboriginal communities and between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples It's this latter goal that is perhaps Represents the Commission's most significant role in the settlement agreement the primary aim of the settlement as it describes itself is to deal with past abuses and their legacies in a way that Forges a brighter future founded on new relationships Embed it in mutual recognition and respect The burden of realizing this goal rests Substantially within the agreement on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as its name suggests and Figuring out how to do this Requires understanding both truth and reconciliation and how we get from one to the other So I elaborated a bit on the comments that I'm making to you tonight in a piece that I wrote for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation In their series on reconciliation There's actually a series of three volumes which notwithstanding the fact that they included a piece by me I would recommend to you Wholeheartedly, it's a remarkably informative and engaging set of essays And you can obtain them through their website Mike might even hand deliver them to you if you'd like And and it's quite a remarkable public engagement With the sets of issues related to thinking about what reconciliation would require of all of us And there is suggested that restorative justice may actually provide a missing bridge that the Commission might need to travel along this road From truth towards reconciliation and in the article I contend that restorative justice might help us both at a Conceptual and a practical level and tonight I want to look at the potential of this framework To understand and connect the aims of truth and reconciliation in the work of the Commission So I suggest to you that restorative justice is well suited to do this because it's a relational theory of justice In response to wrong it sees justice as concerned with the harms to people and relationships and Justice on this accounts requires the restoration of relationships harmed Starting from a relational view of the world restorative justice recognizes the fundamental interconnectedness of people that We live in and through webs of social relationship and when a wrongs perpetrate it or a state of wrong exists The harm that results extends through these webs and connections of Relationships to affect not only victims and wrongdoers, but their immediate families supporters communities their culture future generations the society and fabric in which they live and Understanding the relational nature of harm also helps one to fully identify and understand the harms that individuals have suffered Restorative justice resonates with and of course course owes Much to the insights of Aboriginal conceptions of justice They share a starting point in a relational worldview and relational Restorative justice as a relational theory at least on the account I'm offering you today is rooted in a relational view Of who we are as human beings of human selves and from that flows a relational understanding of the world So the aim of justice envisioned restoratively is to restore Relationships between and among the parties involved to a state in which all the parties are treated with equal concern respect and dignity the quality of Relationships sought by restorative justice is a quality in these very basic elements of human relationship That reflect the equal moral worth we all have Those elements of relationship are the building blocks of peaceful and productive human relationships They're what we need by our nature From each other to be well and to flourish So the goal of restorative justice then is not a return to the past Right as some might mistakenly think from the term restore But rather the creation of a future that's founded on these kinds of relationships that reflect equal concern respect and dignity The aim of restorative justice is to realize this ideal So some misunderstand this focus on relationships and assume that the aim of restorative justice is the restoration of personal or intimate relationships Such relations such restoration may not be precluded by the notion, but it's certainly not its goal Restorative justice is concerned with ensuring equality in our social relationships not our intimate ones social relationships are those that result because We all exist in networks of relationships some are personal some are intimate But the great majority of which result from the fact that we share the same physical and political space So restorative justice is not about getting people to hug and make up Rather it strives to create the conditions of social relationships in which parties might be able to achieve meaningful Just and peaceful coexistence The idea of restored relationships then That animates restorative justice might help us achieve a better understanding of the reconciliation at which the Canadian TRC is aimed It's not reconciliation then in the thick sense It's not the stuff of greeting cards and intimate reunions that the TRC should strive for As surely this would be inappropriate and impossible in many circumstances to achieve Nor though is it reconciliation as one might imagine from the re-prefix this re-prefix causes a lot of difficulty along this road That seeks a return to some fleeting prior time of better relationship Rather the reconciliation that the TRC should seek should be understood relationally as restored relationships Reconciliation seeks peaceful productive a peaceful and productive just future in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples live together in relationships Marked by respect by dignity and mutual concern for one another This understanding of reconciliation actually Accords with the conviction expressed in the TRC's mandate and and by the TRC itself that this is an ongoing process Right that if it's about restoring relationships Reconciliation is more about the process than it is about an end state to be achieved Relationships are dynamic ever-changing. They require constant attention and adjustment in order to ensure that they continue to reflect the values and Qualities of equal respect concern and dignity Establishing such relationships and then maintaining them will take ongoing commitment time effort and the building of our capacities For living in such relationships. I Think understanding this makes clear the contributions that a finite process like a TRC can make to reconciliation Reconciliation the Commission will be able to maybe lay the necessary foundation for such relationships By discovering the truth of the past wrongs their implication for Relationships and what will be required to address the related and resulting harms and to equip parties to live together differently in the future Understanding the goal of reconciliation then through the lens of relational theory I think also helps clarify the relationship between truth and Reconciliation and how to bridge the gap between them. There's this very well-known cartoon now That I saw when I was in in South Africa with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Bishop Tutu who led that commission With a map in his hands walking and behind him There was a representative victim and one of the well-known perpetrators and most of the South African press and a few others And he's marching him and he's in the lead He's got the map in front of them and he's suddenly standing on the edge and There is a big gap and Underneath you can see the cliff he's standing on is labeled truth and the other side is labeled reconciliation and the question is When I what right all the caption says is oops if Reconciliation as restored relationships is the animating goal then the role and the nature of truth of The truth that should be sought by the Commission becomes clearer Right how we bridge this gap requires a certain kind of truth requires a sure Foundation on both the side of truth and reconciliation that we may be able to secure a bridge upon The Commission's mandate at least from its text is focused largely upon or at least it seems to be clearest about a most Coherent about the work of finding truth But in the absence of clarity about the meaning and the goal of reconciliation It's really difficult to understand the motivation and the parameters of this search for truth From an understanding of reconciliation as restored relationships One can work back and ask what role truth plays in this goal and what truth is required And again, we can look to restorative justice for some guidance right restorative justice places a great deal of Significance on truth-telling as a necessary step towards restored relationships It requires all parties to participate Voluntarily in the hopes that they'll be open to the process and willing to be truthful The process is predicated upon parties telling their truths about the nature and the extent of the harms They've suffered about their needs with respect to redress and recovery about their roles and responsibilities For what occurred and about their capacities to assist in repairing the harm and working towards restored relationships It's also through the sharing of their truths that parties come to know and to understand One another's experiences perspectives and needs and that understanding is crucial to reconciliation But while truth is important to restorative justice to walking to bridging this gap between truth and reconciliation a Search for the truth may actually impede restoration of relationships Differing perspectives and experiences make the idea of one single Identifiable truth on any matter problematic and the search for and the determination of the truth Presents a whole bunch of either or choices that are more likely to be fractious than relationship building Reconciliation requires a truth that is able to contain the complexities that are born of our interconnectedness and interdependence a Relational truth, which is not to be confused with the claim that all truth is relative Relational truth is truth with all its nuances and its complexities The legal system is probably one of the most familiar arbiters of truth It's called upon to make determinations with respect to guilt culpability Liability and in that context it must often strip away the complexities of the truth and make a judgment about what part of the truth Matters to resolving a conflict or controversy But the task of a TRC is not that limited. It's not limited like a court It's orienting goal is reconciliation and as such it can't afford to strip away or ignore the messiness or complexity of truth Finding relational truth requires the creation of opportunities spaces and processes in which truths can be told and Heard and in which perspectives can meet one another head-on to challenge Integrate and illuminate the truth about what happened why it happened What are its implications in? This work of the Commission lies perhaps its greatest opportunity to contribute to reconciliation By modeling the processes and relationships. It hopes to actually see built The Commission then stands to make a significant contribution to reconciliation by serving as an opportunity For those involved to come together in processes that reflect and model the values of reconciled relationships And I think this insight has implications for the way in which the Commission's mandate and work should be understood approached and measured But the approach it suggests runs counter to some of the instincts and the prevailing approaches That have been influenced by the origins of the Commission Many within the Commission and outside the Commission have seen as its central focus What the Commission must produce? unofficial historical record in term of final reports national events community events this focus is related I think in no small part to the fact that this truth and reconciliation Commission was born out of a legal Settlement out of a court sanctioned settlement and is one of the deliverables of that settlement The focus on production has even started to seep into discussions of research and knowledge and perhaps even most troubling Into the expectation that it will produce truth and or reconciliation This approach is revealed as particularly problematic I think if one understands truth and reconciliation from a relational perspective The Commission has rightly resisted the expectation that it will produce Reconciliation and they've done so actually using a similar approach to that taken by the South African Commission Which positioned itself as one step along the road to reconciliation The Canadian Commission has made clear that they don't have the time or the resources To reach the end of this road and to its credit even the agreement with all of its short sightedness Recognizes this reality and describes reconciliation as an ongoing process Although it's followed shortly thereafter by a description of who it might be achieved between but let's hold on to its recognition of it as an ongoing process Surely the Commission is right then that it would be Unreasonable to expect them to produce reconciliation at the end of its mandate But it's not just a matter of unreasonable expectations or unrealistic timelines The real problem with this expectation that the Commission might produce Reconciliation is a reflection of a broader problem with approaching the Commission's mandate Through the logic and assumptions of legal settlements and agreements It invites one to assess the success and impact by deliverables and or their production value Such an approach misunderstands the Commission's goal and its role in significance I think in responding to the abuses and legacies caused by residential schools The focus on producing and delivering Threatens to cloud our vision and judgment about what matters most about the Commission not what it produces, but how it is produced a Relational approach to understanding the role and the mandate of the Commission suggests instead that the focus should be on the Significance of the Commission as a model of the sorts of relationships it seeks to promote That the promise the Commission holds is that it may lay the groundwork for the road to reconciliation That groundwork requires truth not for its own sake, but as foundational to understanding What's needed to address harms of the past and to forge a different way forward in relationship in the future But perhaps the most precious and important and valuable contribution the Commission can make to this goal is to hold Space open for us all to consider what such relationships would require and look like What is of central importance then is how the Commission works The approach it takes to its work and the relationships it models and values are More important than what it produces at the end of its mandate The lasting legacy of the Commission its contribution to reconciliation Will not be its report or its archives or even the memories of its national events All of these will fade gather dust fail to be reprinted Unless the Commission manages during its tenure to invite us into or to model for us a Different way forward in relationship with one another That's what will keep people reading the report and Asking research questions of its archives and telling stories of the national gatherings and the community commemorations We need to be compelled that these things matter and they only matter if in the end We still need them on a continuing journey along the road of reconciliation The Commission represents an opportunity to model new ways of interacting with government that isn't adversarial But yet ensures accountability for commitments made to support the work of the Commission the Commission's important for modeling new ways of seeking knowledge and Sharing it of modeling relationships of respect concern and dignity in dealings with individuals survivors and others with groups communities and other institutions But perhaps most significantly within the Commission itself What an incredible legacy the Commission will leave if in its governance and its structure its policies its Processes and all its work. It's sought to actually reflect relationships That reflect the values of reconciliation Okay, less you think I have completely unrealistic Expectations of the perfection the Commission might be able to achieve This actually isn't an expectation or a call for perfect execution of these models but for them to try and for them to be mindful and reflective and Transparent about their successes and their failures The Commission's success will lie in the attempt to do things differently and to operate differently and to be explicit and honest about those attempts We could learn more about the work required for reconciliation from the experience of the Commission about the barriers in our way erected by failures of imagination or Patterns and structures of work in ways that make the road ahead towards reconciliation dangerous or challenging Self-reflection and transparency from the Commission about itself about it as an exercise in Trying out these new ways of relating and working holds the greatest promise for learning about reconciliation So I invite us and the Commission to look at it As more than simply an entity or institution with responsibilities to produce certain deliverables But to widen our view and see the Commission as a process as an opportunity to engage us all in the process of figuring out and practicing What reconciliation might look like and what we might require for our travels together and to bridge the distance to reconciliation?