A report from SFU’s Centre for Dialogue discusses how governments and communities should approach reconciliation of injustices.
The report sums up the findings of Reconciling Injustices in a Pluralistic Canada, a dialogue held on January 23, 2014. According to the media release, it involved “communities affected by a wide range of injustices, including Indian Residential Schools, the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, the Komagata Maru Incident, the Japanese Canadian Internment, the social and legal exclusion of LGBTQ Canadians, and Canada’s refusal of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.”
The report discusses issues such as making clear “the intended beneficiaries of reconciliation [processes], as well as the groups that are accountable [to these beneficiaries],” the necessity “for the process of reconciliation to empower those who have been historically disempowered, and for society to recognize the historically harmful roles of power.”
Robin Prest, a program analyst with SFU’s Centre for Dialogue, was quick to state that the report is “not a cookbook.” He continued, “We’re really careful to be aware that every injustice is unique and every injustice requires a tailored response, but there are a lot of shared principles.”
According to the report, most participants viewed education as being essential to the process of reconciliation, stating that, “Participants wanted the full history and scope of past injustices to be acknowledged without revisionism.” It also stressed the importance of doing more than just apologising, and the importance of dialogue.
Prest said it does not matter whether it is the community or the government that brings up reconciliation, but he stressed that the process shouldn’t necessarily be a combative one. “Often in the past, it has been [with] heavy negotiations back and forth, and backroom deals. It should, in an ideal world, [. . .] be collaborative,” he said.
He also pointed out the government’s reactionary process, stating that many reconciliation efforts came after a lot of protest or even court cases, using the example of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “[It] has done tremendous work [. . . it] has been very effective in many ways but just the fact that it came out of a court proceeding rather than a voluntary process [. . .] is somewhat problematic,” he said.
Prest notes that while reconciliation of previous injustices is important, it is also necessary to stop current ones, such as the police handling of the Pickton case and the treatment of the LGBTQ community: “It’s important to make sure we’re addressing stopping injustice, because it’s difficult to talk about healing and talk about togetherness until we’ve actually made sure the injustice is finished.”
“This isn’t just an academic exercise to talk about injustices; it’s not just about things that happened 100, 200 years ago. [. . .] Canada will, in all likelihood, continue to experience injustices into the future, no matter how well intentioned Canada is,” Prest concluded. “We still need to look at this as something that is forward looking.”
