The restorative and reconciliation impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
The article examines the potential for restoration and reconciliation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). This Commission was implemented in Canada from 2008 to 2015 in response to the traumas experienced by Aboriginal Peoples in the residential school system. The author concludes that these potentialities are relatively limited. The main limits hold in the absence of a dialogue space between the victims and the oppressors, in a centering on the victims’ narrative traumas but also in a depoliticized notion of reconciliation. The TRC of Canada did not subscribe to decolonization as the course to reconciliation but preferred to take the path of a pacification of the relations between peoples. Yet, the author supports the idea that the reconciliation between Native Peoples and the State requires going a step further than healing and material and symbolic restoration. Decolonization of institutions, redistribution of territories and in-depth constitutional reform remain the only possible avenues to succeed in reconciling victims of a cultural genocide with their oppressors.