Residential Schools and Reconciliation
Canada Confronts Its History
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of Toronto Press
Published:27th Sep '17
Should be back in stock very soon
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£21.99(9781487521844)
Since the 1980s, successive Canadian institutions and federal governments as well as Christian churches have attempted to grapple with the malignant legacy of residential schooling through official apologies, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
In Residential Schools and Reconciliation, award-winning author J.R. Miller tackles and explains these institutional responses to Canada’s residential school legacy. Analysing archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history. This unique, timely, and provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies.
"Professor Jim Miller of the University of Saskatchewan pulls back the curtain on the historical blame game. Residential Schools and Reconciliation documents Ottawa’s handling of Aboriginal issues. This is not ancient history. It just happened." -- Holly Doan * Blacklock’s Reporter *
"As colonial nations around the world seek pathways to post-conflict reconciliation, J.R. Miller’s timely work is an important reminder of both the potential obstacles and the healing possibilities of such initiatives." -- Leigh Anne Williams * Publishers Weekly *
‘For those who want to understand Canadian reconciliation attempts and their historical context specifically pertaining to residential schools, Residential Schools and Reconciliation is where they should turn.’ -- Cory Kapeller * Saskatchewan Law Review *
"Miller’s study does not examine the history of residential schools or draw upon horrors recounted by survivors; rather, it looks at what churches, courts, and the state itself have done in reaction, sometimes haltingly. Here his scholarship breaks new ground: few scholars have traced the nitty-gritty of how reconciliation was and is negotiated or set it so firmly in a historical context." -- Susan Neylan, Wilfrid Laurier University * The Canadian Historical Review *
"In this book, Miller provides Canadians with an invaluable, insightful, and accessible resource on reconciliation in Canada." -- Joanna Dawson * Canada’s History *
- Short-listed for The Sir John A. Macdonald Prize 2018 (Canada)
ISBN: 9781487502188
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 25mm
Weight: 680g
368 pages