The Limits of the TRC

A boy is taken from the trap line that he lives on, to a far-away school where he knows no one. He is given unfamiliar food for dinner and helplessly vomits onto the floor. An adult, a worker at the school, arrives to harass him in a language he does not know. He is hit until his nose bleeds, and he is told to crawl on the floor and eat what he has brought up. He is six, and it is his first day at school.

The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission has heard hundreds of these stories from coast to coast to coast. It is already a half-decade old, and winding toward its conclusion. What is not clear is what is supposed to happen next.

Truth and reconciliation are distinctly not the same thing, but we presume they are related. It is an appealing notion, which resonates with our enlightenment...