2 Chapter 2: The Relationship between Indigenous Identities, Being and Knowing, and Business

REFER TO CASE STUDY – TOPIC INDIGENOUS IDENTITY (Nadine Bernard – Indigevisor)

Discussion implications of formative context for my Two-Eyed CSM analysis

It was important for my analysis of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission to foreground Indigenous literature because in my experience the work of Aboriginal and Indigenous authors tends to be overlooked by mainstream business school literature. Step two of the Two-Eyed CSM method involves positioning yourself as a researcher relative to Indigenous communities, including communities of practice. The information provided above (see Appendix 1) are germinal to legal and political reference points of Aboriginal-led community economic development. The literature review also addresses two critical aspects of the Critical Sensemaking heuristic. The body of work that makes up the field of Aboriginal economic development specifically represents the formative context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It also provides salient and retrospective cues that inform me as I make sense of the context of the case study.

There are four points to highlight before moving on to the case study analysis. First, the specific language or words that are presented in popular media that make up the discourse of Canada-Indigenous reconciliation today have been carried forward over time. The discourse of reconciliation is changing and adapting, so when I hear it used today, I am attentive to the relational cues that position the intended meaning of the dialogue temporally, professionally, and politically. I discuss the dynamics of the discourse in greater detail below. Second, the Indian Residential Schools were devastating, and were but one aspect of the systematic process of political disenfranchisement and cultural genocide. Third, the strategy that the Federal government has used has been policy dependent which prompted the sub-sequent resistance response of Indigenous communities. The distrust and skepticism about the intentions of government action is justified and can be used to surface the discursive political moves. Lastly, I reiterate the value of the culturally relevant gender-based analysis toolkits developed by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC, 2020, 2022, 2023).

Connecting the history of Canada-Indigenous Relationships to global reconciliation discourses

As a discourse of change there is an assumption about what truth and reconciliation commissions are and what they are supposed to do (Stanton, 2022). Initially, in my analysis I reviewed the global academic discourses related to truth and reconciliation commissions (Hayner, 2011; Maddison, Clark, and de Costa, 2016) with the intention, as others have done, of positioning descriptions of the Canadian TRC relative to them (Nagy, 2012; 2014; Regan, 2010; Snelgrove, Dhamoon, & Corntassel, 2014). The basic premise of a TRC appears straight forward: social justice is dependent on surfacing truth (e.g., government transparency), development of socially equitable policies (i.e., policy change), and gradual social reform (i.e., discursive change). Therefore, the role of commissions, temporary constituted government institutions, is primarily discursive (de Costa, 2017). Their goals are to focus on illuminating how political and legal rules/structures must change to create more equitable processes and to promote public accountability by recommending reforms.

The truth aspect of a commission, then, assumes that if publics are made aware of structures that perpetuate injustice, then they will hold institutions accountable to change (Bakiner, 2014; Hayner, 2011). This model of change also assumes the power to enact change lies with states and government institutions. By extension, the role of civil society is to present a united ethical stand to pressure governments to change policies and laws (Bakiner, 2014; Hayner, 2011). Hayner (2011) suggested it is necessary to evaluate change over extended periods of time to determine whether historical narratives of the past become more complicated. Bakiner (2014) discussed the need for TRCs to mobilize civil society to disrupt political power dynamics. Citizens must be aware and engaged. Therefore, one of the questions that was asked with respect to the Canadian TRC was this: If Canadian publics were disinterested in Aboriginal issues leading up to the TRC (James, 2017), did the work of the TRC instigate change in the public awareness and interest?

The review of global discourses highlights a need to clarify the locally relevant dimensions of discourse. If we explore and subject national histories to critical questioning, i.e., about the legacies of national histories and the place of the nation state, we make room for radically different conceptions of justice (Scott, 2020). The first step then is to consider the pre-conditions of the relationship to be reconciled, or the locally relevant formative context (e.g., national history). A multi-level approach to conceptualizing reconciliation reveals the need to take a broader perspective on a range of structural, institutional, and interpersonal transformations that promote democratic values and contestations (Maddison, 2017). In other words, the means of evaluating the success of commissions is also dependent on the situation specific baseline conditions from which success is measured. And it is also necessary to be aware of the often-implicit assumptions about history, the objectivity of knowledge claims, and agency to create change (Suddaby and Foster, 2016).

The Discourse of Reconciliation: Learning about history to make sense of plausible future action

The relationship between traditional Indigenous governments and the federal government of Canada is complicated by the way the relationship was (re-)presented in mainstream media and literature (Regan, 2010). The brief history above, presented to foreground Indigenous perspectives of the formative context of the Canada-Indigenous relationship, highlights cues that continue to be important to the modern Crown-Indigenous relationship and therefore the discourse of Canada-Indigenous reconciliation. My analysis of the administrative process of the TRC shows a correlation between the change in the discourses of Crown-Indigenous relations and the completion of the TRC.

The analysis in the next two chapters focuses heavily on two documents: (1) the Mandate Statement, Schedule N of the Indian Residential School Settlement agreement (2006), and (2) Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary Report of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC, 2015a). In terms of the discourse of reconciliation they reflect the language used at the beginning and end of the TRC’s process. At the beginning of the process the principles of reconciliation said:

Reconciliation is an ongoing individual and collective process, and will require commitment from all those affected including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis former Indian Residential School (IRS) students, their families, communities, religious entities, former school employees, government, and the people of Canada. Reconciliation may occur between any of the above groups. (Schedule “N,” 2006, p. 1)

Similarly, the opening chapter of the summary report defined reconciliation as follows:

[…] reconciliation is about establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country. In order for that to happen there has to be an awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behaviour. (TRC, 2015, pp. 6-7)

Later in the same chapter, “The Commission defines reconciliation as ongoing processes of establishing and maintaining respectful relationships (TRC, 2015, p. 16).” Further, “A critical part of this process involves repairing damaged trust by making apologies, providing individual and collective reparations, and following through with concrete actions that demonstrate societal change. (TRC, 2015, p. 16)”

Reconciliation is a political process and requires engagement and change in all departments of the federal government and within the policies they produce. Reconciliation processes are not the exclusive responsibility of the federal government or federal departments. Reconciliation requires, “…commitment from all those affected including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis former Indian Residential School (IRS) students, their families, communities, religious entities, former school employees, government and the people of Canada.” (Schedule “N,” 2006, p. 1)

Exploring the connection between history and future action. The TRC presents a discourse of reconciliation that requires fostering awareness about Indigenous histories and Canada’s histories so that they can inform the future reconciliation processes. The decade of dialogue sessions as part of the negotiation and renewal period was significant for the TRC. They frame the relationship and the corresponding power dynamic that existed between Indigenous governments and the Federal government. The federal government and church institutions continued to deny their legal accountability for the Indian Residential Schools as a whole, but some began to acknowledge the stories of individual harm. Student survivors increasingly turned to the justice system as a means of seeking reparations for damages.

With respect to reconciliatory change, the narrative presented by RCAP also reflects the agency of individuals and communities to change policy. In the case of the TRC, a series of small wins over time created a situation in which it was increasingly difficult to publicly deny the nature of the Indian Residential School systems, the legacy impacts, and the extent of the institutional coordination and involvement. For example, when the courts certified the Cloud Class Action of Mohawk Institute (1997 – 2004), the decision validated the plausibility of systems of neglect (Nagy, 2014). A new precedent was set where, “Wider harms of residential schools would be legally actionable (Nagy, 2014 p. 205, cites Leslie Thielen-Wilson 2012).” Up to that point, the federal government, and churches as administrators of schools, could not be held accountable for the impacts of a residential schools on a whole group of people. At best, a senior administrator would be held accountable for their individual behaviour. Once the Cloud Class Action was certified, it created a legal precedent for evaluating the social structures and impacts of residential schools. The Settlement Agreement , the largest out-of-court settlement in Canadian history, was a legal process to help survivors receive justice. It represented legal acknowledgment of the plausibility of the mass number of legal claims made by former Indian Residential School Survivors against the Government of Canada and Religious Institutions.

The IRSSA was meant to bring a fair and lasting resolution to the legacy of Indian Residential Schools by providing financial and non-financial benefits to the individuals affected by the Indian Residential Schools experience. Its implementation was to be overseen by nine provincial and territorial Superior Courts, and funded by the Government of Canada (Independent Assessment Process, 2021, p. 21).

It was further determined that various structures of settlement were necessary to sort through the claims, determine legitimacy of individual claims, and evaluate the scope of the Indian Residential School system nationally. Thus, the Settlement Agreement presented a solution that helped to legally determine the truths about the past. While some sub-processes like the Independent Assessment Process provided compensation for residential school survivors (Independent Assessment Process, 2021), the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and funding for commemorative events “extended beyond direct survivors themselves and were intended to document the residential school experience and advance healing and reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state” (Independent Assessment Process, 2021, p. 21). Because the TRC mandate was established as part of the Settlement Process the legal context of negotiation presented salient cues for framing of the localized TRC discourse (James, 2022).

Challenging the silent identity discourses of

reconciliation. Canada-Indigenous Reconciliation is inherently a political discussion, because government policies flow through to the delivery of services to people, i.e., citizens. Aboriginal peoples in Canada have a unique relationship that the federal government is bound in the definitions of citizenship presented in the Indian Act and the Canadian Constitution Act. Despite the Canadian justice system historically deeming many traditional practices as illegal (Denny, 2022; Young, 2016), multiple court cases of the past have been overturned on the grounds that the original decisions did not recognize the treaty rights of Indigenous peoples. Thus, the Supreme Court of Canada has legitimized Indigenous claims to inherent rights in their traditional territories. Furthermore, modern provincial and federal governments of Canada still derive jurisdictional authority in the territory from the British Crown via the British North America Act (i.e., the Constitution) are responsible for upholding the spirit and intent of those historic treaties.

Policies such as the Indian Act and the Canadian Constitution Act also have direct implications on the relationship between individuals and regional governments on account of the social services that are provided to them (e.g., health care and education). Political identities are also tied to their physical location (on or off reserve) and their political/legal connections to Indigenous governments. Until recently other levels of Canadian government did not formally engage with Aboriginal communities to avoid conflation of jurisdictional boundaries. However, the strict definitions of jurisdictional authority that are bound to place rather than individual has been shifting as duty to consult legislation, the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, and Supreme Court decisions expand their definitions and return to the original treaty arrangements.

I focus on the (dis-) connections between these discourses of reconciliation and the discourses that reproduce power in the problematic settler-colonial discourses identified in the CRGBA framework. The literature review above presents a dynamic story of relationships between Indigenous peoples and settler-colonizers that have changed over the course of almost 600 years. There are stories of meeting, cooperation, economic development, disagreement, political and religious manipulation, social displacement, and resistance to change. Future reconciliation efforts to repair broken relationships must account for the political, legal, social, religious, and economic dimensions of these stories and their legacies that are reproduced in modern Canadian policy documents.

In my analysis of the reconciliation processes addressed by the TRC, I refer to the CRGBA framework because it distills the challenges Canadian policies present for Indigenous peoples into five absent discourses: (1) the need for policies to account for legal and political Indigenous identity distinctions, (2) Indigenous knowledges and teachings, (3) gender diversity and (4) other common intersectional identity concerns, (5) and legacies of trauma resulting from the weaponization of policy (NWAC, 2022, p.48). The relative silence in mainstream literature with respect to these important policy issues was a challenge for me to articulate until the CRGBA toolkits were published.