SPECIAL REPORT
Calls to Action Accountability:
A 2021 Status Update on Reconciliation
A 2021 Status Update on Reconciliation
By Eva Jewell and Ian Mosby
OVERVIEW
It has now been six years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its six-volume Final Report along with the 94 Calls to Action, meant to remedy the ongoing structural legacy of Canada’s Residential Schools and to advance reconciliation in Canada.
Framed by the recent revelations of thousands of children’s graves discovered on the grounds of several Residential Schools and by signs of a new resolve among Canadians to work toward reconciliation, this year’s report finds three new Calls to Action have been completed. Despite this, we also find an ongoing failure by the federal government to meaningfully enact the Calls to Action that would alter the disparate realities that Indigenous peoples experience in this country. With each passing year, Canada opts to perform reconciliation in an effort to shape a benevolent reputation rather than enact the substantial and structural changes that would rectify ongoing harms and change the course of our collective relationship.
Thunderbird Nest by Blake Angeconeb (Anishinaabe, Lac Seul First Nation)
To the question, “When will it be enough?” we say: it will be enough when the systems of oppression no longer exist. We will arrive at reconciliation when Indigenous peoples in this country experience, at the bare minimum, a living standard that reflects their visions of healthy and prosperous communities.
– EVA JEWELL AND IAN MOSBY
2021 Findings:
Three Calls Completed, Low Hanging Fruit
Three Calls Completed, Low Hanging Fruit
Three Calls to Action were acted upon in the three weeks following the first revelations of children’s graves outside Residential Schools.
This is more movement on the Calls to Action in three weeks alone than in the last three years.
Any completed Call to Action is welcome news. But why did it take the profoundly disturbing revelations of thousands of unmarked graves being found on the grounds of residential schools across the country to see Canada begin to make reconciliation a priority? And what does it mean that the Calls to Action that Canada did complete were also arguably the easiest, most of the symbolic gestures we allude to as “low hanging fruit” in this year’s report?
Why the lack of action on the Calls to Action?
5 Reasons:
01.
Paternalism
“We know best” mentality of policymakers that excludes Indigenous peoples from leading with their own solutions.
02.
Structural anti-Indigenous discrimmination
Canada asserts legal myths to justify dispossession and poverty.
03.
“The Public Interest”
Using the interests of non-Indigenous Canadians to explain their actions (or lack thereof).
04.
Insufficient Resources
Canada refuses to adequately address funding inequities.
05.
Reconciliation as Exploitation or Performance
Most actions are symbolic and serve to manage Canada’s reputation.
The only way to breathe life back into the conversation on reconciliation would be for Canada to first accept the truth that there are too many systems still in place that actively harm Indigenous peoples, particularly the most vulnerable.
Accepting this truth exposes any notion of simply “repairing” the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canadians for what it is: pure fantasy. Real and meaningful transformative change to underlying systems of oppression — not just individual tinkering around the edges of a broken colonial machine — is, therefore, required.
