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Who’s Sorry Now? Government Apologies, Truth Commissions, and Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia, Canada, Guatemala, and Peru

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Abstract

Official apologies and truth commissions are increasingly utilized as mechanisms to address human rights abuses. Both are intended to transform inter-group relations by marking an end point to a history of wrongdoing and providing the means for political and social relations to move beyond that history. However, state-dominated reconciliation mechanisms are inherently problematic for indigenous communities. In this paper, we examine the use of apologies, and truth and reconciliation commissions in four countries with significant indigenous populations: Canada, Australia, Peru, and Guatemala. In each case, the reconciliation mechanism differentiated the goal of reconciliation from an indigenous self-determination agenda. The resulting state-centered strategies ultimately failed to hold states fully accountable for past wrongs and, because of this, failed to transform inter-group relations.

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Notes

  1. There are approximately 24 truth commissions that have been documented by the United States Institute for Peace (http://www.usip.org/library/truth.html#tc). While South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is often touted as a success, it was not chosen as one of our four comparative case studies for two reasons. First, because the 79% African majority in South Africa is a much higher percentage than Indigenous population estimates in Peru, Guatemala, Australia, and Canada, it is not directly comparable to the colonial experiences of these countries. Second, the South African TRC offered amnesty agreements to perpetrators who applied for it, which was not the policy for TRCs operating in Peru and Guatemala. In addition, the TRC in South Africa specifically excluded any possibility of restitution and property relations based on a 1993 political compromise, which runs counter to a conceptualization of genuine reconciliation that we develop in this article.

  2. The term “host” country or state is the most grammatically precise and widely used phrase describing those countries containing indigenous peoples within their borders. However, this term should not be construed to imply a sense of undue state cordiality, especially given the severe treatment that several indigenous populations have received at the hands of their “host” states.

  3. Andrew Rigby, Justice and Reconciliation: After the Violence (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001), p. 142.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Roy L. Brooks (ed), When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (New York: New York University Press 1999), p. 3. Mark Gibney, Rhoda Howard-Hassman, Jean-Marc Coicaud, and Niklaus Steiner, eds., The Age of Apology: The West Faces its Own Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2007).

  6. Mark Gibney and Erik Roxstrom, ‘The Status of State Apologies,’ Human Rights Quarterly Vol.23 (2001), pp. 911–2.

  7. Nicholas Tavuchus, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1991), p. 5.

  8. Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2000), p. 323.

  9. Tavuchus, p. 49.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Martha Minnow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston: Beacon Press 1998), p. 114.

  12. Gibney and Roxstram, p. 935.

  13. Andrew Woolford, ‘The Limits of Justice: Certainty, Affirmative Repair and Aboriginality,’ Journal of Human Rights Vol.3 No.4 (2004), pp. 429–30.

  14. Ibid., p. 430.

  15. Matt James, ‘Wrestling with the Past: Apologies, Quasi-Apologies, and Non-Apologies in Canada,’ in Mark Gibney, Rhoda Howard-Hassman, Jean-Marc Coicaud, and Niklaus Steiner (eds), The Age of Apology: The West Faces its Own Past (Tokyo: United Nations University Press 2007), p. 5.

  16. Over 24 truth commissions have been enacted since 1975. Based on estimates from the United States Institute of Peace’s Truth Commissions Digital Collection, http://www.usip.org/library/truth.html#tc, accessed 1 March 2006.

  17. Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York: Routledge 2001), pp. 310–11.

  18. Rigby, p. 12.

  19. Wilhelm Verwoerd, ‘Toward a Response to Criticisms of the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission,’ in Carol A.L. Prager and Trudy Govier (eds), Dilemmas of Reconciliation: Cases and Concepts (Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2003), p. 265.

  20. Paulette Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within: Canada’s Peacemaker Myth, Reconciliation and Transformative Pathways to Decolonization (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Victoria 2006), p. 205.

  21. Hayner, p. 161.

  22. Ibid., pp.161–2.

  23. Minnow, p. 23.

  24. Woolford, p. 430.

  25. Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Ontario: Broadview Press, Ltd 2005), p. 152.

  26. Ibid., p. 154.

  27. Barkan, p. 318.

  28. John Torpey (ed), Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2003), p. 15.

  29. Barkan.

  30. Erica-Irene A. Daes, Indigenous Peoples’ Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources: Final Report of the Special Rapporteur, Erica-Irene A. Daes (Commission on Human Rights. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2004/30, 13 July 2004), p. 7.

  31. James Tully, ‘The Struggles of Indigenous Peoples for and of Freedom,’ in Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton and Will Sanders (eds), Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (New York: Cambridge University Press 2000), p. 57.

  32. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books Ltd. 1999), p. 28.

  33. Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel, ‘Being Indigenous: Resurgences against Contemporary Colonialism,’ Government and Opposition Vol.9 (2005), p. 601.

  34. Woolford, p. 429.

  35. See, for example, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. 1996. Ottawa: Canada Communications Group, Volume 1, Chapter 10; Furniss, Elizabeth. 1992. Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press; Fournier, Suzanne and Ernie Crey. 1997. Stolen from Our Embrace: The Abduction of First Nations Children and Restoration of Aboriginal Communities. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd; Law Commission of Canada. 2000. Restoring Dignity: Responding to Child Abuse in Canadian Institutions. Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services.

  36. Regan, p. 171.

  37. For a full text of the 1998 “Statement of Reconciliation,” see the following website: http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/gs/rec_e.html.

  38. Statement of Reconciliation 1998.

  39. James, p. 7.

  40. James, p. 9.

  41. Regan, p. 172.

  42. Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs 2005, cited in Regan, p. 183.

  43. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement 2006, p. 2.

  44. Marites N. Sison, ‘Former students urge fairness in settlement,’ Anglican Journal 1 October 2006 [accessed on 17 October 2006: http://www.anglicanjournal.com/issues/2006/132/oct/08/article/former-students-urge-fairness-in-settlement/].

  45. Ibid.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Robert Tickner, Taking a Stand: Land Rights to Reconciliation (Allen & Unwin 2001), pp. 32–3.

  48. Will Sanders, ‘Journey Without End: Reconciliation Between Australia’s Indigenous and Settler Peoples,’ (Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. No. 237/2002), p. 2.

  49. Barkan, pp. 245–6.

  50. Ibid., p. 247.

  51. Sanders, pp. 3–4.

  52. BBC Television 1997.

  53. Barkan, p. 247.

  54. Quoted in Sanders, p. 5.

  55. Sanders, p. 7.

  56. Quoted in Sanders, p. 9.

  57. Sanders, p. 11.

  58. CVR 2003: Anexo 2, 17; CEH 2000: Conclusions, para. 15.

  59. Jonas 1991; CEH 2000: Conclusions, para. 24–25.

  60. Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique, ‘Terror and the Privatized State: A Peruviam Parable’, Radical History Review Vol.85 (2003), p. 153.

  61. Shifter 2004; CEH 2000: Conclusions, para. 1.

  62. Jim Handy, ‘Reimagining Guatemala: Reconciliation and the Indigenous Accords’ in Carol A.L. Prager and Trudy Govier (eds), Dilemmas of Reconciliation: Cases and Concepts (Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2003), pp. 281–85; Poole and Rénique, p. 153.

  63. Eduardo González Cueva, ‘The Contribution of The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commissions to Prosecutions,’ Criminal Law Forum 2004 Vol.15, p. 58.

  64. CVR 2003: Capitulo 3, pp. 157–162.

  65. CVR General Conclusions 2003, emphasis added.

  66. CVR 2003: Anexo 2, p. 17.

  67. Enrique Obando, ‘Civil-Military Relations in Peru, 1980–1996: How to Control and Co-Opt the Military (and the Consequences of Doing So)’, in S. Stern (ed), Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995 (Duke University Press: Durham, NC 1998).

  68. Finn Stepputat, ‘Marching for Progress: Rituals of Citizenship, State and Belonging in a High Andes District,’ Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol.21 No.2, (2004), p. 257.

  69. Poole and Rénique, pp. 154–156.

  70. John Crabtree, ‘The Collapse of Fujimorismo: Authoritarianism and its Limits,’ Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol.20 No.3 (2001), pp. 296–7; Stepputat, pp. 256–7.

  71. Stepputat, pp. 255–6.

  72. Obando; Poole and Rénique, p. 153.

  73. González Cueva, p. 62.

  74. Ibid.

  75. CVR General Conclusions 2003.

  76. Jonathan D. Tepperman, ‘Truth and Consequences,’ Foreign Affairs Vol.81 No.2 (2002); Susan Kemp, ‘The Inter-Relationship Between The Guatemalan Commission For Historical Clarification And The Search For Justice In National Courts,’ Criminal Law Forum Vol.15 (2004), pp. 67–103.

  77. Greg Grandin, ‘The Instruction of Great Catastrophe: Truth Commissions, National History, and State Formation in Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala,’ The American Historical Review Vol.110 No.1 (2005), pp. 46–67.

  78. CEH 2000: Conclusions pp. 31–32, pp. 84–88.

  79. Handy.

  80. Tepperman; Handy; Kemp; Grandin.

  81. Handy.

  82. Charles Hale, ‘Neoliberal Multiculturalism: The Remaking of Cultural Rights and Racial Dominance in Central America,’ PoLAR Vol.28 No.1 (2005), pp. 10–28; Charles Hale, ‘Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala,’ Journal of Latin Amercian Studies Vol.34 No.3 (2002), pp. 485–524.

  83. Minnow.

  84. Woolford.

  85. James.

  86. Regan, p. 32.

  87. Canada recently agreed to create a truth and reconciliation commission to answer for the abuses of residential schools. On 30 May 2005, Assembly of First Nations’ National Chief Phil Fontaine signed a political agreement with the government of Canada to address the harms caused by Canadian residential school policies and their lasting impacts on Indigenous communities. According to the agreement, a process of reconciliation will be established that includes monetary payments to former residential school students as well as the development of “truth and reconciliation processes, commemoration and healing elements.” “Political Agreement, May 30, 2005.” Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada. http://www.irsr-rqpi.gc.ca/english/news_30_05_05b.html, accessed 31 July 2005.

  88. Regan, p. 3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indigenous Governance Programs, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Jeff Corntassel

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Cindy Holder

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  1. Jeff Corntassel
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Correspondence to Jeff Corntassel or Cindy Holder.

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Corntassel, J., Holder, C. Who’s Sorry Now? Government Apologies, Truth Commissions, and Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia, Canada, Guatemala, and Peru. Hum Rights Rev 9, 465–489 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-008-0065-3

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