Indigenous Reparations And Settler Colonial Reckoning

How Indigenous communities are transforming the idea and practice of reparations through their laws and leadership

In recent decades, a growing number of Indigenous groups across Canada have initiated movements for colonial reparations. Too often, the settler state has responded by attempting to enfold their work into a narrative of reconciliation that consigns colonialism to “sad chapters” of history. In this book, Pauline Wakeham calls attention to the ways that Indigenous reparations movements exceed state reconciliatory frameworks and prompt a deeper reckoning with the enduring structures of settler colonialism.

To expose and redress colonial injustices, Indigenous reparations movements draw upon long local traditions of political organizing as well as transformations on the global stage since World War II. As international law formulated new instruments regarding gross human rights violations, atrocity crimes, and the reparative obligations of states, colonized peoples across the world have sought to mobilize these mechanisms in their struggles for decolonization and reparations. While international law has provided strategic tools for this work, the colonial foundations of the field continue to limit how it conceptualizes and shapes access to justice. Indigenous Reparations and Settler Colonial Reckoning traces the specific implications for Indigenous nations whose land is occupied by settler states—nations whose legal orders remain subordinated to both settler “domestic” and international legal systems.

Amid this complex multijurisdictional terrain, how are Indigenous peoples carving out space to articulate their own visions of justice? To answer this question, Wakeham learns from the Inuit-led Qikiqtani Truth Commission as well as reparations movements for residential schools and the High Arctic Relocations of 1953 and 1955. These movements offer powerful lessons about the importance of centering Indigenous leadership and laws in redress processes, thereby connecting reparations to the living enactment of Indigenous rights.

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