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Laura McKinley joins us today to talk about the Prezi Presentation she's put
together analyzing Stephen Harper's apology for the Indian Residential School
System that he gave in Parliament in 2008. So, welcome Laura thanks for joining us
and please tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to this work.
>> Thanks. So I started my Masters Degree here at
OISE about a year and a half ago. And I came to school hoping to do some
work on ideas about responsibility and colonial relations.
And about how I've benefited from living on this land.
And how and what, what that means about my role in terms of responsibility to good
relations. I, in terms of myself I am, I'm doing this
work as a settler and yet my great-grandmother was part Algonquin and
that's a story that's been told to me throughout my life.
But, it's always been shrouded in mystery. It's this, a story that, that doesn't have
a sort of material reality in my life. It's not my lived, lived experience and
yet it's something that is always kind of like drawing me back to, okay, I have to
think through this. But it's also a story, so I don't claim
this indigenous identity because I'm very wary of the way the Canadians, white
Canadians often claim this indigenous identity in part to feel like natural
inheritors of the land. And that's something that I have no
interest in doing. >> Okay.
So on June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered his famous
apology for the Indian Residential School System.
Can you tell us a bit about the apology itself?
>> Mm-hm. I mean, I think I'd like to begin by
acknowledging that this apology was of great significance for many people.
And I have no interest in undermining any of the healing that the apology may have
played a role in. However, what I am interested in with the
apology is gaps between words and actions gaps between or moments that happen within
this story that benefit the state, and not the survivors.
And that tell stories that absolve people of responsibility.
So the apology is a story not only about the Indian Residential School System and
the government's role in it, but also about all of us here in Canada, or the
land now called Canada, and how we relate to one another and who is entitled to what
land and who is entitled to what sovereignty.
So, it tells a, it tells a very long and intricate story in a very short amount of
time. [laugh] >> Mm-hm, yeah.
There's still, there's been a lot of apologies from national governments for,
you know, wrongs done in history to particular cultural groups.
>> Uh-huh. >> Say at least three significant ones in
Canada. So, I'm kind of curious, what, what is the
worth of these apologies are doing? >> Mm-hm.
Well, it is really interesting because they seem to be gaining legitimacy as you
know, good and right responses to, to racial violence all over the world to and
I think it's really per important that we start to ask beyond this sentimentalities
sentimentality of apologies. So, what is actual, what is it that they
actually do and, and, what kind of stories that tell them to cover up what kind of
colonial violence is happening or happened?.
I think it's, I think it's really important that we also ask if there's
moments that, that these apologies can, can allow for, for resistance as well.
>> Okay, so tell us a bit about the analysis of the apology that you've done
and put together in this presentation. >> Okay.
So, what I've, I've done is I've used critical discourse analysis as a
methodology which critical dis discourse analysis is a very useful tool for when
you're look at the ways that language and power are intimately bound.
Discourse analysis takes as its basic premise that language is, is social
process, that it constructs social relations, and that it constructs subject
positions. And it asks us to think beyond just the
surface value of the text. And so when looking at a text, like the
apology, which is obviously hugely fraught and complex, it's a very useful tool for
allowing us to kind of pick apart what the language is doing and what story is being
told beyond just the story we see. And so, what I'm doing with this video
project is to try and, and kind of annotate what is happening in the apology
beyond what the words say. >> Okay.
Now the, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has recommended that
copies of the apology be visible in every school in Canada.
>> Mm-hm. >> So that the younger generation can
learn about this, this history. >> Mm-hm.
>> How far do you think this will go to restoring a good relationship between
indigenous people and Canadian citizens? >> Hmm, that's very good question.
I think, part of the problem with the apology does is that it is a celebratory
national narrative. It says that Canadian settlers are polite,
peaceful, and natural inheritors of the of the land.
And I think that is some really important work in, in writing relations is to stop
seeing ourselves in that way. And to start disrupting these narratives,
and to start talking about complicity and talking about who benefits from these
colonial relations, why and how. And the problem with the apology just face
value being everywhere is that it's, it, it feeds into this narrative of Canadians
not having responsibility of just being these, you know, peaceful people who
showed up. And that, [laugh] and that don't have
anything to do to make relations right again where and I think that's, that's
what this video project is trying to do. It's trying to, to begin that dialogue
and, and my research more generally is, is trying to do that as well.
>> Well thanks, Laura for sharing your knowledge today and for putting together
Jean-Paul RestouleAssociate Professor
