Reconciliation is a word most Canadians are probably quite familiar with by now. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established in 2007 as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and active through 2015, was one of the first initiatives that brought reconciliation to the forefront of Canadian politics.
The TRC defined reconciliation as a process “about establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country,” with the term Aboriginal designating the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis officially recognized as Indigenous to Canada.
This reconciliation is needed to address the legacy of Canada’s residential schools system, where Indigenous children were forcibly sent as part of a program of cultural assimilation and genocide.
This legacy of trauma, abuse, and death has yet to be fully reckoned with, and part of the TRC’s mission was to facilitate the reconciliation between residential school survivors, their communities, and the rest of the Canadian public and its government.
For the rest of this article: https://hir.harvard.edu/exploiting-reconciliation-albertas-coal-revival/