Fragments of Truth: Residential Schools and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Canada
Fragments of Truth: Residential Schools and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Canada
by Naomi Angel edited by Dylan Robinson and Jamie Berthe
Duke University Press, 2022 Paper: 978-1-4780-1857-5 | Cloth: 978-1-4780-1593-2 | eISBN: 978-1-4780-2317-3 Library of Congress Classification E96.5.A54 2022
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In 2008, the Canadian government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to review the history of the residential school system, a brutal colonial project that killed and injured many Indigenous children and left a legacy of trauma and pain. In Fragments of Truth Naomi Angel analyzes the visual culture of reconciliation and memory in relation to this complex and painful history. In her analyses of archival photographs from the residential school system, representations of the schools in popular media and literature, and testimonies from TRC proceedings, Angel traces how the TRC served as a mechanism through which memory, trauma, and visuality became apparent. She shows how many Indigenous communities were able to use the TRC process as a way to claim agency over their memories of the schools. Bringing to light the ongoing costs of transforming settler states into modern nations, Angel demonstrates how the TRC offers a unique optic through which to survey the long history of colonial oppression of Canada’s Indigenous populations.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Naomi Angel (1977–2014) completed her PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University in 2013.
Dylan Robinson is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University.
Jamie Berthe is Lecturer at New York University.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface. Tracing Memory in Naomi Angel’s Archive / Jamie Berthe and Eugenia Kisin ix Acknowledgments / Marita Sturken and Faye Ginsburg xix Introduction. Reconciliation and Remembrance 1 1. Reconciliation as a Way of Seeing: The History and Context of the Indian Residential School System 19 2. Images of Contact: Archival Photographs and the Work of Reconciliation in Canada 54 3. Nations Gather: Public Testimony and the Politics of Affect 90 4. Reconciliation as a Ghostly Encounter: Discourses of Haunting and Indian Residential Schools 125 Conclusion. Fragments of Truth: Concluding Gestures 160 Notes 167 Bibliography 189 Index 207
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