Does Minnesota need its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave a speech to Parliament earlier this week in which he formally apologized for the Canadian government’s native residential school program (see excerpts and videos on the Open Anthropology blog; and see the blogosphere reaction to the speech summarized here by the CBC news).

The apology begins a 5-year process led by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (more at CBC background website) supported with a $60 million budget.

The Canadian government formed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement to understand how people were affected by the residential school experience. The commission will allow those who experienced harm at residential schools to share their stories within a safe and culturally appropriate environment.

The purpose of the commission is not to determine guilt or innocence, but to create a historical account of the residential schools, help people to heal, and encourage reconciliation between aboriginals and non-aboriginal Canadians. The commission will also host events across the country to raise awareness about the residential school system and its impact.

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The truth and reconciliation approach is a form of restorative justice, which differs from the customary adversarial or retributive justice. Retributive justice aims to find fault and punish the guilty. On the other hand, restorative justice aims to heal relationships between offenders, victims, and the community in which an offence takes place.

Those involved in truth and reconciliation commissions seek to uncover facts and distinguish truth from lies. The process allows for acknowledgement, appropriate public mourning, forgiveness and healing.

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback was interviewed by NPR’s Melissa Block on Friday, Apology to American Indians Moves Forward, about the “… resolution making its way through Congress [that] offers an apology to all Native peoples on behalf of the United States.” See Brownback’s Apology Resolution page for more.

Assuming that the US House of Representatives passes their version of Brownback’s apology bill and President Bush signs it, what then? Should Congress then be pressed to launch a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission? No matter who gets elected president this fall, I expect leadership on native issues from both Barack Obama (more) and John McCain (more).

At the state level:

• In April, the Colorado Legislature passed a resolution “… comparing the deaths of millions of American Indians to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide around the world.”
• In May, the MN Sesquicentennial Commission posted a statement on its web site that included this: “Yet we remain either unaware of or unable to look at our own history and acknowledge the painful wounds of ethnocide and genocide right here in Minnesota. We have a very hard time acknowledging that the pain remains and that it has affected much of our history thru to the present day.”
• Last week, Thomas Dahlheimer (Rum River Name Change Movement) had a guest column in the Winona Daily News titled State looks to settle up with the past
• A 2002 study by Sheryl Dowlin and Bruce Dowlin titled Healing History’s Wounds: Reconciliation Communication Efforts to Build Community Between Minnesota Dakota (Sioux) and Non-Dakota Peoples. (See their 2000 paper titled The Dakota Conflict Remembered; Paper prepared for the 35th Annual Northern Great Plains History Conference which includes reconciliation information.)

And last December, Louis Stanley Schoen, a consultant and trainer on racial justice in the Episcopal Church, authored a commentary in the Star Tribune titled We must talk about race, despite the difficult emotions it stirs. (Thanks to Thomas Dahlheimer for alerting me to it.) In it, Schoen suggests the formation of a Commission (links are mine):

The premise of original sin inherently stirs guilt and, sometimes, anger. Nick Coleman’s Dec. 23 reflection on the Dakota wars as Minnesota’s original sin probably stirred such feelings. They also appeared in responses to Waziyatawin Angela Wilson’s “Time to Level” (Dec. 2). Awakening to our own or our ancestors’ sins is painful. Religious teachings suggest a treatment: Repentance and restorative-justice efforts can evoke forgiveness and provide hope for reconciliation. Prayers help most of us, but the process can work for atheists, too, if done sincerely.

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How might serious, healing racial dialogue occur? A series of thoughtful, sensitive commentary in news media might be a starter. Sermons and study groups on race in churches would help, as would discussions in all kinds of community groups. Official public bodies must get engaged. What if a public commission were to begin to examine the American (and European) history of white supremacy — and, here, how that doctrine shaped the formation of Minnesota and its public and private institutions? What if such a commission learned how to offer leadership and resources to dismantle this evil doctrine?

The results could be transforming for us and for all the world. What a magnificent legacy this might be to our celebration of Minnesota’s sesquicentennial.

It seems to me that it would be most meaningful for each state to debate the need for its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission and then to fund it. In Minnesota, we’re now less than four years away from the Sesquicentennial of the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War. If Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission can get their work done in 5 years, surely Minnesota could do something similar in 4 years.