Critical Race and Anti-Colonial Theory Discussion Group

Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, 12-1:30 p.m.
EN-1002

Visiting scholar Dr. Teresa Macias, School of Social Work, York University, to present on The Trouble with Truth and Reconciliation Discourse in Post-colonial Canada: What Can the Indian in the Child Ever Say?

In 2009 Canada instituted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools (TRC) as an independent body with the mandate to acknowledge "residential school experiences, impacts and consequences;" provide those affected with a "holistic and culturally appropriate" opportunity to share their stories and/or experiences; and facilitate "reconciliation among former students, their families, their communities and all Canadians." The TRC is a key component of the 2007 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement between the Canadian government and survivors of residential schools. As a result of the TRC, stories of survivors and of residential schools have proliferated in Canadian media providing us with images and narratives about this part of Canadian colonial history. This paper uses a Foucaultian discourse analysis approach, and a post-colonial and critical race theory framework to explore the process by which media reports surrounding the TRC capture residential school experiences and use them to produce images of residential school survivors, narratives about residential schools and their role in Canadian history. Three main questions guide this analysis: who is the residential school survivor that speaks through the media and how is that survivor discursively produced? What are survivors allowed to say and what is it that they cannot say about the history of residential schools? And, what kind of national narratives are made possible through the discursive production of residential school survivors in media discourses?

Dr. Teresa Macias’ has a long-term commitment to transnational human rights work, community activism and popular education. Her research and teaching interests include ethics in research and practice, nation and identity making, and anti-oppressive and anti-colonial practice and teaching methods. Dr. Macias recently completed a study entitled: “On the Pawprints of Terror: The Human Rights Regime and the Production of Truth and Subjectivity in Post-Authoritarian Chile” which traces 20 years of history in the development of Chilean state policy to deal with human rights abuses. She is currently conducting research on the Canadian Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.


Contact

Marketing & Communications

230 Elizabeth Ave, St. John's, NL, CANADA, A1B 3X9

Postal Address: P.O. Box 4200, St. John's, NL, CANADA, A1C 5S7

Tel: (709) 864-8000