Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa)

Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) awards John Geiger, CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society with its highest honour

Retrieved on: 
Saturday, October 28, 2023

OTTAWA, ON, Oct. 28, 2023 /CNW/ - At a gala dinner in Ottawa, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) awarded the CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), John Geiger the RCA medal, its highest honor.

Key Points: 
  • OTTAWA, ON, Oct. 28, 2023 /CNW/ - At a gala dinner in Ottawa, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) awarded the CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), John Geiger the RCA medal, its highest honor.
  • Founded in 1880, the Royal Academy of Arts represents over 700 established Canadians artists and designers.
  • "The Indigenous People's Atlas of Canada came to our attention at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and we understood the significance of its publication," said Robert Tombs, President of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
  • "We have gotten to know John Geiger over his many years of leadership of the RCGS and Canadian Geographic and wanted to honour him for his achievement."

We fact-checked residential school denialists and debunked their 'mass grave hoax' theory

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Recently a politician from a village in Prince Edward Island displayed an offensive sign on his property in which he proclaimed there is a “mass grave hoax” regarding the former Indian Residential Schools in Canada.

Key Points: 
  • Recently a politician from a village in Prince Edward Island displayed an offensive sign on his property in which he proclaimed there is a “mass grave hoax” regarding the former Indian Residential Schools in Canada.
  • Although many have called for him to resign, he is just one of many people who subscribe to this false theory.
  • A hoax is an act intended to trick people into believing something that isn’t true.

There is no media conspiracy

    • As two settler academic researchers, we decided to investigate the claims of a media conspiracy and fact-check them against evidence.
    • To find out, we analyzed 386 news articles across five Canadian media outlets (CBC, National Post, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and The Canadian Press) released between May 27 and Oct. 15, 2021.

‘Preliminary findings’ of ‘unmarked burials’

    • A National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Memorial Register has to date confirmed the deaths of more than 4,000 Indigenous children associated with residential schools.
    • But the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) noted its register of missing children was incomplete, partly due to a large volume of yet-to-be-examined and destroyed records.

Countering harmful misinformation

    • In the two years since, a number of commentators, priests and politicians, including the P.E.I councillor with his sign, have downplayed the harms of residential schooling — or questioned the validity, gravity and significance of the the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s announcement.
    • We hope that our research can contribute to this work and that our report helps to debunk the “mass grave hoax” narrative specifically.

Cherry-picked ‘evidence’

    • Myths, however, are not pure fiction; they often contain a kernel of truth that is exaggerated or misrepresented.
    • This selective representation of evidence is commonly referred to as cherry-picking, and it’s easy to see how those spreading the “mass grave hoax” narrative rely on cherry-picked evidence.
    • By September, denialists were misrepresenting the extent of media errors to push the conspiratorial “mass grave hoax” narrative online.
    • And we hope our report sparks a national conversation about how important language is when covering this issue.

Challenging Residential School denialism

    • According to Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton (one of the authors of this story), residential school denialism is not the denial of the residential school system’s existence.
    • Read more:
      Truth before reconciliation: 8 ways to identify and confront Residential School denialism

      Residential school denialism, like climate change denialism or science denialism, cherry-picks evidence to fit a conspiratorial counter-narrative.

Truth before reconciliation

    • This is the strategy of disempowering and discrediting residential school denialism advocated by former TRC Chair Murray Sinclair.
    • We hope others will join us in this type of research to help Canadians learn how to identify and confront residential school denialism and support meaningful reconciliation.
    • As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in its final report, without truth there can be no genuine reconciliation.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commitment Statement from Canada’s Leading Occupational Therapy Organizations Signals a New Path Forward

Retrieved on: 
Friday, September 29, 2023

Ottawa, ON, Sept. 29, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On September 30, 2023, Canada’s leading occupational therapy organizations reaffirmed their dedication to Indigenous Peoples in Canada through addressing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s Calls to Action with the announcement of a joint Occupational Therapy TRC Commitment Statement.

Key Points: 
  • Ottawa, ON, Sept. 29, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On September 30, 2023, Canada’s leading occupational therapy organizations reaffirmed their dedication to Indigenous Peoples in Canada through addressing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s Calls to Action with the announcement of a joint Occupational Therapy TRC Commitment Statement.
  • The document has been developed with leadership from the Occupational Therapy TRC Task Force’s Co-Chairs and Métis occupational therapists, Angie Phenix and Kaarina Valavaara, along with invited allies and members of the Boards of Directors of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (CAOT), the Canadian Occupational Therapy Foundation (COTF), the Alliance of Canadian Occupational Therapy Professional Associations (ACOTPA), the Association of Canadian Occupational Therapy Regulatory Organizations (ACOTRO), and the Association of Canadian Occupational Therapy University Programs (ACOTUP).
  • The organizations acknowledge that “transforming our colonial reality must be a responsibility shared by all Canadians” and the Commitment Statement represents “beginning steps in embracing this shared responsibility” with acknowledgement of the harmful colonizing narratives, policies, and practices in the Canadian occupational therapy profession and a commitment to change within their respective mandates.
  • The Co-Chairs call upon all occupational therapists (OTs), occupational therapist assistants (OTAs), students, and other readers of the Commitment Statement to take responsibility and action to support the respective leadership organizations.

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation: Exhibit features stolen Kainai children's stories of resilience on Treaty 7 lands

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, September 26, 2023

In Canada, when we talk about truth and reconciliation we have a tendency to focus on the Indian residential school system (IRS).

Key Points: 
  • In Canada, when we talk about truth and reconciliation we have a tendency to focus on the Indian residential school system (IRS).
  • While engaging with knowledge about residential schools and their legacies is an important facet of truth and reconciliation, there are other colonial school systems that we also need to acknowledge, consider and remember.

Multiple colonial schooling models


    The Canadian government initiated and implemented multiple colonial schooling models for over a century and a half beyond the IRS, such as:
    Where one system failed, the government designed a new school system based on the failure of the previous school model to try and assimilate Indigenous children.

Survivors from many school models

    • Murray Sinclair, former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) said, “The Survivors need to know before they leave this Earth that people understand what happened and what the schools did to them.” As a society, it is important that we remember Survivors from each school model and their many impacts on Survivors, their descendants and society as a whole.
    • People need to know and understand the truth about what happened to Survivors and why this happened to them in order to heal and walk the path of reconciliation.

Addressing gaps in knowledge

    • (also known as Akaisamitohkanao’pa, or gathering place) approached me to be a guest curator and create a traveling museum exhibit based on my TRC research, I decided to use the opportunity to rectify the gap of knowledge so many of us have about educational policy.
    • It presents photographs and stories from Survivors, the Canadian government, the Christian religions and their missionaries, the Indian Agents and Indian school inspectors.

Right to know the truth

    • fully adopt and implement the … United Nations Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, as related to Aboriginal peoples’ inalienable right to know the truth about what happened and why,” and “iii.)
    • fully adopt and implement the … United Nations Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, as related to Aboriginal peoples’ inalienable right to know the truth about what happened and why,” and “iii.)

Multiple Christian churches

    • The exhibit introduces the different Christian churches who created missions on the Blood Reserve, and shows Survivor experiences of missions’ different characteristics.
    • For example, as Survivor Jim Young Pine shares about attending St. Mary’s School:
      “The nuns at the school were French and always spoke French.
    • It was while working outside Kainaisskahoyi that I learned English from non-Natives.”
      “The nuns at the school were French and always spoke French.
    • Churches opened several of the different schools the Canadian government devised to try and assimilate Indigenous children.

Stories from Survivors of institutions

    • The stories are also a testament to the survival of the Blood People.
    • We continue today to practice and live our ways of knowing, being and doing as Siksikaitsitapi.
    • The exhibit concludes on a note of hope by highlighting the resiliency of the Kainai People.

Maintaining our identities as Siksikaitsitapi

    • Today, the Blood Tribe runs its own education programs from early childhood education to post-secondary education.
    • Kainai Board of Education operates five schools (Saipoyi Community School, Aahsaopi Elementary School, Tatsikiisaapo’p Middle School, Kainai High School and Kainai Alternate Academy).
    • The Blood Reserve has worked hard to create education that works towards maintaining our identities as Siksikaitsitapi.

Education as ‘new buffalo’

    • To many Indigenous Peoples across plains regions in Canada, education has become the “new buffalo.” This means just as the buffalo once sustained us for our needs, Indigenous Peoples are adapting education to meet our needs today.
    • To observe the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and all year,
      let us be reminded of Survivors’ voices from the past century and a half, and as Sinclair said, re-commit our reconciliation efforts to “act to ensure the repair of damages done.”
      As the former TRC chair also said, until people show they have learned from this, we will never forget.

Québec's cultural awareness training makes flawed assumptions that do not prioritize the safety of Indigenous people

Retrieved on: 
Monday, July 31, 2023

However, since the training program was launched, Indigenous leaders and health professionals have said it fails to improve cultural safety and poses safety risks to Indigenous Peoples.

Key Points: 
  • However, since the training program was launched, Indigenous leaders and health professionals have said it fails to improve cultural safety and poses safety risks to Indigenous Peoples.
  • Legislating individuals and systems to shift behaviours and attitudes is useless without well-developed cultural safety programs developed and delivered by Indigenous Peoples.

Cultural safety

    • In April, we organized a round table on cultural safety alongside Indigenous scholars, patient partners and other community members in Montréal.
    • The educational strategies that underlie the awareness training are insufficient to countering racism and fostering cultural safety.
    • Cultural safety promotes an approach to foster change that moves away from simply learning about a culture.
    • Scholars propose a conception of cultural safety as a systemic approach to health-care transformation, one that goes beyond individual training but engages organizations and society as a whole towards the principles of cultural safety, equity, social justice and decolonization.
    • As such, comprehensive Indigenous cultural safety training programs should explicitly integrate notions of power, privilege, colonialism and racism.
    • However, cultural safety privileges the autonomy and self-determination of Indigenous Peoples in relation to their health services, and as such, promotes their empowerment.
    • Cultural safety is aligned with principles that promote empowerment and rely on values such as respect, equity and reciprocity.

Sindiwe Magona's new book of essays tackles issues South Africans aren’t talking about

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Sindiwe Magona – who turns 80 this year – is a celebrated South African writer, storyteller, speaker and activist.

Key Points: 
  • Sindiwe Magona – who turns 80 this year – is a celebrated South African writer, storyteller, speaker and activist.
  • Best known for her novels, autobiographies, short stories, poems and children’s books, she’s also a writer of essays.

What’s the “yawning void” you refer to?

    • The void or gap is the invisible but loud and tangible conversation that does not take place in our country.
    • What is stopping us from realising the dream of being the “rainbow nation”, to use Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s now world-famous term?
    • In the heady days of transition to democracy, the stars seemed reachable.

What are the pressing issues you address?

    • The Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed to deliver or make possible any true reconciliation, as that is not realisable without restitution.
    • The essays also warn the reader not to rest on her laurels while waiting for social transformation (which has remained an illusion).
    • So the key pressing issues I address in this book are the twin mountains we have to climb to find our ubuntu – our true liberation: racialism and poverty.

Why the essay form?

    • The essay, more than all the other art forms, most approximates cordial conversation.
    • The essay approximates storytelling more than the novel or short story.

How did you become a writer?

    • Write a book!” I started out as a primary school teacher, with the lowest qualification possible.
    • But then I lost my job in my first year of working and it took six years before I got rehired as a teacher.
    • Between domestic worker jobs, I also sold skaapkop (sheep head) and vetkoek (fried bread) and ginger beer.
    • If we believe in the oneness of humanity, how can we turn around and say there are limitations to human empathy?

What are the core take-aways from your reflections on your own writing?

    • To any who would be a writer – anyone who thinks or feels they’d like to – I would say, “Go for it!
    • Start!” Sit down and start putting down what comes to you … of course, mindful of where you are headed, what you want to say.
    • No matter how vague it is, have a plan, an idea of what story you are telling.
    • That is why I write … to enable others to more successfully navigate life and its many twists and turns.

Tennis and apartheid: how a South African teenager was denied his dream of playing at Wimbledon

Retrieved on: 
Friday, July 7, 2023

But in 1971 an 18-year-old university student, Hoosen Bobat from Durban, was excluded from achieving his dream of becoming the first black South African to play in the Wimbledon men’s junior tournament.

Key Points: 
  • But in 1971 an 18-year-old university student, Hoosen Bobat from Durban, was excluded from achieving his dream of becoming the first black South African to play in the Wimbledon men’s junior tournament.
  • This was due to apartheid, and the collusion of the all-white tennis union in South Africa and the International Lawn Tennis Federation, with Wimbledon toeing the line.
  • My book documents the historic 1971 first international tour by a squad of black South Africans who played tennis under the auspices of the non-racial Southern African Lawn Tennis Union.
  • In 1973, the union was a founding affiliate of the South African Council on Sport, which popularised the slogan
    No normal sport in an abnormal society.

The issues

    • In the book I cover three issues.
    • In 1971 South Africa was a racist, segregated and repressive society, based on white supremacy and privilege and black subjugation.
    • Thirdly, the book demonstrates the collusion between the International Lawn Tennis Federation and the white South African tennis body.

The arguments

    • I make five main arguments.
    • One is that, since democracy in 1994, there has been no fitting recognition, symbolic or material, of outstanding apartheid-era non-racial tennis players.
    • Certainly, there is less self-organisation of the kind that harnessed limited economic and social capital in black communities to ensure non-racial tennis.
    • The commercial media linked to big business were also complicit, devoting print copy and airtime principally to white sports.

Class, racism and patriarchy

    • Opportunities in tennis were profoundly shaped by class, racism, patriarchy and other factors.
    • There were no “Black” South African players chosen because of a debatable notion of “merit” used by the Southern African Lawn Tennis Union.
    • And the tour was an exclusively male affair even though there were outstanding women tennis players and well-established women’s tournaments.

Truth and justice

    • Only the truth can put the past to rest.
    • We can now deal with our past, establish the truth which has so long been denied us, and lay the basis for genuine reconciliation.

Zondo at Your Fingertips: new book offers an accessible and condensed version of South Africa's ambitious corruption inquiry

Retrieved on: 
Sunday, July 2, 2023

No one except academics will read the commission’s 4,750 page report, but many will read Holden’s book, Zondo at your Fingertips.

Key Points: 
  • No one except academics will read the commission’s 4,750 page report, but many will read Holden’s book, Zondo at your Fingertips.
  • Holden is a former director of investigations at Corruption Watch, the South African corruption watchdog.
  • He has worked with the investigative organisations Shadow World and Open Secrets for many years.
  • Holden has written a good and solid book, selecting and explaining the significant Zondo findings.

How the story is told

    • The commission’s 19-volume report totals 4,750 pages.
    • It heard 300 witnesses over 400 days of hearings, spread over four and a half years between 2018 and 2021.
    • How South Africa stacks up

      The book is well structured in 10 parts.

Commissions of inquiry

    • The most ambitious commission of inquiry set up in South Africa was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
    • The great majority of the recommendations of commissions of inquiry, such as the Farlam Commission into the massacre of striking miners and other killings at Marikana, North West province in 2012, remain unimplemented and ignored by the government.
    • Sceptics argue that commissions of inquiry merely provide governments with a pretext to stall any remedial actions for years, until the politics of the front page has moved onto other issues.

Recommendations

    • Holden notes that the Zondo Commission made a number of recommendations.
    • Key among these are to professionalise all appointments to the boards of state-owned enterprises, and prevent cabinet ministers from appointing political cronies and other unqualified or compromised persons.

Preventing and addressing violence in schools: 4 priorities as educators plan for next year

Retrieved on: 
Friday, June 23, 2023

The public heard about a lack of support for LGBTQ2S+ identities, chaotic and divisive school trustee meetings and a rise in violence in schools.

Key Points: 
  • The public heard about a lack of support for LGBTQ2S+ identities, chaotic and divisive school trustee meetings and a rise in violence in schools.
  • A major contributing factor to this rise in violence in schools is the chronic underfunding of public education and the social service sector.

Violence in schools

    • An alarming three-quarters (77 per cent) of members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), said they have “personally experienced violence or witnessed violence against another staff member” in a recent survey conducted by Strategic Communications.
    • Black and other minoritized youth and educators are becoming collateral damage by being pushed out of schools due to wilful neglect of institutions in not supporting their needs.

The school-to-prison pipeline

    • The school-to-prison pipeline continues to cast a dark shadow over the education system in Ontario.
    • This “pipeline” refers to the systematic processes that push students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, out of the educational system and into the criminal justice system.
    • This trend disproportionately affects marginalized communities, particularly Black and Indigenous students, perpetuating a cycle of poverty, systemic discrimination and mass incarceration.

Tragic impact on marginalized communities

    • This is a result of many institutions and leaders at all three levels of government collectively failing to support the needs of racialized communities.
    • Suspensions and expulsions disproportionately affect marginalized students.

Calls to action

    • Redirect funds towards mental health services, counsellors, social workers and community programs that prioritize prevention and timely intervention.
    • There needs to be a more urgent implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action.
    • At the end of April, Ontario’s Ministry of Education announced funding to combat violence and improving safety in schools through community partnerships.
    • We all have to do our part to hold institutions accountable, including for failures and neglect.

Residential Schools National Monument will be built on the west side of Parliament Hill in Ottawa

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, June 20, 2023

The Residential Schools National Monument will be a meeting place where Indigenous people and all Canadians can gather to honour Survivors and all the children who were lost to their families and communities.

Key Points: 
  • The Residential Schools National Monument will be a meeting place where Indigenous people and all Canadians can gather to honour Survivors and all the children who were lost to their families and communities.
  • "We worked in collaboration with the Algonquin people to decide that the Residential Schools National Monument will be located on Parliament Hill.
  • "Having Inuit input into the location of this National Monument is of great importance to our communities and the Inuit people who suffered greatly in residential schools.
  • The selected site, near West Block on Parliament Hill, will be able to accommodate ceremonies, commemorations and special events.