English 607 Topic51/English 517 Topic 75 - Reconciliation, Truth, Apology; Rhetoric, Response, Storytelling
Fall 2009
Instructor: Dr. Aruna Srivastava
asrivast [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
Wednesday 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Course Description:
"The Canadian people are not ready for reconciliation."
In what was deemed to be a historical moment this past year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an apology to aboriginal survivors of residential schools on behalf of the Canadian government and, by implication and extension, the Canadian "people". While many felt this to be a historic and deeply moving occasion, there have been critics of both the apology and its manifestation, the "Truth And Reconciliation Commission," which has as a specific reference and mandate unearthing the history of and narratives about the residential school experience.
This course will examine discourses of "truth" and "reconciliation" in the Canadian and other national contexts, particularly South Africa and Australia and examine the different rhetorical and narrative responses to these ideas, particularly in the context of Canadian mythology about our nation as peacemakers and promoters of multiculturalism. The "texts" of the course will be situated within political discourses of reconciliation, forgiveness, whiteness, and understandings of Canadian history. Our grounding texts will focus on the history and politics of "the apology", The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Kelowna Accord, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Indian Act, and responses to recent discussions of reconciliation as strategy, discourse, and both promise or closure of actvism, especially as seen in other national contexts, where reconciliation commissions have finished their work.
We will be examining writings by indigenous people in Canada, documentary and other forms of film, digitial media, blogs, and so on, that take as their premise expression, storytelling of indigenous experience and/or critique of dominant discourses and understandings of reconciliation.
This will be an inquiry-based, research-intensive course, in which course participants will be expected to participate fully and actively in the construction of knowledge in the course: a great deal of independent and collaborative work will be expected and required.
The course will employ the work of Canadian theorists and activists: David Jefferress, Pauline Wakeham, Daniel Coleman, Greg Young-Ing, Will Kymlicka, Deana Reder. In addition there is an increasing amount of work done on residential schools by Jennifer Kelly, John S. Milloy, Celia Haig-Brown, Agnes Jack, Meeka Morgan, and Sam McKegney (among others), many of them accounts by survivors.
However, addressing the issue of residential schools as an isolated issue speaks to the failure of government-led initiatives: a good part of the course-and one that may interest some participants for specific projects will examine how reconciliation (and "truth") have been theorized, practiced, historicized in other contexts; it is this literature theorizing reconciliation which the course will use as its framework, as we examine the erasure of political and ethical claims about genocide, land claims, and other forms of palpable social inequality, as well as how those are manifested, studied, put under erasure in higher education.
This will be a double-numbered course and, for undergraduate students seeking a Canadian literature requirement, will fulfill that requirement if students focus on specific areas of research.
I have been teaching indigenous media/film courses in the past three years at the U of C and have taught several indigenous literature courses at the 300 and 500 level in the past 12 years, both here, at Red Deer College, at UBC, and at UBC-Okanagan, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. As a contributing faculty member to the International Indigenous Studies Program, I am aware of the dearth of courses at the senior level on literature, discourse and media. Study of "reconciliation" both in the postcolonial context, and its immediate context within Canada, has been of longstanding concern and is of particular and critical concern at this particular moment in Canadian history. In addition, I have published and presented on aboriginal literatures and film for some time, particularly in the context of pedagogy. I will be a principal investigator for a new MCRI collaborative research grant on the subject of reconciliation, to be submitted in 2009.
The following is a working text and media list only:
Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit
Agnes Jack, Behind Closed Doors: Stories From The Kamloops Indian Residential School
Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, "Torture" [Nunca Mas (Never Again) movement].
Assoc. of First Nations, "Reconciliation," www.afn.ca
Elizabeth Furniss, Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of the Williams Lake Residential School
Trudy Govier. Taking Wrongs Seriously
Celia Haig-Brown, Resistance And Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School
Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths
Sam McKegney, Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Community after Residential School
The Inuit Women's Association, Pauktuutit, http://www.pauktuutit.ca/
The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/prb9924-e.htm
Truth and Reconciliation Commission http://www.trc-cvr.ca/meetthecommissionersen.html
Films
Childhood Lost (Doug Cuthand)
UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide (Louis Lawless)
Stolen Generations (Darlene Miller)
Survivors of the Red Brick School (Virg Baptiste)
Kuper Island (Christine Welsh)
Christmas at Moose Factory (Alanis Obomsawin)
