Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The challenge of reconciliation • 339We should begin by echoing what many of our interview and artist subjectshave repeatedly said: that the act of reconciliation is itself deeply complicated,and that success should not be measured by achieving a putative [commonlyaccepted or supposed] reconciliation, but by movement towards these loftygoals. Indeed, it could be proposed that full reconciliation is both mercurialand impossible, and that the efforts of theorists, artists, survivors, and thevarious publics engaged in this difficult process are best focused on workingcollaboratively for better understanding our histories, our traumas, andourselves. 215These various projects indicate that the arts and artistic practices may serve toshape public memory in ways that are potentially transformative for individuals, communities,and national history.Residential school commemoration projectsCommemoration should not put closure to the history and legacy of the residentialschools. Rather, it must invite citizens into a dialogue about a contentious past andwhy this history still matters today. Commemorations and memorials at former schoolsites and cemeteries are visible reminders of Canada’s shame and church complicity.They bear witness to the suffering and loss that generations of Aboriginal peoples haveendured and overcome. The process of remembering the past together is an emotionaljourney of contradictory feelings: loss and resilience, anger and acceptance,denial and remorse, shame and pride, despair and hope. The Settlement Agreementidentified the historic importance and reconciliation potential of such rememberingby establishing a special fund for projects that would commemorate the residentialschool experience, and by assigning a role in the approval of these projects to theTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.As previously noted in this report’s section about the Commission’s activities,commemoration projects across the country were funded under the terms of theSettlement Agreement. Twenty million dollars were set aside for Aboriginal communitiesand various partners and organizations to undertake community-based, regionalor national projects. The Commission evaluated and made recommendations to theDepartment of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, which wasresponsible for administering the funding for the commemoration projects.Unlike more conventional state commemorations, which have tended to reinforceCanada’s story as told through colonial eyes, residential school commemorativeprojects challenged and recast public memory and national history. Many FirstNations, Inuit, and Métis communities partnered with regional or national Aboriginalorganizations, and involved local churches, governments, and their non-Aboriginal