In their 2020 book, “Pathways of Reconciliation, Indigenous and Settler Approaches to Implementing the TRC’s Calls to Action,” Craft and Regan bring together 11 essays from a diverse group of people on particular aspects of the processes of reconciliation.
In the first essay, “Paved with Comfortable Intentions, moving beyond Liberal Multiculturalism and Civil Rights Frames on the Road to Transformative Reconciliation,” David B. MacDonald, who describes himself and his heritage as “mixed-race Indians from Trinidad by way of Regina”, posits the thesis: “settlers have tried to make ‘reconciliation’ comfortable by framing it as something familiar and non-threatening, in much the same way they have sough to use multiculturalism as a means of promoting assimilation.” A frame of reference or simply a frame is the set of ideas or assumptions that organize one’s way of thinking and understanding the world. The notion of looking at the world through a certain lens is the first step to identifying one aspect of a frame. Most frames are unconscious until pointed out and compared and contrasted with another lens or frame. Often calling attention to a particular frame can lead to discomfort, defensive behaviour, denial or anger. The author calls the dominant frame in Canada and the western world the liberal frame: “the belief in a society and governance system based on individual rights and equality, guaranteed by Western settler institutions and derived from European social contract theory and European forms of law and philosophy. This frame has been at the core of Canada’s settler governance traditions…and has strongly influenced multicultural policies”. Most people are comfortable with the liberal frame; it is what we find most familiar. This means that “[t]he most popular ideas of reconciliation are framed as closing gaps, making Indigenous peoples equal with settlers, working to create a shared vision of a harmonious future….[however,] we are not recognizing the unsettling and discomforting effects of what I call ‘transformative reconciliation,’ which is actually what this process should be about.” The liberal frame allows settlers to feel comfortable for it does not challenge us to make real change; the liberal frame is actually softer levels of assimilation where indigenous people will become more like us. We won’t have to disavow colonialization or all that it has done and continues to do. To be clear, liberal notions are not necessarily bad in and of themselves they are just not enough; they may be part of a good first step in the short term if the liberal notion of reconciliation “helps build Indigenous capacity for self-determination” – this is the policy test. If on the other hand, a policy does nothing in the direction of self-determination then it is counterproductive and merely a softer forms of colonization.
The author points out that some “Indigenous views of reconciliation may be incommensurable with the status quo of the settler state”, and there are some Indigenous groups who do not want any shared vision or anything to do with liberal notions. The contrasting frame, Transformative Reconciliation, “is about fundamentally problematizing the settler state as a colonial creation, a vector of cultural genocide, and one that continues inexorably to suppress Indigenous collective aspirations for self-determination and sovereignty. In this type of reconciliation, we will see the rollback of settler state control over Indigenous individuals and communities, commensurate with the restoration of Indigenous lands, cultures, laws, languages, and governance traditions. Transformative reconciliation will centre Indigenous rights to self-determination….[this is] ‘central to a ‘just’ response to colonial dispossession and the resultant political and social subordination of indigenous peoples.’”
Another way to look at it is that the liberal frame will grant “soft rights,” that is “collective rights to language, culture, spiritual beliefs and practices, educational systems, and other forms of identity. These are perceived as extensions of current human rights norms”. The problem from an Indigenous perspective is that the Canadian state is still the dominant holder of sovereignty. In fact, granting soft rights is relatively easy since any liberal state will increase its legitimacy if it is publicly seen to be responding effectively to historical injustices by expanding soft rights. For this reason government policies directed at Indigenous people should not be “‘Constructed on the basis of perceived need and comparative disadvantage’ [because it gives] a false impression of the history and reality of the relationship….[Do not base] delivery of rights on a foundation of compassion. Rather: ‘As long as indigenous peoples are dependent on the perception of need and the compassion of the other, we remain in a position of dependence. Whether the response is benevolent or withholding, our position as powerless recipients is subtly reinforced.’”
In contrast to soft rights, Indigenous self-determination, law, land, protocols, knowledge systems, and land rights are the core of hard rights. Hard rights “are less commensurable with the current structures of the settler state, and remove settlers’ ability to exercise their compassion in either providing or denying it. Instead, the focus is on the exercise of Indigenous rights…. Indigenous people… need to be correctly understood as ‘nationals with sovereign authority over their lives and over their membership and living within their own space…’” the current international system is based on the Westphalian model of sovereignty: where the power of the state is absolute within the territory and the domains it chooses for itself. Starting about 1648 all states in the world have claimed this model of sovereignty. Indigenous hard rights would require a change to the current Westphalian model, a voluntary reduction in state power such that new types of sovereignty would emerge within multiple sovereignties. Soft rights are important and are included in hard rights, however a focus on soft rights to the exclusion of hard rights is self-serving for the liberal state since the problem of having to deal with soft rights is the result of taking way the hard rights in the first place – in other words, if the hard rights had not been taken away, soft rights would not be an issue. Additionally, by only focusing on soft rights we can produce the feel-good stories that give the impression of advancing reconciliation. However, the state is actually pursuing a path of assimilation not reconciliation. The focus on soft rights is taking away and hiding the importance of the real issue and the real path to reconciliation: hard rights.
The author’s opinion is that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s terms of reference “restricted its ability to promote a robust sense of hard rights.” Likewise, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “while path breaking in many respects, has had to dilute its hard rights provisions in order to gain agreement by signatory states.” In other words, to paraphrase Audre Lorde: The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s home. “[C]ivil rights equality and multiculturalism frameworks have been privileged in settler understandings of reconciliation. Both ensure a sense of forward movement and progress along the road to reconciliation but are also designed to make that process comfortable for settler Canadians by confining it to relatively safe areas that will not upset status quo institutions, values, and identities of the settler state.” The author does a critical analysis of a professional survey that sought to gauge Canadian’s perceptions of reconciliation. The core results were that “most settler respondents understand reconciliation primarily in terms of liberal equality….as providing economic and other forms of equality to Indigenous peoples within the beliefs, institutional structures, and ideological boundaries of the settler state.” This Canadian survey echoed similar ones around the world: settlers don’t want real reconciliation.
The liberal multicultural frame as declared in the 1969 White Paper and 1971 Multicultural Act is basically slow assimilation. Its goal is to promote “the long-term integration of ethnic and religious communities, including the adoption of Canadian values.” Quoted from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Together they set up two founding nations: the French and the English. All other founders (such as, indigenous, Chinese, and Black) are ignored. This Canadian created mythology supports the adoption of whites from all over the world immediately (whether citizen or not) and everyone else is viewed as an immigrant regardless of how many generations they have been here. For indigenous people the liberal multicultural frame creates a “tendency to frame indigenous rights as somehow analogous to cultural claims by ethnic communities and…have a tendency to conflate reconciliation with equality.” This frame will allow temporary exceptions to be made to help people become equal. The implication is that when they are equal (i.e. when they have assimilated) then no more exceptions or accommodations need to be provided. Multiculturalism is therefore the latest attempt at assimilation and is contrary to the spirit of reconciliation.
The equality civil rights frame is also similarly unsuited as a model for reconciliation. The author dissects the MLK jr. “I have a dream” speech to show how it legitimized the American dream and did not challenge the status quo but rather asked that it be expanded to include African American people. The civil rights movement wanted blacks to be allowed to integrate and assimilate into the dominant white culture. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly told us that they do not want to be assimilated, nor do they want temporary handouts until they reach equality. What they want is full self-determination over their lives and land like it was when settlers first met them. Anything less is a continuing crime.