Apology for Residential Schools

The following University of Victoria faculty members are available to discuss the Prime Minister’s anticipated apology to Canada’s Indigenous Peoples for the residential school program.

Matt James (Political Science) is an expert in reparations and political apologies. He can discuss the political implications and motivations involved in the Prime Minister’s apology to Indigenous Peoples for the residential school program. (Office: 250-721-6489 or mattjame@uvic.ca).

Taiaiake Alfred (Indigenous Governance) is Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) and an expert in Indigenous governance. He believes that it is premature for the Prime Minister to talk of ‘reconciliation’ since, Alfred says, the federal government has attempted, for many years, to limit responsibility for abuses within the residential school system to individuals and consider these abuses as individual incidents, thereby disregarding the multi-generational effects of the residential school system and the intergenerational abuses that have resulted from it. (Office: 250-721-6439 or gta@uvic.ca).

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