Event Date: March 2, 2018 - 12:00 to 1:30
Location: FSS 4006, 120 University Private

Terms like genocide and cultural genocide have been widely used to make sense of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools and some other aspects of settler colonial history. This presentation outlines how genocide was committed both in the schools and through the sixties scoop – both of which were means through which Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities. It also engages with how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission engaged with these concepts. Claims of genocide in Canada build on a longer history of genocide claims in the US and Australia, and have recently laid the basis for discussion of such crimes in Aotearoa New Zealand. There is an increasing move towards uncovering and more actively engaging with the past crimes of settler colonial governments because many of the effects of those crimes and the institutions which brought them into being continue. The continuity of settler colonial institutions, norms, and laws, as well as forms of structural violence mean that genocide has salient echoes in the present. What is genocide and what does it mean in the Canadian context? Are we likely to see commemoration of genocide? Is this an important issue? In a context of genocide, what does reconciliation mean? How might its parameters change as a result?

David B MacDonald is a full professor of political science, and the research leadership chair for his college, at the University of Guelph, Canada. His research and teaching areas include International Relations, US foreign policy, comparative Indigenous-settler relations in English speaking settler states. He has written four books on these subjects as well as numerous articles and book chapters, and four co-edited books amongst other works.  His work is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He has also been a faculty member at the University of Otago and the ESCP Graduate School of Management – Paris.