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In the workshop "Colonial Genocide and Indigenous North America" researchers from Canada, the USA, Australia and Europe will discuss various destructive aspects of the colonization and subsequent settlement of North America. Massacres, residential/boarding schools, land appropriation, the collapse of the buffalo and other species, disease spread, forced sterilization, and forced political restructuring will all be examined through the lens of genocide -- namely, what impact did these events, individually or combined, have on the ability of Indigenous groups to survive as groups? And what can be done today to redress and educate non-Indigenous North Americans about these harms? These questions will be addressed by experts from a variety of disciplines (History, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Studies, Conflict Resolution, and Native Studies), who will assess not only the historical record of these events, but also what they mean for current and future Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in North America.

This project compares American Indian boarding schools and Canadian residential schools as total institutions designed for purposes of assimilation and consider whether or not these institutions can be considered genocidal in accordance with recent advances in the genocide studies literature. Based on this historical backdrop, the project contrasts the differing paths toward redressing the boarding/residential school experience taken in the United States and Canada. Key questions include:

1) Does the boarding/residential School experience constitute genocide according to prominent legal and sociological definitions of the phenomena?

2) Why is it that Canada has arrived at a tripartite reparative process for residential schools (i.e., a truth and reconciliation commission, compensation, and a public apology) while American boarding school injustices have been left largely unaddressed?

3) In light of arguments in favor of applying the term genocide to boarding/residential schools, what are the benefits and drawbacks of implementing truth and reconciliation commissions, compensation, and public apologies for such harms? Does the Canadian Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement represent a potential model for American boarding school reparations?

4) In what ways is our shared colonial past embedded in our attempts to correct this history? Can mechanisms of “transitional justice” offer a pathway to a decolonized North America that overcomes the destructive pressures of settler colonialism?