Ten years after the Gottfriedson case class action lawsuit was filed to claim for compensation over the destruction of language and culture caused by the Canadian Indian Residential School system (IRSS), an agreement was made public in January 2023: Canada’s federal government is prepared to pay a settlement sum of $2.8 billion into a new trust fund which shall enable 325 First Nations to invest into cultural and language revitalization. The agreement is just one step on the journey to building trustful relationships between Canadian Aboriginals and the settler-colonial state, but it is an important one, overdue and urgently needed.
Autor: Rita Theresa Kopp
Rita Theresa Kopp hat an der Universität Jena Politikwissenschaft studiert und arbeitet aktuell an ihrer Masterarbeit zu Diskursen der Aussöhnungspolitik im postkolonialen Kanada. Zudem ist sie studentische Hilfskraft von Sabine Mannitz im regionalen Forschungszentrum Transformationen politischer Gewalt (TraCe). // Rita Theresa Kopp studied Political Science at the University of Jena and is currently working on her master thesis on discourses of reconciliation politics in postcolonial Canada. She is also a student assistant to Sabine Mannitz at the regional research center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe).
