Abstract
Ever since the groundbreaking work of Nicholas Tavuchis2 growing number of psychologists, political scientists, legal analysts and other scholars have become enamoured with the complex implications of the deceptively simple expression, ‘I am so sorry …’ What does it mean to give an apology? What must be included in this statement for it to be considered genuine or sincere? Can all acts of wrongdoing be justifiably apologised for? Who should be expected to apologise and who to? Can an apology stand on its own or does it need some additional gesture of recompense to make it meaningful?
This chapter is based on a paper presented at the 2011 conference of the European Consortium for Political Research, held in Reykjavik, Iceland in August 2011. I am deeply indebted to the organisers and co-presenters of the Public Apology Panel for inviting me to participate in the panel and in the subsequent book project, and also to Jennifer Ham, who provided invaluable assistance in preparing the article for publication.
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Notes
Nicolas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).
Roy L Brooks, ed. When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversies Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (New York: New York University Press, 1999);
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Danielle Celermajer, ‘Revealing the Religious Underpinnings of Political Apologies’, in Forgiveness: Promise, Possibility and Failure, ed. Geoffrey Karaban and Karoline Wigura (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2011), 101–110.
Robert R. Weyeneth, ‘The Power of Apology and the Process of Historical Reconciliation’, The Public Historian 23 (2001): 9–38;
Michael R. Marrus, ‘Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice’, Journal of Human Rights 6 (2007): 75–105.
Arthur J. Ray, An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native Peoples: I Have Lived Here Since the World Began (3rd ed.), (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2010);
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James R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996);
John S. Milloy, ‘A National Crime’: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999).
Basil H. Johnston, Indian School Days (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1988).
Agnes Grant. No End of Grief: Indian Residential Schools in Canada (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 1996);
Agnes Grant, Finding My Talk: How Fourteen Native Women Reclaimed Their Lives After Residential School (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 2004).
Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples, Final Report (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1996).
Reprinted in Gregory Younging et al., Response, Responsibility and Renewal: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009), 353–355.
Matt James, ‘Wrestling With the Past: Apologies, Quasi-Apologies and Non-Apologies in Canada’ in The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past, ed. Mark Gibney et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 137–153.
Michael Murphy, ‘Apology, Recognition, and Reconciliation’, Human Rights Review 12 (2011): 47–69.
Jeff Corntassel and Cindy Holder, ‘Who’s Sorry Now? Government Apologies, Truth Commissions, and Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia, Canada, Guatamala, and Peru’, Human Rights Review 9 (2008): 465–489.
Law Commission of Canada, Restoring Dignity: Responding to Child Abuse in Canadian Institutions (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2000);
Ken Cooper-Stevenson, ‘Reparations for Residential School Abuse in Canada: Litigation, ADR and Politics’ in Repairing the Past? International Perspectives on Gross Human Rights Abuses ed. Max Du Plessis and Stephen Pete (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2007), 359–388.
AFN, Report on Canada’s Dispute Resolution Plan to Compensate for Abuses in Indian Residential Schools (Ottawa: AFN, 2005);
Neil Funk-Unrau and Anna Snyder, ‘Indian Residential School Survivors and State ADR: A Strategy for Co-optation?’, Conflict Resolution Quarterly 24 (2007): 285–304.
Reprinted in Gregory Younging et al., Response, Responsibility and Renewal: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009), 357–359.
Neil Funk-Unrau, ‘The Re-Negotiation of Social Relations Through Public Apologies to Canadian Aboriginal Peoples’, Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change 29 (2008): 1–19;
Emil B. Towner, ‘Apologia, Image Repair, and Reconciliation: The Application, Limitations, and Future Directions of Apologetic Rhetoric’, Communication Yearbook 33 (2009): 431–468.
Matthew Dorrell, ‘From Reconciliation to Reconciling: Reading What “We Now Recognize” in the Government of Canada’s 2008 Residential Schools Apology’, English Studies in Canada 35 (2009): 27–45.
Pauline Wakeham, ‘Reconciling “Terror”: Managing Indigenous Resistance in the Age of Apology’, American Indian Quarterly 36 (2012): 2.
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Funk-Unrau, N. (2014). The Canadian Apology to Indigenous Residential School Survivors: A Case Study of Renegotiation of Social Relations. In: Mihai, M., Thaler, M. (eds) On the Uses and Abuses of Political Apologies. Rhetoric, Politics and Society Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343727_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343727_8
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