Truth, Reconciliation, and ‘Double Settler Denial:’ Gendering the Canada-South Africa Analogy

Comparisons to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission haunt most post-1990s institutional attempts to address historical injustice, building on the wide familiarity and perceived success of that TRC. Comparing Canada and South Africa, Nagy (2012) notes that “loose analogizing” has hampered the application of important lessons; namely, that “narrow approaches to truth collude with superficial views of reconciliation that deny continuities of violence.” This paper adds to the conversation by gendering the continuum of Settler colonial violence in both locations, and by outlining the implications of these TRCs (and the potential for reconciliation) for Indigenous women in particular. We argue that, in both Canada and South Africa, institutional approaches to ‘truth’ have been both narrow and androcentric. The simultaneous historical bounding and social consolidation of Indigenous experiences of abuse and injustice has thus produced a ‘double Settler denial’ in the case of these Indigenous women today.