The Quest for Reparations for Indian Residential School Abuse

This book explores the complexities and nuances of reparations for victims and survivors of settler colonial violence. It centres its analysis on the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), a financial compensation programme that was designed to address the horrific legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential School system, which was established to assimilate Indigenous children into settler Canadian society.

The reader of this book will learn about the impact of the IAP as a mechanism of redress for the physical and sexual abuse that Indigenous children experienced while attending Indian Residential Schools. Through the analysis of unique perspectives and first-hand accounts of survivors, lawyers, claims adjudicators, and health support workers who participated in the IAP, the book tells the stories of former Indian Residential School students’ struggle for justice. It invites the reader to explore several themes related to the IAP that engage with the idea of financial compensation as redress for acts of institutional child abuse in ongoing settler colonialism. By bringing insights from several theoretical frameworks to bear on empirical data in a complex yet accessible manner, it seeks to address the following questions: How does money compensate survivors of institutional child abuse? How does settler colonialism complicate state-sponsored redress for violence against Indigenous people? And, how might survivors problematize, resist, and contest individual reparations for settler colonial violence?

The target audience for this book includes scholars, educators, practitioners, students, and members of the general public whose research interests include settler colonial studies, history, reparations, transitional justice, Indigenous studies, and critical victimology.