Fragments of Truth: Residential Schools and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Canada

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Canada examined the residential school system's history, which resulted in trauma and pain for Indigenous children. Naomi Angel's Fragments of Truth explores the visual culture of reconciliation and memory in relation to this history, tracing how the TRC served as a mechanism for claiming agency over memories of the schools.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 01 October 2022
Publisher: Duke University Press

The Canadian government established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2008 to examine the history of the residential school system, a brutal colonial project that resulted in the death and injury of numerous Indigenous children and left a legacy of trauma and pain. In her book Fragments of Truth, Naomi Angel examines the visual culture of reconciliation and memory in relation to this complex and painful history. Angel analyzes archival photographs from the residential school system, representations of the schools in popular media and literature, and testimonies from TRC proceedings to trace how the TRC served as a mechanism through which memory, trauma, and visuality became apparent. She demonstrates how many Indigenous communities were able to use the TRC process as a way to claim agency over their memories of the schools. Angel's work highlights the ongoing costs of transforming settler states into modern nations and offers a unique optic through which to survey the long history of colonial oppression of Canada's Indigenous populations.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478015932