Non-Indigenous People and the Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation

Abstract

This chapter sets the context for this volume’s concern with the conceptual, attitudinal, and political limits to policies and practices of reconciliation in settler colonial societies. It explains the complex and interconnected focuses of the book as a whole and sets the notion of a non-Indigenous ‘responsibility to engage’ in a broader context of theory and research, Australian, Canadian, and globally. The chapter maps the continuities and contestations evident among the book’s following 15 chapters, and outlines an overall contribution to an operational understanding of reconciliation as an historically critical problem.