Time as an instrument of settler evasion: Circumventing the implementation of truth and reconciliation in Canadian geography departments

Abstract

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released its final report on the Indian Residential Schools system and issued 94 calls to action. Education was identified as core to the reconciliation process. Universities across the country responded swiftly, acknowledging the calls as urgent and long overdue. Institution-wide task forces were established, and glossy reports were produced with directives to faculties and departments. Given Geography's historic and ongoing implication in white settler colonialism, Geography departments were in unique positions to surface the truths, engage in healing, and reconcile their relationships to Indigenous Peoples and the Land. This paper presents findings from an exploratory case study that sought to understand precisely what Canadian Geography departments have been doing to operationalize the TRC's calls to action in the five years since the TRC report was released. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis of semi-structured interviews with Geography department heads, we show how settler-colonial space-time geographies were often used as a scapegoat to circumvent responsibility at the department level. We are calling on Geography departments to take time away from their standing state of affairs to strategically, structurally, and systematically operationalize the calls to action.