The Quest for Reparations for Indian Residential School Abuse : Confronting the Legacy of the Independent Assessment Process

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 program 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 the 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 a story of former Indian Residential School students’ struggle for justice. This book invites the reader to explore several themes related to the IAP that engage with the idea of financial compensation as redress to settler colonial violence. By combining insights from several theoretical frameworks with empirical data in a sophisticated yet accessible manner, it poses the following questions: How does money compensate survivors of institutional child abuse and how do survivors construct narratives of victimization to frame their experiences and realities in a compensation process?

The target audience for this book include 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.