Exhibits of Truth and Reconciliation: Creating Empathetic Spaces for Indigenous Narratives in Canada

Abstract

This essay examines what the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has achieved and failed to accomplish between 2009 and 2015. The TRC’s exhibits are testaments to the ongoing colonial traumatization among Indigenous peoples in Canada expressed through survivor statements in non-conventional forms of art in a space that has been historically biased against them. I study the importance and value of a sample of exhibits produced as a result of the Commission to argue that ongoing and systemic racism persists in 2020 and Canada needs broader participation in reconciliation forums. This project is an effort towards shifting post-colonial public dispositions that lack awareness of pervasive colonization-trauma or empathetic indignation.