num_pages: 256
description: Confronting the truths of Canadas Indian Residential School system has been likened to waking a sleeping giant. In this book David B. MacDonald uses genocide as an analytical tool to better understand Canadas past and present relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples. Starting with a discussion of how genocide is defined in domestic and international law the book applies the concept to the forced transfer of Indigenous children to residential schools and the Sixties Scoop in which Indigenous children were taken from their communities and placed in foster homes or adopted.Based on archival research and extensive interviews with residential school survivors officials at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and others The Sleeping Giant Awakens offers a unique and timely perspective on the prospects for conciliation after genocide exploring how moving forward together is difficult in a context where many settlers know little of the residential schools and the ongoing legacies of colonization and need to have a better conception of Indigenous rights. It offers a detailed analysis of how the TRC approached genocide in its deliberations and in the Final Report.Crucially MacDonald engages critics who argue that the term genocide impedes understanding of the IRS system and imperils prospects for conciliation. By contrast this book sees genocide recognition as an important basis for meaningful discussions of how to engage Indigenous-settler relations in respectful and proactive ways.
language: English
title: The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation
publisher: University of Toronto Press