The Quest for Reparations for Indian Residential School Abuse

Confronting the Legacy of the Independent Assessment Process
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-82477-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 186 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice

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.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Petoukhov, Konstantin

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Indigene Völker
• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Kriminologie, Strafverfolgung
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction - The Road to Reparations for Indian Residential School Abuse

Chapter 1 - Theorizing Reparations for Indigenous People in Ongoing Settler Colonialism

Chapter 2 - The Hierarchies of Victimization in the Independent Assessment Process

Chapter 3 - Specifying the Parameters of Exchange of Money for Violence in the IAP

Chapter 4 - The IAP as a violent Settler Colonial Legal Process

Chapter 5 - Resistance, Contestation, and Refusal in the IAP

Chapter 6 - Moving Forward: Concluding Remarks and Directions for Future Research

Über Autor(innen)

Konstantin Petoukhov received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. His doctoral research explored the socio-legal constructions of ‘ideal’ and ‘non-ideal’ victims in the Independent Assessment Process that adjudicated claims of physical and sexual abuse among Indian Residential School survivors.

Konstantin also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). As part of his postdoctoral research programme, he studied the constructions of ‘complex’ offenders in restorative justice – individuals who have committed a crime against their victims, but who have also been marginalized through social injustice and structural violence.

Konstantin’s research areas fall broadly within several categories. As a critical victimologist by training, he is interested in the social construction of victim status, victimization, and victimhood. In the area of transitional justice, his research programme focuses on reparations with a specialization in financial compensation for human rights violations as well as reparations for settler colonial violence. His research in the area of restorative justice explores the construction of discourses of complexity of victim and offender experiences with particular attention on structural victimization.