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The spark of inspiration for this special edition of Canadian Issues/Thěmes Canadiens was the controversy that ensued after the governing council of the Canadian Historical Association issued a statement on Canada Day 2021 formally announcing that the long history of violence and dispossession Indigenous peoples experienced in what is today Canada should be called genocide.
We recognize that historians, in the past, have often been reticent to acknowledge this history as genocide, the CHA, which represents 650 professional historians in Canada, said in the statement. As a profession, historians have therefore contributed in lasting and tangible ways to the Canadian refusal to come to grips with this country's history of colonization and dispossession. Our inability, as a society, to recognize this history for what it is, and the ways that it lives on into the present, has served to perpetuate the violence. It is time for us to break this historical cycle. We encourage Canadians to recognize this history for what it is: genocide.
The CHA statement was released in the months following the discovery of hundreds of unmarked children's graves at former residential schools in Canada. But there was - and remains - sharp disagreement with the association's statement among some Canadian scholars. A number of them issued an open letter acknowledging the gravesite revelations...