Dialogic Potential in the Shadow of Canada's Indian Residential School System

Canada's 2008 apology to Indigenous peoples addressed a history of institutionalized racism and aggressive assimilation. Grounded in an ongoing experiment in multinational compromise, the event serves as a case study for the capacities of public argument to motivate productive inter-community exchange in contexts animated by power asymmetries and historical injustice. Acknowledging the limits of an education-based approach to reconciliation, I offer a twofold argument. First, the apology was a crucial (albeit partial) step towards fostering conditions amenable to dialogic (but still strategic) negotiations regarding a common future. Second, such negotiations may be productively conceptualized through the theory of coalescent argumentation.