Canada’s Arctic Policies and Truth and Reconciliation: An Examination of Canada’s Arctic and Northern Policy Framework through a Reconciliation Lens

Abstract

In September 2019, the Canadian Government launched Canada’s Arctic and Northern Policy Framework. One of the main goals of the framework is to achieve reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples by way of taking a co-development approach. But what does reconciliation look like exactly? And how are we to know whether the federal government is meeting the objective of reconciliation in the development of this framework? Since the release of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in December 2015, a number of scholars have written about the question of how to attain reconciliation. One scholar in particular, Deborah McGregor, an Anishinaabe scholar from Whitefish River First Nation, Birch Island, Ontario, proposes six suggestions from which to assess whether reconciliation processes have been implemented in post-secondary institutions. McGregor concludes that these suggestions, while not exhaustive, represent a place from which to begin dialogue about establishing reconciliatory processes within the institution. Using McGregor’s suggestions, this article examines whether the federal government has implemented reconciliatory processes in the development of Canada’s Arctic and Northern Policy Framework.