Indigenising or abolishing it? Ashley Kyne, Justin Piché, ‘The Prison as Reconciliation? Considering the “Indigenization” of Carceral Spaces in Canada’, Yellowhead Institute, 10/03/26 | settler colonial studies blog

Indigenising or abolishing it? Ashley Kyne, Justin Piché, ‘The Prison as Reconciliation? Considering the “Indigenization” of Carceral Spaces in Canada’, Yellowhead Institute, 10/03/26

26Mar26

Excerpt: In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) documented the realities and the longstanding impacts of Indian Residential Schools and released its 94 Calls to Action. Among them was Call to Action 30 that called “upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to commit to eliminating the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in custody over the next decade, and to issue detailed annual reports that monitor and evaluate progress doing so”. To this end, Call to Action 31 recommended that federal and provincial-territorial levels of government “implement and evaluate community sanctions that will provide realistic alternatives to imprisonment for Aboriginal offenders and respond to the underlying causes of offending”. Both recommendations, along with others such as Call to Action 36, which urged these “governments to work with Aboriginal communities to provide culturally relevant services” to Indigenous prisoners, were made as an acknowledgement that imprisonment, like residential schools, is a settler colonial institution that causes great harm to Indigenous peoples through cultural erasure and state violence, necessitating action to reduce the use and consequences of incarceration.

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