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Apology, Recognition, and Reconciliation

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Abstract

The article examines the role of apology in a process of reconciling with historic injustice. As with so many other facets of the politics of reconciliation, official apologies are controversial, at times strenuously resisted, and their purpose and significance not always well understood. The article, therefore, seeks to articulate the key moral and practical resources that official apologies can bring to bear in a process of national reconciliation and to defend these symbolic acts against some of the more influential criticisms from the skeptics. The analysis is developed in relation to apologies offered in the context of state-indigenous reconciliation processes in the Americas, Australasia, and other regions of the globe.

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Notes

  1. I borrow the term “political ancestors” from Gaita (1998: 87).

  2. On church and corporate apologies, see, respectively, Marrus (2008) and Ibhawoh (2008).

  3. For an account of these policies, see Australia, Human Rights, Equal Opportunity Commission (1997) and Haebich (2000).

  4. I borrow the term micro-level injustice from Chapman and van der Merwe (2008).

  5. The parties might also agree to include the experiences of particular survivors in the apology text as a means of humanizing the apology process. For example, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd included first-hand accounts from survivors in the preliminary remarks to his apology to the stolen generations (Australia 2008).

  6. It may also, as Gibbs (2008: 161–2) notes, be interpreted as a recognition of the iwi’s mana (authority)

  7. This is not to say that there is no room for (or value in) the spontaneous act of apology. Perhaps the most famous example is that of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt spontaneously falling to his knees in front of the memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, during a visit to Poland in 1970.

  8. This also has obvious importance in cases where members of the survivor community are not fluent in the majority language.

  9. The human rights violations in the Guatemalan civil war were documented in the final report of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification. For an English translation of the report, see American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2010).

  10. Canada’s historic residential schools policy saw up to 150,000 indigenous children enrolled in state-sanctioned educational institutions where their cultures and languages were subjected to prohibition and degradation, and where many were physically, psychologically and sexually abused and neglected. See Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996: 333–409), Milloy (1996), and Miller (1996). References to the Australian case can be found in note 3.

  11. Publicly delivered oral apologies tend to be more immediately powerful, and moving, in this respect, but I fully agree with James (2008: 146–7) that apologies must also be entered into the official, written historical record so that their meaning and significance can live on for future generations.

  12. The statement was delivered by then Minister of Indian Affairs Jane Stewart in a lunch hour ceremony on Parliament hill. The statement had both its critics and supporters (James 2008: 141; Bourgeois 1998).

  13. In Gover’s own words: “I do not speak today for the United States. That is the province of the nation's elected leaders, and I would not presume to speak on their behalf. I am empowered, however, to speak on behalf of this agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs…” (Gover 2000).

  14. My use of this term is inspired by the edited volume of Manne (1994) of the same title.

  15. A similar sentiment was expressed by former Canadian Minister of Indian Affairs Jim Prentice in relation to the residential schools policy (Globe and Mail 2007).

  16. On the question of persuasion in the absence of strong universal truths, see Wittgenstein (1974) and Rorty (1989a, b).

  17. This is what Richard Rorty (1989a, b, 1992) would refer to as being ethnocentric with respect to our own community’s past actions and traditions.

  18. For a fascinating discussion of the idea of collective responsibility, see Cellermajer (2006).

  19. For example, Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera was murdered in 1998, just a week after the church published a report detailing human rights abused committed during the civil war. A retired army colonel and his son, a member of the intelligence services, were eventually convicted of the murder (Daniels 2008).

  20. To date, only the government of Tasmania has offered compensation to victims of the removal policies.

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Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, and to faculty members at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa in 2009. My thanks go to those in attendance for their helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Siobhan Harty and the Journal’s three anonymous referees for their detailed, and highly valuable, comments on an earlier draft, and to Pam Flagel and Sue Mitchell for invaluable research assistance. Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged.

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    Michael Murphy

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Murphy, M. Apology, Recognition, and Reconciliation. Hum Rights Rev 12, 47–69 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-010-0166-7

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