This is a reformatted and lightly edited version of an essay I wrote for a course back in November 2025 titled “Reparations as a Form of Transitional Justice: The Limits of Rectification Within a Colonial Framework,” complete with some brief annotations throughout.
The main text has been kept mostly unchanged; most edits were made to accommodate footnotes, block quotes, etc. or to fix grammatical imperfections.
I am by no means an expert on this topic and am sharing this purely for the purposes of dissemination and broader discussion. I still have many questions and am happy to continue discussing with and learning from Indigenous on Turtle Island and beyond.
Effect of reparations in transitional justice
Reparations, while presented as a mechanism of transitional justice (TJ), often commodifies historical harm by converting these immeasurable, irreversible damages into finite transactions, the extent of which is almost always decided by states and sociopolitical majorities.
This creates:
an illusion of finality, in which payment and acknowledgement equates to the matter being settled;
resentment among non-beneficiaries who may perceive these amends as handouts or the beneficiaries themselves as “greedy,” causing further tension and division; and
alienation among some survivors who may view payments as an insult or as hush money.
I focused on financial reparations for the introduction here, though I then proceed to speak about non-monetary forms of reparations like land acknowledgements and the renaming of locations whose names are inherently tied to colonization.
I will also note that I focused primarily on Canada, as I study in a Canadian university and am more familiar with its history and current events compared to Imperialist America, Australia, etc.
Land acknowledgements as reparations
This has been reflected rather vividly in Indigenous groups’ varied responses to land acknowledgements.
Multiple resources have emphasized the importance of intent and chosen terminology, and pronunciation guides for the various First Nations groups have been created by Indigenous organizations due to the continued issue of mispronunciation, which can itself be concluded as a result of a lack of education regarding local history.
Further, a recurring query among Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals alike is whether land acknowledgements truly cause any meaningful change beyond the titular, often performative, act of acknowledging:
Land acknowledgments have been used to start conversations regarding how non-Indigenous people can support Indigenous sovereignty and advocate for land repatriation.
Yet the historical and anthropological facts demonstrate that many contemporary land acknowledgments unintentionally communicate false ideas about the history of dispossession and the current realities, [which] can have detrimental consequences for Indigenous peoples and nations, [for instance relegating] Indigenous peoples to a mythic past and [failing] to acknowledge that they [once] owned the land.
While words may be powerful, they mean nothing if not backed up with action. “Unless governments are willing to ... [add] tangible reparations to the intangible ones, such actions tend to fall in the category of ‘cheap talk.’”
Reparations should be “proportional to harm”: UN
According to the United Nations (UN), reparations should be “proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered, [in] accordance with ... domestic laws and international legal obligations.”
Five “forms” are covered: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition.
The first, restitution, is defined as the restoration of the victim(s) “to the original situation before the gross violations of international human rights law ... occurred.”
[It] includes, as appropriate: restoration of liberty, enjoyment of human rights, identity, family life and citizenship, return to one’s place of residence, restoration of employment, and return of property.
How can a colonial state be decolonial?
However, a clear paradoxical fallacy is visible through this approach: how would an established state, one which has both taken over and been built upon another’s land—that is, a state itself built on dispossession—be able to “return” property they never truly owned, having gained it through theft and/or trickery, without the abolishment of the state as a whole?1
To this section, I will add that I don’t love the use of the terms “postcolonial” or “decolonial” as they apply to Turtle Island/North America, Australia, and other still-colonial societies. It seems more rhetorical than factual.
It is true that, in literary and critical theory, “postcolonial” originally referred to societies that gained independence from a European power after experiencing formal colonial rule (e.g., India, Algeria, Nigeria). In the cases of Imperialist America, Canada, and Australia, they achieved self-rule while continuing the internal colonization of their respective Indigenous peoples. So, referring to them as “postcolonial” seems to only be accurate if “post-independence from Britain” is meant, rather than post-colonialism as a system.
By design, settler-colonialism is a structure rather than an event, operating through the elimination and replacement of Indigenous populations through land theft, resource extraction, legal erasure, assimilation policies, etc. As such, referring to a colonial government’s actions as “decolonial” seems to simply co-opt the term to avoid real structural change. There are, more accurately, reforms within a colonial liberal democracy that fall short of true decolonization rather than a break from it.
Despite the fact that restitutionary acts, at the very least in the case of Indigenous communities on Turtle Island (North America), are unable to provide “true” compensation to the marginalized, outsiders, especially those who may not be as familiar with the history that led up to the need for reparations, be it due to recent immigration or simply lack of education, occasionally see the constant provisions from the government as unfair treatment, be it due to the threshold for what they themselves have deemed “sufficient compensation” being met or due to a belief that these reparations are not required at all.
Monetary reparations viewed as “excessive, opportunistic” by settlers
Under Stephen Harper’s administration in early 2006, a Common Experience Payment of $10,000 in compensation was provided for the first year spent in a residential school, plus an additional $3,000 for each additional year, “but it also bolstered the view that [residential schools] were horrible places in which everyone suffered ... [and] while everyone got compensated, the federal government could continue to maintain that the compensation was not for loss of language and culture, as had been demanded by the AFN” (Assembly of First Nations).2
Following the agreement of a $23 billion (CAD) settlement in 2023 (nearly two decades after Harper’s settlement), applying to “those who were part of the welfare system between April 1, 1991, and March 31, 2022,” Marc Miller, then-Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, stated that the “compensation announced ... is a historic amount, matched only by the historic amount of harm that occurred to First Nations children.”3
Similar to how many criticized the reparations provided to the descendants of African-American slaves and survivors of slavery, this same thought process is applied to Indigenous groups, despite the last residential school closing less than 30 years ago at the time of writing.
These non-beneficiaries frequently frame reparations and Indigenous claims as excessive or opportunistic, often portraying them as “greedy.”
This discourse appears in both mainstream and alternative media; for example, an article in 2017 reported on criticism surrounding an Irving-owned newspaper editorial for its “poor optics” in framing First Nations opposition to the Sisson Mine project, while a 2025 blog post by Harvey Oberfeld went further, accusing Indigenous groups of attempting to “shake down” the nation and “blackmail” markets.
In hindsight, who cares what white settlers think? But, I digress.
In December 2024, Grand Council Chief Debassige of the Anishinabek Nation issued a statement that reiterated:
…the money for settlements is not taxpayer dollars and references to these settlements as a reason for the Liberal government’s deficit is preposterous and is a deflection from reality.
They are, in fact, money that is owed from resources taken from our lands, which we shared with settler immigrants to our lands.
Payouts as insult, hush money
Moreover, certain survivors may view these payouts as an insult or as hush money, causing an even greater amount of continued colonial harm.
The vision of life and the world conceived by indigenous peoples is too plain and, at the same time, too complicated to be adequately understood by Western people, whose culture is rooted in completely different values.
For this reason, any attempt to regulate indigenous life on the basis of Western legal and cultural stereotypes is potentially liable to kill or impair the integrity of the “indigenous dream,” even when those attempts are carried out in good faith with the purpose of achieving the (presumed) interests of indigenous peoples themselves.
Renaming of public spaces as reparations
Some additional, non-monetary forms of reparations have appeared, including the symbolic renaming of public spaces, such as streets and universities, from a name linked to colonization.
One such example is the change from Ryerson University to Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). The change was made in order to “help the university address the legacy of Egerton Ryerson [marking] the start of a new chapter for the university, as it moves forward with a name that better reflects its [unchanged] values and aspirations.”
Still, such alterations are not without issue; in addition to potentially being viewed as a performative act, they also risk erasure of the darker histories behind the original names.
Another notable instance of renaming within the City of Toronto is the renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square due to connections to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Sankofa, a concept that originated in Ghana, “refers to the act of reflecting on and reclaiming teachings from the past, which enables us to move forward together.” Ironically, the street itself was not renamed “because of concerns over cost.”
This serves not only as a form of historical erasure, causing the colonial history to be hidden, but the change did not extend to the street itself, which could be understood as a lack of full commitment, particularly since the reasoning provided was monetary cost.
Perhaps the current generation would know the reasoning behind the change, but without continued education, it is certainly not guaranteed that future generations will know what had occurred at all. As Elster wrote rather bluntly:
…naming streets after victims or apologizing for events that took place several generations ago does not do much good for anyone.
Failure to provide basic needs
The UN also expresses that “[rehabilitation] should include medical and psychological care as well as legal and social services” and that reparations must meet the victims’ satisfaction.4
A continued occurrence that comes to mind is the lack of safe drinking water provided to the Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) First Nation in northwestern Ontario.
In the 1960s, the tribes were considered too isolated to properly contribute to Canadian society; as such, the federal government attempted to “modernize” how the Nation lived, in order to, supposedly, boost the country’s economy. This led to high levels of industrial pollution, particularly mercury, an issue that persists even today.
According to a report done in 2020 by Nanos Research, a “majority of Canadians say access to clean and potable drinking water in First Nations communities is less than adequate,” specifically three in four, while “14 percent think it is adequate and four percent think it is more than adequate. Seven percent are unsure.”
Guarantees of non-repetition as reparations
The final of the five guidelines provided by the UN is the guarantee of non-repetition. While important, this is, once again, purely symbolic.
As long as the colonial state holds power over the group, the continued power imbalance implies potential threat in the future, perhaps under different leadership.
Again, “post/decolonial” does not mean very much in my view when a colonial government is still in power. By “potential threat in the future” here, I am referring to an open return to more explicit forms of settler-colonialism, as seen in occupied Palestine, compared to the (typically) more structural forms in so-called “democratic” settler-colonies.
This is similarly mirrored in the treatment of African-American history; Professor Martha S. Jones criticized the myth of the USA as a beacon of democracy, claiming that Black American “counter-history” is often erased completely—much like that of Native American and Indigenous histories.
She argued that the myth of democracy, created wholly by “elite white men,” is built upon the silence and absence of Black history; many aspects, such as free Black Americans, are left as unknown parties in American history, neither “free” nor “enslaved” as they were understood at the time.5
This illusion is also seen in the rewriting of American Thanksgiving, centering colonists rather than the Native tribes, where the tradition originated.
Conclusion
Perhaps moving forward is not merely the endless, continued act of beautification, covering up past violations under unintentional yet supposedly well-meaning pretenses.
Instead, it must involve looking back and…
providing accurate, continued historical education, complete with both sides’ perspectives;
allowing Indigenous leaders and communities a seat at both the metaphorical and physical tables, returning their voice;
ensuring their needs are met, such as in the case of Grassy Narrows’ demand for clean water;
and combining reparations with other methods of transitional justice.
Unless paired with structural reform and victim-led design, these attempted remunerations become nothing more than glorified performance.
I wrote this over half a year ago for an academic institution in a settler-colonial liberal democracy, so there were some things I could not mention in the detail I would have wanted. This was also not written from a strict Marxist-Leninist perspective.
More broadly speaking, however, I have always advocated for investigating material conditions and acting based upon those results. In the case of the Asubpeeschoseewagong drinking water crisis, this has been ongoing for decades, well-known enough that it was even used as a case study at my high school. So, it is quite clear there have already been a great many assessments done; the issue is that little to no concrete action is being done to rectify it.
To add on further, Canada’s current Prime Minister Mark Carney recently joked he could “outlive” an Indigenous activist from Grassy Narrows who suffers from mercury poisoning and has still not apologized, causing even more harm.
Proportionality itself is also very loosely defined and often subject to the whims of the ruling class.
Note that the agreement was negotiated between and signed by the AFN and the previous PM Paul Martin, not Harper, who became PM two months later. However, Harper decided to accept and “implement it as written, but not [go] beyond the four corners of the text.”
An attempt was made to reach out to Renelle Arsenault, Miller’s Director of Communications at the time, but no response was received.
One could (erroneously) argue that residential schooling and the replacement of traditional Indigenous practices via forced religious beliefs could be classified as a derivative of this reparation, despite being a large part of the harm caused.
This was during a guest lecture hosted by my university’s Department of History, but she’s likely spoken about it elsewhere.
my problem with reparations (as an Indigenous person) is: 1, it upholds the settler state 2, it upholds capitalism and encourages us to participate in it more (thats all money does). .3, it’s just paid by the state and so no settlers learn a lesson. Settlers steal land, settlers own businesses and work in extraction, prisons and children’s aid, settlers cause MMIW.
Reparations doesn’t return the land or end the state.