Between Acknowledgement and Inertia: Reflections on the Legacy of Canada’s Residential School System

This article explores Canada’s legal and institutional responses to the residential school system, arguing that symbolic recognition has often come at the expense of substantive structural reform. While the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have offered a framework for redress, they remain embedded within the same legal architecture that facilitated historical injustices. A decade after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action, progress on implementation remains uneven, revealing persistent gaps in resource allocation, institutional accountability, and public trust. The analysis adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining legal doctrine, historical inquiry, and human rights analysis. It further examines how digital activism and mediated forms of memory operate as counterpoints to state-led reconciliation. These digital interventions expose the inertia of legal institutions by reframing the temporality of justice: while legal mechanisms proceed within procedural and bureaucratic logics, digital platforms demand immediacy, visibility, and affective engagement. This tension underlines a deeper paradox – namely, that visibility may increase disillusionment when not accompanied by institution transformation. The article situates reconciliation within the broader continuity of settler colonialism, contending that legal responses often reify the state’s dual role as both perpetrator and redeemer. Consequently, the article questions whether such frameworks can meaningfully deliver justice.