Conference at UiT, Tromsø, on the 16th and 17th of October
Truth and Reconciliation processes in stable Democratic States - who, how and what happens after?
On the 16th and 17th of October, an important conference on the themes of Truth and Reconciliation is hosted at UiT Tromsø
The conference will put a spotlight on Truth and Reconciliation commissions (TRC), including the Norwegian Commission's final report which was forwarded on the 1st of June this year.
The conference aims to discuss:
The conference will focus on TRC processes in mature and stable democracies, a new cluster of TRCs where it is the democratic state itself that have inflicted injustices and abuses on indigenous people and minorities in terms of assimilation and even segregation. This separates these non-transitional commissions from commissions established post war or violent conflicts, and where the whole population have been affected.
The conference will thematize ended TRCs in Canada and Norway, the ongoing TRCs in Finland and Sweden, and the experiences of reconciliation from Greenland/Denmark.
While the Canadian TRC focused on the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools, the TRCs in Norway, Finland and Sweden have much broader mandates and the inquiries focuses on historical wrongs in general, agains the Indigenous people. In Norway the TRC in addition to the Indigenous Sámi included the Kven/Norwegian Finn and Forrest Finn minorities.
The conference language is English.
Register for the conference here, or click the registration button above or to the right.
The participation fee is 500 NOK, free for students.
You can no longer register for meals, but you can still register for the conference.
Conference dinner will be held at Clarion Hotel The Edge 16 October 19.00.
To view our preliminary program click the program, get practical information, read more about some of the coference contributions and read more about keynote speaker Dr. Ronald Niezen, see the different buttons at the top of the page.
The conference is organized by the research project TRUCOM, link to the TRUCOM website, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, and financed by the Research Council of Norway. Click here to view our flyer.
Dr. Niezen is a professor of anthropology and teaches at the departments of Sociology and of Political Science and International relations at the University of San Diego. Previously, Niezen taught at McGill University in Montreal, and he has been an Associate and Assistant Professor at Harvard University.
His research focuses on Indigenous peoples, the social study of human rights, transitional and restorative justice, the anthropology of organizations, social change in Africa, information technologies and communication and the history of anthropology/social theory.
If you have the opportunity, we recommend that you seek out Niezen’s book about the Canadian TRC: Truth and Indignation: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools (University of Toronto Press, October 2017).
If you want to read more about Ronald Niezen you can visit his website: Ronald Niezen | Professor of Anthropology & Author
