The Settler Grammar of Canadian History Curriculum: Why Historical Thinking Is Unable to Respond to the TRC’s Calls to Action

Résumé

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) identified that education plays a central role in developing reconciliatory relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. However, the current historical thinking approach to history and social studies education imposes a settler grammar over the study of the past in ways that lessen the space available to develop the respect, openness for truth, and relationality needed to develop these ongoing relationships of reconciliation. By deconstructing one piece of work by a leading thinker in historical thinking, Peter Seixas, this article demonstrates the structural limitations of responding to the TRC using the Benchmarks of Historical Thinking.