American Indian Culture and Research Journal

We live in an era of the proliferation of the use of apology and attempts at formal reconciliation by national governments and civil institutions, such as churches, to breach grievances with particular populations within the national borders. This is the case in Canada as well as the United States concerning indigenous peoples and other groups. Although these apologies are accompanied by various well-publicized ritualized events there is inadequate recognition by state officials of the preexisting and long-established cultural practices of apology in these indigenous communities. As a consequence, there can be a gulf between the practices of the state and local indigenous people’s expectations regarding how apology and reconciliation should properly occur. These issues have received little direct scholarly attention. My claim is that indigenous North Americans, and no doubt many others, already have ways of understanding how historical grievances should rightly be handled and that they have become less and less willing to put up with imposed, Western-derived models. In this text, I describe historic Coast Salish ritual practices and the concepts regarding wrongdoing and redemption that underlie them. I draw out the implications, particularly the associated dangers, derived from these existing rituals for ritual work conducted by outsiders engaging Coast Salish peoples. Finally, I consider the responses of Coast Salish peoples to recent apologies and reparations in Washington State and British Columbia. Despite the difficulties and potential traps, there can be positive benefits to considering existing cultural practices and incorporating them with top-down state-driven apologies. Over the last few generations, Coast Salish leaders have developed their own ways of incorporating representatives of government and industry within local rituals of reconciliation. But, as I have noted, the state’s use of rituals of apology to manage relations with constituent groups internationally creates the context for this development in North America, and so I briefly consider the insights and shortcomings of current scholarship on these issues.