Reconciliation Without Return: The Hypocrisy of Healing on Stolen Land

Canada has spent the last two decades cultivating a global image as a human rights leader — progressive, inclusive, and committed to healing historical injustices. Nowhere is this more visible than in its public commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Government apologies, orange shirt days, and land acknowledgements have become routine.

But beneath this surface-level moral performance lies a glaring contradiction: reconciliation without land return, without structural change, and without real power-sharing is not reconciliation at all — it is pacification.

While Canada speaks the language of justice, the machinery of settler colonialism continues to grind forward. The state’s actions, particularly regarding resource extraction, policing of Indigenous land defenders, and weak implementation of Indigenous rights legislation, tell a very different story.

UNDRIP and the Performance of Progress

In 2021, Canada passed legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The move was widely praised as a significant step forward, especially since UNDRIP explicitly recognizes the right to self-determination and free, prior, and informed consent for any development on Indigenous lands.

Yet when the federal government released its long-awaited action plan in 2023, Indigenous leaders responded with skepticism. The document lacked timelines, enforcement mechanisms, or binding obligations. As Chief Judy Wilson of the Neskonlith Band remarked, “Canada is still picking and choosing which rights they want to recognize and when.”

This is not new. Canada has a long history of passing progressive laws while simultaneously undermining them through regulatory loopholes, bureaucratic delays, or lack of political will. The Wet’suwet’en struggle is a clear example: the government publicly acknowledges hereditary governance systems but authorizes pipelines through unceded Wet’suwet’en land without proper consent.

In essence, UNDRIP — at least in its current form — offers rhetorical progress without substantive change. It grants the illusion of partnership while maintaining the status quo of state dominance.

Budgetary Commitments vs. Structural Change

Budget 2024 included allocations to support Indigenous languages, mental health services, and infrastructure. These are undeniably important, especially given the devastating intergenerational impacts of the residential school system, forced relocations, and cultural erasure.

However, such investments are often narrowly targeted and fail to address systemic power imbalances. Funding a community health clinic is not the same as returning land, restoring sovereignty, or dismantling colonial governance structures.

Critics argue that these budget lines, while necessary, are too often framed as acts of benevolence rather than justice. Reconciliation is not charity. It is a debt owed — one that requires economic, legal, and territorial reparations.

The Land Back Movement

At the heart of any genuine reconciliation process is land. Indigenous nations have always emphasized that their identity, governance, culture, and spirituality are inseparable from the land.

The “Land Back” movement is not simply about geography; it is about jurisdiction, autonomy, and survival. Returning land means restoring the ability of Indigenous nations to govern themselves according to their own laws and traditions — something that no federal budget line or symbolic apology can achieve on its own.

Despite this, Canada continues to prioritize corporate interests over Indigenous sovereignty. Resource extraction projects — from oil pipelines to mining developments — are pushed through despite resistance from Indigenous communities. The RCMP has forcibly removed land defenders from their territories. Surveillance and criminalization of Indigenous resistance have become normalized.

In this context, reconciliation without land return becomes an empty gesture — a way to manage Indigenous discontent rather than truly address it.

Conclusion: Reconciliation or Rebranding?

The Canadian state’s approach to reconciliation often functions more as rebranding than reparations. Ceremonial acts — apologies, commemorative days, truth commissions — are important, but they are not substitutes for structural change.

To reconcile is to repair. That requires dismantling systems built on stolen land, returning that land to its rightful stewards, and respecting Indigenous governance not as a consultation checkbox, but as a sovereign political reality.

As Indigenous scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes, “Reconciliation is not a synonym for assimilation.” Without land return, legal parity, and the dismantling of colonial power structures, the project of reconciliation remains not just incomplete — it remains fundamentally dishonest.

For settlers, solidarity must move beyond empathy into action. For governments, reconciliation must mean relinquishing control, returning what was taken, and honoring Indigenous laws on Indigenous terms.

Anything less is not reconciliation. It’s just polite colonialism.