Now in paperback, The Theatre of Regret uncovers ways reconciliation movements resist meaningful justice for Indigenous peoples.

Public appeals to “reconciliation” between Indigenous and settler societies often undermine Indigenous cries for justice. In The Theatre of Regret, David Gaertner challenges state-centered reconciliation movements and explores ways Indigenous and allied artists and writers play in defining, challenging, and rejecting settler regret. Across the four key phases of reconciliation—acknowledgment, apology, redress, and forgiveness—Gaertner uncovers the failures of Canadian and global reconciliation efforts to hear Indigenous peoples. In so doing, he exposes the colonial ideologies that both define and limit reconciliation in settler-colonial states. Redirecting current debate, The Theatre of Regret points the way out from the state-centered language of regret toward a future of equitable justice.