Abstract

This chapter presents a sociohistorical, political, and religious exploration of the decolonizing effects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in Canada and Guatemala. The indigenous communities in each country, despite their geographical, religious, and cultural differences, are successfully rejecting historically imposed Eurocentric forms of knowledge. The chapter presents a study of how the indigenous communities are reclaiming their own traditions, customs, and ancestral forms of knowledge amidst systemic state-sanctioned violence and cultural genocide. These movements are a sampling of the growing number of social and religious movements which, while not drawing on the categories of decolonial thinking, are by definition decolonizing.