Abstract: Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) are restorative justice
mechanisms for addressing human rights violations and injustice at the macro level.
Mainly applied in the Global South, they have only recently been adapted within North
America. The Greensboro, NC TRC was launched by grassroots and community-based
organizations in 2004 to examine the causes and consequences of a 1979 incident of
racial violence. The Canadian TRC was established in 2008 to address the legacy of
colonial policies of assimilation and the forced schooling of indigenous populations.
Through a comparison of these two cases, this paper will investigate how the North
American context shapes the nature of the problems that these TRCs address, how they
are organized, their relationship to the legal system, the role of civil society, and their
relationship to poverty and reparations. Implications for social work, restorative justice
and the potential for additional TRCs in North America are discussed