What happens behind the scenes at a Canadian human rights tribunal? And why aren't human rights tribunal processes working for Indigenous people?

Witness to the Human Rights Tribunals opens the doors to the tribunal, revealing the interactions of lawyers, tribunal members, expert witnesses, and Indigenous litigants. Bruce Miller provides an in-depth look at the role of anthropological expertise in the courts, and draws on testimony, ethnographic data, and years of tribunal decisions to show how specific cases are fought and how expert testimony about racialization and discrimination is disregarded. His candid analysis reveals the double-edged nature of the tribunal itself, which re-engages with the trauma and violence of discrimination that suffuses social and legal systems while it attempts to protect human rights.

Grounded in expert experience, this important book asks hard questions. Should human rights tribunals be replaced, or paired with an Indigenous-centred system? How can anthropologists support an understanding of the pervasive discrimination that Indigenous people face? It definitively concludes that any reform must consider the problem of symbolic trauma before Indigenous claimants can receive appropriate justice.