On July 1st, 2021 the Canadian Historical Association (CHA) — which represents some 650 professional historians across the country — released a statement saying that Canada’s “long history of violence and dispossession” directed at indigenous peoples “fully warrants our use of the word genocide.” It was an unusual step for an institution representing an academic discipline that has long shied away from using language that might be deemed “controversial,” particularly when the lens of analysis is directed, not at faraway …