In Reparations and the Human, Professor David L. Eng challenges his audience to step back and reconsider: What are reparations and what is human? A slim but timely, relevant volume packed with complexity, the book brought to mind the saying, Homo faber suae quisque fortunae, which translates to “Every man is the artisan of his own fortune.”
The issue of reparations resurfaces today ranging from discussion of reparations for enslaved people by the National African-American Reparations Commission to the Iranian government negotiating a demand for reparations by the United States for its war on Iran. In March 2026, the United Nations General Assembly passed a landmark resolution addressing the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. While the resolution passed with broad international support, it was opposed by the United States, Israel, and Argentina voicing divisions over reparations.
Sovereignty
Eng presents the Euro-American dialectic of sovereignty and reparations. For centuries sovereignty emanated from the sacred, then to the divine right of kings and institutional religion. In 1776, the founders of the United States challenged this sovereignty. The Declaration of Independence stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” While acknowledging a divine power, the founders declared power was held by the people to ensure unalienable rights.
Human
With this liberation, the politics of redress and reparations developed further. For example, In the 19th century the International Committee for Red Cross was formed to prevent and alleviate human suffering, especially from wars. Eng highlights two direct examples of reparation related to war. From 1945 to 2018, the German government paid approximately $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust victims and their heirs. Second, under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the US government formally apologized and gave $20,000 in reparations to each surviving Japanese and Japanese American interned during World War II totaling $1.6 billion. For me, an interesting contrast of reparations was the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF). As of August 31st, 2025 it received over 102,000 claims, awarding over $16 billion to nearly 70,000 claimants. This restitution was from the United States, not from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates whose young men hijacked the American Airlines and United Airlines flights.
A more thought provoking example cited by Eng is the Sahtu Dene reparations to the Hiroshima hibakusha, the victims of the intentional nuclear bombing of civilians by the United States. He soberly notes that, “Most of the world’s uranium is mined from Indigenous lands.” The Sahtu Dene were an Indigenous Canadian peoples who mined the uranium used to build” Little Boy, “ the first atomic bomb used in warfare. According to Eng, the Sahtu Dene traveled to Hiroshima to apologize to the hibakusha. “In these ecological zones of sacrifice and suffering, the Shatu Dene’s apology not only exposes political limits of humans and human rights but also the differential distribution of low violence and ecological grief, their biopolitical effects on humans and nonhumans alike. Absolute apology brings the Sahtu Dene together with other Indigenous communities suffering the toxic effects of uranium mining….With the Sahtu Dene pilgrimage to Hiroshima, the beginning meets the end. The first peoples of the Americas who transported the radioactive ore for the creation of the atom bombs come together with the first communities in Asia on whom these weapons of mass destruction descended.”
Reparations
The above examples illustrate the intricacy of who pays reparations and who receives them. Eng tracks “…how the idea of reparation appears as a central concept mediating sanctioned as well as disavowed histories of human trauma and suffering.” He further demonstrates its differential production in its “arrogation of injury, its claim to political recognition, its right to economic compensation.”
The use of nuclear power as a legitimate form of warfare reveals the limits of people power in negotiating perpetrators and victims. Man is no longer the artisan of his own future. Nuclear power is not only lethal but complete and instantaneous; Its harm to life and the planet are irreversible and long lasting. While the United States has made reparations for incarcerated West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II, it has not apologized for nor provided compensation to hibakusha of Hiroshima. Eng soberingly concludes, “In the final analysis, absolute apology exposes the political failure of both the sovereign state and human rights to protect the sanctity of all human and non human life in the age of the Anthropocene.”
Juanita/Nita is an activist since the 1968 BSU/TWLF San Francisco State Strike; since the 1970 census advocating for more detailed racial and ethnic data in Washington, DC, and now singing with the Seattle Raging Grannies. Her collection resides in the Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress. Author of Golden Children, Legacy of Ethnic Studies, SF State, Juanita is featured in the documentary, Agents of Change https://www.agentsofchangefilmnational.com/
