Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics

L11(b) - Indigenous Sovereignty, Nationhood, and Challenges to Settler Colonial Projects

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 10:15am to 11:45am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Rupinder Liddar (McGill University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Colleen Bell (University of Saskatchewan)

Decolonizing Space and Place: Spectrums of Settler Support for Indigenous Sovereignty in Canada: Andrea M.L. Perrella (Wilfrid Laurier University), Andrew Basso (Wilfrid Laurier University), Hannah L. Rose (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Abstract: This study, conducted from a Settler perspective, investigates the notion of sovereignty in relation to Indigenous nations. To contribute to existing literature, this study seeks to model levels of Settler endorsement, antipathy, comprehension, and rejection of Indigenous sovereignty in Canada. This paper utilizes a mixed-methods approach and explores the range of Settler opinions on Indigenous sovereignty(ies) as well as possible commonalities or even classification systems among Settler opinions. Based on qualitative survey responses, results will show a range of positions, for example: support for Indigenous self-determination, reticence on the basis of economic and national unity concerns, perceptions of Indigenous sovereignty as violating some norm of equality, and beyond. Generally, Settlers are found to be lacking in basic understandings of history and legal concepts underlying Indigenous sovereignty and imagined spaces for both Indigenous nations and Settlers. In this context, the study is part of a broader discourse on Reconciliation which has been said to require improvement in education and awareness among Settlers regarding Indigenous sovereignty.

National Myth-making and Indigenous Nationhood: Expressions of Settler Colonial Manifestations of Sovereignty: Emily Grafton (University of Regina), Mariam Georgis (Simon Fraser University)
Abstract: This paper focuses on a comparative analysis of the impacts of settler colonialism on the Assyrian and Métis Nations. Specifically, we examine the ways in which the Iraqi and Canadian states circumvent claims of Indigenous nationhood whilst using these Indigenous nations to support and uphold the colonial state through national myth-making. International Relations (IR) routinely ignores the impacts of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples, and yet debates of sovereignty lie at the core of both IR and Indigenous Peoples’ struggles for self-determination and nationhood (Georgis & Lugosi-Schimpf, 2021). For example, in the colonial creation of the region known as the Middle East, the Assyrian Nation’s traditional territory was divided between the modern states of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey and is currently the site of virulent Kurdish struggles for independence. The Métis Nation is a post-contact Indigenous Peoples whose homelands and claims to nationhood are contested. Both Indigenous Nations hold marginalized sovereignty due to the ongoing claims of sovereignty of the Iraqi and Canadian states. These settler colonial states manifest their state dominion through the subjugation of Indigenous nationhood by a manufactured sense of sovereignty based on national myth-making. We use the method of cross-national comparisons (Kohn, 1987) to situate the Assyrian/ Métis Nations within the context of the myth-making of the Iraqi and Canadian states. We ask: What attempts do these Nations make to dismantle or overcome settler colonial myth-making? How does settler colonial myth-making inform internalized colonial-informed myth-making within these Indigenous Nations?

Indigenous Energy Futures: Settler Colonial Jurisdiction and the Tensions of Green Conservation and Development: James FitzGerald (Government of Canada)
Abstract: The Mushkegowuk Council on behalf of the Omushkego Wahkohtowin have been fighting to preserve the James Bay Lowlands through a conservation project since the 1970s. The Mushkegowuk Council was successful in securing federal funding from Parks Canada to establish a conservation area at the soggy muskeg— a natural carbon sink that sequesters millions of tons of carbon. Ontario seeks to expand mining in the James Bay Lowlands for critical mineral productions for batteries for electric vehicles. This paper examines the contested jurisdictional conflicts between federal and provincial development in Canada’s green transition. From a decolonial perspective, the paper argues that the continued tensions between provincial expansion of mining in the ring of fire and the conservation protections secured by the Mushkegowuk Council reveal significant divisions within Canada’s approach to the green transition. The paper then considers the assertions of landbased and stewardship rights by the Omushkego Wahkohtowin and what this means for jurisdiction going forward (McNeil 2000; Macklem 2012; Pasternak 2015). I then delve into what these emerging divisions reveal about the struggle over meanings over critical infrastructure and development under the green transition (Whyte 2017; LaDuke and Cowen 2020). I conclude with a discussion of what conservation projects reveal about the afterlives of settler development (Hall and Pryce 2023; Wiebe 2016; 2023). Overall, the paper points to the success of environmental conservation as a means of protecting Indigenous jurisdiction and rights. However, the paper also points to the greening of extractivism and the settler colonial underpinnings of deepening electrification.

“It felt very much like how the RCMP has always controlled us, walked not with us, but in control of us”: Documenting and learning from a case of Indigenous engagement with the RCMP: Colleen Bell (University of Saskatchewan), Lou Pingeot (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: Should Indigenous individuals and communities interested in advancing decolonization engage with the Canadian settler colonial state? This theoretical debate seems to pit two opposed positions against each other: engagement alienates and ultimately reinforces the settler state as a structure of domination vs. engagement can lead to change because settler colonialism is a relation. In practice, however, engaging with or turning away from the state is not mutually exclusive. This opens the door to exploring what happens when engagement occurs. In this paper, we present the micro story of what happens when Indigenous individuals engage with one of the most emblematic institutions of the Canadian settler state, the RCMP. We look at the case of the “Circle of Change,” an internal advisory committee created by the RCMP ahead of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Building on interviews with Circle members in 2023-24, we explore what their situated, embodied experience can tell us about possibilities for change and unbendable continuities. By Circle members telling us their story and then us relaying it, we document an experience that would otherwise remain a few abstract lines in RCMP promotional material and seek accountability.