(IND5a) Indigenous-Settler Relations and Decolonization I

This session features presentations addressing issues of Indigenous-settler relations and decolonization.   Tags: Indigenous Studies

Organizer: Kerry Bailey, McMaster University and University of Saskatchewan; Chair: Kerry Bailey, McMaster University and University of Saskatchewan

Presentations

Dean Ray, York University

Indigenous Futures: What makes resurgence possible?

Drawing on five years of field work with six Indigenous communities and 56 qualitative interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers in Indigenous organization this paper provides an empirical description of resurgence. I argue that Indigenous resurgence is made possible through the hybridization of different forms, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to create an institutional and cultural infrastructure for resurgence, principally through strategic organizational practices, self-help cultures, and a culture of vision. I trace these strategies of hybridization. Organizations fuse Indigenous cultures with modern organizational forms to create resurgence, providing an institutional infrastructure through which Indigenous communities create space and time for their cultural practices, reconnect with the land, limit whiteness as a credential, transform Indigeneity into a credential, and reject practices that perpetuate settler-colonial power dynamics. Self-help cultures are deployed by communities to reconnect their members with traditional language, spirituality, and culture, enabling the valuable work of rebuilding their worlds. Finally, Indigenous communities in the Valley combine different temporalities, including their own culture of vision with modern time, to create historical cognition or an enhanced awareness of the past and the future that reshapes the capacity for Indigenous agency in the present. This cultural toolkit, comprised of elements from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous sources, makes resurgence possible.

Karishma Binta Tofail, University of Ottawa

Portrait of Intolerance towards Indigenous people in Canada

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission acknowledges the long-lasting hardships that Indigenous people and their families faced as a result of the Indian residential school system. This provided an opportunity, arguably unprecedented in its scope, to shed some light on an often-neglected part of Canadian history and create awareness and understanding in the greater public. Despite this progress, negative attitudes and behaviours toward First Nations will likely remain in Canada for decades to come, such as negative stereotypes (perceived laziness, unfair special treatment, welfare abuse) and intolerance (discrimination and racism). This research paper explores the complex issue of intolerance toward indigenous people in Canada. It provides a detailed examination based on historical context and theoretically grounded empirical research. Our objective is to provide a portrait of intolerance toward First Nations in Canada and to examine its determinants. Our theoretical framework is based on a series of middle-range theories to explain the different factors of intolerance, most notably, realistic group conflict theory, social identity theory, contact hypothesis, and personality trait theory. This social-psychological perspective on intolerance offers insights into competition for resources, varying support for multiculturalism, the legacy of colonialism, and psychological traits. Methodologically, we performed a least-squared regression model to examine the factors that explain negative attitudes toward First Nations in Canada. To accomplish this, we used the 2014 Provincial Diversity Project Survey. By understanding the determinants of negative attitudes, we hope that we may contribute to fostering a more tolerant and inclusive future for indigenous communities in Canada.

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Non-presenting author: Mathieu Lizotte, University of Ottawa

Susan O'Donnell, St. Thomas University

Nuclear Waste on Indigenous Homelands: A Settler Critique

The Canadian settler state has been involved in nuclear technology since the Manhattan project that developed the bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Later, as part of the Cold War, Canada too sought to use nuclear technology to support the power of the U.S. led “capitalist” bloc. Starting from such beginnings, the nuclear establishment in Canada has expanded to link federal departments, Crown corporations and agencies, provincial public utilities, public universities and thousands of companies from small manufacturers to Canada’s largest multinationals and partners in the U.S. and beyond. The main selling point has also evolved; nuclear technology is now portrayed as a safe and reliable source of energy that produces no carbon emissions, thereby allowing continued economic growth in the face of a dire climate crisis, thus ensuring the survival of the current capitalist trajectory. This message overlooks the well-known problems associated with nuclear energy: the risk of catastrophic nuclear accidents, the linkage with nuclear weapons proliferation, and the challenge of dealing with radioactive waste that stays hazardous for millennia. Many Indigenous communities in Canada are concerned about radioactive waste on their homelands (Akagi and O’Donnell, 2023; Blaise and Stencil, 2020; Coates and Landrie-Parker, n.d; Höffken and Ramana, 2023). In June 2021, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act came into force in Canada. Article 20(2) of the UNDRIP states: “ States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent ” (United Nations, 2017). ‘Hazardous materials’ includes nuclear waste, categorized by different levels of radioactivity. Of particular concern is high-level waste that includes spent or used nuclear fuel, that encompasses the most radioactive products of the nuclear fuel chain (Ramana 2018). High-level nuclear waste has been produced, and is currently stored, at sites in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba. The industry-run organization, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is trying to find a site to build a proposed ‘deep geological repository’ to bury this stockpile (Ramana 2013). It is expected to select one of two sites in Ontario, both of which on Indigenous territory, to site this repository. Several First Nations have expressed their opposition to such siting. If the NWMO proceeds with its plan, it will add to the long history of the environmental and health consequences of the nuclear power fuel chain falling disproportionally on Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities as well as all our non-human relations (Höffken and Ramana, 2023). Our paper will explore the settler-colonial aspects of the nuclear industry, the situation of nuclear waste on Indigenous homelands, and what reconciliation with the nuclear industry might mean, from a settler perspective.

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Non-presenting author: M.V. Ramana, University of British Columbia

Natalie Snow, Humber College; Manjot Naroo, Independent

Resisting Extractive Capitalism: The Criminalization of Indigenous Activism

This study explores the criminalization of Indigenous activism protesting the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline that runs through Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. Despite the pipeline’s well-known negative impact on the Indigenous communities and the environment, the expansion approval of this project juxtaposes the commitments made by the government to (1) prevent rising global temperatures under the Paris Climate Agreement and (2) the path to reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples. We argue that Indigenous activists are criminalized by agents of the Canadian state as a political strategy to delegitimize the Indigenous opposition and neutralize dissent. One of these agents is the news media, as it normalizes the criminalization of Indigenous communities and plays a significant role in people’s understanding of social movements. Movements such as Idle No More are powerful examples of the Indigenous resistance against colonial violence, corporate destruction and brazen human rights violations. Direct action in the form of blockades represents material obstacles to extractive capitalism and challenges the settler-colonial constant circuitry of capital from the lands. The protests raise awareness of the lack of prior and informed consent from Indigenous communities, the erosion of treaty rights, and the suppression of Indigenous self-determination/sovereignty. Thus, through content analysis, we examined the framing of Indigenous activism in 284 Canadian newspapers between June 18, 2019, to December 19, 2023. Our findings suggest that Indigenous activists are indeed hyper-surveilled and over-criminalized by the settler-colonial state as a strategy to eliminate interference within the construction of the pipeline project. The negative framing of the protestors revealed overarching patterns of how Indigenous resurgence and self-determinism are met with punitive forces by the state. Secret surveillance technologies and aggressive law enforcement interventions further highlighted the colonial logic that seeks to alienate, criminalize, and oppress Indigeneity. Our research illuminates the anonymity of the institutional colonial power that dwells within the matrix of the overlapping social, economic, environmental and technological dimensions of society. Through the deconstruction of Indigenous criminalization, we hope to unveil the true paradoxical nature of the post-colonial humanitarian society that Canada aims to be.