Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics

L01 - Workshop on Indigenous Politics - The Problems and Possibilities of Canadian-Indigenous Politics

Date: Jun 2 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location:

Joint Session / Séance conjointe : Canadian Politics

Chair/Président/Présidente : Dallas Hunt (University of British Columbia)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Matthew Wildcat (University of Alberta)

Session Abstract: This panel offers reflection on the possible spaces of ethical engagement between the fields of Canadian and Indigenous politics from the standpoint of white settler scholars whose work aims at confronting colonialism and white privilege. Recognizing that colonialism is integral to settler understanding and vision, colonialism is here approached as a shared yet differently experienced situation that requires a response from settlers – both to that situation and to Indigenous peoples and their critiques, visions, and claims. Our four papers reflect on this question of ethical engagement between Canadian and Indigenous politics from the overlapping standpoints of organizer, pedagogue, and theorist. Joëlle Alice Michaud-Ouellet reflects on the possibilities of decolonizing settler political imaginaries via an investigation of the place of maple syrup as a symbol of Québécois identity. Phil Henderson offers his thoughts on the possibilities and limits of the discipline of political science and its classrooms in upholding settler responsibilities and supporting Indigenous resurgence. Renée Beausoleil reflects on the successes and challenges involved in taking seriously and applying Indigenous intellectual traditions based on her deployment of Indigenous law and the Indigenous Law Research Methodology in the context of practical governance issues. While Corey Snelgrove suggests the necessity of a shift within Canadian political theory and practice from the question of recognition to the question of criticism.

Decolonizing Settler Political Imaginary: Elements of Reflection on Québécois Representations, Discourses, and Symbols Around Maple Syrup: Joëlle Alice Michaud-Ouellet (Simon Fraser University)
Abstract: This paper initiates a new research project on Québécois settler political imaginary, the more particular aim of which is to offer a critical reflection on the representations, discourses, and symbols that Québécois settlers have formed around the production of maple syrup. The impulse from this new research comes from the author’s engagement with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s thought-provoking article Land as Pedagogy and the recognition that maple syrup production in Québec today lies on instances of cultural appropriation, as well as land appropriation. In other words, the relationship Québécois settlers entertain with maple syrup production is a site that calls for decolonization, particularly when it is mobilized as a symbol of so-called pure laine Québécois identity. Yet, building off previous research on Maussian gifting as an approach to thinking about relational self-determination and shifting Québécois settler political imaginary away from the state and the logic of sovereignty, this new research also presents that site as one that lies on and perpetuates gifting and storytelling. Based on this tension, this project seeks to explore the limits and possibilities offered by those representations, discourses, and symbols for channelling a post-colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples, and the land. It will also explore their implications for the relationship between Québécois people and immigrants living in Québec.

Can Our Classrooms Become Places Where We “Make Things Right”?: Phil Henderson (University of Victoria)
Abstract: In fall of 2019, students, faculty, and staff at the University of Victoria (Lkwungen Territories) worked to build a mobile tiny home in the style of a Kwakwa?ka??wakw Big House. This “Little Big House” project was conducted under the guidance and in support of Tsastilqualus Umbas, a matriarch and salmon warrior of the Ma’amtagila nation. Soon, the Little Big House will move out onto the land at Hiladi—a Ma’amtagila village abandoned during the residential school era—reasserting Ma’amtagila sovereignty, jurisdiction, and governance. Ma’amtagila presence at Hiladi also expands the nation’s resistance against state-sanctioned clear-cutting and salmon farming that threaten their lands, waters, and more-than-human relations. This paper reflects on the project from the position of both organizer and pedagogue. First, I consider what the necessary conditions, frameworks, and relationships were that enabled a project like this to come together. From there, I reflect more explicitly on how Political Science classrooms attempted or could potentially attempt to engage and support Indigenous peoples in this sort of direct resurgence work. Finally I consider the structural and relational limitations imposed on this work when it is embedded within the university community. Throughout this paper, my reflections attend to the question of settler responsibility—that is, the obligations arising for non-Indigenous people as consequence of our implication within ongoing colonialism. But I also consider what the particular responsibilities of the discipline of Political Science are in an era of both publicly proclaimed ‘reconciliation’ and expanding/entrenching colonialism.

The Victoria Declaration: Practical Governance for Housing and Support Services: Renée Beausoleil (University of Alberta)
Abstract: This paper describes the challenges and successes of The Victoria Declaration, a governance resource designed to help communities address inequities created by colonialism, race, gender and class. The Declaration was co-created over the course of four workshops with people who both access and work in downtown social services in Victoria, BC. Over 70 people were involved in the process, just over half of whom have experience of homelessness and approximately half of whom are Indigenous peoples. A number of organizations are actively considering implementation, especially the Declaration’s call for inclusive and collaborative governance that centers community safety, where possible, based on Indigenous laws regarding long-term reciprocal relationships. To help us do this, we are using tools developed by the UVic Indigenous Law Research Unit that draw on stories from specific Indigenous legal traditions about governance issues, including harms and conflicts. As a non-Indigenous person facilitating this project as part of my dissertation research, I have grappled with political and ethical questions related to foregrounding Indigenous governance approaches without relying solely on the practices of Indigenous peoples. Responding to a disagreement that illustrates the complex relationships people have across axes of difference, I argue that practical governance researchers need to balance tensions between building collaborative relationships and recognizing the role individuals play within structures that reproduce inequities.

From Recognition to Critique? Indigenous Politics and the Problem of Canadian Political Science: Corey Snelgrove (University of British Columbia)
Abstract: While liberal political theory’s approach to difference is animated by the idea of tolerance and reasonable disagreement, the practices and visions of Indigenous peoples demonstrate the inadequacy of this framework. This is because these practices and visions often represent a critique of a settler colonial form of life. In this situation, tolerance becomes ‘repressive tolerance’ (Marcuse 1964). Other approaches to difference are similarly inadequate. As Indigenous political theorists tell us (Coulthard 2014, Simpson 2014), the politics of recognition in practice fails to challenge and therefore participate in the reproduction of the structures of settler colonialism. This has left Canadian political science at an impasse. In response, there has arisen an effort to minimize difference either by privileging the purportedly ‘realistic’ or by identifying some shared (historical or implicit) norm. This tendency to avoid difference is echoed as well in the discourse and practice of reconciliation as well as in the canons of treaty interpretation. In this paper, I highlight how difference makes critique unavoidable and that Canadian political science needs to face this problem rather than continue to obscure it. Towards this end, I offer a reading of Enrique Dussel’s Ethics of Liberation and Rahel Jaeggi’s Critique of Forms of Life as two approaches to the problem. I conclude by reflecting on how their respective answers are relevant both to the settler colonial situation and Canadian political science.