The Lethality of the Canadian State's (Re)cognition of Indigenous Peoples

Abstract

In 1982, the Canadian state constitutionally “recognized and affirmed” the “existing Aboriginal rights and treaty rights” of its indigenous peoples. The constitutional turn to recognition promised reconciliation between nonindigenous Canadians and Canada's indigenous peoples. This chapter uses “recognition” as an entry point to reconsider some of the (legal) events marking the Canadian state's relations to indigenous peoples. More specifically, this chapter traces recognition's failure to overcome the Canadian state's lethal cognition of indigenous peoples. Because we dwell on how re -cognition discursively repeats cognition in one specific context, we seek neither to show that the discourse and practice of recognition are always and necessarily lethal nor to contribute directly to the theoretical literature that treats the classic texts on recognition. First, we identify the state as the political form of lethality, locating the lethality of the state in “cognition,” in how the state knows, and hence how it sees and speaks. Second, we turn to the Royal Proclamation , the Indian Act , and the White Paper to show cognition at work in the attempt to make indigenous peoples legible, so as to rewrite them as members of a simplified Indian population. Finally, we illustrate the persistence of cognition in recognition by considering the constitutional promise of an honorable speech grounded in a proper sight of indigenous peoples. By examining the Supreme Court of Canada's interpretation of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 , we show how recognition continues to reduce indigenous peoples to populations and is tied to an understanding of reconciliation as submission to Crown sovereignty.