Tracing understanding of sovereignty and settler-colonial violence in the Quebec’s Viens Commission (2016–2019)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Val d'Or crisis began in 2015 with local Indigenous women naming the violence they faced at the hands of police officers in a news report, which culminated in 37 documented cases yet no criminal charges. In response to the outcry, the provincial ‘Viens Commission: Listening, Reconciliation and Progress' was launched in 2016. The mandate of the commission was to determine if Indigenous people faced discrimination in Quebec's public services. This paper reviews the terms and limits of this commission when it is understood as a discursive production of modern liberal settler-colonial nations. My analysis proposes that the commission, unwittingly or not, is bound by the conditions of existence of ongoing settler-colonization, that is the imperative of land access. The issue of discrimination against Indigenous people can then be discussed and ‘resolved' as disconnected from issues of land sovereignty. As per Goeman’s conception of scales of spatial injustices, it mostly leaves the alienation between the interconnected scales targeted by settler-colonial violence (such as body and land) unchanged. By paying attention to the way violence is presented and managed, I discuss how the commission may be oriented by larger conditions interested in re-settling the present and in veiling land sovereignty questions.