Canadian Settler Research Articles

From European Roots to Settler Soil: Adapting Foucault’s Biopolitics to Canadian Settler Colonialism

This article examines the applicability of Michel Foucault’s biopolitical theory within the Canadian settler colonial context. Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, which describes the shift from sovereign power to the regulation of life and populations, is grounded in European historical contexts. In contrast, the Canadian settler colonial experience diverges significantly, necessitating a re-examination of biopolitics. The article argues that in Canada, the relationship between sovereignty, population, and territory does not follow the European model described by Foucault. Instead, Crown sovereignty established its control through legal mechanisms that defined ‘Indian’ status, displacing Indigenous territorialities and political structures. By analysing the evolution of ‘Indian’ status within the Indian Act (1985), the article highlights the centrality of law in constructing settler colonial biopolitics. This legal framework was used to manage and assimilate Indigenous populations, reflecting a unique biopolitical strategy aimed at creating a relationship to territory and population. The study contributes to a more specific understanding of biopolitics in settler colonial contexts, emphasizing the distinct role of law in these processes.

Canadian settler colonialism: Structure, event, relationship, or process?

AbstractGeography scholarship examining Canadian colonialism often draws upon concepts and categories from the field of Settler Colonial Studies, including Patrick Wolfe's definition of settler colonialism as a “structure rather than an event.” In this brief intervention, I argue that historical Marxist debates about structuralism and social class have important lessons for the way geographers characterize Canadian colonialism today. The definition of class as both relationship and process is especially relevant, because Indigenous intellectuals and activists tend to speak about (de)colonization in similar terms. By reframing Canadian colonialism as relationship and process rather than structure, we can better engage Indigenous criticisms of Settler Colonial Studies, understandings of (de)colonization, and epistemologies and ontologies.

Antiracism in appreciative inquiry: Generative tensions and collective reflexivity.

Appreciative inquiry is an action research methodology focused on revealing an organization's positive core. As a cross-racial team of antiracist researchers, we were drawn to appreciative inquiry due to its congruences with community-based research perspectives on power-sharing and co-constructing knowledge. Our collaborative reflexivity brought us to question whether Appreciative inquiry's hyper-focus on positivity would fit our antiracist research paradigm. We articulate reflections of how antiracism theory informed our approach to Appreciative inquiry in a study on the experiences of predominantly racialized settlement workers in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explain how we negotiated tensions between Appreciative inquiry's focus on positivity and our antiracist framing, in a Canadian settler colonial context where institutional expectations to ignore racism and collapse diversity, loom large. Without a theoretical framework that attends to racism and power, Appreciative inquiry may not fulsomely address participants' transnational knowledges, nor experiences outside of a positive/negative binary. In our elucidation of how critical reflexivity on racism allowed us to integrate antiracism into Appreciative inquiry, we demonstrate the value of first-person action research for expanding the social justice aims of research.

Settler-Neoliberalism: Tom Flanagan and Friedrich Hayek on the Prairies

After encountering the writings of neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek in the late 1970s, the political scientist Tom Flanagan became one of the most well-known Hayekians in Canada. Over the course of a career devoted mainly to the study of Louis Riel, Metis history, and the policies of Canadian settler colonialism, Flanagan developed a particular kind of “settler-neoliberalism.” This article takes a broad view of Flanagan’s intellectual development in order to show that, once Flanagan is situated transnationally in the appropriate intellectual currents, his work stands out and represents the most thoroughgoing effort, if not the only one, to deploy neoliberal ideas systematically in the service, or the defence, of a settler-colonial project. By examining the ways in which neoliberal ideas enabled Flanagan’s defence of settler colonialism, this article concludes ultimately that neoliberalism has been a collaborative companion to the Canadian settler-colonial project.

Dispatches From Eeyou Istchee: Cree Networks, Digital, and Social Inclusion

This article offers a fragmentary, partial history of the successes and challenges the Cree of Eeyou Istchee have encountered as they’ve developed the capacity to offer their region and communities a range of traditional, analogue, and digital services through the development and maintenance of different yet interconnected networks. Using social construction of technology (SCOT) and social shaping of technology (SST) theories as a framework, these dispatches offer a glimpse of the complexity and layeredness of two Cree networks as they come into contact and/or overlap with those of extractive colonialism, Canadian settler policies, and traditional Cree law and policy.

Young Black women's resistance to the Canadian settler colonial state apparatus: Negotiating the complexities of “being part of the system that oppresses”

AbstractYoung Black peoples encounter racism and discriminatory practices and policies through formal education and in the larger society (Creese, 2013; Dei & James, 1998; Kelly, 1998). As the experiences of the research participants—young Black women between the ages of 18 and 30—highlight, a formal education system that is structured to benefit and perpetuate the settler colonial state apparatus marginalizes Black youth, including those who are deemed “successful” through their acceptance into higher education as formal education and the labour market are structured according to the logic of settler colonialism. As such, these systems operate by imposing Euro‐Western systems of knowledge, justice, and community on racialized peoples, and in particular, Black peoples. Yet, the research also shows that while injustice is the reality for young Black people, so too is resistance through a small yet powerful contingent who are refusing to remain complicit in perpetuating settler colonialism.

“The lissome lady from Spain”: building Canadian modernism and flamenco dance in performance archives

ABSTRACT This article recovers the training and early career of Barbara Mary Beck “Conchita Triana” (1912–2006), the first professional flamenco dancer in Canada, whose professional career spanned from 1938 into the late 1950s. This recovery entails an exploration of archival records, analysis of the role of Spain for modernist Canadian artists across disciplines, performance histories of Canadian, American, and Spanish artists, and close reading of archival dance notation. Together, these contexts allow us to analyze the construction and emergence of a Canadian settler identity in the 1930s alongside a home-grown Canadian flamenco dance. Performance of an ostensible exotic import – on the stage and through the appropriation of Spanish identity – reinforces the legitimacy of white settler identity through the “mosaic” metaphor that dominates 1920s and 1930s conceptualization of Canada, positioning itself for the first time as a nation distinct from Britain. Spanish cultural performance as a tool to explore Canadian settler identity remains relevant today, as Canadian flamenco artists continue to interrogate their own national identities through the artform.

Introduction: Race and the Olympic Games

Introduction: Race and the Olympic Games

The 1936 Olympic Dance Competitions, Canadian Settler Colonialism, and the Indigenous Absence

Abstract Despite the substantial attention paid to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Internationale Tanzwettspiele of these Games has received nominal attention. The studies related to this relatively unknown episode in Olympic Games focus on the ethnocentrism of aesthetic expression in dance and ballet as cultural art forms. This article seeks to shift the focus toward the fundamental importance of the Indigenous absence at the center of this episode; its significance can be properly understood when placed in the context of Canadian settler colonialism. The article first provides an overview of settler colonial history and its implications for the Canadian troupe's Berlin performance. Second, the circumstances that led to the construction of the Canadian contribution to the 1936 dance competitions are examined. Lastly, we reflect on the reception of pre-Olympic performances offered in Tkaronto (Toronto) in May 1936 and on the Olympic performance's reception in the German media.

Reframing food as a commons in Canada

This paper interrogates the role of the dominant narrative of “food-as-commodity” in framing food systems policy in Canada. Human values shape policies, usually privileging those policies that are aligned with dominant values and neglecting others that confront dominant values. In that sense, valuing food as a commodity privileges specific market-based policy goals, regulations, and public subsidies that aim to enlarge market coverage. This prioritizes both corporate profit over societies´ common good and private enclosures of commons resources over universal access to food for all. Conversely, the normative shift this paper proposes—valuing and governing food as a commons—could enable socio-ecologically based policy goals and regulations, and redirect public subsidies to support customary and contemporary practices that produce and distribute food differently. Such a normative shift, scholars have argued, is a prerequisite for developing legal frameworks that lead to more and better 1) self-production; 2) stewardship of natural commons; and 3) civic participation in the governance of a resource that is essential for everybody´s survival. Valuing food as a commons can provide a complementary narrative to alternative civic claims such as food sovereignty, agro-ecology, or food justice. In this paper, we begin by outlining the theoretical basis for our investigation into the role of food valuation in the critical food guidance shaping public policy. Next, we provide an overview of the concept of food as commons through the multidimensional food values framework and offer a tri-centric governance model to frame the analysis. Following a brief policy context for Indigenous food initiatives in Canada, we then provide three case studies involving Anishnaabek food systems to explore valuation of food beyond commodity in customary and contemporary food systems. Finally, we discuss how valuing food as a commons offers critical food guidance for addressing multiple socio-ecological issues connected with food systems policy in the Canadian settler colonial context.

No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous

As a scholar who frequently relies on a microhistorical and biographical approach to Indigenous history, I often marvel at the ability of other historians to synthesize and build on previous scholarship to develop broad narratives that span political, cultural, and temporal borders. One of the perils of such an approach is that a cohesive argument can often become lost as data and sources multiply and become unmanageable. Despite these challenges, in No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous historian Sheldon Krasowski has succeeded in producing an innovative and cohesive account of the first seven numbered treaties negotiated between the Canadian government and western First Nations between 1871 and 1877.Drawing from his work with Indigenous elders and academics in the province of Saskatchewan, Krasowski implements an Indigenous “Treaty Bundle” approach. By recognizing treaties as sacred undertakings enacted through ceremony, this approach draws on Indigenous oral histories that understood the treaties to be a cumulative, interrelated whole rather than isolated instances of policy negotiation. Through this approach, No Surrender builds on previous scholarship that focused on individual treaties to step back and identify the larger patterns that ran throughout the negotiations of the first seven numbered treaties.By writing largely in response to what he terms the “misunderstanding thesis,” Krasowski has made use of previously overlooked eyewitness accounts and Indigenous oral histories to reexamine the veracity of the published records of government operatives. Beginning in 1936, historian George F. G. Stanley promoted the interpretation that the ill effects of the numbered treaties were largely the result of misunderstandings arising from the interaction of two deeply different cultures and that the government negotiators, though confused and misguided, acted honorably and in good faith. This “misunderstanding thesis” has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century Canadian treaty scholarship. While acknowledging the complex cultural interactions that pervaded treaty negotiations, Krasowski argues that negotiators on both sides understood each other to a much greater extent than was previously thought. In light of this, No Surrender concludes that the representatives of the Canadian government acted duplicitously by downplaying the significance and meaning of the “surrender clause,” which was intended to forfeit Indigenous lands to the Canadian government. Krasowski points out that in four of the seven sets of treaty negotiations, despite the centrality of land surrender to the Canadian government’s goals, the surrender clause never appeared in recorded translations or proceedings. The swiftness and opacity of the government’s negotiations were sometimes so apparent that they were critiqued by missionaries and traders whom the government relied on as witnesses, translators, and Indigenous liaisons. This theme connects all seven of the treaties studied in No Surrender and is supported by Euro-Canadian eyewitness testimonies and Indigenous oral histories alike.No Surrender will be an invaluable text for undergraduate students of Canadian and Indigenous history because of both its comprehensive analysis of the first seven numbered treaties and its modeling of fundamental historical methods. By carefully walking the reader through the construction of his argument, Krasowski provides a clear discussion of the different kinds of sources used by historians and their associated challenges. In addition, the historiographical passages are straightforward models of how aspiring historians should grapple with previous scholarship. Additionally, future scholars of Indigenous peoples’ dealings with the Canadian government, Canadian settler colonial policy, and the history of western Canada will need to engage with No Surrender. New research on treaties in particular will benefit from Krasowski’s synthesis and reinterpretation of previous scholarship through the lens of Indigenous oral histories and the Treaty Bundle framework.

Pokémon Go as palimpsest

In this paper, I employ the concept of the palimpsest of meaning (Bailey, 2007) to illustrate how Pokémon Go shapes and produces relations to place. Using ethnographic data from student players at the University of Guelph, I demonstrate how augmented reality (AR) gaming constructs a curated layer of place meaning that influences players’ knowledge of, relationships to, and movement through space. In so doing, I argue that we should not ignore the potential of AR technology to influence how we come to know place, emphasizing the impacts that biases, which are coded into this technology, might have on subaltern narratives of place and on marginalized communities, particularly in the context of Canadian settler colonialism and the erasure of Indigenous knowledge.

Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity

Darryl Leroux’s Distorted Descent provides a fascinating glimpse into the broader colonial structural issues at play in what he calls the “race-shifting” or “self-Indigenization” phenomenon that has taken hold over the last decade or so in the United States and Canada. Leroux spends the majority of the book focused on white settlers of French descent in various communities across eastern Canada and the United States, breaking down the methods and justifications they use to craft a contemporary Indigenous identity. For the most part, Leroux’s focus is on white people who either claim Métis identity using genealogical methods that connect them to an Indigenous (usually First Nations) relative as far back as twelve generations or claim Indigeneity for a distant non-Indigenous relative. It is important that Leroux distinguishes between white settlers claiming Indigenous heritage when there is none to be found and Indigenous people struggling to reconnect to communities after US and Canadian assimilationist policies and institutions, such as the “sixties scoop” and residential/boarding schools, severed ties.Leroux’s intensive research into online French genealogy message boards yields a series of patterns through which white settlers make fraudulent claims to Indigeneity. Distorted Descent offers names for these patterns; for example, settlers using an Indigenous relative three hundred years in the past are manufacturing Indigeneity through “lineal” descent. Settlers attempting to claim Indigeneity by rewriting a distant settler relative as Indigenous do so through “aspirational” descent.Much of the book serves as a well-researched and astutely historical critique of settler focus on blood quantum and generational cut-offs as sole indicators of Indigeneity. It traces the ways in which settler concepts of genetics have been used to erase Indigeneity and claims to territory in both Canada and the United States. Importantly, blood quantum models of determining Indigeneity have served to undermine Indigenous systems of kinship, and this trend continues in the recent upswing in white claims to Indigenous identity. Leroux draws on the work of esteemed Métis scholars Chris Andersen and Brenda Macdougall, for example, to outline how settler ideas of Indigeneity have ignored structures of kinship and claiming in the Métis nation, actively threatening Métis sovereignty as a result.The crucial part of Leroux’s argument is not in his study and description of the phenomenon itself but in his framing of race shifting and the self-Indigenization movement as part of broader patriarchal white supremacist structures of colonial dispossession, even beyond Leroux’s identification of the roots of many of these so-called Indigenous groups in white supremacist organizations. In claiming a false Indigenous identity, many settlers have used their invented status to actively undermine and dispossess living Indigenous groups. Leroux brilliantly frames this as “[facilitating] white futurity in response to conventional reconciliation frameworks” (219). Leroux places this “new” phenomenon in context, thus presenting it as a continuation of centuries of colonial oppression—just with a different face.It is important to note that Leroux is not a historian—his roots in sociology and anthropology are clear in this book—but it is precisely the importance of a historical framing of many of the topics in Distorted Descent to which I would like to turn. While most of the book is dedicated to white settlers claiming Métis identity, there are sections where Leroux discusses settler claims to First Nations/Native American identities for similar purposes. The quick shift between two very different groups of Indigenous peoples at points throughout the book—the individuality of single nations aside—risks conflation of unique circumstances and historical and contemporary relationships with colonial power. Various nations and Indigenous groups have different practices of kinship and claiming that get lost in Leroux’s contemporary analysis of the issue and heavier focus on fake Métis claims without making the book solely about claims to Métis identity.While the book does talk about some differences between assimilation policies in the United States and Canada, it misses an opportunity to look at how historical differences between Indigenous relationships with US and Canadian settler states in place impact the kinds of rhetoric used to dispossess Indigenous peoples and how settler recognition—and de-recognition—are shaped by these contexts. These factors need to be considered when discussing issues of fake claims to Indigeneity, particularly in the northeastern United States, where there is a much longer history of colonial dispossession than in western regions. Indigenous nations like the Mashpee Wampanoag, for example, have continued to struggle for federal recognition in the face of a centuries-long attack on their sovereignty and claim to their home territory. While there are indeed white settlers taking advantage of this, the conversation is a great deal more nuanced than the scope of this book could address.Overall, Distorted Descent joins the ranks of important works, such as those of Kim Tallbear, about colonial attempts to control Indigeneity, and it will inform what will no doubt remain a robust and crucial conversation in this contemporary moment.

When Salmon meets Saran Wrap: Settler Colonial Placidity and Anti-Relationality in Ktaqmkuk

This article uses white Canadian settler artist Mary Pratt’s photorealistic paintings of salmon to grapple with the ways in which settler colonialism necessitates anti-relationality between humans and the non-human world. I trace Indigenous (Beothuk and Mi’kmaq) histories of salmon in Ktaqmkuk|Newfoundland to grapple with what Pratt’s seemingly placid visions of everyday domestic settler life violently erase, concluding by with representations of salmon by Beothuk artist Shanawdithit.

“Ongoing harm under a prettier, brighter umbrella”: A critical analysis of reconciliation talk in Canadian settler philanthropy

AbstractEngagement with the concept of reconciliation, broadly understood as the process or goal of transforming relations among Canada's Indigenous and non‐Indigenous peoples, became commonplace in the philanthropic sector after the 2015 release of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Institutional responses to the TRC (e.g., by universities, businesses, healthcare institutions, governments, etc.) have been widely discussed in the academic literature—lauded by some as pivotal to the transformation of Indigenous/settler relations, and critiqued by many as no more than a shift in rhetoric covering over ongoing racialized colonial violence. Through a critical analysis of reconciliation talk as articulated through blog posts, press articles, conference recordings, webinars, and professional development resources produced by and for progressive settler philanthropy from 2012 to 2020, this essay analyses the hearty uptake of reconciliation in the sector. I bring these texts into dialog with the larger body of critiques of reconciliation, with the aim of interrogating settler philanthropy's place and roles in Canada's settler colonial order, past, and present. I focus on common terms and concepts that appear in conjunction with reconciliation talk such as diversity and inclusion; community‐engagement and relationship building; learning and listening. I also explore instances of obfuscation and renaming, such as a scarcity of explicit references to race and racism, colonialism and white supremacy and a tendency to relegate colonialism to the past in texts produced by non‐Indigenous authors. The themes I identify across these texts resemble those apparent in other institutional contexts. Reconciliation talk has potential to transform how settler philanthropy engages with Indigenous communities. Yet, many of the most urgent critiques raised in other fields apply to this context. Ultimately, I conclude, reconciliation talk may elevate and uphold—and indeed conceal—the white supremacist, colonial status quo in settler philanthropy and in Canada more broadly. Occlusions and renaming common to settler philanthropy's reconciliation talk contribute to what Vimalassery et al. describe as “colonial unknowing” and what Tuck and Yang call “settler moves to innocence.” In these ways, reconciliation serves a mystifying function for settler philanthropy, masking ongoing coloniality, absolving settler guilt, and avoiding more radical, transformative possibilities.

Exploring the Creative Geographies of Work with Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers: Exposing intersections of time and labour in New Brunswick, Canada

What creative approaches might be harnessed to encourage social critique and action in pre-service Geography teacher education? By reflecting on an assignment in Casey’s Introduction to Teaching Geography class where pre-service teachers (including Allen) visually mapped a worker’s labour for a day on unceded and unsurrendered Wolastoqiyik territory (Fredericton, New Brunswick), we ask: What can we learn about work, labour, space, capitalism, and intersectionality by visually mapping a worker’s day and analyzing their labour? We argue that by confronting the apolitical teaching of Geography education through the example of the Mapping Labour assignment, we might attempt to disrupt the ways that European Canadian settler geographies permeate the existing curriculum and work to disrupt neoliberal assumptions about schooling, creativity, and work.

Indigenous mothers’ experiences of power and control in child welfare: Families being heard

Summary There are upward of 11,000 Indigenous children and families in the Manitoba Child and Family Services (CFSs). Many factors coalesce as contributors to these high rates of care, including oppressive histories of Canadian settler colonialism, governmental policies and the Indian Residential Schools, and mass apprehensions of Indigenous children through “the 60’s scoop.” Although a process of “Devolution” began in Manitoba in 1999 to address Indigenous overrepresentation and improve cultural safety for children and families, the voices of women whose children are in care often remain silenced and marginal. Findings Utilizing an Indigenous Research lens, this qualitative study explored the stories and experiences of 12 Indigenous mothers involved with Manitoba CFS. The mothers’ stories revealed dynamics of power and control outlined in five core themes: (1) Being “set up to fail”; (2) Confronting “normalcy” and navigating case plans; (3) Dealing with tactics of intimidation; (4) Experiencing judgment and being labelled; and (5) Emotional politics. The mothers’ stories suggest that the CFS system continues to reflect colonial structures of oppression and that the “Devolution” did not fully have the intended impact on daily practice. Applications The womens' shared experiences highlight several areas for change, such as: enhanced family supports and worker relationships; utilization of capacity building frameworks; better institutional collaborations; increased efforts to maintain family relationships and units; and greater access to and quality of Indigenous cultural supports for mothers and children, including ceremony, healing, and access to Elders. Suggestions for more efficient and family-centered service provision are also offered.

Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance

Focusing on the Canadian settler context, this article analyzes two of Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s interactive works that enact alternatives to colonial understandings of voicing and listening that have centred the human ear and vocal apparatus. In particular, I analyze Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991), where Belmore constructed a large wooden megaphone for participants to speak into and address the land directly, and Wave Sound (2017), where Belmore installed four sculptural listening tubes in Canadian National Park and reserve sites that invited visitors to listen to the land. Through my analysis of these two iterative performances, I examine how the echo functions as a decolonial gesture and multisensorial (re)mapping that can generate alternatives to modernity’s spatial-temporal-sensorial order and unsettle the coloniality of the voice. Engaging critical work in sound studies and Native feminist theories to think about vibration, I propose that voicing and listening can be understood as a set of social relationships between people and space/time.

Safeguarding Settler Colonialism in Geneva: Canada, Indigenous Rights, and ilo Convention No. 107 on the Protection and Integration of Indigenous Peoples (1957)

This article explores the intersecting of liberal internationalism and settler colonialism by tracing the Canadian governmental response to the emergence of International Labour Organisation (ilo) Convention 107 (1957) and Recommendation 104 (1957), the first international treaties regarding the rights of Indigenous Peoples in independent states. Drawing upon the archives of the ilo, Canada’s Department of External Affairs and Department of Citizenship and Immigration, notably the latter’s Indian Affairs Branch, the article investigates the convergence of mid-twentieth-century notions of Indigenous rights and the global phenomenon of “development.” It also explores how, amid anti-colonial resistance, decolonization, and an emerging international human rights regime, settler states responded, not least by seeking to blunt if not defeat the ilo initiative. In addition to yielding greater understanding of the origins and emergence of the ilo instruments, this analysis contributes to critical interrogations of Canadian liberal internationalism by revealing how Canadian settler preoccupations were projected abroad and shaped the international system’s evolving treatment of Indigenous Peoples. It also offers a different perspective on Canadian Indian policy by revealing the “global” dimension of an allegedly “domestic” question. Finally, the article highlights a parallel history of Indigenous internationalism speaking back to a world order constructed on Indigenous displacement and dispossession.

Creative Research as Story-Telling: An Indigenous visual culture course from the perspectives of a librarian, a professor and students

AbstractLocated on Treaty #13 (Toronto Purchase) territory, OCAD University offers an Indigenous Visual Culture (INVC) program that leads to a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree or an interdisciplinary minor. The curriculum combines courses in the cultural, social and political history of Indigenous peoples, preparing students to engage in global discourses in contemporary art practice through a profound understanding of story-telling as the foundation of visual culture.A narrative framework is used to present an information literacy interaction with an INVC course from the perspectives of a librarian from the Canadian settler population and an assistant professor, who is a member of the Métis Indigenous nation. Research and evaluation models are presented; ones that emerged from traditional information literacy concepts informed and transformed by Indigenous knowledge systems. Finally, student learning outcomes from the course are presented through an exhibition of artworks and artist statements that display their visual story-telling skills.