Since the 1960s, some Aboriginal theorists and political leaders have opposed aspects of Canadian multiculturalism. In part this is because multicultural policies and their promise of "tolerance" (within western institutions) and formal equality insufficiently recognize the sui generis rights of Aboriginal peoples, while similarly failing to address the continuing economic, social, and political inequalities between Aboriginal and settler populations. This article proposes working towards a "syncretic multiculturalism," which might involve adopting a "binational" perspective, focusing on the need for partnership between Aboriginal and Shognosh peoples. Such a perspective can help the country move beyond "colonial multiculturalism" which privileges integration into dominant English and French settler societies. Prioritizing Aboriginal involvement in reshaping national institutions and identity, so that newcomers and the rest of us are integrated into Aboriginal ways of knowing and being, can play a role in repairing some of the harms done through residential schooling and other colonial policies (Publication abstract).
This paper provides a comprehensive look at sex discriminatory policy as it has been directed toward First Nations in Canada since the 1800s. This policy has created boundary maintenance struggles and has reshaped gendered and social relations in some communities. I raise a series of questions about the process of colonial intrusion, histories of adaptation, and the accommodation of sex discriminatory policy. First Nations have coped with and adapted to policy intrusions around Indian citizenship, but further research will be needed to investigate the collective impacts of sex discriminatory policy (including Bill C-31: An Act to Amend the Indian Act). In light of the policy considerations that are outlined, I offer suggestions to help guide this research and, indeed, the discussions about First Nations identity, citizenship, and belonging (Publication Abstract).
The regulation of Native identity has been central to the colonization process in both Canada and the United States. Systems of classification and control enable settler governments to define who is "Indian," and control access to Native land. These regulatory systems have forcibly supplanted traditional Indigenous ways of identifying the self in relation to land and community, functioning discursively to naturalize colonial worldviews. Decolonization, then, must involve deconstructing and reshaping how we understand Indigenous identity (Publication Abstract).
Oral history, pictorial evidence, and government and missionary records are used to test the traditional interpretation of policies of political control and cultural suppression. The "pass system," prohibition of potlatch and dances, and directed cultural change through residential schooling were much less effective than generally thought. Indian peoples employed strategies of resistance, evasion, and defiance to counter attempts to control their lives and eradicate their traditions (Publication Abstract).
This article examines the relationship that emerged between injury and indigeneity in a recent residential school lawsuit in Canada. In Blackwater v. Plint (2001, 2003, 2005), several former residential school students sued Canada and the United Church for injuries they sustained as a result of sexual and physical abuse, neglect, and forced assimilation at the Alberni Indian Residential School. The plaintiffs argued that their loss of culture and language was an injury for which Canada and the United Church should be held liable. During the trial these plaintiffs tried to construct an uninjured aboriginality as normative prior to attending the residential school. Church and government lawyers, however, reified aboriginality in a way that made injury the true difference that resides in aboriginal people and something for which the plaintiffs rather than the government or church were to blame. This article shows how the logic of tort law combined with existing assumptions about aboriginal people to facilitate these arguments. Throughout, the article draws attention to the importance of the law and legal processes as sites for the negative construction of aboriginality (Publication abstract).
Article may also fall under “Indian Residential Schools” subcategory.
“Conflict, Coercion, and Settler Colonialism in Western Canada” reviews the documentary The Pass System. The film strongly refutes Canada’s “myth of benevolence” – the belief that the country was created peacefully, without conflict or coercion – by showing how the pass system was devised in direct response to colonial conflict.
This paper will outline the history of federal and provincial laws applicable to aboriginal people. Much has been written about discriminatory federal legislation respecting Indians.
The exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament over "Indians and lands reserved for the Indians"(1) and the large body of resulting federal legislation(2) are obvious reasons for the emphasis on the federal side of this story. There has been relatively little discussion, however, of the discriminatory provincial legislation and the joint impact of federal and provincial discrimination on the basic human rights of aboriginal people. This paper does not attempt to identify exhaustively every instance of statutory discrimination and its implications. It will, however, review the history of this issue and examine both federal and provincial strands of legislation. The word "discrimination" will be used in the sense of legal distinctions singling out aboriginal people for special treatment and operating to the detriment of their fundamental human rights (Moss and Gardner-O'Toole, 1991).
“On February 20, 2003, the Saskatchewan Minister of Justice announced the appointment of the Honourable Mr. Justice David H. Wright to conduct a Commission of Inquiry Into Matters Relating to the Death of Neil Stonechild.
The Commission was given the responsibility to inquire into any and all aspects of the circumstances that resulted in the death of Neil Stonechild, and the conduct of the investigation into the death of Neil Stonechild for the purpose of making findings and recommendations with respect to the administration of criminal justice in the province of Saskatchewan.”
This pedagogical resource provides instructors with syllabus resources to include Indigenous content in political science courses. It encourages instructors to use Indigenous content materials in a way that engages Indigenous political traditions from an internal perspective; communicates the significance and complexity of issues; is anti-racist and anti-oppressive; is critical, reflexive and constructive; is attentive to gender and other forms of oppression; and engages Indigenous communities without being overly reliant on Indigenous people to do work that non-Indigenous people can and should be doing.
The Indigenous content materials survey key issues and debates in political science, including: democracy, political participation, citizenship, Indigenous politics, federalism, Canadian settler identity, Indigeneity and multiculturalism, ethnocultural pluralism and anti-racist politics, Canadian constitutionalism, settler colonialism, legal pluralism and Indigenous law, Canadian law and justice system, Indigenous governance and self-governance, political community, and race, culture and nationhood.
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