Pathways of Settler Decolonization

Lynne Davis, Jeffrey Denis, Raven Sinclair, Lynne Davis, Jeffrey Denis, Raven Sinclair, Lynne Davis, Jeffrey S. Denis, Raven Sinclair

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429752704
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Frühe amerikanische Geschichte

Although settler colonialism is a deeply entrenched structural problem, Indigenous peoples have always resisted it and sought to protect their land, sovereignty, and treaties. Some settlers have aimed to support Indigenous peoples in these struggles. This book examines what happens when settlers engage with and attempt to transform settler colonial systems.

What does 'decolonizing' action look like? What roles can settlers play? What challenges, complexities, and barriers arise? And what opportunities and possibilities emerge? The authors emphasize the need for settlers to develop long-term relationships of accountability with Indigenous peoples and the land, participate in meaningful dialogue, and respect Indigenous laws and jurisdiction. Writing from multiple disciplinary lenses, and focusing on diverse research settings, from Turtle Island (North America) to Palestine, the authors show that transforming settler colonial relations and consciousness is an ongoing, iterative, and unsettling process that occurs through social justice-focused action, critical self-reflection, and dynamic-yet-committed relationships with Indigenous peoples.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Settler Colonial Studies.

Complicated pathways: settler Canadians learning to re/frame themselves and their relationships with Indigenous peoples

Lynne Davis, Chris Hiller, Cherylanne James, Kristen Lloyd, Tessa Nasca and Sara Taylor

ABSTRACT

The relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler society in Canada has been profoundly shaped and affected by the ongoing and insidious processes of settler colonialism operating within all spheres of mainstream life. Indigenous peoples, grassroots activists, universities, NGOs, church groups and governments have organized many initiatives to educate and provide information to settler Canadians about colonial histories and the contemporary realities of Indigenous peoples. This paper introduces a research project which draws together many such initiatives in a website Transforming Relations. Through an analysis of the compiled initiatives, the complexities of transforming settler consciousness in Canada are demonstrated and discussed. Shifting settler consciousness has complex layers that must be engaged in order to disrupt the settler colonial status quo. We conclude that many initiatives are focused on changing awareness or consciousness and may not go further to name contemporary manifestations of settler colonialism where settler Canadians are positioned as its beneficiaries. The paper reflects on the need for analysis to understand what kinds of spaces and pedagogies lead to the most substantial shifts in settler consciousness, and how to effectively generate conversations that center Indigenous lands, sovereignties and resurgence.

When Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on Indian Residential Schools concluded its work in December 2015 and left behind 94 ‘Calls to Action’, the Government of Canada stated its intent to implement them.¹ It is too tempting to think we have entered a unique moment in the history of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada. When the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, in his 16 December 2015 speech to Assembly of First Nations Chiefs, committed to working in partnership with First Nations on a Nation-to-Nation basis,² those aware of Indigenous-non-Indigenous historical relations could not help but be reminded of those throughout history who had developed personal relationships with First Nations, who had made agreements based on mutual understandings, and whose efforts to enact good intentions³ were swept away by the structures, processes, values, greed and actions of the settler colonial state, its industrial capitalist economic imperatives and its well-indoctrinated citizens.

The discourse of ‘reconciliation’ has become widespread in Canadian society in the last decade and has gained considerable momentum with the interim and final reports of the TRC. ‘Reconciliation’ has been extensively critiqued by Indigenous scholars and allies who have dismissed the term as a romantic attempt to smooth over Indigenous–settler relationships while leaving the status quo untouched.⁴ Haudenosaunee scholar Taiaiake Alfred has advocated ‘restitution’ as a first step and many have pointed to resolving the occupation of Indigenous lands by Canada as central to any process of real change.⁵

There is strong evidence to suggest that these fears are well-founded. During the 2015 federal election, when the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations appealed to Canadians to ‘close the gap’, many Canadians saw the possibility of change in providing more financial resources to create equality in education, child welfare, housing, clean water access and jobs. Equality is a comfortable discourse in the Canadian lexicon. It is compatible with human rights and the ‘peace-maker’ myth that are part of Canadians’ self-image.⁶ As evidenced by the current eagerness of Canadians to welcome Syrian refugees, many Canadians readily embrace the role of ‘helper’. Less comfortable – if not unthinkable – is the entanglement of Canadians in colonial violence, the removal of Indigenous people from ancestral homelands and the perpetuation of cultural genocide.⁷ In an interview following the release of the TRC Report, it was telling to hear a media host begin questioning with the statement that many Canadians do not see a connection between themselves and Indian Residential Schools because that happened so long ago.

What will help shift the consciousness of contemporary Canadians to a new story, where Canadians recognize and acknowledge themselves as occupiers of Indigenous homelands, perpetrators of cultural genocide and sustainers of settler colonial practices in the present? Contemplating the difficulty of this task is not new theoretical terrain. ‘Colonial mentality’ has been well analyzed by Indigenous people; Marxists, cultural critics, critical theorists, anti-colonial theorists and anti-oppression educators have documented and analyzed the saturation of consciousness by hegemonic narratives of the colonial or settler colonial state. In the settler colonial context, we are faced with the daunting task of excavating the deep conditioning that settler scholar Paulette Regan refers to as a process of ‘unsettling the settler within’,⁸ particularly as it manifests itself in the engagement of Canadians in their daily lives, wherein Indigenous peoples may be rendered invisible.

What decades of academic analysis reveal is that providing education and information to settler Canadians is not sufficient to shift the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler colonial society.⁹ Canadians have a deep emotional and cultural investment in the status quo and are the beneficiaries of past and present injustices, particularly with respect to the occupation of Indigenous lands which settlers consider to be their own.

Aleut scholar Eve Tuck and settler scholar K. Wayne Yang maintain that decolonization has one central meaning: returning the land.¹⁰ As Mississauga scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has observed, ‘Land is an important conversation for Indigenous peoples and Canada to have because land is at the root of our conflicts.’¹¹ If Canadians are to move toward concrete conversations about land, there is an important foundation to be laid. It will require a significant re-shaping of settler consciousness and the deep attachments that construct Canadian identities.

Insights from anti-racist, anti-oppressive pedagogical practices point to the emotionality of learning in which one’s own investments and identities are called into question and the need to embrace a ‘pedagogy of discomfort’.¹² Speaking in an anti-racist education context, Robin DiAngelo talks about ‘white fragility’ which includes a sense of entitlement to racial comfort.¹³ Roger Simon raises questions about how settler people hear the stories of Indigenous peoples and the pedagogical challenge of avoiding reiterations of colonial discourses and simple storylines of victimhood that position Indigenous peoples as objects of pity.¹⁴ Lenapé-Potawatomi scholar Susan Dion points to the difficulty that teachers face in recognizing their own implication in the oppression of Indigenous people when they are to teach contemporary First Nations materials. Taken together, the pedagogical literature points to the complexity of changing the consciousness of Canadians so that they hear and understand the voices of Indigenous peoples.¹⁵

The literatures on alliance building and solidarities emphasize the importance of learning and self-education as a critical part of the relationship process. Indigenous activists, community leaders and scholars have often commented on the need for non-Indigenous people to confront the racism and ignorance that flow out of the narrative, economic, political and geo-spatial structures of Canadian settler colonial society.¹⁶ Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, organizations and communities have taken on this task of educating inside and outside the academy. The paper presented here represents a collaboration; it has been prepared by one Anishinaabe scholar (Cherylanne James) and five settler Canadians.

This paper addresses some of the complexities of challenging settler consciousness by reporting on a project that has documented many initiatives and events underway which are aimed at changing the way in which Canadians think about historical and contemporary Indigenous–non-Indigenous relationships. Initially, it was developed as a class project in a fourth-year undergraduate course called ‘Transforming Settler Consciousness’ in the Indigenous Studies Department, Trent University, Canada. We will describe the project including the Transforming Relations website and share our initial analysis of the entries, in particular the unsettling questions that come to mind for us in trying to think through what it means to take up historic and generational responsibilities in intervening in the narratives that sustain settler colonial mechanisms.

Introduction to the research

The research project emerged from fluid, transformational discussions in 2014 by six senior undergraduates and a faculty member in exploring the concepts of ‘settler colonialism’ and ‘settler consciousness’.¹⁷ The research was born in exchanges that questioned what is taught as truth in schools, and how we understand our implication in the continuing legacy of colonization and in histories that have long been silenced. As these conversations deepened, we committed to creating the website entitled Transforming Relations: A Snapshot of Initiatives which Create Space for the Transformation of Settler Consciousness. The website concept emerged from a gap in research on settler consciousness observed by settler scholars Davis and Hiller, namely, that the many initiatives which work to engage Canadians in the process of transforming consciousness, had yet to be centrally compiled, a necessary first step in analyzing educational interventions. Thus our task became to document initiatives being undertaken that attempt to reshape settler historic consciousness and transform Indigenous–non-Indigenous relations.

The Transforming Relations website currently documents over 200 initiatives undertaken by various parties to change the understandings of non-Indigenous people in Canada about Indigenous peoples, the historical unfolding of colonialism, and settler colonialism as it exists in Canadian society today. The website is updated and expanded annually by the ‘Transforming Settler Consciousness’ class at Indigenous Studies, Trent University. In the following discussion, we will share some decision points encountered in the website development process and how they were negotiated by the research team.

Arriving at a definition of ‘transforming settler consciousness’

Over the course of the research process the class arrived at a definition, or a current understanding, of what the ‘transformation of settler consciousness’ means and entails for purposes of the website. Our working definition is grounded in the writings of many Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, including Patrick Wolfe, Paulette Regan and Susan Dion, and their explorations of settler colonialism and settler consciousness. It is also informed by our previous knowledge of Indigenous–non-Indigenous alliances scholarship.

This understanding is firmly rooted in Wolfe’s conception of settler colonialism as a continuing structure in which all contemporary institutions are based, as opposed to an event beginning and ending in the past.¹⁸ Regan builds on this understanding of settler colonialism in Unsettling the Settler Within, in which she examines how this structure is perpetuated and sustained. She argues that settler consciousness, which permeates nearly every aspect of mainstream society, has allowed colonial practices and narratives to remain dominant within Canada. It is from Regan’s work that we draw our understanding of settler consciousness as the narratives, practices and collective Canadian identity that are based solidly in a foundation of national historical myths.¹⁹ These myths, and the attitudes and ideologies they engender, pervade all institutions and all spheres of society. Upon examination, it is easy to see them upheld and reproduced within the public education system, through the media, and in government policy. In Braiding Histories: Learning from Ab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Pathways of settler decolonization
• 1 Complicated pathways: settler Canadians learning to re/frame themselves and their relationships with Indigenous peoples
• 2 Tracing the spirals of unsettlement: Euro-Canadian narratives of coming to grips with Indigenous sovereignty, title, and rights
• 3 'A lot of catching up', knowledge gaps and emotions in the development of a tactical collective identity among students participating in solidarity with the Winnemem Wintu
• 4 Decolonizing solidarity: cultivating relationships of discomfort
• 5 Imagining autonomy on stolen land: settler colonialism, anarchism and the possibilities of decolonization?
• 6 Anti-colonial methodologies and practices for settler colonial studies
• Index