Irreconcilable

Indigeneity and the Violence of Colonial Erasure in Contemporary Canada

Joseph Weiss

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781469693736
  9781469693729
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469693743
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Native American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Since the early 2000s, the Canadian government has attempted reconciliation with Indigenous Nations through varied efforts: treaty processes, government commissions, rebranding campaigns for settler-owned businesses, workshops for state and local officials, school curriculum changes, and a recently christened national holiday. However, Joseph Weiss argues, these state-driven initiatives reinforce Indigenous subordination to the settler state. This incisive study of the varied responses from both Indigenous Nations and individuals illuminates how reconciliation is implicated in ongoing colonial erasure.

Critically engaging with a variety of fields, including Indigenous studies, anthropology, history, political theory, semiotics, and museum studies, Weiss captures the multiple scales at which these contested dynamics unfold and explores their underlying technologies of erasure. Irreconcilable unpacks how reconciliation offers amends for anti-Indigenous violence while disavowing responsibility for that violence, and argues that settler promises of reconciliation cannot be reconciled to the fact of Indigenous sovereignty. Nevertheless, Weiss illustrates how Indigenous Peoples refuse erasure at every turn, instead building alternate futures and lived worlds that are not always already colonially overdetermined.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Terminology
• Introduction
• Part I | Disavowal
• Part II | Empty Signifiers
• Part III | Colonial Generosity
• Outro: Irreconcilable Images, Irreconcilable Futures
• Coda: Rising Tide
• Notes
• References
• Index