Settler Relations

(Bonita Lawrence on Indigenous Studies and Anti-Racist Studies)
Official policies, laws, and governing doctrine are important works to be examining in our criticisms and investigations of colonialisms and Canada. The Indian Act’s racist, sexist, and violent history continues to enforce how our government defines and relates indigeneity. I am currently fascinated with the interactions of ‘official’ policies, specifically the 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act, and ‘unofficial’ policies such as Canada’s idea of itself as a “cultural mosaic”.

What interests me about the Multiculturalism Act is the way it is wielded by the Canadian nation state to form a visage of inclusivity. Indeed, my first encounter with the act was in elementary school, where we were taught about it in comparison to the United States’ melting pot ideology (pdf). All of the rhetoric the act deploys reminds me very much of a certain Canadian set of optics—apologetic, polite, embracing of cultural diversity. These tactics on one hand make Canada seem like a very liveable place while on the other, making critical discourses around say, Canada’s violent and erasing past (and contemporary direction) of colonialism, hard to have. Section 3.1 (f) of the act states that the act will “encourage and assist the social, cultural, economic and political institutions of Canada to be both respectful and inclusive of Canada’s multicultural character” (Canadian Multiculturalism Act 1988). This becomes a sort of flattening of race and ethnicity to ‘work together’ and build this cultural mosaic of hybridity and nationhood.

Bonita Lawrence, a Mi’kmaw woman, and Enaksh Dua work together from both sides of Aboriginal education and anti-racist education (respectively) to pose dialogue on how the two are seen to be at arms with each other (pdf) in their article “Decolonizing Antiracism” (2005). Overwhelmingly the anti-racist pedagogies they cite and view “has maintained a colonial framework” (136). That is, it does not work to acknowledge that being indigenous is different from being a person of colour in Canada. A multiculturalism act that puts all races and ethnicities on an ‘even’ playing field in hopes of mutual recognition, visibility, and benefits does not do a justice to the complicated ways to how race and indigineity relate and intertwine themselves, particularly through the lens of a nation state.

I wish to draw a parallel of what Lawrence and Dua place as a missing of the mark by the academy to not work decolonization into its anti-racist pedagogies, and what I position as the Canadian public for failing to make this connection as well. Amnesty International’s response to the culture of violence and silence against Indigenous women permeating throughout Canada was published in 2004 (pdf). It traces a violent set of inaction from the Canadian government, media, and citizens in the murdered and missing women across Canada. The report seethes that “[v]iolence against women, and certainly violence against Indigenous women, is rarely understood as a human rights issue” (4). This functions as a reminder that the Canadian public has a heavy-hand in ignoring, normalizing, and producing violence against Indigenous women.

These moments of intervention by activists and scholars such as Lawrence and Dua, or organizations like Amnesty International begin to paint a broader picture of the ways in which Canada is operating under a cultural mosaic which, like physical mosaics, covers a dark and derelict base—Canada’s own continuing erasure of indigenous peoples. I see this sort of masking of all races and ethnicities as ‘one’ uniform and ‘knowable’ thing to be a direct parallel to Coleman’s position of a certain type of white supremacy–that is, the mosaic appears to us to be white because it is mirroring and paralleling the histories of white supremacy and colonialism our nation is built upon.I think it is no accident that these fictive constructs are reproducing dominant powers and sensibilities–whiteness dominates and affects how we come to understand even anti-racist studies if not intervened upon.

Works Cited

Amnesty International. “Stolen Sisters: A Human Rights Response to Discrimination and Violence Against Women in Canada.” Stop Violence Against Women (2004). Web.

Canadian Multiculturalism Act Statutes of Canada, c.9. Canada. Department of Justice. 1988. Department of Justice. Web.

Henry III, William A. “Beyond the melting pot.” Time 135.15 (1990): 28-31. Web.

Lawrence, Bonita. “Race, Ethnicity & Indigeneity | Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies | York University.” YouTube. YouTube, 21 June 2010. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.

Lawrence, Bonita, and Enakshi Dua. “Decolonizing antiracism.” SOCIAL JUSTICE-SAN FRANCISCO- 32.4 (2005): 120. Web.

Williams, Lynn. “The Indian Act (1876 to Present).” News for the Rest of Us. Rabble.ca, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. Web.