Subjects of Empire? : indigenous peoples and the "Politics of recognition" in Canada
Over the last forty years, the self-determination claims of Indigenous peoples in Canada have increasingly been cast in the language of “recognition”: recognition of Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, recognition of an Indigenous right to land and self-government, recognition of the right to benef...
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| Language: | English en |
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2009
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1913 |
| Summary: | Over the last forty years, the self-determination claims of Indigenous peoples in Canada have increasingly been cast in the language of “recognition”: recognition of Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, recognition of an Indigenous right to land and self-government, recognition of the right to benefit from the development of Indigenous territories and resources, and so on. In addition, the last fifteen years have witnessed a proliferation of scholarship which has sought to flesh-out the ethical, legal and political questions that these claims tend to raise. Subsequently, “recognition” has now come to occupy a central place in our efforts to comprehend what is at stake in contestations over identity and difference in liberal settler-polities more generally. The purpose of this dissertation is twofold. First, I want to challenge the now commonplace assumption that the colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada can be reconciled via such a politics of recognition. Second, I want to explore glimpses of an alternative politics. More specifically, drawing critically from Indigenous and non-Indigenous intellectual and activist traditions, I will explore a politics of self-recognition that is less oriented around attaining an affirmative form of recognition from Indigenous peoples’ master-other (the liberal settler-state and society), and more about critically revaluating, reconstructing and redeploying Indigenous cultural forms in ways that seek to prefigure alternatives to the colonial social relations that continue to facilitate the dispossession of Indigenous lands and self-determining authority. |
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