Unsettling The Settler State

Cover artwork : The Way of the Walawalarra (Two Women Ancestors): Kapululangu Women's Two Way Governance Courtesy and Copyright : Artists of Kapululangu Aboriginal Women's Association of Balgo.Debates in contemporary Indigenous affairs rarely question the settler-state framework and its accompanying institutions and processes. This silence persists despite Indigenous efforts to engage the settler-colonial order through repeated calls for treaties, for constitutional change, for self-determination and for better representation on the national political stage. These Indigenous efforts to enter into dialogue with mainstream Australia have thus far received little or no reciprocal movement from the settler state and its associated institutions.To advance Indigenous affairs governance and develop a dialogue for improved Settler-Indigenous relations in the 21st century requires unsettling the silences around the settler-state and its institutions and processes. Instead, we need dialogue and exchange between Indigenous and Settler orders. Only by embracing the challenges of governance in an open an unapologetic way will we be able to address the anxieties associated with Indigenous governance and contribute to healing the persistent sore of the wider Indigenous-Settler relations that continue to trouble the Australian community.To address these challenges, Unsettling the Setter State documents and analyses contemporary Indigenous efforts to engage with the settler state and its institutions. Chapters by Indigenous authors and settler interpreters and counterparts highlight Aboriginal creativity, vibrancy, and resistance while providing a crucial resource and pathways for rethinking governance and decolonising Australia in the 21st century.

In 2008 the Canadian government apologized to the victims of the notorious Indian residential school system, and established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose goal was to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that engineered the system. Unsettling the Settler Within argues that in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation, non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization. They must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge the destructive legacy of a society that has stubbornly ignored and devalued Indigenous experience. Today’s truth and reconciliation processes must make space for an Indigenous historical counter-narrative in order to avoid perpetuating a colonial relationship between Aboriginal and settler peoples. A compassionate call to action, this powerful book offers all Canadians – both Indigenous and not – a new way of approaching the critical task of healing the wounds left by the residential school system.

`Settler societies' are those in which Europeans have settled and become politically dominant over indigenous people, and where a heterogenous society has developed in class, ethnic and racial terms. They offer a unique prism for understanding the complex relations of gender, race, ethnicity and class in contemporary societies. Unsettling Settler Societies brings together a distinguished cast of contributors to explore these relations in both material and discursive terms. They look at the relation between indigenous and settler//immigrant populations, focusing in particular on women's conditions and politics. The book examines how the process of development of settler societies, and the positions of indigenous and

What does it mean to be a white settler on land taken from peoples who have lived there since time immemorial? In the context of reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence, Unsettling Spirit provides a personal perspective on decolonization, informed by Indigenous traditions and lifeways, and the need to examine one's complicity with colonial structures. Applying autoethnography grounded in Indigenous and feminist methodologies, Denise Nadeau weaves together stories and reflections on how to live with integrity on stolen and occupied land. The author chronicles her early and brief experience of "Native mission" in the late 1980s and early 1990s in northern Canada and Chiapas, Mexico, and the gradual recognition that she had internalized colonialist concepts of the "good Christian" and the Great White Helper. Drawing on somatic psychotherapy, Nadeau addresses contemporary manifestations of helping and the politics of trauma. She uncovers her ancestors' settler background and the responsibilities that come with facing this history. Caught between two traditions – born and raised Catholic but challenged by Indigenous ways of life – the author traces her engagement with Indigenous values and how relationships inform her ongoing journey. A foreword by Cree-Métis author Deanna Reder places the work in a broader context of Indigenous scholarship. Incorporating insights from Indigenous ethical and legal frameworks, Unsettling Spirit offers an accessible reflection on possibilities for settler decolonization as well as for decolonizing Christian and interfaith practice.

A Canadian bestseller and winner of the 2016 Canadian Historical Association Aboriginal History Book Prize, Unsettling Canada is a landmark text built on a unique collaboration between two First Nations leaders. Arthur Manuel (1951–2017) was one of the most forceful advocates for Indigenous title and rights in Canada; Grand Chief Ron Derrickson, one of the most successful Indigenous businessmen in the country. Together, they bring a fresh perspective and bold new ideas to Canada’s most glaring piece of unfinished business: the place of Indigenous peoples within the country’s political and economic space. This vital second edition features a foreword by award-winning activist Naomi Klein and an all-new chapter co-authored by Law professor Nicole Schabus and Manuel’s daughter, Kanahus, honouring the multi-generational legacy of the Manuel family’s work.

"Drawing on interviews with 51 anti-authoritarian organizers to investigates what it means to struggle for "the commons" within a settler colonial context, Unsettling the Commons interrogates a very important debate that took place within Occupy camps and is taking place in a multitude of movements in North America around what it means to claim "the commons" on stolen land. Travelling back in history to show the ways in which radical left movements have often either erased or come into clear conflict with Indigenous practices of sovereignty and self-determination--all in the name of the "struggle for the commons," the book argues that there are multiple commons or conceptualizations of how land, relationships, and resources are shared, produced, consumed, and distributed in any given society. As opposed to the liberal politics of recognition, a political practice of unsettling and a recognition of the incommensurability of political goals that claim access to space/territory on stolen land is put forward as a more desirable way forward."--]cProvided by publisher.

Five hundred years. A vast geography. Making and Breaking Settler Space explores how settler spaces have developed and diversified from contact to the present. Adam Barker traces the trajectory of settler colonialism, drawing out details of its operation that are embedded not only in imperialism but also in contemporary contexts that include problematic activist practices by would-be settler allies. Unflinchingly engaging with the systemic weaknesses of this process, he proposes an innovative, unified spatial theory of settler colonization in Canada and the United States that offers a framework within which settlers can pursue decolonial actions in solidarity with Indigenous communities.

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Calls to Action in June 2015, governments, churches, non-profit, professional and community organizations, corporations, schools and universities, clubs and individuals have asked: “How can I/we participate in reconciliation?” Recognizing that reconciliation is not only an ultimate goal, but a decolonizing process of journeying in ways that embody everyday acts of resistance, resurgence, and solidarity, coupled with renewed commitments to justice, dialogue, and relationship-building, Pathways of Reconciliation helps readers find their way forward. The essays in Pathways of Reconciliation address the themes of reframing, learning and healing, researching, and living. They engage with different approaches to reconciliation (within a variety of reconciliation frameworks, either explicit or implicit) and illustrate the complexities of the reconciliation process itself. They canvass multiple and varied pathways of reconciliation, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, reflecting a diversity of approaches to the mandate given to all Canadians by the TRC with its Calls to Action. Together the authors — academics, practitioners, students and ordinary citizens — demonstrate the importance of trying and learning from new and creative approaches to thinking about and practicing reconciliation and reflect on what they have learned from their attempts (both successful and less successful) in the process.