Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T09:16:50.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unsettling Expectations: (Un)certainty, Settler States of Feeling, Law, and Decolonization1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Eva Mackey
Eva Mackey*
Affiliation:
Carleton UniversitySchool of Canadian Studies
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Guaranteeing “certainty” (for governments, business development, society, etc.) is often the goal of state land rights settlements with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Certainty is also often seen as an unequivocally desirable and positive state of affairs. This paper explores how certainty and uncertainty intersect with the challenges of decolonization in North America. I explore how settler certainty and entitlement to Indigenous land has been constructed in past colonial and current national laws, land policies, and ideologies. Then, drawing on data from fieldwork among activists against land rights, I argue that their deep anger about their uncertainty regarding land and their futures helps to reveal how certainty and entitlement underpin “settler states of feeling” (Rifkin). If one persistent characteristic of settler colonialism is settler certainty and entitlement, then decolonization, both for settlers and for jurisprudence, may therefore mean embracing uncertainty. I conclude by discussing the relationship between certainty, uncertainty, and decolonization.

Résumé

Garantir une « certitude » (pour les gouvernements, le développement d’entreprises, la société, etc.) est souvent le but des accords sur les revendications territoriales avec les peuples autochtones au Canada. La certitude est souvent perçue aussi comme étant une situation, sans équivoque, désirable et positive. Cet article explore comment la certitude et l’incertitude recoupent les défis associés à la décolonisation en Amérique du Nord. J’explore comment la certitude des colons ainsi que les droits aux terres autochtones ont été élaborés au sein des lois coloniales du passé, des lois nationales courantes, des politiques foncières, et des idéologies. Par la suite, puisant sur des données de terrain de militants opposés aux revendications territoriales, je soutiens que la colère profonde qu’ils éprouvent face à l’incertitude de leurs terres et de leur future révèle comment les « sentiments de colons » (Rifkin) sont renforcés par la certitude et les droits territoriaux. Si l’une des caractéristiques persistantes du colonialisme de peuplement est la certitude des colons ainsi que leurs droits territoriaux, alors la décolonisation pourrait donc signifier, pour les colons et la jurisprudence, que l’on accepte l’incertitude. Je termine en abordant la relation entre la certitude, l’incertitude et la décolonisation.

Keywords

colonialismcertaintyIndigenousdecolonize“settler states of feeling”colonialismecertitudeAutochtonedécoloniser« sentiments de colons »
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 29 , Issue 2: Law and Decolonization / Droit et décolonisation , August 2014 , pp. 235 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AANDC). 2010. “Acts, Agreements, Treaties and Land Claims.” Date modified: 2010-09-15. Accessed January 2, 2014. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100028568/1100100028572.Google Scholar
Adese, Jennifer. 2012. “Anxious States and the Co-optation of Métisness.” Nomorepotlucks. Accessed May 21, 2014. http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/anxious-states-and-the-co-optation-of-metisness-jennifer-adese/.Google Scholar
Alfred, Taiaike. 2009. “Restitution is the Real Pathway to Justice for Indigenous Peoples.” In Response, Responsibility, and Renewal, edited by Younging, G., Dewar, J., and DeGagné, M., 179–87. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation.Google Scholar
Alfred, Taiaike. 2001. “From Sovereignty to Freedom: Towards an Indigenous Political Discourse.” Indigenous Affairs (3): 22–34.Google Scholar
Alfred, Taiaike, and Corntassel, Jeff. 2005. “Being Indigenous: Resurgences Against Contemporary Colonialism.” Government and Opposition 40 (4): 597–614.Google Scholar
Asch, Michael. 2002. “From terra nullius to Affirmation: Reconciling Aboriginal Rights with the Canadian Constitution.” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 17 (2): 23–39.Google Scholar
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1997. Postmodernity and Its Discontents. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Berman, M. 1988. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. “From Industrial Society to the Risk Society.” Theory, Culture & Society 9 (1): 97–123.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Carole. 2005. “Searching for Guarantees in the Midst of Uncertainty: Negotiating Aboriginal Rights and Title in British Columbia.” American Anthropologist 107 (4): 586–96.Google Scholar
Borrows, John. 1997. “Wampum at Niagara.” In Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada, edited by Asch, Michael, 154–72, Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.Google Scholar
Borrows, John. 1999. “Sovereignty’s Alchemy: An Analysis of Delgamuukw v. British Columbia.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 37 (3): 538–96.Google Scholar
Borrows, John. 2002. “‘Landed’ Citizenship: An Indigenous Declaration of Interdependence.” In Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law, 138–58. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 2006. “The Privatization of Risk.” Public Culture 18 (2): 257–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christie, Gordon. 2005. “A Colonial Reading of Recent Jurisprudence: Sparrow, Delgamuukw and Haida Nation.” Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 23: 17.Google Scholar
Christie, Gordon. 2007. “Culture, Self-Determination and Colonialism: Issues Around the Revitalization of Indigenous Legal Traditions.” Indigenous Law Journal 6 (1): 13–30.Google Scholar
Coulthard, Glen S. 2007. “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada.” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (2007): 437–60.Google Scholar
Epp, Roger. 2003. “We Are All Treaty People: History, Reconciliation and the ‘Settler Problem.’” In Dilemmas of Reconciliation: Cases and Concepts, edited by Prager, Carol A. L. and Govier, Trudy, 223–44. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Cheryl I. 1993. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106: 1707.Google Scholar
Harris, Cole. 2004. “How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94 (1): 165–82.Google Scholar
Henderson, James Sákéj Youngblood. 2002. “Postcolonial Indigenous Legal Consciousness.” Indigenous Law Journal 1 (Spring 2002): 1–56.Google Scholar
Mackey, Eva (in preparation). Unsettled Expectations: Settler Coloniality, Land Rights, and Decolonizing Strategies.Google Scholar
Mackey, Eva. 2005. “‘Universal’ Rights in National and Local Conflicts: ‘Backlash’ and ‘Benevolent Resistance’ to Indigenous Land Rights.” Anthropology Today 21 (2): 14–20.Google Scholar
Marris, Peter. 1996. The Politics of Uncertainty: Attachment in Private and Public Life. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick. 1848. The Communist Manifesto. Accessed January 9, 2014. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf.Google Scholar
Merrill, Thomas W. and Smith, Henry E.. 2001. “What Happened to Property in Law and Economics?” Yale Law Journal 111 (2): 357–98.Google Scholar
Miller, Robert J. 2005. “The Doctrine of Discovery in American Indian Law.” Idaho Law Review 42 (1): 21–75.Google Scholar
O’Malley, Pat. 2004. Risk, Uncertainty and Government. London: Glasshouse Press.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge: London and New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regan, Paulette. 2010. Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press.Google Scholar
Reyes Cruz, Mariolga. 2012. “Ni con dios ni con el diablo: Tales of Survival, Resistance, and Rebellion from a Reluctant Academic.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1): 141–57.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Henry. 1996. “After Mabo, What About Aboriginal Sovereignty?” Australian Humanities Review (April). Accessed April 24, 2014. http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-April-1996/Reynolds.html.Google Scholar
Rifkin, Mark. 2009. Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rifkin, Mark. 2011. “Settler States of Feeling: National Belonging and the Erasure of Native American Presence.” In A Companion to American Literary Studies, edited by Levander, Caroline F. and Levine, Robert S.. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Simpson, Audra. 2011. “Settlement’s Secret.” Cultural Anthropology 26 (2): 205–17.Google Scholar
Sium, Aman, Desai, Chandni, and Ritskes, Eric. 2012. “Towards the ‘Tangible Unknown’: Decolonization and the Indigenous Future.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1): I–XIII.Google Scholar
Smith, Andrea. 2012. “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White supremacy.” In Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, edited by HoSang, Daniel Martinez, LaBennett, Oneka, and Pullido, Laura. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
St. Catherines Milling and Lumber Company v The Queen, [1888] UKPC 70, [1888] 14 AC 46 (12 December 1888).Google Scholar
Supreme Court of the United States. 2005. Opinion of the Court, City of Sherrill, New York, Petitioner v Oneida Indian Nation of New York et al [544 US 197].Google Scholar
Tuck, Eve, and Yang, K. Wayne. 2012. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1): 2–40.Google Scholar
Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UNBCIC). “Certainty: Canada’s Struggle to Extinguish Aboriginal Title.” Accessed March 13, 2012. http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/Resources/certainty.htm#axzz1ownSFWKx.Google Scholar
Waziyatawin, . 2012. “The Paradox of Indigenous Resurgence at the End of Empire.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1): 68–85.Google Scholar