Wet’suwet’en Additional Readings

Here are some articles that have been recommended by group members as we move(d) through the Spring 2019 session on Wet’suwet’en and Delgamuukw.

Federal climate law crucial to Indigenous constitutional rights, court told _ CBC News This news article addresses one of the themes of this session: the relationship between federal and indigenous legal systems.

The Other Side of Eden – This is an excerpt from Hugh Brody’s The Other Side of Eden, which provides a first-hand account of the treatment of oral history and song in the Delgamuukw case (from a longer chapter on language and language loss). Its ethnographic relevance may be of interest.

Dancing the World into Being_ A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson by Naomi Klein — YES! Magazine About this piece, Rachel writes: “here’s the interview between Namoi Klein and Leanne Simpson that lays out some really powerful ideas about colonialism as a severing of relations and “extraction.” I found this piece (and all of Simpsons’ work) really productive for thinking about what decolonization could then mean. She says the opposite of extraction (and colonialism) is reciprocity, which I think is fundamental to strengthening or regrowing relations as a decolonizing practice.”

Glen Coulthard. “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada.” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (2007): 437–460. This article, by Dene scholar and UBC Associate Professor of First Nations and Indigenous Studies Glen Coulthard, takes up Western traditions of philosophical thought to deconstruct the politics and mechanisms of colonial “recognition” in Canada’s brand of multiculturalism. Coulthard argues that the contemporary politics of recognition are not based on ideals of generalized reciprocity (thanks for the vocabulary, Jen!), but rather on the familiar colonial power relations: recognition grounded in colonial ideologies will serve to reproduce colonial mechanisms of subjugation. In the words of Audrey Lorde, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (thanks for this connexion, Pablo!) It is a difficult read, but well worth the effort.