MediaTropes eJournal Vol VII, No 1 (2017): i–xx ISSN 1913-6005

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION INDIGENOUS MATTERS: CULTURES, TECHNOLOGIES, MEDIATIONS

TAD LEMIEUX

Consider a photograph of a skinny polar bear taken on Baffin Island, Nunavut, in late August 2017.1 The photo was released by National Geographic (NatGeo) in early December 2017, accompanied by a video overlaid with somber piano music and text that read in part: “This is what climate change looks like.” The photo depicted an emaciated bear dragging its hind legs on an “iceless land,” its head down, its bones protruding, “staggering” toward an “abandoned fishing camp” to eat a piece of foam from a snowmobile seat.2 The photo and video have since been viewed and shared millions of times across a range of social and traditional media platforms. While a post made on Instagram by NatGeo admitted that the cause of the bear’s emaciation could not be gleaned from the photo, it still named the photo the #FaceOfClimateChange. On the same day, in a post geolocated from Beijing, Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna wrote on Twitter: “THIS is what climate change looks like. Climate change is real. As are its impacts. Time to stand up for our polar bears and our planet.”3

1 The photo was taken by National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen, along with documentarians from the conservation group Sea Legacy, which is “on a mission to create healthy and abundant oceans” by sending “the world’s best photographers and filmmakers on expedition [to] capture the beauty below the surface of our oceans and the threats to its survival” (https://act.sealegacy.org/tide). 2 The camp acted as the observation point for the photographers and documentarians. The post continued: “We didn’t have a weapon and we didn’t have any food. There literally was nothing we could do for him as we were hundreds of miles from the nearest community. What could we have done? What we did do was push through our tears knowing that this footage was going to help connect a global audience to the biggest issue facing us as a species today.” See https://www.instagram.com/p/BceylHujELW/, 9 December 2017. 3 See https://twitter.com/cathmckenna/status/939601028567191553, 9 December 2017. Emphasis mine.

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But this story, like so many stories, is also an echo.4 Two years earlier, in 2015, Nicklen released a photograph of another skinny polar bear,5 another ostensible effect of melting sea ice, another victim of the reality of climate change. And as with the bear in 2017, the claim issuing a clear climate-related consequence on Arctic animals was of little consequence in its contentiousness. Then, as now,6 it didn’t actually matter if the bear was skinny because of climate change or because it was injured—the future was there already in its protruding bones, atrophied limbs, and the global affect it inspired. If, as George Wenzel put it in an interview on Isuma TV in 2010, the “iconic image of a polar bear standing on a little piece of ice” has since at least the 1980s threatened to displace the relations—rhetorical, cultural, material, economic— present in the Arctic between Inuit peoples and the polar bear, the new iconography is perhaps the failed predator in a brown, not white, Arctic.7 Enter now the shambling skinny polar bear, a “face” of climate change regardless of whether or not its empty stomach has anything to do with the climate or change. Public discussions about the photographs and video have been principally concerned, if predictably, with questions of legitimacy and

4 If the language of “our polar bears,” coupled with “our planet,” delocalizes the polar bear and the Arctic variously into the state and the planetary, this too is familiar to Arctic peoples in the (Inuit Homeland). The Harper government’s (2009) mandate for the future of Arctic governance, in a report titled ’s Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future, used a similar language to describe Inuit peoples, whose “longstanding presence … [is] fundamental to our history” (3, emphasis mine). http://www.northernstrategy.gc.ca/cns/cns- eng.asp. 5 Again in partnership with Sea Legacy and NatGeo. See https://www.instagram.com/p/7TRP7WlsKm/. The same year, only months prior, a similar photograph taken by Kerstin Langenberger sparked further controversy. See http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/thin-bear-photo-kerstin-1.3232725. 6 In a comment made to CBC radio program As It Happens, Sea Legacy co-founder Christina Mittermeier argued that it didn’t matter what happened to this individual bear. Rather: “The point is that it was starving…. As we lose sea ice in the Arctic, polar bears will starve.” As It Happens, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 11 December 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.4442887/viral-video-of- emaciated-polar-bear-may-not-be-what-it-seems-nunavut-bear-monitor-says-1.4442892. 7 At the time, Wenzel was speaking on the terms of representation and misrepresentation of the seal and polar bear hunts in the context of a changing Arctic environment. Rather than sound the alarm of adaptability, and capacity for adaptation—an all too common scholarly activity in contemporary scholarship of Indigenous communities—Wenzel was more concerned about the representational politics of animals like the polar bear to intervene and sweep away the economic, food, or cultural, and what can be called rhetorical relations Inuit have constituted. For more on these relations, see Wenzel, Sometimes Hunting Can Seem Like Business: Polar Bear Sport Hunting in Nunavut (Calgary: University of Press, 2008).

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certainties about the end of the Arctic.8 Inuit peoples responded in turn with a counter-narrative9 on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. In part, they have repeated and stressed the necessity to listen to and consult with Inuit on questions concerning their home—whether climate, animals, or health.10 But if dominant framing narratives (re)mediate the Arctic within the familiar tropic terrains of the Anthropocene, the crisis, the catastrophe, not to mention the pristine and the open, these fail to reckon with how, when Inuit remain “unconvinced,” they remediate Arctic mediations.11

8 Whether through the end of the Arctic or the end of the world, the Anthropocene or the capitalocene (Jason Moore, “The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis,” Journal of Peasant Studies 44, no. 3 [2017]: 594–630), the membrane of Canadian Arctic sovereignty is shatter-thin—an exigency that could be thought of as the “outside” in the way Agamben traced its line: the thyrathen, the threshold, or fores, door: the passage that grants access. Still today the Northwest Passage persists internationally as an imminent question of granting for shipping routes, seismic surveys, oil spills, and catastrophic collapse. See Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, translated by Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 68. 9 In a tweet posted on 9 December 2017, mayor of Iqaluit, Nunavut, Madeleine Redfern wrote: “Important to ask Inuit elders/polar bear hunters—they are the true experts regarding polar bears (demography),” and, in a separate tweet on the same day: “Ideally all stories about polar bears would automatically include Inuit from the start—not just biologists.” See https://twitter.com/madinuk/status/939680115398758400. Many other Inuit peoples responded on Facebook and Twitter, challenging the claims by NatGeo and Sea Legacy. In an interview with As It Happens, Leo Ikakhik, a polar bear patroller in Arviat, Nunavut—a part of a joint polar bear patrol partnership with World Wildlife Foundation Canada—told Carol Off that the bear was likely sick, that he’s seen various animals in such a condition, and: “Since I’m from the north, like I would really fall for the video that it’s going to affect every polar bear. It’s like it’s kind of hard to explain, but I’m pretty positive with that the polar bears are not decreasing, and the climate change is not really killing them” (emphasis mine). 10 Arctic Indigenous peoples do not deny climate change, of course. In a recent publication from Nunavut Arctic College, Inuit elders from across the Inuit Nunangat have spoken on the changes wrought by a changing climate. Indeed, the robins in , tall willows in Umiujaq, grass in Kugluktuk, dandelions in Pangnirtung, new wind in Pond Inlet, new trees in Nain, skinny caribou around Baker Lake, and thin ice in Kangiqsualujjuaq are stark reminders that mediation is geo-tropic. See “The Caribou Taste Different Now”: Inuit Elders Observe Climate Change, edited by José Gérin-Lajoie, Alain Cuerrier, and Laura Siegwart Collier (Iqaluit: Nunavut Arctic College, 2017). Also see Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change (2011), dir. Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro, Igloolik Isuma Productions and Kunuk Kohn Productions. http://www.isuma.tv/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change/movie-noss. 11 One way to read this might be through what Audra Simpson has variously named refusal, “distantiation,” or “disaffiliation” (16)—a refusal of settler or state recognition, but also a positional distance from being recognized through or as difference, tethered forever to the acquiescences and chronologies of the colonial mutare. Indeed, for Simpson, distantiation from difference imposes a “territorial and semiotic imperative” (186) that, ultimately, rejects translation. See Mohawk Interuptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States (Durham,

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But Inuit response is also mediated by broadband Internet access.12 As Erin Yunes writes, “One challenge to the growth of Inuit spaces online is that residents of the Arctic are underserved in Internet access, especially when compared with Canadians in urban centres. Infrastructure projects and social programming initiatives tend to be short-term, meeting only the minimum capacity to participate in high bandwidth global network.”13 The territory of Nunavut has the slowest and most expensive Internet in Canada, and this is the case all throughout the Canadian Arctic.14 So-called “expeditions” with cameras and streaming video recording therefore mediate the tropic spheres of Arctic representation as a recurring space of terminal crisis, while the wires and infrastructure of the Internet remain buried in southerly hotspots. Media events like this one, recurrent and shareable, point to these inconsistent mediatory collisions—access and affect, tears and traffic, and the stacks of unconcern

NC: Duke University Press, 2014). For more on the translations and mediations of “recognition,” also see Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Joanna Hearne, Native Recognition: Indigenous Cinema and the Western (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012); Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). 12 See Cynthia J. Alexander, Agar Adamson, Victor Tootoo, et al., “Inuit Cyberspace: The Struggle for Access for Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit,” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes 43, no. 2 (2009): 221–249; Nancy Wachowich and Willow Scobie, “Uploading Selves: Inuit Digital Storytelling on Youtube,” Études/Inuit/Studies 34, no. 2 (2010): 81–105. 13 Erin Yunes, “Arctic Cultural (Mis)Representation: Advocacy, Activism, and Artistic Expression through Social Media,” in PUBLIC 54 (2016), edited by Heather Igloliorte, Julie Nagam, and Carla Taunton, 101. 14 For example, the largest of Nunavut’s Internet Service Providers servicing all 25 communities is SSI Micro Ltd., which, under the Qiniq brand, offers packages—with names like “Bush Plane,” “Snowshoe,” “Dog Team,” and “Ice Road”—ranging at the low end of $115 CAD/month for 1.5 Mb/s up to $369 CAD/month for 2.5 Mb/s. See https://www.ssimicro.com/services#broadband. Coupled with astronomical industrial food prices at the grocery store, three times the Canadian national average (Elyse Skura, “Food in Nunavut Still Costs Three Times the National Average,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 24 June 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nunavut-food-price-survey-2016- 1.3650637), and limited and expensive housing (Garrett Hinchley, “Iqaluit is one of the Most Expensive Cities to Rent, CMHC Says,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 22 June 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/cmhc-report-northern-capitals-1.4173777), Internet expense and speed complicate streaming video, large downloads, and data dumps. For a different focus on bandwidth restrictions in Indian Country, and the “bandwidth characteristics of content propagated by and from” Indigenous peoples in platforms like Twitter, see Duarte and Vigil-Hayes’s contribution to this issue.

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either for ongoing impositions typical of colonial and settler futurisms, or their factuality for the present (if it isn’t true now, then “soon”). In the course of the media process of sharing, retweeting, and commenting is the mediatory claim to the certainty of potentiality, familiar to the interaction of the settler state with Inuit communities in consultations and courtrooms. Potential harm is reaffirmed by the rhythms of the media landscape and tropes that populate the Arctic, which returns the ungrammaticality of the speech act—whether it’s a refusal to a consultation process or comments to an Instagram or Facebook post. But in turn, Inuit re-claim the histories of interaction and relation, that which does not signify the necessary-potential-to or the potential-not-to, but rather the various articulations of the situation-as- relation. These photos, and retweets, and cycles of concern—in mediations and meetings—are precisely familiar, one more mediatory event to actualize the potential latent in some southerly discourse. But more happens here: Inuit do not merely greet this familiarity; they actualize the potential-to of the story’s claimed humanist or liberal intent by reaffirming their own being-there-now.15 By calling the past into question, the skinny polar bear is drawn back into relation and right acting. This remediation might signify, not simply an epistemological divergence, but the secret hidden by the photograph: that the truth of the photo is mediated by what has long been decided by the state, by governance, police, by Arctic settlements and resettlements, sovereignty claims, comment sections, and Supreme Court Decisions.16 It is an impossible task to “introduce” the mediation of Indigeneity. On the one hand, because to define—to introduce, transitively17—is already to misunderstand the practices of both mediation and Indigeneity; on the other,

15 See Joanna Hearne’s essay in this issue, 4. See also Rachel A. Qitsualik, “Innumarik: Self- Sovereignty in Classic Inuit Thought,” in Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapariit Kanatami, 2013). 16 Whether in foundational cases concerning the Crown’s duty to consult, as with Delgamuukw v. (1997), Haida Nation v. British Columbia (2004), Rio Tinto v. British Columbia (2010), or Clyde River (Hamlet) v Petroleum Geo-Services Inc. (2017) and Chippewas of the Thames First Nation v Enbridge Pipelines Inc. (2017), or with cases concerning Aboriginal title and/or rights, as with Sparrow v. R. (1990), R. v. Powley (2003), Tsilhqot’in Nation v British Columbia (2010), and Daniels v Canada (2016). For more on the relation between the Clyde River decision and the question of the “already decided,” see Tad Lemieux (2017), “What Comes Next for Clyde River after Supreme Court Decision?,” The Conversation, 15 August 2017. https://theconversation.com/what-comes-next-for-clyde-river- after-supreme-court-victory-81812. 17 On my use of “transitivity” see Stuart J. Murray, “On Rhetoric and the School of Philosophy Without Tears,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 50, no. 4 (2017): 528–551.

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because I would not be the one chosen, or responsible, for it if such an introduction could be given over without misunderstanding and misapprehension. No, the “mediation of Indigeneity” will not and cannot be introduced here, by me. Instead we might speak of an approach, and approaches, to mediations, to Indigeneity, and to the mediations of Indigeneity today. Much might be said of the approach itself, which shifts and changes the horizon through movement, scanning, immersion, and of course from descent, knowledge, and practice. But, of course, to ascribe an either/or is already a mediation. If global climate change discourses, paternalistic sovereignty claims, and myriad tropes and mythoi blow through the Inuit Nunangat, and over those European skeletons imagined there still today, then the approach is also mediated by the imaginations of governors and documentarians alike as they converge upon the skinny polar bear in search of the wrong food. And as Mario Blaser has pointed out,18 an approach is also a practice, and a practice that can be misapplied even by its “proper” practitioners—the “variably successful performance” of the worlds in which stories narrate and make.19 Blaser repeats what has been repeated before, that “stories are not only or mainly denotative (referring to something ‘out there’), neither are they fallacious renderings of real practices; rather, they partake in the variably successful performance of that which they narrate.”20 The story and the storyteller can be wrong according to the world it makes and finds itself making.21

18 Mario Blaser, “Ontology and Indigeneity: On the Political Ontology of Heterogeneous Assemblages,” Cultural Geographies 21, no. 1 (2014): 49–58. 19 Ibid., 54. 20 Ibid. 21 For Blaser this plugs into a question about the threat of repetition in ontology, whether in the overflowing heterogeneity—of “things,” “objects,” “assemblages,” not to mention cosmopolitics (Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics, Volume 1, translated by Robert Bononno [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010]; Yuk Hui, The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics [Falmouth: Urbanomic Media, 2016] and “Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics,” e-flux 86, November 2017, http://www.e- flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/) and “Gaia” (Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climactic Regime [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017]; Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The Ends of the World [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016])—or the positing of the nested space, the ultimate and final bedrock where multiple ontologies sit. Indigeneity, he writes, questions the “due process” of the pluriversal, and comes ultimately to a “political ontology,” which “cannot be concerned with a supposedly external and independent reality (to be uncovered or depicted accurately); rather, it must concern itself with reality-making, including its own participation in reality-making” (“Ontology and Indigeneity,” 55). For Blaser, this “way of worlding” is described as “a proposition that seeks to be hospitable to the notion of multiple ontologies” (54, emphasis mine). But the notional might be understood as the site of mediation, where the proposition is

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To speak of the mediations of Indigeneity today is to trace, perhaps even conjugate, the colonial mutare22 in the state, the body, the border, the family, the network, the platform, the modern (and the modem), and the “natural.” Whether through paternalistic state mechanisms and policies, genetic tableaus and racial purity, blood quantum,23 mythos and settler indigenization, legal and infrastructural partitioning, plots, and design, the project of settler colonialism has still not succeeded. The unwanted trees in a land wanted for pasture, as Ronald Niezen once put it, stand taller and their root networks are stronger.24 Indeed, as Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith has argued in her seminal work,

hospitable to the notion or the multiple ontologies qua ontologies. Does the seeking seek a notional proposition, or might it propose a notion to a notion? The question isn’t trivial. What is a notion of an ontology if not the mediation of a notion? Do propositions and hospitalities stay with the notions while enacted? There is a kind of classic rhetorical proposition, which enacts notionally into non-notional ontologies in the act of seeking the hospitality. Indigeneity is itself notional in this reading. Still, this way of approaching worlding, this “seeking,” may be reckoned as a “regard” to the approach to right acting or wrong acting that variously concerns the authors of this issue. See Cheryl L’Hirondelle, “Re:lating Necessity and Invention: How Sara Diamond and The Banff Centre Aided Indigenous New Media Production (1992–2005),” in Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital, edited by Heather Igloliorte, Julie Nagam and Carla Taunton, PUBLIC 54 (2016). 22 It is perhaps all too familiar to Western philosophy to trace the etymology. Walter Mignolo has usefully identified the ways that languages and alphabets structures and carries the matrices and nodes of the colonial. See Mignolo, The Darker Side of Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). The colonial matrix of power is what Mignolo calls the foundational structure of Western civilization, a kind of post- culpability of power, body, and knowledge. At base, the colonial matrix of power defines the ways colonialism has defined the body against the soul, the body of knowledge, the body politic, the body in economy, and the bodily in the technologico-economic. Ergo from the racial to the ethnic, aesthetic and epistemic, linguistic and alphabetical, sexual and state, to labour and finance, Mignolo finds these “historico-structural nodes” wherein the logic of coloniality and imperial qua difference and diversity are articulated and rearticulated, recursively (17). Mutare, the root of “mutate” and “mutation,” therefore gives more than the logical, legal, material, bodily mutations, or changes of and to colonialism. I signal to mutare to dig out these roots— neither to merely to give over to the definitions of change and alteration in a chronological or linear trajectory, nor to conjugate the diversifications or the exchanges, but rather to excite the ways of “forsaking” that mutare also translates from. To take mediation as a potential “forsaking” reckons with the ways that the colonial is forsaken and moved, altered but varied. Also see Mignolo, “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-Coloniality,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2 (2008): 449–514. 23 See Kim Tallbear, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). 24 Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 53.

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networking is an act, an approach, of decolonization—it continues, it moves, it remediates in “survivance,”25 “right thinking,”26 and “future imaginary.”27 The past, suggested Smith, and the “stories local and global, the present,” and “communities, cultures, languages and social practices—all may be spaces of marginalization, but they have also become spaces of resistance and hope.”28 Speaking of the ongoing “explosion” of Indigenous artists, scholars, teachers, and innovators, Heather Igloliorte, Julie Nagam, and Carla Taunton have recently argued: Through gathering and networking, Indigenous voices and perspectives come together, are centrally positioned, and ultimately combat the colonial marginalization of Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies … Indigenous artists have always already been innovators, and have therefore been at the forefront of practice and technologically orientated methods and methodologies.29 Indeed, the Internet is today variously described as populated by ancestors,30 built upon layers already travelled and mapped by angakkuk,31 representative, if not residual, of the tools and practices already built into Indigenous

25 Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). 26 Joe Karetak, “Inuit Knowledge Applies Today,” in Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: What Inuit have Known for a Long Time, edited by Joe Karetak, Frank Tester, and Shirley Tagalik (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2017), 209–210. 27 Jason Edward Lewis, “A Better Dance and Better Prayers: Systems, Structures, and the Future Imaginary in Aboriginal New Media,” in Coded Territories: Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art, edited by Steven Loft and Kerry Swanson (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014). 28 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 1988), 4. 29 Heather Igloliorte, Julie Nagam, and Carla Taunton, “Transmissions: The Future Possibilities of Indigenous Digital and New Media Art,” in PUBLIC 54 (2016), 7. 30 Steven Loft, “Mediacosmology,” in Coded Territories: Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art, edited by Steven Loft and Kerry Swanson (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014), 172. 31 Katarina Soukoup, “Travelling Through Layers: Inuit Artists Appropriate New Technologies,” Canadian Journal of Communication 31, no. 1 (2006). http://www.cjc- online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1769/1889. The word “angakkuk” is the Inuktut word for “shaman,” who “when asked to find out about living or deceased relatives or where animals have disappeared to: travel across time and space to find answers.”

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communicative media tropes.32 And yet, these also compete with the questions of online and technical “utility,”33 the question of “bettering yourself,” and the cascades of claims of placenessness, data-terra nullius, and the addictive codification of the platform.34 But, as Jason Lewis has argued, One can imagine the spirits of our ancestors inhabiting those networks, whispering to each far below the error correction and noise suppression, continuing their

32 See, for example, Angela M. Haas, “Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and Practice,” Studies in American Indian Literatures 19, no. 4 (2007), 77–100. 33 Christian Sandvig, “Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain: Indigenous Internet Infrastructure,” in Race After the Internet, edited by Lisa Nakamura and Peter A. Chow-White (New York: Routledge, 2012), 185–186. 34 As Nick Srnicek has argued, platforms are the newest emergence for the business model of capitalism and the digital economy. Writ into the platform is the mining of data, which places its users—geolocates, predicts, and addicts—through the interface while simultaneously rendering them into the placenessness of the Internet. See Srnicek, Platform Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016). And while Indigenous peoples have variously worked against terra nullius of the Internet, questions about net neutrality, the freedom of data, and so on, have led to what Mueller has called the “transnational coalition of Internet users” (Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization, Cyberspace [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017], 142). The “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” written by John Perry Barlow in February 1996 is one such example. It reads, in part: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” It continues: “You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants.” See https://www.eff.org/cyberspace- independence. By giving unfettered access to personal data to the platform, Srnicek argues that analysis, prediction, and repository are the necessary correlates and coordinates in this space (176). In other words, mediations of place, body, and history are in constant conflict, while aggregation, competition, and monopolization narrowly focus network and platform providers into single restrictive points. The opening of platforms therefore struggle with Indigenous claims to intellectual and cultural property, traditional space, and the protocols of relationality, further mediated by the predictive and aggregative motions of platform and interface, and competing tropes of “becoming native” to the space of the Internet. For ways that Indigenous peoples have responded against the self-indigenization of the Internet, see Jason E. Lewis and Skawennati Tricia Fragnito, “Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2005); Candice Hopkins, “Interventions in Digital Territories: Narratives in Native New Media,” in Transference, Tradition, Technology: Native New Media Exploring Visual and Digital Culture, edited by Melanie A. Townsend, Dana Claxton, and Steven Loft (Banff: Walter Phillips Gallery Editions, 2005); Jolene Rickard, “First Nation Territory in Cyber Space Declared: No Treaties Needed,” CyberPowWow (2001), retrieved from http://www.cyberpowwow.net/nation2nation/jolenework.html 4 December 2017; and Archer Pechawis, “Not So Much a Land Claim,” CyberPowWow (2001), http://www.cyberpowwow.net/archerweb/index.html.

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commerce with one another, speaking forward into the future—the spirits in the tree and the stone and the stream becoming the ghosts in the machine”35 This special issue of MediaTropes, “Indigenous Matters: Cultures, Technologies, Mediations,” therefore convenes a dialogue on the matters and materials, toolkits and practices, that culturally mediate contemporary Indigeneity on the land, in the letter of the law, via social and political activism, in the press (new/emergent media and mainstream), and through science, technology and art. Lessons from Indigenous art, practice, and media scholarship have troubled the borders and assumptions of our media ecologies, and are recoding the “landscapes” of media and mediation toward distinct epistemological and relational cosmologies. Part of the work described by contributions to this issue is to complicate the purported inventions installed by the colonial. Whether through policy or in the remainders of dominant settler enframing, it is often the case that Indigenous peoples are imagined to have adopted or understood a medium only yesterday. I put some emphasis on this term, which I borrow from Craig Womack.36 Indigenous resistance in the nineteenth-century, writes Womack, did not merely take the form of plains warriors on horseback; Indian people authored books that often argued for Indian rights and criticized land theft. In addition to publishing books, many of these authors engaged in other rhetorical acts such as national speaking tours lobbying for Native rights. Their life stories, as well as their literary ideas, provide a useful study of the evolution of Native thought that has led up to the contemporary notions of sovereignty and literature…. Most approaches to the ‘Native American Literary Renaissance’ have proceeded as if the Indian discovered the novel, the short story, and the poem only yesterday.37 Womack’s study of Indigenous literatures in the United States foregrounded what Walter Mignolo called the nodes of the colonial matrix that mediate the pace and trajectory of varied apprehensions of Indigeneity.38 To this end, it is

35 Lewis, “A Better Dance and Better Prayers,” 68. 36 Craig S. Womack, Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 3. 37 Ibid. 38 Mignolo, The Darker Side of Modernity.

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not at all uncommon to find Indigenous peoples also working against the mediation of the introduction, “only yesterday,” to the pace and path of the medium-as-introduced.39 Only yesterday can only be claimed from a “today” where “yesterday” is always too recent to fully participate in tomorrow, and for which the too-recent past lived by those imagined to have been introduced was not the right one. It was only yesterday when that past was supposed to have shifted course. This issue convenes diverse voices from a number of disciplines and backgrounds together to explore the myriad ways that Indigeneity is culturally mediated in the contemporary media landscape. Among its questions: How are claims, self-determination, nationhood, community, and identity related to and constituted across complex and colliding landscapes? What is the role of new and old technology, and how is it being remixed, remediated, reclassified, reconstituted? What, and where, are the fault-lines and shifts? The authors were encouraged to probe the transformational, connective, memorial, and communicative tensions and potentials found in these shifting tropic terrains, and to scan the horizons. Readers may note the tension in a story told again (and again), one described by Zoe Todd and Jennifer Adese in their contribution to this issue. On the one hand, the practices of Indigenous matters and materials, epistemologies, and ontologies are precisely in the telling and retelling of story—repetition. But, on the other hand, with retelling comes an uneasy difference, both as a matter of concern and a matter of principle. Whether the story shores up or wearies depends on this play of difference and repetition.40 The essays featured in this special issue therefore may be said to share the approach in common, but not as a matter of course. Though all authors do share in their commitment to analyze the matters of course—the trajectories, tenses, sites, and plots of nation, identity, of people, and of traditions as they are known today—the approaches move variously through the terrains, media ecologies, and platforms mediating Indigeneity. These approaches are disciplinary and methodological, yes, but they are also grounded or tracked in places, in times, in families, and in ways that speak intermedially: as counternarratives, refusals, and in different skins.41

39 Cheryl L’Hirondelle, “Codetalkers: Recounting Signals of Survival,” in Coded Territories: Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New Media Art, edited by Steven Loft and Kerry Swanson (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014). 40 See Jennifer Adese, Zoe Todd, and Shaun Stevenson’s contribution to this issue, 11–12. 41 In her monograph on Inuit literatures, Keavy Martin adapted the trope of skin found in myriad Inuit stories and lessons to, in her words, find the ways that “Inuit intellectual traditions

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Article Summaries We open this issue with contributions from Jennifer Adese, Zoe Todd, and Shaun Stevenson, “Mediating Métis Identity: An Interview with Jennifer Adese and Zoe Todd,” and Sébastien Malette and Guillaume Marcotte, “Marie-Louise: Protector of Louis Riel in Québec.” Taken together, these essays offer both a powerful statement on contemporary Métis scholarship, and, despite the disagreements evident between them, what might be named a shared concern for the medial—neither poles, nor quite the middle. Throughout, Adese and Todd sketch the various and variegated mediations of contemporary Métis identity: the matrilineal and relational bonds of kinship; the land and waterways of Western Canada, and the beings that draw within, through, and from them; the ongoing production of the literary and linguistic, from to children’s literature; the pedagogical and collegial, in the academe and band council; and, finally, the different tenses, forms, and beings of the future. For his part, Stevenson variously moves between “interview,” “conversation,” and “discussion” to describe what with Adese and Todd also becomes, in the course of its unfolding, a practice. The “interview” (appearing only once in the title of their contribution) implies, if it does not testify to, what Sophie McCall once named the “central point of struggle”42 of voice implicit to the relation between settler scholar-editors and Indigenous might … dress in new ‘skins’ for the purposes of infiltrating the academy—and likewise, in the ways in which the wrongs of the southern institution might similarly be ‘re-dressed.’” See Martin, Stories in a New Skin: Approaches to Inuit Literature (Winnipeg: University of Press, 2012), 8. More recently, Martin has argued for the need to “consume,” to hunt and feast upon Inuit and Indigenous texts as a matter of protocol. Drawing from scholar Dwayne Donald, and her own experience at the Pangnirtung Nunavut Summer School, the persistent denial of relationships—whether by polite refusal to eat “country food,” disregard, or other such unknowing sleights—is the “extended process” of the colonial. Indeed, as Martin describes, it is precisely the motivation not to be colonizers that wedges the openness of difference, alterity, otherness, and recognition. Texts and contexts, then, demand an ethics— of butchering, feasting, of removing and enclothing a skin—that enacts the protocols and respects, the responsibilities and relations, that do not hoard but shares, do not control but act rightly. We might further the argument to suggest that if proximity is a practice of decolonization, questions of mediation similarly require, perhaps even suggest an approach, a moving in, whose protocols already imply the butchering, sharing, and wearing of platforms, networks, codes. Keavy Martin, “The Hunting and Harvesting of Inuit Literature,” in Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaches to Indigenous Literatures, edited by Deanna Reder and Linda M. Morra (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2016), 445–458. 42 Sophie McCall, First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative Authorship (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012).

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storytellers. But the multiple mediations of the interview and of testimony are not lost to Stevenson, who notes that “recognition of the implications” of what he calls the “false claims to Indigeneity,” implicit in the arguments to be made about métissage and settler self-Indigeneization, “does not necessarily result in a nuanced understanding” of the multiple meanings of Indigeneity, Métis, and the mediations of their meanings. But here is where the tri-authored text finds Adese and Todd in dialogue not only with each other and Stevenson, but in dialogue as such. We might think of this dialogue mediated by conjugations of “connection”—in the familial, geographic, and historical connections, the connective tissues of the settler state called Canada, in the collegial and academic connections or networks of the university, and connected via emails and shared documents on the Internet. We might think of the way Cheryl L’Hirondelle, in her own interview with Sara Diamond, linked relation to the act of telling, or the email subject protocol RE: to the respect protocols of the “regard.”43 The question that, as Adese describes, lingers in the air between family, kin—will you see me as yours?—is one of many instances of time as a mediator. For it is not simply that the “unasked question” is the time where relation and kinship are founded, but it is when they continue to be made. That it is both founded and made is the way of kinship as it has been described by so many Indigenous peoples: together over time, founded in its own making. But maybe founded is the wrong word, as Neizen would have it—not founded, but “engendered.” If we take seriously Stevenson’s claim that Métis are in many ways on the “frontlines” of Indigenous mediation in Canada, then Malette and Marcotte’s substantial contribution to this issue moves along these provocative and illuminating “lines” by tracing the claims to Métis political consciousness, peoplehood, descent, history, and homeland. At issue are two significant claims concerning the life, or the “living proof” (27), of archival research, and its proximity to the enduring question of presence: who, where, and when are the Métis? Who decides and how? What counts, literally and figuratively, and through what means and mediums? The authors issue a challenge to what they will argue is an ongoing mediation of scholarship and political consciousness wrought through the Powley and Daniels Supreme Court of Canada decisions, in contemporary scholarly debates concerning Métis epistemology and archive, and through often painful questions of platform and place, ontic and ontology, sovereignty and self-determination. What emerges, in part, are stories, histories, families, and relations of Mme. Violet Lalonde, the great-great-granddaughter of Marie-Louise Riel, in what was until now an unpublished testimony. From

43 L’Hirondelle, “Re:lating Necessity and Invention,” 25.

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this, the resonances of oral testimony left in Maniwaki, Québec, and the “people” of Marie-Louise. The authors bring forth Louis Riel in his sojourns to Québec and Ontario, along the Kichisìpi or Ottawa River between 1873–75, “a fugitive in the Outaouais.” Anecdote, story, testimony: to this end, Malette and Marcotte probe what is no less than the narrativities of peoplehood that issue from the Outaouais to Red River. Throughout emerge the constitutive tenses and modes of the postcolony. The stakes are high, the terms unstable, and the emotional and theoretical weight is significant. As the bio-logical and bio-racial claims of mixedness variously converge upon the meaning of Métisness,44 much still remains in the embrace of the scare quote. And yet, these loads bearing down on the matters of Métis Indigeneity in the medial space of these two contributions—nation and peoplehood, homeland and identity, descent and emergence, presence and testimony, story and history, practice and profession—might just be, after all, the “doing” that names the practices of decolonization. Next, we offer three essays concerning the discursive mediations moving through traditional and social media, as well as the politics of recognition and self-determination as they play out in extractive industry discourses directed at Indigenous peoples in Latin America. As with the skinny polar bear, Indigenous peoples contend with and negotiate the anaphorá (a carrying back) and kataphorá (a carrying forward) of trope—whether in globalized atmospheric and climate futures, the conservation and governance qua protection of places and beings, in the stories and mythoi of adversity and social justice, or the moral landscapes of conveyance. As any descent into online comment sections will reveal, whether on news websites, YouTube, or Facebook, commentary to Indigenous news stories—as with the general confusion or annoyance with Idle No More,45 offensive claims by police after the suspicious death of Annie Pootoogook,46 or

44 As the contributions to this special issue suggest, the “-ness” of Métisness remains variously intersected, divulged, debated, and claimed. For another recent take on these terms, see Adam Gaudry and Daryl Leroux, “White Settler Revisionism and Making Métis Everywhere: The Evocation of Métissage in and Nova Scotia,” Critical Ethnic Studies 3, no. 1 (2017), 116–142. 45 David Newland, “Parsing the Online Comments on #IdleNoMore: How Canadians are Failing a Tolerance Test,” Macleans, 20 December 2012. http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/parsing-the-comments-on-idlenomore/. 46 “Ottawa Officer Demoted for Racist Comments about Annie Pootoogook,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 7 December 2016. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/chris- hrnchiar-racist-comments-penalty-annie-pootoogook-1.3884927

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false rumours spread on Facebook47 to devalue the second degree murder of an Anishinaabe woman struck by a trailer hitch—can often be painful, if not horrific. As Kimberly Matheson argues with her contribution, “Rebuilding Identities and Renewing Relationships: The Necessary Consolidation of Deficit- and Strength-Based Discourses,” the saliency, affect, expectations, and power of a discourse variously converge upon strategic mobilizations and balance. “Centuries worth of paternalistic systems are in place,” writes Matheson, “and the tenets of these systems reach deeply into the current culture and governance of each nation that makes up the Indigenous peoples in Canada.”48 Matheson employs social identity theory to parse the arrangements of “strength” and “deficit” based discourses. Depending on the mode and application of either, qualitatively different affects, expectations, anticipations, and views emerge. Both discourses hold truth, finds Matheson, and yet their saliency is highly contextual and mediated by, if not implicated in, trope. Consider, for example, the varied outcomes of the “David versus Goliath” underdog story on non-Indigenous peoples. Depending on the deployment, and propelled by the tropes particular to the underdog story, an empathetic and aspirational gravity is disposed with coincident mediations and expectations for struggle, loss, performatives of exertion, perceived threats to non-Indigenous communities, and questions of legitimacy. Ultimately, Matheson finds that the mobilization of discourses is most effective when there are strong and effective leaders capable of integrating meaningful articulations of identity, community, and visions together. Rather than fall back on simplistic dualisms complicit in the mediation of Indigeneity and the discourses that shape its apprehensions, Matheson ends with a strong recommendation for a complexification of the medial spheres of expectation and identification, grounded in historical and systemic injustices, and a confrontation with “the incapacity of universal standards to legitimize other knowledge systems.”49 With “A Vulture is Not a Dove: The Politics of Indigeneity and Resistance to Canadian Extractivism in the Americas,” Steven Schnoor probes what is at base the ongoing collision between what the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) calls “free prior and informed consent” (FPIC)50 and the longstanding resource extraction goals of settler state

47 Jorge Barrera, “How a Facebook Lie about Thunder Bay Woman Killed by Trailer Hitch Spread,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 18 November 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/facebook-kentner-rumours-1.4408097 48 Matheson, 88. 49 Ibid., 89. 50 See “Free Prior and Informed Consent: An Indigenous Peoples’ Right and a Good Practice for Local Communities, Manual for Project Practitioners,” Food and Agriculture Organization,

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capitalisms. In the 1970s, during the senior Trudeau’s Liberal government, Indigenous peoples in the Arctic and northern territories refused Ottawa’s vision for Arctic development. One of the most publicly recognizable outcomes from this period was Justice Thomas R. Berger’s 1977 report on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline.51 In it, Berger describes the naturalness with which Canadians are prone to think of developing the Arctic, the “last frontier.” Among other things, Berger offers a simple lesson from this document that, for too many reasons to name, should not be forgotten today: Indigenous peoples claim a homeland—not nowhere, not empty, not nothing—“and they believe they have a right to say what its future ought to be.”52 All throughout what are called the Americas, extractive industry projects—pipelines and mines, seismic surveys and tar sands, open pits and fracking—encounter Indigenous movement and staging: from dances, walks, and circles, to blockades, talks, and court cases.53 The discourses concerning these projects are also moving (and affecting) and staging (platforms) on- and offline, where "exploitation" and "opportunity" are mediated, and remediated, in body and body politic, in campaigns, social movements, streaming video, and Facebook pages. If development and extractions projects are contentious, there is no uniform rejection of their terms. To this end, Schnoor investigates the different ways that the language of recognition, self-determination, and FPIC are strategically deployed by Canadian extractive industries in Latin America—propped up by mining law reforms in the 1990s—to favour, if not vouchsafe, the terms of “prosperity, democracy, and security” as imagined by former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. For his part, Schnoor is concerned with the matters and ways that “irreversible” environmental degradation and contamination, near universal rejection by Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous lifeworlds encounter and precipitate the rhetorics of “community” and “self-determination.” If, as Berger

United Nations, 24 October 2016. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6190e.pdf. For a recent take on the way the Justin Trudeau Liberal government may handle what in July 2016 Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould called the unworkability of the UNDRIP into Canadian law, see Stephanie Axmann, Brynn Gray, and Selina Lee-Andersen, “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in Canada—Implementation Status Update,” Canadian ERA Perspectives, 8 August 2017, accessed 26 December 2017. https://www.canadianeraperspectives.com/2017/08/united-nations-declaration-on-the-rights-of- indigenous-peoples-undrip-in-canada-implementation-status-update/. 51 See Thomas R. Berger, “Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Volume 1 (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1977). 52 Ibid., 1. 53 See for example Janet Fiskio, “Dancing at the End of the World: The Poetics of Body in Indigenous Protest,” in Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos, edited by Salma Monani and Joni Adamson (New York: Routledge, 2017), 101–118.

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said decades prior, and as is found today in the language of human rights and the UNDRIP, Indigenous peoples “ought” to decide on their future, then what are the mediations of the terms and grounds of this future? Marisa Elena Duarte and Morgan Vigil-Hayes’s contribution, “#Indigenous: A Technical and Decolonial Analysis of Activist Uses of Hashtags Across Social Movements,” employs a network scientific and social media analysis of a sample of activists on Twitter during the 2016 US election. Twitter, of course, was then a space of incredible energy, and witnessed the transmission and creation of countless bits of data crashing in waves of memes, outlier sources, rumour, and what a Twitter representative called “thoughts, comments, [and] questions.” The New York Times published a piece on the day of the American election calling Twitter “the champion of social media”54 throughout the campaign. In 2008, and again in 2012, Twitter emerged as the medium par excellence for Barack Obama’s campaign machine. By 2016, Twitter promoted itself as the central election platform for streaming video, live updates, and the meme economy.55 By day’s end on Election Day 2016, over 40 million tweets had been posted to Twitter—10 million more than in 2012.56 The goal, in the words of a Twitter representative, has been “to increase engagement in the election process and encourage voter turnout.”57 While the terms of that “engagement” are still troubled by bots and potential extra-state interference, Duarte and Vigil-Hayes depart from the idealized political subject of social media. The “sample” employed by the authors, then, is already suggestive of the depth of mediation online—as set and subset, as bits of data in a constant upswell, as citizens of a state, as subjects of settler rule, and as peoples of nations and homelands. Dominant narratives, used to help explain the outcome of the contemporary Western political landscape,

54 Mike Isaac and Sydney Ember, “For Election Day Influence, Twitter Ruled Social Media,” The New York Times, 8 November 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/technology/for- election-day-chatter-twitter-ruled-social-media.html. 55 Matt Kapko, “Twitter’s Impact on 2016 Presidential Election is Unmistakable,” CIO, 3 November 2016. https://www.cio.com/article/3137513/social-networking/twitters-impact-on- 2016-presidential-election-is-unmistakable.html. 56 Jessica Guynn, “Forget Trump: Election’s Big Winner was Twitter,” USA Today, 8 November 2016. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/11/08/election-winner- twitter/93509896/. 57 Melanie Ehrenkranz, “Trump Supporters are Scheming on 4Chan to Flood Twitter with Fake Voting Memes,” Mic, 7 November 2016. https://mic.com/articles/158759/can-you-vote-online- 4chan-hoax-spreads-on-twitter-voting-twitter-facebook-text#.00I4V8VnK.

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have focused on the so-called meme war,58 disinformation, the undertow of populist clamour, or on US President Donald Trump’s scandalous (and ongoing) use, or misuse, of the platform. But Duarte and Vigil-Hayes offer, rather, what they call the “existential sphere and material expression” of Indigenous social media communication—“ in phases scientific, experiential, technical, governmental, political, and metaphysical.” With it, the responsibility qua praxis of Indigenous Internet researchers to discern, detect, and engage the silt carried by the tributaries of the colonial—whether as design, the state, or in technological assemblage. Finally, we close the issue with two papers concerned with the practices and fields of Indigenous collaborative media production, from Fourth World Film59 to podcasting practices. In both cases, the authors read not only the ways in which these medias and tropes are employed or practiced, but the matters and materials that continuously found and place the medias into traditional and contemporary geographies of Indigenous knowledge-making. The first of the final two papers is Joanna Hearne’s “‘Who We Are Now’: Iñupiaq Youth On the Ice,” which reckons with cinematic genre in siku,60 in her reading of Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s first feature film On the Ice. The claim advanced here by the filmmakers, argues Hearne, variously speaks (of) the time of the ice flows, its migrations and situations; the relations with and of the hunt and tracking; the remixes of history, of words (the shifting meanings, and groans, of the word “ice”), and cultural expression; and the inter- action of traditional and contemporary knowledge-making into the broader mediations of genre, production, gaze, and being. Indeed, for Hearne the film acts precisely as a saturation of living here, now, with and on the land, with and

58 See for example Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (Winchester: Zero Books, 2017). 59 See also Michelle H. Raheja, “Reading Nanook’s Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner),” American Quarterly 59, no. 4 (2007). 60 I am playing here with “in situ,” in place, the place of the generic, and siku, the Inuktut word for “ice,” which, as Hearne describes, is its own unique place in the world. Siku must be thought as a mutable but ongoing place: of tradition and story; of right acting; of the return of the seal at the breathing hole; of the tuvaq (shorefast ice) trails used by whalers off Barrow and along the shoreline to the Beauford. See Matthew L. Duckenmiller et al., “Assessing the Shorefast Ice: Iñupiat Whaling Trails off Barrow, Alaska,” in SIKU: Knowing Our Ice, Documenting Inuit Sea-Ice Knowlede and Use, edited by Igor Kupnik, Claudio Aporta, Sheari Gearheard, et al. (New York: Springer, 2008), 207. See also Julie Cruickshank, Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007).

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as its inhabitants, human and hip-hop moving that encounter beyond the border, through it, and within it to perform the complexities of Inuit inhabitancy. Hearne outlines this intervention and framing of the symbolic landscape and performance of Iñupiaq practice in spaces popular and “remote.” Marshall McLuhan, borrowing a term from Cardinal Newman,61 famously described Alexis de Tocqueville as having mastered “the grammar of print.” The technological and generic appropriations and remixes that Hearne outlines in MacLean’s On the Ice—whether via Mark V. Campbell’s description of the “common grammar” and lingua franca of hip-hop, or in “the visual grammar” of the camera—might be said to describe a “concern with the continuation of Iñupiaq systems of knowledge” that is precisely a mastery of the Barrow grammar of ice—the blanche immanent to film noire. As with other contributions to this special issue, that grammar is a matter (of concern, but also of place and time) as material practice, long since mastered by the toolkits available to Iñupiat—matter that moves, remixes and re-places, and finds its ways to the “who” and “now” of “who we are now.” We close the issue with Lindsay Day, Ashlee Cunsolo-Wilcox, et al.’s contribution, “The Expanding Digital Media Landscape of Qualitative and Decolonizing Research: Examining Collaborative Podcasting as a Research Method.” Taking their cue from Linda Tuhiwai Smith, participatory action research, and decolonizing research, the authors undertake the under-researched space of the podcast as “a method of qualitative data collection and analysis, critical inquiry, and knowledge mobilization.” Water returns here as a concern and mediation, shared with the paper that opens this issue, enacted through a transdisciplinary podcast—The Water Dialogues Project—with an approach to water grounded in the Mi’kmaw Two-Eyed Seeing framework uniting Indigenous and Western research approaches together. Indeed, as the authors initiate the approach, and the sharing of the approaches in the medial space of the podcast, they reflect the constitutive “object” of this special issue and the myriad ways that the contributions, taken together, approach the mediation of Indigeneity. The podcast performs, acts, and approaches in the frame, remediating the medium and the collection of 32 interviewees sharing approaches to water, collaborative research, and gathering. Throughout, the process of producing the podcast is variously mediated: by seating arrangement, opportunity, priority of voice, and the editing process of listening, relistening, cutting, summary, and thematic and tropic highlighting. As the authors spotlight the role of making, mediating, and marking the distinctions of the

61 Who said of Napoleon: “He understood the grammar of gunpowder.” Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Vintage, 1964), 28, emphasis mine.

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collaboration—the practice of gathering together, dispersing, prioritizing, reframing, and sharing—so too emerge the mediatory collisions between sharing and dissemination, speaking and telling, summary and representation, privilege and convergence, testimony and story. In the end, through the tropic spheres of mediation, what remains, perhaps, is the gathering—and it is this gathering that is the decolonizing framework.

Acknowledgements Issue cover photograph courtesy of Tiff-Annie Kenny, taken in Qikiqtarjuaq, Nunavut, in August 2017.

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MEDIATING MÉTIS IDENTITY: AN INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER ADESE AND ZOE TODD

JENNIFER ADESE, ZOE TODD, AND SHAUN STEVENSON

Introduction The mediation of Indigenous identity in Canada cannot be disentangled from the ways that non-Indigenous Canadians attempt to mediate their own settler identities. For significant numbers of non-Indigenous Canadians, this mediation occurs through uncritical and problematic mobilizations of what is often perceived to be Métis identity—an identity which, for many with little connection to Indigenous histories or politics, simply signifies the mixing of cultures, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Indeed, countless Canadians who otherwise would not identify themselves as Indigenous, will inevitably cite a distant or Métis relative, claiming they themselves are Métis, part- Métis, or possess Métis heritage. Hardly a month goes by that notions of “Métis-ness” do not appear to be up for debate, or, more often, especially in the east, uncritically championed as part of Canada’s own national identity. If my claims here appear merely anecdotal, the recent controversies over the supposed Indigenous identity of author Joseph Boyden,1 along with the deluge of non- Indigenous op-eds in support of his lucrative and ambiguous claim to various Indigenous communities—at times Mi’kmaq, Anishnaabe, and of course Métis—is indicative of just how much investment settler Canadians put into propping up and leaning into unsubstantiated claims to Indigenous identity, while deriding legitimate assertions of Indigenous rights (Elliott 2017). While many questionable claims to Métis identity likely do not come from an explicit desire to cause harm, they represent the endless iteration of what Terry Goldie, way back in 1990, referred to as “indigenization.” Goldie

1 See Jorge Barrera, “Author Joseph Boyden’s Shape-Shifting Indigenous Identity,” APTN National News, 23 December 2016. http://aptnnews.ca/2016/12/23/author-joseph-boydens- shape-shifting-indigenous-identity/.

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writes, “In their need to become ‘native,’ to belong in their land, whites in Canada have required a process I have termed ‘indigenization,’ the impossible necessity of becoming indigenous” (2004, 194). From Grey Owl and Boyden to the seemingly innocuous passing dinner table comment about a distant “Indian,” “Native,” “métis,” or “sauvage/sauvagesse” ancestor, limited understandings of Métis identity have consistently been utilized as a means of mediating an indigenized settler identity, wherein non-Indigenous peoples seek to reconcile or justify their presence on Indigenous lands. It is indeed the responsibility of settler Canadians to better understand the implications of these settler moves to indigenize, especially as they do so at the expense of the Métis peoples; however, the meaning of Métis identity is undoubtedly a complex issue. Where identities are often mediated through complicated negotiations, this is especially true for Indigenous peoples who have been forced to articulate or define their identities in various ways within the veiled blood quantum provisions of legislation. Issues of blood quantum and gender have consistently been operationalized to limit and, in many cases, eradicate expressions of Indigenous identity.2 Métis identity has been further mediated by the state, serving as a kind of floating signifier positioned between Indigeneity and whiteness and deployed at various points to bolster Canada’s sense of its own history. It is no wonder that confusion abounds on behalf of non-Indigenous peoples with little connection to Métis histories, nationhood, and political struggle. As Alicia Elliott writes, “telling Indigenous people who they are and what to think is never an entirely benign exercise” (2017). To be sure, as a settler scholar, it is not my intention to further contribute to the policing of

2 Canada has a long history of policy legislation that has sought to define who and who does not possess “Indian status,” and thus who is recognized as possessing rights as “Indian” under the Indian Act and as Indian, Métis, and Inuit through Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. Prior to the passing of Bill C-31 in 1985, for example, Indigenous women with a blood- quantum based “Indian status” who married a non-Indian status man would lose their Indian status. If a status Indian Indigenous woman married a status Indian Indigenous man from another band or nation, she would lose status within her own nation. The Act went so far as to accord Indian status to non-Indigenous women who married status Indian Indigenous men. In short, Indigenous women’s Indian status and to some extent, Indigenous identity was mediated through the men they married. While Bill C-31 sought to rectify this gender discrimination within the Indian Act, it has been criticized for simply delaying the removal of Indian status by one generation and thus perpetuating gender discrimination. For more information on issues of blood quantum and gender in defining Indigenous identity, and how Indigenous peoples define themselves beyond colonial legislation, see Bonita Lawrence’s 2004 “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood or Pam Palmater’s 2011 Beyond Blood: Rethinking Indigenous Identity.

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Indigenous identity. A recognition of the implications of false claims to Indigeneity does not necessarily result in a nuanced understanding of the meaning of what it means to be Métis or how this meaning becomes constituted within a complex nexus of colonialism, rights discourse, kinship relations,3 and personal identity. How then do I engage colleagues, friends, and family who might perpetuate limited claims to Métis identity? How do I reckon with these claims in the classroom, where many students, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, may be negotiating the mediation of their own complex identities? What about those individuals doing the hard work of re-claiming their Indigeneity amidst the backdrop of colonialism and a settler society still seeking semiotic control over the meaning of that identity? How do I reckon with these issues in a way that is informed, responsible, and ethical? I have the privilege here of engaging in conversation with two respected Métis colleagues to explore these complex mediations further. In responding to “Canada’s continued obsession … with the ‘‘mixedness’ of Métis identity” (Andersen 2011), I am joined by Jennifer Adese from Carleton University’s School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies and Zoe Todd from Carleton’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, located in the traditional territories of the Omàmiwininiwak, also called unceded Algonquin territory and the City of Ottawa. This dialogue is an attempt to interrogate the ongoing and uncritical mediation of Métis identity in the settler colonial nation state. Before turning to this important dialogue, I want to further elaborate on the terms of engagement Métis people have been forced to mediate their identity through under the confines of settler colonialism. Where the Métis have most generally been conceptualized as “the descendants of fur-trade marriages of Europeans and natives” (Andersen 2011), the Métis have come to stand in as a simple marker of mixed identity, mixed

3 Indigenous notions of kinship are complex and diverse depending on the particular needs and organizing principles of a given Indigenous nation. However, for many Indigenous peoples, kinship embodies a sharable philosophy across nations and often represents much more than simple blood or family lineage. Later in our interview, Jennifer Adese, drawing from the work of Brenda Macdougall, will offer a Métis conception of kinship based on the idea of “wahkohtowin,” meaning “everything is related” and wherein kinship is “an active process of relationship that speaks not just to flat points of connection but to an active process of responsibility and reciprocity.” Daniel Heath Justice (2008) has similarly said in the context of Cherokee people, “Kinship … is about life and living; it’s not about something that is in itself so much as something we do—actively, thoughtfully, respectfully” (148). For further discussions on Indigenous kinship and its relation to specific Indigenous nations and communities see the work of Rob Innes (2013), Daniel Heath Justice (2008), and Brenda Macdougall (2011).

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heritage, and mixed histories. In his quintessentially liberal-Canadian text, A Fair Country, John Ralston Saul suggests that Canada ought to be understood as constituted, not merely through French and English interaction, but through settler interaction with the continent’s Indigenous peoples, somehow making Canada a “métis Nation.” Through a levelling out of complex historical, social, and political relations, Saul raises notions of “mixing” and “mixed- bloodedness” to the status of Métis. As Métis scholar and activist Chelsea Vowel notes, “After all, that's what the French word means, and that is almost exclusively how we are discussed in the mainstream; as a hybrid people formed from the unions between European men and First Nations women” (2015). While good intentions are a troubled hallmark of settler Canadian engagement with Indigenous peoples, Saul’s seemingly well-meaning prompt to consider the integral role of Indigenous peoples in the formation of the nation only reinscribes settler colonial “possessive logics” (Moreton-Robinson 2015) wherein the political, historical, and cultural specificity of Métis peoplehood are collapsed under the banner of mixed identity. Saul’s position, one uncritically reflected throughout dominant settler Canadian mediations of Métis identity, works to reaffirm the nation-state’s place as rightful inheritor of Indigenous lands. As Andersen, Vowel, and many other Métis scholars have noted (Andersen 2011 and 2014; Gaudry and Leroux 2017; Macdougall 2010; O’Toole 2010; St.-Onge, Podruchny, and Macdougall 2012), such a move to what is referred to sometimes, and especially in eastern Canada, as “métissage”4—an increasingly popular position in Quebec and — constructs Canada as an unproblematically “indigenized” nation-state, while also posing significant challenges for contemporary Indigenous, and in particular, Métis, claims to self-determination (see Gaudry and Leroux 2017). Indeed, claims to Métis nationhood are often in direct tension with settler claims to nationhood, and worse, are pitted against other Indigenous assertions of self-determination in the settler state. In many ways, the Métis are at the frontlines of navigating the complex terrain of Indigeneity in Canada, with Métis identity consistently, and often uncritically mediated through the courts, through public opinion, and the media, rather than through Métis communities and peoples themselves.

4 See for example, Gaudry and Leroux’s 2017 “White Settler Revisionism and Making Métis Everywhere: The Evocation of Métissage in Quebec and Nova Scotia,” where they describe the “evocation of métissage”—that is, the tactical use of long-ago racial mixing to reimagine a “Métis” identity that prioritizes mixed-race ancestry and disregards the historical development of Métis peoplehood” (116–117).

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Countering the move to mobilize Métis identity as an uncritical settler construct of Indigeneity, Andersen (2011) argues that, “‘Métis’ refers to a nation with membership codes that deserve to be respected. We are not a soup kitchen for those disenfranchised by past and present Canadian Indian policy and, as such, although we should sympathize with those who bear the brunt of this particular form of dispossession, we cannot do so at expense of eviscerating our identity.”5 Andersen instead foregrounds the significance of Métis nationhood, and of constituting the Métis as a distinct polity, with historically grounded geo-political roots. Andersen writes, “Thinking about these issues through the lens of Indigenous nationhood might allow us to tell a much different—and more complex—story, about a Métis society historically centred in the area of Red River (now roughly Winnipeg, Manitoba).” The recent Supreme Court judgment in Daniels v. Canada (2016), referred to largely as the “Daniels Decision,” further illustrates the ongoing complexities in mediating Métis identity, as well as the state’s consistent inability to reckon with the political specificity of Métis nationhood (See Adese; Gaudry and Andersen; Vowel and Leroux; and Todd in a special issue of the journal TOPIA on the Daniels Decision, 2016). While the decision affirmed the inclusion of Métis and non-status Indians within s. 91(24) of the Constitution Act (1867), the Supreme Court’s focus on “mixedness” re- entrenches many of the above-mentioned issues. Responding to the Daniels Decision, Métis scholar Brenda Macdougall writes, “focusing on mixed ancestry ignores the history of who the Métis and Non-Status people were and therefore misrepresents who they are today.” Macdougall is careful to note, that “of course there were mixed-blood people in eastern Canada as early as the seventeenth century, but equating them with the Métis, known historically as la nouvelle nation, is not borne out by historical evidence” (Macdougall 2016, 2). Further, legal equivocations around the specificity of Métis identity opens the floodgates for non-Métis and even non-Indigenous claims to Métis nationhood, once again undercutting Métis political rights and self-determination.

5 Andersen recently addressed and elaborated on his oft-quoted “soup kitchen” reference in a Twitter thread (@DrChrisAndersen, 29 November 2017). I offer an abridged version of that elaboration here: “The point about the soup kitchen metaphor is not just to suggest that while Métis are legendarily generous we are not limitlessly so (i.e. we can’t feed everyone nor should we be obligated to); It is to ask us to think about the ethics that ground our willingness to feed those who we do. Any of us that come from Métis families know that in nearly all situations, those in need get an extra plate at the table—food (and generosity) can always be stretched. But (and here I give a nod to Dr. Jill Doerfler’s brilliant book Those Who Belong): what are the responsibilities of those who are being fed? What does it mean to act ethically when you are being fed in accordance with someone else’s generosity?”

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Andersen, in his pivotal text Métis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood (2014) suggests that to understand the Métis through mixedness represents a mediation of Indigeneity premised on colonial logics wherein biology, and limited notions at that, take precedence over more complex and formal political structures, such as treaties and kinship relations (11). For Andersen, and many Métis scholars, activists, and community members, the “national core” of the Métis must be traced back to its historical location at Red River, and “in the shared memories of the territory, leaders, events, and culture that sustain the Métis people today” (13). Andersen foregrounds “historical, peoplehood-based relationships” as the basis for Métis claims to recognition (11). While these issues must be better understood by non-Indigenous peoples in Canada, and while it is up to non-Indigenous Canadians to push back against the trend of métissage, the ongoing mediation of Métis identity, both at a political and cultural level, must be, and has been consistently led by Métis peoples—by scholars, activists, and community members. And so to elucidate these issues further, I now turn to a conversation with Métis scholars, writers, and activists at the frontlines of these debates in various ways. In light of Canada’s preoccupation with the “mixedness” of Métis identity and Andersen’s assertions that “recognizing Métis as ‘mixed’ rather than as a nation is an ethical choice,” our discussion here thus serves as an attempt to respond ethically and responsibly to the mediation of Métis identity in the settler colonial nation state.

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Shaun: By way of introduction to you both, I want to invite you to introduce yourselves and ask how it is that you have come to mediate your own identities as Métis people? Zoe: As I position myself with academe, I draw on my kinship relations. I’m an otipemisiw/Michif/Red River Métis woman who grew up in amiskwaciwaskahikan (), which is a city that rests within Treaty Six Territory in Alberta. The city is in the heart of the prairie/boreal parkland transition zone, and the North River (kisiskaciwani-sipiy in nehiyawewin or Plains Cree, Y Dialect) runs through my hometown. My mom’s family are British and Norwegian settlers who moved to Alberta between the 1880s and 1920s. My maternal grandmother’s family, the Petersons, moved to Alberta from Oklahoma and Minnesota. My maternal

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grandfather’s family, the Crouchers, moved to Canada to homestead in Alberta after WWI. My dad’s family is Métis. His mom’s (Sharpe) ancestry was British-Pennsylvania Dutch. My paternal grandfather, George Todd, was Métis—his family stretches through time and territory across the length of the Lake Winnipeg watershed. Through nimosom’s family we are related to Métis and Cree families with roots across the plains, including the Cardinal, Desjarlais, Dumont, Dusfresne, Dennet, Howse, Laframboise, Laboucane, and Todd families. I draw especially on the stories my Dad and Aunties share of their grandparents, Caroline LaFramboise (whose mother was Cree-Métis from Whitefish (Goodfish) Lake, Alberta) and James Todd (whose parents were Métis). These kinship relations tie me to histories and stories across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and North Dakota—in other words, bind me to a great majority of the Lake Winnipeg watershed. So when I position myself, I gesture to this settler history and Métis kinship. I think it’s really important for me to be explicit about these links as they manifest through time and space in the prairies. I am an unapologetic prairie philosopher, and my immediate passion is for tending to the stories, histories, and entanglements of people and fish in the context of settler colonization of the prairies throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. I see myself as bound to upholding and reciprocating the legal traditions and philosophies of my Métis relations, which position me in specific ongoing reciprocal responsibilities as a scholar, community member, feminist, artist, activist, and writer. Jennifer: My name is Jennifer Adese. I am of the otipemisiwak/Métis/Michif people who for generations before me called places like amiskwaciwaskahikan (Beaver Hills House/Edmonton), and communities such as St. Albert and Manitou Sakahigan, home. My father was raised in amiskwaciwaskahikan, and maintained a close connection to his grandparent’s home in Duffield, a hamlet next to the reserve, south of Manitou Sakahigan. His mother, my grandmother, Myrtle Lenny, was born and raised there in Duffield, and comes from a large Métis, Cree, and family that stretches from Duffield, to Manitou Sakahigan and St. Albert, all the way up through Athabasca to Tulit’a in the , and beyond. She is the daughter of Mary Justina Dubé and Dolphus Lenny and Great-grandma Mary was born in St. Albert and raised in Meanook in the Athabasca region. Following what may have been a postpartum depression, attributable to a breakdown in her early 20s, she spent the remainder of her life in the Provincial Mental Hospital for Ponoka and Raymond Home in Raymond, Alberta. Her mother, Adelaide Wabasca Blandion/Dion was the grand-niece of the well-known leader mistahi-muskwa (Big Bear). Great-grandma married my great-grandfather Dolphus, who was the son of Lucille Gladu, daughter of Marie Amable Belcourt and Oskinikiw aka

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Joseph Gladu, headman of the Michel Band of Manitou Sakahigan at the time of the signing of .6 Grandma Lucie was born a member of the Michel Band, a treaty person, and was later enfranchised through the North-West Half- Breed Scrip Commission.7 She married John Flett Lennie, an Orcadian employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company who ran a well-known stopping house near Duffield. My paternal grandfather, Joseph Seib, was the son of Ignatz Seib and Adellheid Engel, Russian-German settlers who arrived to Alberta by way of the United States, and before that, their birthplace along the Volga River in Russia. I place great emphasis on the stories of my maternal Indigenous relations here, and I also place them first, as an inversion of common practice in identifying relations. They connect me to innumerable relations— Lenny/Lennie, Dubé/Dubie, Gladu, Belcourt, L’Hirondelle, Chartrand, Blandion/Blondion/Dion/Dionne/Blyan/White/Powder, Petit Couteau, Nipissing, and Gray/Grey, among others. For me, it is my maternal Indigenous relations who ground me in my identity as a Métis woman. Insofar as my paternal Indigenous relations, and my many other non-Indigenous relations are deeply important to me, it is my maternal Indigenous relations whose homelands, labour, and language that have been, and continue to be, the birthplace of my Métisness. In contrast to popular Franco-centric and patrilineal narratives of Métisness that attempt to seat its origins in Québec or other points eastward, my Métisness—and indeed that of most of the people I know who are Métis—cannot be dislocated from our maternal relations. I did not always know these stories. I have had to work very hard to learn these stories through conversations with family members, oftentimes through heartrending tears, while my unasked question as to whether they would embrace me as one of theirs hung in the air between us. Extended family members that I have met know of me as the “one who was adopted out,” although I was never, in fact, adopted out. Like all other members of my father’s immediate and extended family, I was born “out west,” but unlike every other member of father’s family I was not raised within this familial context. I was born in North Vancouver and spent the first few years of my life in Squamish, British Columbia. Following my father’s disappearance and the later discovery of his body—and the determination of his death by suicide in October 1982—I was relocated by my mother’s hometown in Neutral and Haudenosaunee territory, the City of St. Catharines, Ontario. My mother was born here and at the age of 8 months she was adopted into a family of English

6 See http://digital.scaa.sk.ca/ourlegacy/exhibit_treaties. 7 See http://digital.scaa.sk.ca/ourlegacy/exhibit_scrip.

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and Scottish Mennonites. Her birth mother was of English and Pennsylvania Dutch background, and other ancestral relations that remain unknown to us. Her birth father was born in England in 1885, arriving to Saskatchewan on the promise of “free land” and a better life than workhouses and struggle. Over the past 12 years I have made many returns to “out west” to visit immediate and extended family and I have seen how deeply intertwined our families and communities are across the Métis homeland. I have sat with my late Auntie Helen Perreault Lenny at her kitchen table in Duffield, pouring over suitcases full of family photographs; I have walked the Lenny homestead with my dad’s cousin Paul; I have taken a ride with my grandmother’s cousin Don Dubé through the Dubé family homestead in Athabasca, and heard his granddaughter tell me stories about our family and the land; I have walked through graves in St. Albert and paid my respects to my relations; I have returned to Batoche, where my great-great grandma’s sister, Virginie Blandion and her husband Charles Saluste Gariépy lived, and near where Charles was wounded in resisting Canadian colonization at Duck Lake in 1885; and I have sat beside the Red River, where my great-great-great-great grandmother Josephte Chartrand was born before moving to Manitou Sakahigan, and where my great-great-great grandfather Antoine Wabasca Blandion Jr. met and married his second wife, Marie Desjarlais. I have laboured, at times tirelessly, and with no reward other than to know my own relations, to reweave myself back into the web of these kinship ties and to learn what responsibilities I have to be a good family member to past, present, and future generations. The people and stories ground me and guide me and I am grateful to all of these people, without whom I would not be here today. I carry their stories forth in my teaching, research, and everyday life, as I am responsible to them. I am also accountable to the ones waiting with these ancestors in the spirit world, the ones who have yet to be born. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the urban Indigenous community I was raised within in St. Catharines where the generosity of Haudenosaunee helped to foment this responsibility from an early stage. All of this comes forth with me in my work as an anti-colonial, anti- racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic mother, academic, educator, and activist. Shaun: Given the complexity of your introductions—the familial webs, histories, and stories that ground you in what it means to be Métis—my next question should by now be irrelevant. And yet, in recent years there has been an

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increase in pushback against the assertion of a coherent Métis nationhood,8 situating it as a claim to a kind of ethno-nationalism, or essentialist form of identity politics. Further, as discussed above, notions of mixedness abound, wherein simplified conceptions of Indigenous heritage result in claims to Métis identity. Despite the extensive literature elucidating the complexities and significance of Indigenous nationhood (Justice 2008; Weaver, Womack & Warrior 2012; Andersen 2014), reductive moves to undermine this complexity are common in relation to Indigenous claims to recognition and self- determination. While it seems that Indigenous peoples, and increasingly the Métis, are forced to rehash these arguments over and over again, and at the risk of asking this of you myself, I’m wondering if you could speak to these issues and about what nationhood or peoplehood means to you in relation to Métis self-determination. Jennifer: Nationhood is the political expression of our indigenous peoplehood—that as Indigenous people, we are entitled to express ourselves politically in whatever manner we see fit —even if it is a manner that makes some uncomfortable. I don’t think the fact that there are people within the Métis Nation who disagree with the current predominant political representation we have undermines this—it is innate to any nation to have discord. I’m less concerned with people of the Métis Nation who are displeased with its political direction than I am with people who feel a sense of destructive entitlement to the Métis Nation. Within this, I am concerned about people who access Métis through appeals to “métissage” because it fundamentally ignores what we say about how we come to exist as a distinct yet interconnected people. As a Métis woman, I find that claims made regarding Métis as “originating in the East” or from the “paternal homeland of Québec” are unforgivably sexist. As Adam Gaudry and Darryl Leroux (2017) have demonstrated in their recent work on métissage and claims to Métis identity in Eastern Canada, appeals to métissage are often deeply invested in patrilineal narratives—particularly French and/or Québeçois ones. For me, as I mention a bit earlier, this problematic narrative makes a pretty powerful statement about how the claimants of such identities devalue Cree, , and other prairie and parkland-based Indigenous women and their stories and lives. Further, these narratives debase the Métis women who come from them, offering a public narrative wherein these women are erased as if they do not matter to

8 For further discussion on claims to a “new Métis” identity which works to undercut the centrality, coherence, and political significance of a Métis homeland and peoplehood, see Darryl Leroux and Adam Gaudry’s 2017 article “Becoming Indigenous: The Rise of Eastern Métis in Canada.” https://theconversation.com/becoming-indigenous-the-rise-of-eastern-metis- in-canada-80794.

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Métisness. This is dangerous and sexist. It elides the rootedness of Métis in their maternal homeland—and thus in the language, kinship networks, and knowledge systems of maternal relations. People such as Maria Campbell, Brenda Macdougall, and Nicole St-Onge have spent their lives countering the violent erasure of Métis women and their ancestors. They have worked to highlight the centrality of Métis women to the Métis Nation. When pressed on the matter, people upholding these métissage-based narratives dig in and assert that they value Métis and other Indigenous women, but in truth, if they did, they would have to concede that Michif and the worldviews it conveys are not inseparable from the aforementioned (particularly Cree and Saulteaux) women. Zoe: I really appreciate the detail and clarity that you offer here, Jennifer, regarding Métis women, political action, and nationhood. To be honest, I am a little fatigued by the fact that the misrepresentation and mis-interpretation of Métis peoplehood and nationhood by settler scholars, lawyers, jurists, journalists, and others forces us as a Métis people to constantly rehearse and re- negotiate ourselves as a polity within a settler nation-state that is ill-equipped to interpret Indigenous law and sovereignty. For me, Métis self-determination is a recognition of the specific and quantifiable ways in which Métis asserted and assert their relationships, responsibilities, histories, stories, language, laws, kinship ties, diplomatic traditions, inter-nation treaties, vis-à-vis their own communities, other Indigenous nations, and the settler-Canadian nation-state. Because I research human-fish relations, I tend to think of Métis self- determination in terms of which fish and waterways we had and have relationships to. Métis nationhood is a territorially and temporally bounded series of relationships between human and more-than-human kin that is rooted in a very tangible series of events and localities in the Lake Winnipeg watershed and its neighbouring watersheds in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. I think of this in relation to the responsibilities we owe to other Indigenous nations, too. I am currently reading Dr. Robert Innes’s Elder Brother and the Law of the People (2013), and his work has also prompted me to ask: how did nehiyawak (Cree), Ansihinaabeg, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota on the Plains recognize the Métis? Building on his studies of kinship in his community of Cowessess First Nation, I now realize we are self-determining in part because other Indigenous nations recognized us through naming us, negotiating trade relations and treaties with us, co-constituting certain stories and narratives with us, and by placing sanctions on us if we were not living up to our responsibilities as kin (or as guests, depending on the circumstance). Other Indigenous nations on the Plains acknowledged our shared connections but also our distinctness in specific time(s) and place. I am less interested in

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what varying and shifting terminologies settler actors applied to the Métis, because that terminology was rooted in racialized understandings of Indigeneity and a need to assert white supremacist and dispossessing logics to “the Other.” Building on the work of Chris Andersen, and his description of the relationship between Fort Edmonton and Red River Settlement as “heartbeats” (Stirling 2016), I think of these relationships in terms of the flows of people, stories, life, and labour along specific rivers, creeks, and lakes that are incorporated in to the legal-political consciousness of who the Métis are. Jennifer: I appreciate Zoe’s tiredness. Indeed, it is emotionally and quite often physically exhausting to be constantly pulled into a position of having to address something that to us is pretty self-evident. I think, though, I am perhaps less fatigued by it than some of my colleagues in Métis Studies. Given that I was raised in Southern Ontario, I have been exposed to these “Eastern claims” in different forms for the majority of my life. I often talk about the time that the Métis Nation of Ontario, then in its infancy, began to make inroads into the urban Native community of St. Catharines. This was in the early 1990s, and I can’t recall ever meeting someone who claimed Métis identity as also claiming a connection to Red River. Métisness, to me, always appeared as a politically expedient way for people disenfranchised from First Nations communities—or far more often, many generations removed from them—to attempt to lay claims to them. I did not identify as Métis when I was younger because the claims of such people around me made me come to think Métisness was a vacuous thing. Nothing unified the people making the claims to Métisness, other than the claims themselves. Claiming a Métis identity—any Indigenous identity—is a serious thing and it has implications far beyond oneself. If anything, I’m so very relieved that other people are seeing the problems with such self- identifications and calling into question the ethics and accountability of them. I feel less alone. At the same time, though, the fact that we have to do this work, and repeat it over and over for those who haven’t been listening, is frustrating. It takes away from the important work we have to do in addressing all of the important things that Zoe has outlined, and it keeps us away from the work of making meaningful inroads against the ongoing impacts of the colonization of the Métis Nation. Shaun: As you both highlight, we should be long past the point of Métis people having to educate non-Métis and non-Indigenous people on the politics and history of Métis peoplehood. Still, misinformation is perpetuated on all fronts— through media, court decisions, official associations, and even in the classroom. Jennifer, you work specifically on Métis literature as a means of mediating Métis identity. What is the significance of literature in understanding and teaching others about what it is to be Métis?

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Jennifer: Literature is, to me, one of the many forms of the creative expression of our distinct Indigenous peoplehood. It is a mechanism through which we tell stories about who we were, who we are, and who we intend to be. With the threat posed to oral tradition by the loss of Michif and other related Métis- spoken languages, literature in some ways has become a stand-in for this (though at times it is inept and not without its problems). My current work on Métis literature is focused on Métis children’s literature. I see this area of under-discussed writing an absolutely crucial one. The Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI), headquartered in Saskatoon, has been publishing texts directed towards Métis children since it began its publication efforts. Métis children’s literature is a bridge used to transmit our distinct ways of knowing as an Indigenous people to future generations. Given the impact of colonization on Métis, Métis children’s literature can, and does, bridge past and present generations of Métis. At the same time, it also gives voice to Métis people’s experiences under colonization. What I do find concerning with respect to literature is the way in which non-Métis uncritically glom on to what is marketed to them as bona fide Métis literature. The more convincingly an author performs “Métisness” that is recognizable to a wider, non-Métis audience, and the more placid they are with respect to positioning Métis as a “bridge between cultures,” or a true example of settler Indigenization, the more likely they are to find success. We are still dealing with the fallout of what (for matters of self-preservation) I’ll term “the Joseph Boyden Affair.” Non-Métis have been catching up to where many of us have been—that despite numerous self-identifications and awards bestowed upon him for being so, and despite his ongoing refusal to reckon with the implications of his identity claims,9 Boyden is not from the Métis Nation.10 He does not hold membership with any of the organizations that link to the historic Métis Nation (a nation of Indigenous people led, most notably, by the late Louis Riel). In any instance wherein he has adopted this label, he has used it as shorthand to describe his “mixedness”; indeed the concept of “Métis-as- mixed,” as has been discussed, is wholly problematic. Children’s literature is not immune to this. For instance, there have been questions raised in publicly available documents drafted by the Métis Nation of British Columbia (MNBC) as to whether children’s author David Bouchard is or is not Métis. I think that perhaps because Bouchard is a children’s literature author, and his work is skewed towards a much smaller audience, the

9 See Joseph Boyden, “My Name Is Joseph Boyden,” Macleans, 2 August 2017. http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/my-name-is-joseph-boyden/. 10 See http://www.metisnation.ca/index.php/who-are-the-metis.

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documents circulating online regarding Bouchard’s purported lack of Indigenous ancestry—and his purported lack of demonstrable connection to the Métis Nation—doesn’t really wind up on anyone’s radar. When the stakes are seemingly low, problematic claims go unquestioned. But the stakes are never low. This last part is also vitally important to me as a Métis mother. I am unendingly worried about the misrepresentation of Métisness in children’s literature where for most people such stakes are perhaps mistakenly seen as low. Children’s literature is not innocuous and, for me, the stakes here are quite high. Shaun: I recently taught a second-year Canadian literature survey course. The inclusion of Indigenous literatures in such a course is complicated but necessary, in my view. Even more complicated is representing something as complex as Métis Nationhood and peoplehood through one or two texts, and usually within one week. I taught Maria Campbell’s short story “Jacob” because it raised important issues around the use and attempted destruction of Michif, the relationship of the Métis to residential schools, and allowed me to foreground Campbell’s pivotal work while giving an overview of Métis settlement and colonization, and the history of road allowances in the prairies. My goal was to convey the distinct histories, struggles, and political orders of the Métis people. It was a challenge, and as teaching goes, I’m not sure I was entirely successful in my use of this text. Jennifer, can you talk a bit about what other kinds of literary texts you mobilize to help students understand Métis identity in a more responsible way? What are the challenges, limitations, and potential of teaching about Métis identity through literature and within the constraints of the classroom? Jennifer: I think that at this stage, given the absolute lack of awareness among most people I meet in university classrooms, that educators should pair literary texts that are more creative in their form with pieces by people at the forefront of Métis Studies theory. For instance, Chris Andersen’s path paving book “Métis”: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood is, for me, required reading. Although not a literary scholar, Andersen’s work resonates with what we do for its emphasis on rhetoric and (mis)representation. He tackles, in concrete ways, the permeation of mischaracterizations of Métisness and exposes the problematic rhetoric around “Métis as mixed.” I also think that Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny, and Brenda Macdougall’s edited volume Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility, and History is valuable reading. Their introduction, in particular, renders Métis peoplehood undeniably intelligible to those who are not Métis. Andersen thoroughly explores who Métis are not and makes a sound statement as to who Métis are—

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St-Onge et al.’s chapter, although published prior to Andersen’s, extends this conversation. I have argued in my own work (Adese 2016b) for the need to read Métis Studies pieces alongside Métis creative text. The biggest constraint to teaching in such a manner is that English, as a discipline, still has yet to properly confront its originary fantasies about fantasizing. A cornerstone of creative writing, and fiction, in particular, is the idea that one is free to creatively imagine and express themselves. We are free to write whatever we may be able to conceive. Yet as Edward Said’s (1978) work has profoundly pointed out, the entire idea of imagining worlds outside of one’s own is intimately tied to legacies of colonization, enslavement, and dispossession. The stories of other people outside of ourselves are not free for the taking and embellishing or playing with. Métis people—and our histories and stories—are not for everyone. In fact, there are stories that aren’t even for me, as a Métis person. There are protocols around how stories are shared, when, where, and with whom. It can be hard to convey this to students in a university classroom because the very nature of that kind of education is supposed to be about free thinking and exploration. Shaun: Zoe, above you orient yourself, your nationhood and politics, in many ways, around waterways and fish. Indeed, much of your work is on human-fish relations, and you even identify yourself as a “Fish Philosopher” (see Todd 2014, 2016, 2017). My own doctoral research is largely interested in the role of water in mediating relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and so I’m wondering if you could say more about the role of water, and in particular fish, in mediating Métis identity? Zoe: Building on my above comments, I also have a tongue in cheek “legal test” that I apply to claims to Métis identity that I call the “fish test.” It is as straightforward as it sounds: if you are indeed claiming to belong to a polity that is intrinsically bound to the watersheds within which Métis legal-political action takes place, then who are the more-than-human kin with whom you share stories, time, and space? What fish do you recognize as integral to your survival in the territories you come from? What stories about fish do you draw on in your family/community/nation? There are very specific fish that inhabit the Lake Winnipeg watershed and its surrounding watersheds (such as the Churchill River watershed or the Peace-Athabasca watershed), and there are very material-historical relationships that Métis peoples have developed to these specific fish over time. I draw here on the historical work that Brenda MacDougall has done in documenting the involvement of Métis, Dene, and Cree women in supporting the fisheries at the HBC post in Sakitawak (Île-à-la-

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Crosse) in northeast Saskatchewan in the 19th century (MacDougall 2011: 143- 144). Further, I think about water as a medium that brings us, as Métis, into and out of different territories. It moves through watersheds and binds us as otipemisiwak through time and space to complex assemblages of stories, people (both human and nonhuman), experiences, meanings, memories, laws, protocols, and histories. For me, I cannot position who I am as a Métis person without also tending to the rivers and lakes and watersheds within which we negotiate our laws, our ethics, and our kinship through time. I like thinking about territory from a watery perspective because it so often up-ends broader euro-western societal understandings of neatly bounded political or geographical borders. Water insistently implodes earth, and it carves and shapes land. And water contains worlds that are as worthy of care and attention from humans as those that are visible to us on land. Water exists in relation to land, too, so humans always have the responsibility to tend to the messiness or complexity of life and meaning at shorelines and riverbanks. For these reasons, I think water is really important in our thinking about Métis life, longing, and the legal-ethical negotiations of our kinship relations as a people. But I also think thinking “with” water is also really important for us as Métis in order to tend properly and thoughtfully to our responsibilities for all of the other Indigenous nations whose waterways we move through. Shaun: One of the most oft-contested notions of Métis nationhood is the idea of a Métis homeland—that Métis nationhood can be traced back to Red River and the kinship relations that emerged out of that territory. Can you talk about why the idea of a Métis homeland matters? Zoe: Here I really draw on the fact that the Lake Winnipeg watershed accords pretty closely with the lands and waters within which Métis political action took place in the 19th and 20th centuries. I think of the Métis polity as inhabiting a watershed (and certain neighbouring watersheds), and therefore we have responsibilities to specific Indigenous nations within that watery geography. Focusing on where we have lived, and where we therefore hold reciprocal legal-ethical responsibilities to human and more-than-human kin, is important. To me, a Métis nation homeland is important because it recognizes that we have time- and place-specific relationships, laws, stories, and histories through which we approach the world. And a homeland is important because it is explicitly recognized in certain Canadian legal formations (i.e.: Manitoba Métis Federation Inc. v. Canada). Ultimately, a homeland matters because it disrupts the supposed “slipperiness” of the Métis-as-mixed narrative. We are very explicitly of a particular place. We are not everywhere. We are not “coast-to-

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coast-to-coast” as one “nouveau Métis”11 organization claims. We are explicitly bound to very real, very visceral, living kinship formations and legal-ethical responsibilities in very particular places. And that is also how other Indigenous nations hold us accountable: we have treaties in this homeland, we have responsibilities that outline what it means for us to co-exist. Jennifer: I don’t know that I can say it with any more clarity than Zoe has. The homeland is where we are from—it is who we are. It is our home. And if we understand, as I argue earlier, that this homeland has deep maternal ties, it is also our mother. It is where we were born, both figuratively and literally. It gives us our knowledge, our medicine, our language, our kinship ties, and our way of relating to the world around us. It is where our ancestors are buried and where our future generations will continue to return. This is in direct contrast to “Métis-as mixed” claims that often try to de-tether Métisness from the homeland, and it is unlike pro-Canadian narratives that try to recoup Métis as an ideal figure of the possibility of settler indigenization. By insisting on recognition of our homeland, we reject attempts to separate us from land-based existences and claims. Shaun: If the significance of a Métis homeland is one integral means of tethering the Métis to particular histories, treaties, kinship relations, and political orders, I suspect that language is another. How does language fit in with respect to Métis identity, and with respect to how Métisness is currently understood and articulated in mainstream society? Jennifer: I would argue that most contemporary assertions to Métis identity from people outside of the Métis Nation homeland ignore the ethnogenesis of the Michif language. Métis were traditionally and by necessity multilingual, given their position on the prairies, which at the time of the ethnogenesis of the Métis Nation was a multicultural/multinational Indigenous place (Bakker 1997). Generally overlooked in conversations on Métis identity is the role of language and Québécois (and further east) attempts to co-opt Métisness choose not to contend with the fact that Michif is the language of the Métis Nation, and that the core of the Michif language is Cree and Saulteaux (Bakker 1997). Not only that, but Michif language is rooted in place—it is born and gives birth to our connection to our homeland, and to our human and, as Zoe argues, other- than-human, relatives. Zoe: For me, I yearn to be able to speak Michif. My family was a Cree speaking Métis family living in and around the St. Paul des Métis Settlement in

11 This is language mobilized by the Métis Federation of Canada, as demonstrated in a notice posted on the Association des Acadiens-Métis Souriquois website (AAMS n.d.).

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the early 20th century, so the language reclamation work we are doing in my family centres around neyihawewin (Plains ). This work on reclaiming nehiyawewin in my family also enables me to better tend to my responsibilities to Cree friends in Alberta and Saskatchewan whose territories my family has lived in and moved through. My Aunt, Loretta Todd, formalized this work in her Cree language children’s TV show Tansi! Nehiyawetin, which was picked up by Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) for three seasons. But, knowing the specificities and power of the Michif language as something that formally grew out of our relationality to Cree, Saulteaux, French, and Gaelic kin really moves me. Perhaps I am not equipped to speak about this with any authority as I have no language training and I am not a linguistic anthropologist, but to me Michif really demonstrates those ongoing, reciprocal, kinship-based responsibilities we hold to specific people in place and time throughout the prairies. I am distressed by posts I see on social media where people misinterpret Michif as just “any” mix of French and an Indigenous language, in an effort to advance métissage arguments. Linguists very clearly demonstrate that Michif is a time- and place-specific language unique to the Métis people, and I hope that we can continue to do serious work tending to this language for current and future generations. Shaun: Kinship has come up in various ways throughout your responses. As Métis people are dispersed throughout Canada, as people come to learn about their Métis identity later in life, as the Michif language is variously spoken or not spoken, learned and unlearned, can you speak further about the meaning of kinship in relation to the mediation of Métis identity? Zoe: I really love recent work by Brenda MacDougall (2017) on kinscapes, and Rob Innes’ (2013) work on kinship. Both are really informing how I think about shared responsibilities that Métis carried and carry across the Plains. Jennifer: As Zoe mentions, both Brenda and Rob’s work are crucial in highlighting the importance of kinship. The significance of kinship to Métis communities is not unlike as it is for other Indigenous communities and nations. Our relationships to/for/with one another is the glue that binds as all together as a distinct, and discrete, nation. Some of us have been separated from our families and we have to work, as I mention earlier, harder to reweave ourselves back into the web-like network of kinship ties that we come from. I think that people who arrive to Métisness later in life—especially if they live outside of the homeland and/or are disconnected from their family—struggle to move beyond the simple invocation of family names as constituting kinship. It is more than who you are related to. Kinship and in particular our concept of wahkohtowin (as Macdougall (2011) writes about) is an active process of

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relationship that speaks not just to flat points of connection but to an active process of responsibility and reciprocity. Shaun: One of the many reasons that the mediation of Métis identity is so contentious is that there are significant material ramifications for the misrecognition of Métis identity. These range from Indigenous rights under the constitution and the potential for Métis assertions of self-determination. One area where the three of us see these ramifications play out is in the academy, through grant applications, graduate student admissions, and perhaps most contentiously, through the often poorly defined mandate of “Indigenous hires.” While the necessity of universities foregrounding the hiring of Indigenous faculty cannot be understated, can you talk about how limited conceptions of Métis identity have complicated the need for more faculty positions designated for Indigenous peoples? Jennifer: This has serious consequences. For instance as of summer 2017, the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) were using a definition of “Indigenous” that emphasized descent from what the website termed the “Original people of Canada.” While definition has been changed, this time returning to the language of “Aboriginal” and an emphasis on entrenchment within section 35 of Canada’s Constitutional rights, the confusion over terminology reveals something important. The current definition states, “An Aboriginal person in Canada, as recognized in the Constitution Act, 1982, is a person who identifies with First Nations (Status/Non-Status), Métis, or Inuit cultural and/or ancestral background.”12 This language is quite obviously problematic to Indigenous people in the sense that while the constitution is invoked, Indigeneity on the basis of culture or ancestral background is an amorphous entity that says little about whether people exist in relation to Indigenous community. It leaves the door well open to those who want to lay claim to an Indigenous identity without actually having to demonstrate a connection to living Indigenous communities. For most institutions there is a financial incentive to deploying self-identification rather than imagining beyond it —and increasingly, social capital for doing so. In the “TRC moment,” universities are rushing to be seen as doing something, yet thanks to decades of racist policy meant to deny Indigenous people access to postsecondary education, there is a severe shortage of PhD-holding Indigenous people. A combination of it being the right thing to do and desire for financial and social capital, as well as universities’ reticence to defining Métisness for fear of facing Human Rights challenges, has meant the importation of relatively

12 See https://osap.gov.on.ca/OSAPPortal/en/A-ZListofAid/PRDR015048.html#P16_1550.

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lax approaches to Indigenenity. Academic and other institutions adhere to a self-identification/self-reporting model that has no provability. If we understand that bringing Indigenous faculty into the university in light of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) recommendations, then it is our responsibility to bring in faculty that are a reflection of the historical denial of Indigenous access to postsecondary education. This means that hiring practices are very much about equity—yet you can’t achieve equity if self-identification policies mean hiring people of minimal Indigenous ancestry and no grounding in Indigenous families and communities, and who have not faced exclusion from the academy on the basis of Indigeneity. Shaun: By way of concluding this discussion, I first want to thank you both for taking the time to so generously engage with me on these issues. In returning to my initial questions about how to ethically engage with the meaning of Métis identity in the settler state, I would assert—and I do so now with your immense insights and guidance—that it is integral for non-Indigenous people in Canada to interrogate why we continue to have such an investment in the mediation of Indigenous identity—to ask what aspects of settler identities are mediated or negated through uncritical claims to Indigeneity? And these discussions, of course, must move beyond the requirements of non-Indigenous Canadians. They are conversations that are integral for the rights and self-determination of the Métis people, and settler Canadians would do best to step aside and cease skewing the terms of these conversations. I want to end with the important words of Chris Andersen and then by returning to you, Zoe and Jennifer. Andersen writes (2011), “If Métis identity is ‘caught between two worlds,’ it isn’t because it somehow reflects the ‘core’ of our identity. Rather, it is because Métis identity carries the freight of more than a century of official Canadian attempts to impose binary ‘truths’ — ‘Indian or Canadian’ —onto Indigenous social orders, the avenues of resistance such attempts have opened up (and closed off), and the ‘leakage’ of such racialization discourses into our perceptions of the world.” You have both articulated perceptions of Métisness that push back against any notion of binary truths, that resist simplified conceptions of mixedness, and that ground the mediation of Métis identity in distinct political, social, legal, and kinship orders. Your words here in conjunction with an increasing body of pivotal Métis scholarship articulate a kind of Métis futurity that will move and is moving well beyond Canadian impositions on Métis

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identity and nationhood. I’m wondering if you want to end by briefly talking about what Métis futurity might look like moving forward. Jennifer: Ultimately, my Métis futurity is my son. Because of him, I believe it involves getting back to the work that matters. I am fairly tired of being drawn into conversations about Métis identity; the objectives of which I often find are fairly self-focused and self-invested. My Métis futurity involves continuing to work with Métis people in our homes, our families, our communities, our political associations, and to help make this world a safer, healthier, and healed place for future generations of Métis. It involves remembering our non-human relatives and doing our part to live alongside them in ethical and respectful ways. It involves land restoration and strong and healthy relationships with our other Indigenous relations in the Métis homeland. It involves protecting and transmitting our Indigenous ways of knowing to future generations and enacting these in our interactions with the new people who arrive to our homeland every day. Zoe: I think of Métis futurity as the ability to continue to tell our stories on our own terms. I am so excited by the courageous and badass Métis thinkers and community leaders working every day to honour our reciprocal and ongoing responsibilities to one another and to other Indigenous nations. I think of Métis futurity, probably unsurprisingly, in terms of fishy futures, too. Given that we are heading into what many scientists believe is the Sixth Mass Extinction event (Barnosky et al 2011, Kolbert 2014, Regnier et al 2015), I can’t help but couple our future as Métis, as humans, to the well-being and futurities of the more-than-human beings we built and build our polity alongside. So, for me, Métis futurity is about tending to one another with care, and also about tending to more-than-humans with great care and kindness. I yearn for the ability for us to even have that futurity, when so much of the policy and political debates in settler Canada are about delimiting and parsing out our past for current settler deconstruction or consumption (either in limiting our rights through problematic court decisions, or in outright settler consumption of our identities in what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012) refer to as a “settler move to innocence”). In thinking about Métis futurity, I turn to my Aunt Loretta Todd’s path breaking film and television work. A few years ago, she developed a pilot for a TV show called Skye and Chang: it was an intergalactic martial arts science-fiction show that told the story of an Asian-Canadian and Indigenous crime-fighting duo who had a dojo in Vancouver. In this piece, my Aunt brings her careful attention to the nuanced relationships between Indigenous and other oppressed or racialized communities in Canada to bear on contemporary Métis storytelling, and in this show she turns to the other-worldly possibilities that come from working across these communities, ontologies, and cosmologies to

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literally save the world. This kind of work deeply inspires me. This is what I see us being robbed of when we have to keep rehearsing our past to fend off settler consumers trying to claim our identity for their own. We lose the space to tell our own vibrant, entangled, philosophical stories, stories that we have a right to imagine and to tell, and share and tend to. Similarly, the work of Chelsea Vowel and Molly Swain in their podcast Metis in Space inspires me. They are, I think, at the forefront of a new kind of Métis relationality, one which positions us firmly in the rich entanglements of past, present, and future and into new forms of kin-making and diplomacy beyond the constrictive borders of the Canadian nation-state and static settler imaginaries. So, I imagine our futurity to be one where we tell our stories on our own terms, and where we do not have to accommodate settlers who insist that our stories cater to them or make sense to them. We deserve to have this space to think, courageously and audaciously, through our own kinship entanglements and responsibilities to human and more-than-human, and perhaps even other-worldly, beings.

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Works Cited Adese, Jennifer. 2016a. “A Tale of Two Constitutions: Métis Nationhood and Section 35 (2)’s Impact on Interpretations of Daniels.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 36 (Fall): 7–19. ——. 2016b. “The New People: Reading for Peoplehood in Métis Literatures.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 28(4): 53–79. Andersen, Chris. 2011. “I’m Métis: What’s Your Excuse? On the Optics of Misrecognition of Métis in Canada.” Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences: Equity Matters, 22 February 2011. http://www.ideas- idees.ca/blog/im-metis-whats-your-excuse-optics-and-misrecognition- metis-canada. ——. 2014. Métis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood. Vancouver: UBC Press. Association des Acadiens-Métis Souriquois. n.d. “Metis Federation of Canada (MFC) Joins the AAMS.” http://acadiens-metis-souriquois.ca/aams- joins-with-the-metis-federation-of-canada.html. Bakker, Peter. 1997. A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Métis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barnosky, Anthony D., Nicholas Matzke, Susumu Tomiya, Guinevere O. U. Wogan, Brian Swartz, Tiago B. Quental, Charles Marshall, Jenny L. McGuire, Emily L. Lindsey, Kaitlin C. Maguire, Ben Mersey and Elizabeth A. Ferrer. 2011. “Has the Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived?” Nature 471: 51–70. Elliott, Alicia. 2017. “Why Non-Indigenous Support for Joseph Boyden Should Set Off Alarm Bells.” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 26 January 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/why-non-indigenous-support-for-joseph- boyden-should-set-off-alarm-bells-1.3951223. Gaudry, Adam, and Chris Andersen. 2016. “Daniels v. Canada: Racialized Legacies, Settler Self-Indigenization and the Denial of Indigenous Peoplehood.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 36(Fall): 19–30. Gaudry, Adam, and Darryl Leroux. 2017. “White Settler Revisionism and Making Métis Everywhere: The Evocation of Métissage in Quebec and Nova Scotia.” Critical Ethnic Studies 3(1): 116–142.

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Goldie, Terry. 2004 “Semiotic Control: Native Peoples in Canadian Literatures in English.” In Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism, edited by Cynthia Sugars, 191–203. Peterborough: Broadview Press. Innes, Robert Alexander. 2013. Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Justice, Daniel Heath. 2008. “‘Go Away Water!’: Kinship Criticism and the Decolonization Imperative.” In Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, edited by Craig S. Womack, Daniel Heath Justice, and Christopher B. Teuton, 147–168. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Kolbert, Elizabeth. 2014. The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Macdougall, Brenda. 2011. One of the Family: Metis Culture in Nineteenth- Century Northwestern Saskatchewan. Vancouver: UBC Press. ——. 2016. “The Power of Legal and Historical Fiction(s): The Daniels Decision and the Enduring Influence of Colonial Ideology.” International Indigenous Policy Journal 7(3): 1–5. ——. 2017. “Wahkootowin as Methodology: How Archival Records reveal a Métis kinscape.” Conference presentation delivered for the Daniels: In and Beyond the Law conference at the University of Alberta, 28 January 2017. https://www.ualberta.ca/native-studies/research/rupertsland- centre-for-metis-research/news-and-events/events/daniels/daniels- videos. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. 2015. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Régnier, Claire, Guillaume Achas, Amaury Lambert, Robert H. Cowei, Philippe Couchet and Benoit Fontaine. 2015. “Mass Extinction in Poorly Known Taxa.” PNAS 112(25): 7761–7766. Said, Edward. 1978. “Imaginative Geography and its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental.” In Orientalism, 15–37. New York: Vintage. Saul, John Ralston. 2008. A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. Toronto: Penguin. Stirling, Bridget. 2016. “Who’s Métis?” Folio. 7 March 2016. https://www.folio.ca/whos-metis/.

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St-Onge, Nicole, Carolyn Podruchny, and Brenda Macdougall (eds.). 2012. Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility, and History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Swain, Molly and Chelsea Vowel. 2016. Metis in Space. Indian and Cowboy Podcast Media Network. http://www.metisinspace.com/. Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1): 1-40. Todd, Loretta. 2014. Skye and Chang. Dir. Loretta Todd. Vancouver: QubeFilm. Todd, Zoe. 2014. “Fish Pluralities: Human-Animal Relations and sites of Engagement in Paulatuuq, Arctic Canada.” Etudes/Inuit/Studies 38(1– 2): 217–238. ——. 2016. “From a Fishy Place: Examining Canadian State Law Applied in the Daniels Decision from the Perspective of Métis Legal Orders.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 36(Fall): 43–57. ——. 2017. “Fish, Kin, and Hope: Tending to Water Violations in amiskwaciwâskahikan and Treaty Six Territory.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Inquiry 43(1):102–107. Vowel, Chelsea. 2015. “Settlers Claiming Métis Heritage Because They Just Feel More Indigenous.” Rabble.ca, 11 March 2015. http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/apihtawikosisan/2015/03/settlers- claiming-m%C3%A9tis-heritage-because-they-just-feel-more-. Vowel, Chelsea, and Darryl Leroux. 2016. “White Settler Antipathy and the Daniels Decision.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 36(Fall): 30–42. Weaver, Jace, Craig S. Womack, and Robert Allen Warrior. 2006. American Indian Literary Nationalism. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes eJournal Vol VII, No 1 (2017): 26–74 ISSN 1913-6005

MARIE-LOUISE: PROTECTOR OF LOUIS RIEL IN QUÉBEC

SÉBASTIEN MALETTE AND GUILLAUME MARCOTTE

“If you will, bless us in particular, us the French Canadien Métis. Bless us with all the other Métis from all origins.” —Louis Riel (1985a, p. 23; our translation)

Introduction Descendants of Métis from the eastern provinces of Canada are at present facing various accusations of being “ethnic frauds” and mere political opportunists from some of those within neo-nationalist Métis academic and activist circles.1 They are told that using the term “Métis” essentially amounts to “cultural appropriation.” And they argue that the term “Métis” should be reserved to the Red River Métis Nation descendants alone (by virtue of the transmission of some “matured” political consciousness that would have emerged only in the Prairies).2 It is also suggested that the ancestors of Eastern Métis have never used the term “Métis” until recently, thus confirming their alleged neo-colonialism and “wannabe” impulses (Vowel and Leroux 2016, Andersen 2016). Finally, it is argued that Eastern Métis are merely archivist

1 E.g., Vowel and Leroux (2016), Gaudry and Andersen (2016), Adese (2016), and Andersen (2014). 2 See Jacqueline Petersen (2012) for an example of such argument. Quoting Chris Andersen, Petersen posits the need for political maturation to secure a “real” peoplehood, with the most extreme consequence that, for Petersen, the “Métis Nation of Ontario” would amount to a “misappropriation” of the term “Métis” per the descendants of mere “Half breeds.” A similar social-evolutionary approach to Métis identity seems to inform the work of Darren O’Toole, who distinguishes the “passage” from métis/identity to Métis/nationality along a teleological spectrum, placing at its apex a metaphysical embodiment of a nationalistic Métis “Geist” capable of subjective desires and even “agency” (O’Toole 2013). It could be argued that such scaling replicates the one between primitive (Petersen’s mere “Half breeds”) versus matured cultures under the necessary scope of nationalist expressions (i.e., the Métis Nations) we find at the heart of what Bruce G. Trigger described as “colonial anthropology” (Trigger 1984).

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hungry ghosts or “zombies” (as if coming back from the dead) with no proof of living transmission of Métis culture or any genuine relationships (leading to accusations of “Self-Indigenization,” see Andersen 2016). In light of these accusations, this essay has two objectives. It first seeks to challenge Métis neo-nationalist discourses that deny the existence of Métis Easterners by presenting evidence to the contrary. Second, it wishes to refute the accusation that archival documents attesting the historical existence of Eastern Métis would not constitute a living proof of “genuine” Indigenous cultural transmission. We use the term “Métis neo-nationalism” in this essay with two interrelated meanings to build our criticism of such phenomena: first, we use the term to describe an ideological position framed by a fallacy which consists in conflating the conditions of possibility for all possible Métis ethnogenesis (and/or cultural expressions) with a single ethno-nationalist narrative based on classic Red River historiography; second, we use it to stress its recent vintage (neo-) and mark its difference with the historical Métis nationalism as articulated by Métis leader Louis Riel. By the term “Métis neo-nationalism” we refer to an ideological position of recent vintage that makes only the descendants of the Métis from the Prairies (and Red River in particular) “real” Métis. The other non-Prairies Métis would be merely “mixed-blood” descendants. The ideology of Métis neo-nationalism rests on the argument suggesting that only Prairies Métis experienced the “maturation” of becoming a full-blown Métis nation, which, in turn, would secure the transmission of a “genuine” Métis culture to the contemporary Métis who can trace such ancestry. Because of this political maturation, it is argued, only Prairies Métis should be granted the rights to take on the name “Métis.” In this essay, we provide evidence that Louis Riel’s vision of Métis nationalism contradicts this exclusionary doctrine, especially when it comes to Riel’s inclusiveness toward all Métis and “Half breeds” irrespective of their location in the British territories of North America. We do so, moreover, by exploring the oral tradition pertaining to Marie-Louise Riel in the Outaouais region (in Québec). The first part of this essay discusses the juridical treatment of Métis identity through the Powley and Daniels decisions in order to better situate the preoccupations of Métis neo-nationalism. We then criticize a fallacy we suggest is at the heart of neo-nationalism, which consists of making the neo-nationalist narrative based on mainly populist accounts of classic Métis historiography of the Red River region the necessary condition of possibility for all Métis ethnogenesis. We do so by unpacking a range of historical evidence, including from historic Métis leaders Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. The second part of

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this essay then tackles the argument that archival proof should not be enough to prove the “living” transmission of Métis culture. This leads us to present the oral tradition of Marie-Louise Riel, which is evidence of the historical usage of the terms “Métis” in the Gatineau Valley (in Québec), East-West kinship relations between Métis families, as well as enduring cultural attachments to both Métis identity and the figure of Louis Riel among descendants of Outaouais Métis still living today. This essay thus invites the reader into a step- by-step refutation of the main psychologism, political rhetoric, and abusive generalizations used within neo-nationalist academic and activist circles currently busy denying the existence of Métis in the eastern provinces of Canada, including Québec.

The Juridical Arena: Who Are the Métis? The Métis became, in 1982, one of the three Aboriginal peoples whose rights are constitutionally recognized and protected in Canada.3 But after 35 years, the question ‘Who are the Métis?’ is still debated. Lacking a clear definition of Métis identity, in 2003 the Supreme Court of Canada articulated a juridical test in the Powley decision by which the Courts now evaluate the “legitimacy” of rights-bearers per s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Powley trial involved Steve and Rodney Powley, charged for hunting a moose out of season, for which they invoked a constitutional Aboriginal right (R. v. Powley 1998, para. 3). Appealing the decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal, the Crown then attempted to dismiss the Métis identity of the Powleys, highlighting that the term “Métis” was only used in the 1990s by the members of their ad hoc “Métis” community (thus of recent vintage). The Crown also pointed out that the Powleys were only 1/64 and 1/128 Ojibwe ancestry, going back seven generations, and to a single Indigenous ancestor from Wisconsin (Canada 2003, para. 3, 111–112). The Crown also suggested that the Métis “community” of Sault Ste. Marie, then already sparse, showed no evidence of continuity since 1850. The Supreme Court of Canada gave these arguments no merit, ultimately confirming the Aboriginal right of the Powleys.4

3 The three Aboriginal peoples are mentioned in section 35(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982: 35. (1) The existing aboriginal and of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed. Definition of “aboriginal peoples of Canada” (2) In this Act, “aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada. 4 These unsuccessful arguments pressed by the Crown are important to highlight, as they announce not only striking similarities with the rhetoric used by proponents of Métis neo-

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In rendering its decision, the Supreme Court articulated a ten-point “test” to assess claims of s. 35 right-bearers Métis (R. v. Powley 2003, paras. 18–50). For the purpose of identification, these criteria include self- identification as Métis, the demonstration of an ancestral connection to an historic Métis community, and acceptance by the modern Métis community (para. 30). The Court also stated that not everyone of mixed-ancestry necessarily qualify for the purpose of s. 35 Métis rights (para. 10). The Court describes the Métis as forming a distinctive culture, while highlighting the possibility of various Métis peoples. 5 We could add that a person can also be of “mixed-ancestry” and not identify as “Métis” (they could rather self-identify as First Nation or Inuit, for example). Because Aboriginal rights for the purpose of s. 35 are seen as collectively held, a Métis claimant who is not able to demonstrate a connection to a historical Métis community (i.e., a community that existed after the period of contact yet before the estimation of effective control by European authorities) can still have their constitutional defence rejected by the Court. The logic we find in the Powley decision—that not all people of “mixed-ancestry” are Métis for the purpose of s. 35—has often been instrumentalized to condemn as “fake” those Métis unable to secure a Powley test. In the case of the Eastern Métis, the legal failure to secure the Powley test sent the signal that such failure would confirm the untrustworthiness of their identity as “Métis.” In addition, such juridical failures often translate into difficulties accessing services and negotiating tables with the government for these Métis. The Powley logic is, moreover, at the centre of concerted efforts by a Western-based Métis organization created in 1983, the Metis National Council (MNC), to forge a “Métis Registry” that would be based on the Powley test—with the risk of creating a two-tier Métis identification system while supressing the autonomy of established independent Métis communities across Canada (see Senate of Canada 2012). nationalism when attacking other “fake Métis,” but also ground their charge against the adoption by the Judiciary of a “racially-charged” treatment of Métis identity, accused here of being detrimental of the “true” expression of Métis nationalism. 5 The reality of the diversity of Métis communities is highlighted by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Powley decision, at para 11: “The Métis of Canada share the common experience of having forged a new culture and a distinctive group identity from their Indian or Inuit and European roots. This enables us to speak in general terms of ‘the Métis’. However, particularly given the vast territory of what is now Canada, we should not be surprised to find that different groups of Métis exhibit their own distinctive traits and traditions. This diversity among groups of Métis may enable us to speak of Métis ‘peoples,’ a possibility left open by the language of s. 35(2), which speaks of the ‘Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada’” (Powley 2003, para. 11).

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It was the risk of seeing their “Métis” identity obliterated by the creation of such Powley Registry, handled by a western-based Métis organization that rejects the existence of any Métis in the eastern provinces of Canada (the MNC), that pushed thousands of Métis over the edge: many leaders of Eastern and Western communities decided to assert claims of their own, or to regroup under the banner of newly formed and grassroots organizations such as the “Métis Federation of Canada” (MFC). In 2016, this organization successfully financed, through various community activities, an intervention into the high profile case Daniels v. Canada before the Supreme Court of Canada, which was set to determine who, between the federal and the provincial levels of government, holds a primary fiduciary to the Métis and Non-Status Indians per the section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867. Many non-Prairies and Prairies-Métis grew anxious when the MNC sought to intervene in the Daniels case to limit the fiduciary responsibility associated with section 91(24) only to “Powley Métis,” an argument the MNC held in parallel with their own project of creating a Powley registry, which could potentially exclude thousands of Métis from governmental recognition (as “non-registered” Métis).6 Among the opponents, the Metis Settlement General Council from Alberta opposed this line of argument in its intervention, criticizing the restrictive territorialization of the Powley test, which freezes, per the notion of “historical community,” the evolution of Métis culture and politics in time, stating that their own membership code had accepted Métis from different areas.7 Denouncing the insistence that s. 91(24) pertain only to

6 See the MNC strategy of using the Powley test to close the access at 91(24) in the Factum of the Intervener, Metis National Council, in Daniels v. Canada (2016), at para. 22, p. 9: 22. In Powley, this Court established a workable and durable framework for identifying the Métis and their rights for the purposes of s. 35. Powley allows for Métis “diversity,” however, it confirms that Métis are not simply “mixed Aboriginal ancestry” individuals or groups that now self-identify as Métis. 23. Contrary to CAP’s claims that Powley is too “restrictive” and “[v]ery few Métis communities” have met success, Métis rights have been recognized or accommodated in significant parts of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. This Grundnorm of Métis constitutional law must inform s. 91(24). While litigants in other parts of Canada may not have met success, the case law suggests that the problem may be the facts of history for those groups―not the Powley framework. 7 See the Factum of the Intervener Metis Settlement General Council, in Daniels v. Canada (2016), at para. 22, p. 7: 22. These questions are essential to the Metis Settlements who have a unique history. While many of the Metis Settlements are located in Northern Alberta and are associated with a larger historic regional Métis community it is also true that Métis from other areas were drawn to the colonies and Settlements. It would be a

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collective entities as too simplistic and a mere distraction (a position noticeably defended by the MNC), the Metis Settlement General Council went on with a clear declaration at paragraph 30 of its intervention: MSGC submits it does not assist efforts at reconciliation to focus on divisive, politically territorial arguments. Just as the diversity of Canada’s Indian and Inuit can be recognized under s. 91(24), so can the diversity of Métis be recognized. Just as there is no single voice for the myriad First Nations and Inuit in Canada, MSGC resists any notion there is a single collective voice speaking on behalf of the Métis in Canada. (MSGC 2016, 9; our emphasis) Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed in part with MSGC and the Métis Federation of Canada, while giving the Powley argument produced by the MNC no merit, stating the obvious that s. 35 and 91(24) served different constitutional purposes. The Daniels decision established that the Federal government has a fiduciary duty toward all Métis and Non-Status Indians as “Indians” per section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867. The Court moreover stated that this fiduciary relationship includes not just those Métis who have secured the Powley test, but all Métis and non-status Indians, even those who have not secured the Powley criterion of “community acceptance” as a result of being separated from their community, or in case of adoption, and so on.8 On

disastrous result if a strict application of the Powley test brought the legitimacy of these individuals and communities into question for the purposes of s. 91(24). Similarly, there is no principled reason why an individual’s identity as Métis should depend upon where they live. 8 We have reproduced the most important paragraphs of the Daniels decision to that effect (Daniels v. Canada, 2016), including mentions of the three Powley criteria discussed above, and the arguments why the Supreme Court of Canada reject the community acceptance criterion derived from the Powley test: [48] The issue in Powley was who is Métis under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The case involved two Métis hunters who were charged with violating the Game and Fish Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. G.1. They claimed that the Métis had an Aboriginal right to hunt for food under s. 35(1). The Court agreed and suggested three criteria for defining who qualifies as Métis for purposes of s. 35(1): 1. Self-identification as Métis; 2. An ancestral connection to an historic Métis community; and 3. Acceptance by the modern Métis community. [49] The third criterion—community acceptance—raises particular concerns in the context of this case. The criteria in Powley were developed specifically for purposes of applying s. 35, which is about protecting historic community-held rights: para. 13. That is why acceptance by the community was found to be, for purposes of who is included as Métis under s. 35, a prerequisite to holding those

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the question of Métis identity, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that there is no consensus on who the Métis are, adding that ethnic labels are more fluid than often admitted (Daniels v. Canada 2016, paras. 48–49). This was followed by a passage suggesting that there is “no one exclusive Métis people in Canada” (para. 17), that to know who the “Métis” are for section 91(24) remains a fact-driven question on a case-by-case basis in the future (para. 47), and the Powley test remains in effect when it comes to s. 35 rights which are community-based (paras. 48–49).9

The Academic Arena: Engaging Métis Neo-Nationalism From the standpoint of this juridical turmoil, establishing who the Métis are has not been a simple task. Métis across Canada are caught between juridical test and reasoning while battling their own inner conflicts, and often

rights. Section 91(24) serves a very different constitutional purpose. It is about the federal government’s relationship with Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. This includes people who may no longer be accepted by their communities because they were separated from them as a result, for example, of government policies such as Indian Residential Schools. There is no principled reason for presumptively and arbitrarily excluding them from Parliament’s protective authority on the basis of a “community acceptance” test. [50] The first declaration should, accordingly, be granted as requested. Non-status Indians and Métis are “Indians” under s. 91(24) and it is the federal government to whom they can turn. [...] [58] The appeal is therefore allowed in part and the Federal Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the first declaration should exclude non-status Indians or apply only to those Métis who meet the Powley criteria, is set aside. It follows that the cross- appeal is dismissed. The appellants are entitled to their costs. 9 Paragraph 17 from Daniels v. Canada (2016) is explicit: [17] There is no consensus on who is considered Métis or a non-status Indian, nor need there be. Cultural and ethnic labels do not lend themselves to neat boundaries. ‘Métis’ can refer to the historic Métis community in Manitoba’s Red River Settlement or it can be used as a general term for anyone with mixed European and Aboriginal heritage. Some mixed-ancestry communities identify as Métis, others as Indian: There is no one exclusive Metis People in Canada, anymore than there is no one exclusive Indian people in Canada. The Metis of eastern Canada and northern Canada are as distinct from Red River Metis as any two peoples can be…. As early as 1650, a distinct Metis community developed in LeHeve [sic], Nova Scotia, separate from Acadians and Micmac Indians. All Metis are aboriginal people. All have Indian ancestry. (R. E. Gaffney, G. P. Gould and A. J. Semple, Broken Promises: The Aboriginal Constitutional Conferences (1984), at p. 62, quoted in Catherine Bell, “Who Are The Metis People in Section 35(2)?” [1991], 29 Alta. L. Rev. 351, p. 356)

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succeeding in securing official recognition and funds from governmental agencies. Both the Powley and Daniels decisions have, in turn, been criticized by a number of Métis scholars and jurists whose views often align with the politics of the MNC. They have argued that these decisions favour “race- based” conceptions of the Métis at the expense of what would be the “true” essence of Métis identity, namely, its nationalist or political embodiment that emerged from the Red River events (see Chartrand 2008; Madden 2008; Teillet 2014). These decisions have also been accused of favouring a language with racist undertones (by reducing Métis identity to the result of mere “mixture”), or settling for an overly restrictive “community-based” understanding of Métis identity (Andersen 2012, p. 394; Adese 2016, p. 12). This “piecemeal” approach has been criticized for balkanizing or fragmenting what is deemed the “true” Métis political identity that would originate solely in the Prairies (Andersen 2011, p. 56; Andersen 2014; Adese 2016).10 These debates have evolved into an assessment of the causes for the multiplication of Métis “communities” outside the Prairies (or cases of Métis self-identification), which are accused of opportunism or “ethnic fraud” for using the now constitutionalized term “Métis” while attempting to gain recognition from Canadian authorities (Andersen 2014; Adese 2016).11 As Dubois and Saunders

10 Chris Andersen describes some sort of intimate “awareness” that allows him to discern who the “true” Métis are, namely the reaching of a level of “political maturity” of some kind on an evolutionary scale, seen as necessarily radiating outward from and in direct connection to the Red River Métis history: Likewise, although it may well be that the shortcomings and biases of the colonial record relied on by ethnohistorians will continue to enormously complicate the precise tracing of contemporaneous self-ascriptions, we are more than aware of who did use the term Métis and of the social relations in which they were embedded. Thus, while “mixedness” constitutes a near-ubiquitous feature of social relations in the vast indigenous territories claimed by various imperial powers, only in Red River did the encounters, intimacies, and antagonisms that characterized previous “separateness” bloom into full political maturity: the Métis people thus represents “an exceptional phenomenon that responded to a unique set of social, political, and economic stimuli in western Canada during the nineteenth century” (Chartrand and Giokas 2002: 295), and following from this, ethnohistorical scholarship wedded to a “peopled” rather than a racialized analytic is best served by charting an analytical course in the light of this conceptual cartography. (2011, p. 56; our emphasis) 11 Chris Andersen did not hesitate to use the derogatory expression “soup kitchen” to describe the “other Métis,” who, he posits, abuse the term “Métis”: Despite the racialization that has shaped Métis politics, however, the category “Métis” is not a soup kitchen for Indigenous individuals and communities disenfranchised in various ways by the Canadian state (see Andersen 2011): however volatile our Métis citizenship codes have necessarily become in the

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highlight, this sentiment appears to be shared by the current President of the MNC, Clem Chartier, who resolutely excludes a number of Métis not fitting MNC strategic definitions in line with his constitutional power struggles: Others, like President Chartier, worry that that failure to clearly demarcate the boundaries of membership will not only threaten the internal cohesion of the nation, but will inhibit efforts to negotiate land and self-government with the state. For Chartier (2013b), “The days of putting off difficult decisions for fear of upsetting people are over. The stakes are too high.” The enforcement of the MNC definition across the Métis Nation imposes a fractious choice on provincial governing bodies mired in the complex legacy of colonialism: forcibly remove individuals from their membership registries—people who may have identified as Métis their whole lives but who do not meet the new criteria—or allow them to remain, thus creating a two- tier system of citizenship (Saunders 2013) (Dubois and Saunders 2017, p. 11).12 Accusations targeting the non-Red River/non-Prairies Métis as “ethnic frauds” have been criticized, in turn, for conflating all possible causes of a Métis ethnogenesis with an exclusivist ethno-nationalist discourse on Métis identity (Gagnon 2009; Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette 2016, pp. 355–383). In other words, supporters of Prairies-centric definitions of Métis identity would conflate a causal explanation using a romantic and often populist account of Métis ethno-nationalism (itself derived from classic Métis historiography),

racialized cauldron of Canada’s colonialism, they deserve to be respected. (2014, p. 24; our emphasis) 12 In 2014, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported that MNC President Clem Chartier attempted to influence former Prime Minister Harper to halt the process of appeal from Canada in Daniels v. Canada. Chartier attempted to do so at a stage when the last standing decision was more favourable to the exclusion of the “Other Métis,” in agreement with the MNC strategy of closing their access to the fiduciary relationship with the Federal government per 91(24) by instrumentalizing the Powley criteria set for s. 35 rights (which are collective by default). The intent appeared to have been to effectively cut down the number of Métis who could have sought to initiate former recognition processes with the Federal . President Chartier went as far as to argue that the government would equally benefit from cutting down the number of Métis claimants, with the new Qualipu First Nation band as an example, causing the uproar of the President of the Congress of the Aboriginal Peoples, Mrs. Lavallée. The article mentions that: “the Canadian Press obtained a copy of Chartier’s April 23 letter to Harper under the Access to Information Act. In it, Chartier warns that broadening the definition to include people from eastern Canada could result in a huge surge in people claiming to be Métis” (Rennie 2014).

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with all possibilities of causation of Métis ethnogenesis and cultural manifestations. Thus they would commit the fallacy of making the presence of a specific nationalistic causal explanation a necessary condition for proving all possible “Métis” ethnogenesis anywhere. Supporters of this exclusionary logic are at risk of formulating chauvinist, if not plainly intolerant expressions of Métis culture, especially when stating that some regions of Canada would be more truly “Métis” than others. Nourished by this fallacy, the notion of “ethnogenesis” used in debates on Métis identity can be criticized for oscillating between the need to prove either a “settlement locus” or a closed-territorialized ideal of the Métis nation, with both assuming an atomistic configuration. As such, both ideals make the condition of possibility of the achievement of “political consciousness,” either at a local or national level, dependant on some ontological “enclosing” criteria (such as population density and immediate territorial proximity). It has been shown that these criteria are not only ultimately arbitraries, but often contrary to the mobile and trans-territorial kinship-based upon which the experience of Métis political consciousness has been experienced in various ways (Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette, 2016, pp. 379–381).13 The dissemination of such a fallacy also explains why there is little room within neo-nationalist circles for arguments suggesting that “Métis” identity may have been conceived and internalized in myriad ways. Indeed, we find little room for arguments suggesting that Métis culture may have evolved in different “regional” Métis identities or communities, or that cherishing a dual heritage does not necessarily condemn one to become a “racist or a neo- colonial bigot.”14 It also explains why there is little room for argument that

13 The problematic nature of the “political ontology” favoured by supporters of Métis neo- nationalism at the expense of the “Other Métis” across Canada will be discussed by Malette in a forthcoming chapter entitled, “Political Ontologies in Turmoil: The case of Métis Nationalism,” in Christopher Adams, Gregg Dahl, Ian Peach (eds.), Metis in Canada: History, Identity, Law and Politics, Voume 2 (University of Alberta Press, forthcoming). 14 In the current state of the debates on Métis identity, if the self-identifying Métis is unable to demonstrate such a community link, but able to show a connection with an Indigenous ancestor, that person risks being labeled a “wannabe,” that is, someone with only distant and insignificant Indigenous ancestry. If a self-identifying Métis in Canada is able to show such a connection (to a community), the cultural quintessence of that historical “mixed-community” can still be doubted by asking that person to prove that their historical community and/or ancestor did use the term “Métis” (or “Half breed”). Finally, even if a self-identifying Métis is successful in showing a connection to a Métis historical community, it can still be argued that the cultural transmission was interrupted for too long; that all that this person has are “dead” archivistic documents and not the fruit of a real still-living nationalist Métis tradition:

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self-awareness and “political consciousness” can be experienced in multiple ways outside the strict nationalist interpretation of the Métis historiography of Red River, or any top-down sociological approach conflating ethno-nationalist discourses with what ought to constitute “peoplehood.”15 The presence of such a fallacy furthermore explains the reactionary pushback from the most extremist factions that defend a Prairies-centric definition of Métis identity, repudiating as “colonial” even the Powley logic, which, in principle, does not require from Métis claimants to necessarily belong to the Red River Métis Nation. In all cases, the presence of such a conflation helps to explain the mounting accusations of “ethnic fraud” toward the “other Métis,” now weighed down with accusations of “false consciousness,” “moves to innocence,” and other psychologisms, leading scholars to impugn motives to Justices and “fake” Métis combined.16 That being said, we can certainly agree that there are

These new Métis organizations have offered several alternative sources, instead, in addition to attachment to their organizations, in lieu of an attachment to community, and they offer two in particular, that I found interesting: the first is archival sources, and the second is DNA. These two technologies of self- making, archives and DNA, fit perfectly within a non-relational animus, in that all that claims rely on inert documentations required is the realisation that because you want something, you deserve it, and thus you should be able to have it. (Andersen 2016; our emphasis) 15 The influence of Chris Andersen’s conflation between ethno-nationalist discourse with “true” peoplehood—a “truthiness” derived from a quasi social-Darwinian scale between Indigenous peoples having reached “political maturity,” topped with allegations of coordinated and wilful attacks against the “true” Métis Nation from “the State”—is perhaps best encapsulated in Jennifer Adese’s concluding remarks on the Daniels case. In the passage below, her conflation between the genuineness of Métis identity and a quite romantic and homogenizing Métis neo- nationalist discourse is blatant: The state, in particular, facilitates the continued misrecognition of Métis as mixed- race and the abrogation of Métis nationhood. The state’s (perhaps witting) denial nearly widened constitutional inclusion so much as to render it meaningless. As Andersen (2012) [sic] points out throughout his book “Métis”: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood, there are many people who have mixed ancestry or “Indian” ancestors, but this alone does not necessarily make them a part of the Métis people and thus a part of Métis peoplehood expressed politically in terms of Métis nationalism—a people, I argue, whose labour resulted in Métis being recognized within the constitution. (Adese 2016, p. 16; our emphasis) 16 These psychologisms and accusations toward the Eastern Métis often suffer from the informal fallacy of hasty generalizations built from a few cases, of which fewer examples would not condemn the problematic nature. These generalizations and psychologisms are exemplified in the passages, quoted below, from Leroux and Vowel, and Andersen and Gaudry, respectively. Their method consists mainly in isolating few problematic cases such as the “Mikinak” attempts to seize a tax break in Québec, the remoteness of Indigenous ancestry of

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dangers of reification and stereotyping when we favour only the cultural elements at the expense of the political, especially in the context of juridical “tests” created to assess the Indigeneity of a people (see Gunn 2015). But we

Métis in Québec (essentially rehashing the blood quantum argument), or a Métis leader from a Côte Nord Métis association who used to be involved in a “White rights defence association,” to suggest that all Métis in Québec would be guilty of “ethnic fraud” when claiming to be “Métis” because they would, in fact, be “Whites” wanting to play “Indians” due to lack of self- esteem, guilty-consciousness, or other colonial impulses to steal an Indigenous identity. We hope that this article will highlight the harm of impugning such motives, moreover via hasty generalizations to all Easterner Métis, potentially damaging the reputation of countless individuals and communities already struggling for recognition. From Vowel and Leroux, on the impugning motives that the proliferation of Métis in response to Powley and Daniels would be caused by a “neoliberal enthusiasm for individual redefinition” and not a genuine attempt to salvage one’s cultural identity due to new juridical dynamics: The response to the Powley and Daniels decisions presents a set of troubling dynamics that has led to the proliferation of “métis” (and potentially, non-status Indian) communities. In a perverse way, the Métis, who fought several high-profile, anti-colonial wars against the Canadian state alongside their Indigenous allies and kin on the Prairies, risk being subsumed in the neoliberal enthusiasm for individual redefinition. (Vowel and Leroux 2016, pp. 38–39; our emphasis) And from Gaudry and Andersen, on impugning motives that new groups of Métis would not have the “right” motivations, but would represent a “danger” to the self-determination of other Indigenous collectivities: Paradoxically, these new groups now claiming to be Indigenous seem largely uninterested in reconnecting with, let alone productively engaging, Indigenous communities. In many cases their relationships with Indigenous communities are outright adversarial (see Deer, The Eastern Door, July 20, 2016). It is therefore understandable that many Indigenous communities see these new supposedly Métis and non-status Indian groups as undermining Indigenous communities’ self- determination and ability to productively regulate the membership of their community, to say nothing of their various political and policy relationships with the Canadian state. (Gaudry and Andersen 2016, p. 25; our emphasis) Finally, Gaudry and Andersen, on the notion of self-Indigenization at the expense of the true peoplehood of Indigenous collectives, groups “like” the Mikinak using their White privileges (hence the generalization, by using the term “like” suggesting comparative encompassing other Easterners), and the “desires” that would drive such “self-Indigenization” (hence the psychologism): Self-Indigenization can result from complex motives, but is nonetheless straightforward in its colonial logic. Steeped in white possessiveness (Moreton- Robinson 2015), groups like the Mikinak make use of their white privilege to make claims to Indigeneity at the expense of the place- and history-based peoplehood of Indigenous collectives. The motivation for claiming an Indian or Métis identity where none has previously existed is in our opinion motivated by two overlapping desires: wanting to feel something more by becoming Indigenous and wanting to get something more by becoming Indigenous. (Gaudry and Andersen 2016, p. 27; our emphasis)

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ought to see equally the perils of adopting mono-logical and romantic conceptions of the “Métis Nation,” especially when derived more from the European classical conception of what constitutes Indigenous replicas of the nation-state as the only locus of “legitimate” politics (which, in turn, tend to presume the homogeneity of the nation, its culture, its population, and its enclosed territoriality). Such an enclosing and homogenizing of nationalist imagination simply does not correspond with the historical realities of most Métis peoples across North America, whose identities are based on fluid, kinship-based, open, and trans-territorial relations that evolved differently across different regions and according to specific circumstances.17

Evidence to the Contrary? But can these accusations toward the Métis of the eastern provinces of Canada withstand the examination of historical evidence, including the ways in which historic Métis leaders Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont conceived Métis identity? We know that, historically speaking, the Métis peoples have emerged out of relationships forged in the context of the fur trade crisscrossing the North American continent. Métis leader Louis Riel has clearly stated that the Métis peoples originated from unions between Europeans peoples involved in the historical fur trade and Indigenous women from various nations: The Métis have as paternal ancestors, the former employees of the Hudson’s Bay and Northwest Companies, and as maternal ancestors, Indian women belonging to various tribes. The French word Métis is derived from the Latin participle mixtus which means “mixed”; it expresses well the idea it represents. (Riel 1985c, p. 272; our translation) Yet Riel has also stated that the Métis of the Northwest formed a people and a “nation” (Riel 1985c).18 Should we then understand Métis identity and culture(s) as limited only to the Red River vicinities or the Northwest? Did Riel adopt an inclusive or exclusive understanding of Métis identity for the purpose

17 St-Onge and Podruchny have already offered a similar warning: “We caution researchers and jurists against focusing too closely on territorial delineations and worry that current notions of nation, rooted to state and with clear concepts of territoriality, may come to dominate definitions of a Metis Nation” (St-Onge and Podruchny 2012, p. 60). 18 See this passage from Riel, where the term “nation métisse” is clearly used: “Grace been given to God, the Métis nation always had the honour of defeating its Indian enemies. The advantages which she claimed from these victories was first peace, and then the freedom to communicate and trade with the defeated tribe” (Riel 1985c, p. 274; our translation and emphasis).

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of his political project? Reputed for their mobility, we have evidence that the Métis have occupied different regions of Canada and the United States. The Métis were also known for speaking many languages, most noticeably French, as well as various Indigenous languages. Reflecting such diversity, the term “Métis” has been used to designate different sub-groups, such as the “French- Canadian Métis,” the “Half Breeds” or “Country Born,” and the “Acadian- Métis” (Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette 2016, p. 389). Métis were also identified by different ethnonyms, including “French” and “Canadians.” In The French Half-Breeds of the Northwest, Havard refers to the usage of diverse ethnonyms (including “French”), as well as the continental distribution of Métis populations, from the coast of Oregon, to the Midwest, to the Eastern provinces of Canada: The usual name of half-breeds used by English and Americans presupposes blood from the paternal and maternal ancestors, mixed in equal proportion; but, as mentioned before, this is not often the case. The term mixed-blood is too vaguely comprehensive. Métis, when referring to French mixed-bloods, seems the most appropriate name. The designation of French is often indifferently applied to Canadians, métis of all grades, and even pure Indians who associate with métis and speak their patois. It should also be stated that in Manitoba and other places a certain proportion of mixed bloods, from English and Scotch fathers, bearing such names as Grant, Grey, Sutherland, &c., are classified as French, from their language, religion, and associations, while occasionally such names as Lambert and Parisien are found among English half-breeds. [...] If we could obtain the number of métis in Canada [i.e. Ontario and Québec], New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, , and in the northern part of New England, as well as that of the French- descended families tainted with Indian blood in the States of Illinois and Missouri, I doubt not the total would reach at least 40,000 as the strength of the population of French-Canadian mixed-bloods in North America, (Havard 1880, pp. 314–317; our emphasis) Making the matter even more complex, Métis identities have historically challenged the settler-Indigenous binaries found at the heart of colonial laws, on which race-based privileges have been articulated (White rights to liquor, to

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property, and to vote).19 The Métis could never quite fit the identitarian categories used by colonial authorities, which came to oppose “Whites” to “Indians” (or Indigenous) as mutually excluding racial categories. As Métis leader Louis Riel suggests, one drop of each “blood” would suffice to make someone a “Métis,” if that person chooses; a philosophy of Métis-Indigeneity clearly undermining the efforts deployed by colonial authorities to assimilate and subdue all traces of Indigenous identities: Very polite and amiable people may sometimes say to a Métis, “You don’t look at all like a Métis. You surely can’t have much Indian blood. You could pass anywhere for pure White.” […] It is true that our Indian origin is humble, but it is indeed just that we honour our mothers as well as our fathers. Why should we be so preoccupied with what degree of mingling we have of European and Indian blood? No matter how little we have of one or the other, do not both gratitude and filial love require us to make a point of saying, “We are Métis”? (Riel 1985d, pp. 278–279; our translation and emphasis) The “choice” offered by Louis Riel to people of mixed Indigenous and Euro- Canadian heritage to embrace the Métis identity, an invitation denounced in its contemporary manifestations as this tyranny of “self-Indigenization” (Andersen and Gaudry, 2016), surely problematizes the restrictive definition of Métis identity espoused by a Prairies-centric and neo-nationalist ideology. For the partisans of such ideology, any Métis identifications outside the expression of a strict ethno-nationalist discourse grounded in the political awakening of the Red River events is perceived as internalizing a racialized logic pressed by colonial authorities. But here it is important to note that the Métis were not just the passive victims of “racial” colonial policies; the formulation of their “racialized” or dual identities were not the mere product of gullible minds caught in an overwhelming colonial spider’s web until rescued by the neo- nationalism of Andersen and Gaudry (2016). This overly deterministic argument repudiates not only the inclusive invitation of Louis Riel to all Métis and Half-breeds to join his political project, but it takes simply too much away from the agential powers the Métis had (and still have) to craft their identities in various ways—including upholding their dual or hybrid heritage as part of

19 Exclusion of the Métis as “non-Indians” can be found in the Indian Act of 1876, and in attempts to block Métis from accessing treaty negotiations and/or Indian reserves, effectively preventing the Métis from protecting or consolidating existing Métis of Half Breed collectivities or networks. In western Québec, see the correspondence of Father Nédélec for a telling example of such exclusion (LAC 1892–1896).

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their distinct Indigenous identity without necessarily losing any analytical power or degree of agency to it (Andersen 2014, p. 38). Although it is undeniable that Métis peoples have suffered from a number of exclusions due to their status of being in-between “races,” it is important to remember that Métis were also known historically for playing these identitarian colonial divisions sometimes to their best advantage. At times, Métis did benefit from Indian annuities or by joining a treaty if they could, sometimes opting out so as to gain other benefits and better societal positioning (see Ens and Sawchuk 2016, pp. 215–216). Métis were also reported to have bought liquor for the Indians, taking part in various contraband enterprises as “intermediaries” (see Hickson et al. 1895, p. 670). Blurring the boundaries between settler/Indigenous, the lives of many Métis unsettle current expectations about what we often imagine as “true” or “pure” Indigeneity, as critiques of Indigenous “hybridity” would like us to believe. On the one hand, a number of French-Canadian Métis have been recorded for having boosted the role they played in “civilizing” the West (or the “Indians”), thus boosting the role they played in colonization—a philosophy that certainly emerged in the refusal of voting privileges to the “uncivilized” or “unsettled” Indians by the Red River Métis in their 1870 third list of rights (Begg 1871, quoted in O’Toole 2010, p. 164 for the List).20 On the other hand, Métis are remembered for claiming their Indigenous roots in defence of their rights

20 An example of this sentiment of cultural superiority over the so-called Indians can be found in Riel’s writings when he declares: “Before the Confederation the Métis, per their superiority over the Indian tribes dominated over them but without abusing of their powers” (Riel 1985d, p. 281; our translation). Métis leader Gabriel Dumont also declared: “pride is not our main vice, but I must admit with pride that we have been, us the Métis, pioneers of the civilization in the North-West” (Combet and Toussaint 2009, p. 241; our translation). In the Great Lakes, Métis, or Bois-Brûlés, are also reported as perceiving themselves as a superior class of people compared to Indians, this time by a government official: [...] on Lake Huron and other places, where I have had the an opportunity of meeting the “Bois brulé” and the full bred Indian, a marked difference is to be seen between the two. The former are mostly of French origin, a cross between the numerous Canadians employed by the traders. The half breed is a species of Pariah from his own people, and assumes over the Indians a superiority they are unwilling to concede; he is beside generally dissipated, and unprincipled, and in all commercial intercourse, takes advantage of his knowledge of Indian character and habits, more effectually to grind down and impoverish the wretched dependants on the trader. These people are the curse of the Aborigines, and in all cases mislead them. They excite them to dissipation, rob them when under the influence of the ardent spirits they take among them, and in fact the synonymous word to “good trader” is “great rascal.” (Report On the affairs of the Indians in Canada 1847, p. 467; our pagination and emphasis)

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(including title to the soil by virtue of their “Indian blood”), and even defending the rights of the “Indians” to treaties (see O’Toole 2008). The Northwest Métis are also remembered for various alliances with First Nations kin, relatives, and allies (Innes 2013, pp. 54–58). Métis leader Gabriel Dumont himself is remembered for expressing a dual or hybrid appreciation of his heritage, as both “French” and “Indian,” on the basis of which he justifies his political resistance and assertion of rights: as long as we have a drop of French and Indian blood in our veins, we will claim the rights for which we fought and for which they have judicially assassinated feu Louis David Riel. (Combet and Toussaint 2009, p. 238; our translation) Clearly, Gabriel Dumont did not refrain from formulating identity in terms of being “mixed,” however little intermingling in one’s heritage there might be. Complexities and perceived ambiguities in the articulation of Métis identities are therefore not a new phenomenon.21 Historically speaking, we know that the Métis were found in many regions of North America, were speaking different languages (including French), were predominantly Catholic, were not always on good terms with other Indigenous peoples, and expressed their distinct identity as a claim for both their French and Indian heritage. What is new, however, are the criticisms of “cultural appropriation” and “ethnic fraud” toward the non-Prairie Métis that appear at odds with the inclusive vision of Métis leader Louis Riel or the importance Gabriel Dumont conferred to his dual “French-Indian” heritage.22 As discussed elsewhere, Louis Riel’s political vision resists any regional reductionism and ethno-nationalist essentialism (Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette 2016). Riel’s writings, moreover, problematize current assertions that Métis identity is limited to a Canadian Prairies phenomenon. Riel himself even goes a step beyond their position by

21 See O’Toole (2012) for the historical opposition between Anglophone “Half breeds” and French Métis, even in the heart of Red River. 22 The backdrop of these academic debates also involves power struggles between various Métis organizations seeking the exclusive recognition from governmental officials who hold the keys to finance their activities, often at the cost of millions of dollars, looping back in affirming the sole legitimacy of these financed organizations. In the case of the Métis National Council, an organization created in 1983, their Prairie-centric philosophy currently excludes the possibility of Métis in Québec, parts of Ontario, and the Eastern provinces of Canada. The importance of these organizations is underlined in Jennifer Adese’s analysis of the Daniels decision (2016), where she opposes the Métis Federation of Canada for its inclusive approach to Métis identity, to the exclusivist and Prairies-centric definition adopted by the Métis National Council.

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acknowledging the existence of Métis in the Eastern provinces of Canada with equal political rights of the Métis of Manitoba: When it comes to the Eastern provinces of Canada, many Métis live there persecuted under the attires of the Indian costume. Their villages are villages of indigence. Their Indian title to the soil is, however, as good as the Indian title of the Métis of Manitoba. (Riel 1985b, p. 121; our translation) Confirmation that Louis Riel opposed a Western-only Métis identity can also be found in the transcripts of his 1885 trial, where he states: “if the principle of giving one seventh of the lands to the Half-breeds in the North West is good, it ought to be good in the East also,” adding, “I will say if you ever have an opportunity of crossing the line in the East do it and help the Indians and Half- breeds of the East to have a revenue equivalent to about one seventh” (Anonymous 1886, p. 158). These passages suggest that Louis Riel did not negate the “political agency” of Eastern Métis or Half-breeds. Rather, Riel affirmed the inherent dignity and the political power of all “Half-breeds” or Métis (East or West) to join his political project and equally to claim Métis identity. Hence, when it comes to accusations against Eastern Métis for wanting to wash their colonial guilt away by evoking their métissage,23 the bad news for

23 Gabrielle Monique Legault discusses this “moves to innocence,” in relation to Chelsea Vowel’s criticism of “the mythology of Métissage.” In doing so, Legault quotes Barker (2012) who suggests that: “settler societies co-opt and assimilate indigeneity through incorporating Indigenous aesthetic and expression as a means to legitimize settler colonialism.” Legault points that Barker is wary that such claims to hybridity would originate from settler positionality. In short, Barker would be wary of some “moves to innocence,” whereby settlers deny their role and benefit in colonization. Supporting Vowel’s own criticism of “the mythology of Métissage” as something that can be purely self-ascribed, both preoccupations echo the criticism we find in Tuck and Yang’s (2012), Decolonization is Not a Metaphor: In this move to innocence, settlers locate or invent a long-lost ancestor who is rumored to have had “Indian blood,” and they use this claim to mark themselves as blameless in the attempted eradications of Indigenous people... [it] is a settler move to innocence because it is an attempt to deflect a settler identity, while continuing to enjoy settler privilege and occupying stolen land. (2015; quoted by Legault 2016, p. 107) Per Legault’s account: Vowel argues that the self-fashioning of Native identities, especially through the lens of Métissage is an act of ongoing colonialism that seeks to erase Indigenous peoples and undermine Indigenous rights (including those of Métis people), especially if the ratio would become a majority of self-proclaimed Métis—then all indigeneity would be lost. This line of argument only makes sense, however, if we accept three problematic premises: (1) that Métis identities bear no historical

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everyone is that there is no primordial “innocence” to fall back on (see Tuck and Yang 2012, Barker 2012, Vowel 2015). Métis complex histories simply do not allow for such an ideological shortcut, and no amount of resisting the Queen for the Patriots or Canadian nation-building for North-western Métis completely absolve their descendants from other entanglements with colonialism—to which many Métis have sometimes complex relationships, as we have seen. Undeniably, there have been a number of injustices suffered by the Métis peoples that are in need of reparation and compensation, including a much-needed solution for the breach of fiduciary duty by Ottawa when dealing with the land claims of the Métis of Manitoba and of the historical Northwest. We are not denying this. Yet we ought equally to have the courage to realize that these injustices often mingle in complex ways with other injustices suffered by Indigenous peoples living on the Land before the Métis—and sometimes rival to the Métis. We also need the courage to realize—without abandoning the project of seeking Justice, redress, and self-determination with and for Indigenous peoples—that assessing who might be deserving (or not) of a primordial “move to innocence” is a bad starting point, especially when it comes to assess the authenticity of Métis identities.

Against the accusation of being Living-Dead: The story of Marie-Louise Riel What might still be unclear, however, is how Riel came to conclude the existence of Métis in the eastern provinces of Canada. What evidence supports this claim, besides Riel’s own writings? And if we did find evidence that the terms “Métis,” “Métif,” or “Bois-Brulé”24 were used historically in Québec, would these findings withstand the repudiation that these are only dead and dusty “archival” material resurrected by mere opportunists and wannabe “Métis” (Andersen 2016)?

relationship whatsoever to any colonial scheme in which Métis peoples could have taken part (which we know to be false); (2) that all indigenous peoples fall equally under a one-size-fit-all understanding of their indigeneity, identity, and rights (which then flats out Indigenous diversity and complex approach to one’s identity); and (3) that any expression for Euro-Indigenous hybridity as a vector of Métis identity necessarily amounts to a willful attempt to eradicate Indigenous peoples (which is to impugn motive and use abusive generalizations appealing to populist arguments based on utopian scenario). (Legault 2016, p. 107) 24 “Métif” is an older version of the word “Métis.” “Bois-Brûlé” is one of the many ethnonyms attributed to Métis peoples across the country, at least from Québec to the West Coast.

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To offer just one answer to this challenge, the remaining sections of this essay explore a case study involving Riel’s exile and refuge in Québec. The popular story suggests that Riel returned to the Canadian Prairies in the late 1870s, and that a party led by Gabriel Dumont brought him back in 1884 from Montana to represent the Métis in present-day Saskatchewan. Classic Métis historiography tells that after the battle of Batoche, Riel was taken into custody, judged, and tragically executed (see Howard 1952). His execution was followed by waves of repression against the Western Métis, while French- Canadian nationalists reacted to the hanging by building-up their political project in Québec (Clapin 1894, p. 15). Without more detailed historical knowledge of Louis Riel’s period of exile, we might be under the impression that the fate of the Métis leader is tied exclusively to the birth of a “Western” Métis nation. A closer examination of Riel’s exile reveals, however, that Riel travelled to many other locations, including Keeseville, Plattsburgh, Ottawa, Hull, Montréal, Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Beauport. In each location, friends, family members, priests, and communities supported Riel. The Riel family (including Louis Sr. and Jr.) travelled extensively between Québec and Manitoba, as well as many other locations where French-Canadian and Métis populations were located.25 Riel’s own aunt, Lucie Riel, and uncle, Mr. John Lee, settled near Montréal and protected Riel while he sojourned there. Given the scholarship positing that Métis identity is only “authentic” if still “alive” and rooted out West (Andersen 2014 and 2016), the remaining sections of this essay will unpack the oral testimony offered by a Québec Métis woman named Violet Lalonde, herself the great-great-granddaughter of Marie- Louise Riel. We believe that her unpublished testimony written in the 1980s is valuable for several reasons. First, we believe it sheds light on rarely discussed events surrounding the protection of Louis Riel in the Outaouais region during a relatively obscure period of his life. Second, the story of Violet Lalonde (1926–2005) offers key characteristics describing the Métis historical ways of

25 Louis Riel Sr. was Christianized in 1822 in Berthier, Québec (GSU, BMS of Sainte- Geneviève-de-Berthier, 1822-09-23), as many Métis from Red River were revealing fascinating connections between Lower Canada and the Red River settlement. We might forget that both Louis Riel Sr. and Jr. were educated and lived many years in Québec. Moreover, at least 12 ’ contracts involving individuals of the name of Jean-Baptiste Riel (who was the name of the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of Louis Sr.) figure on the Voyageur Contracts Database (SHSB 2010) between 1752 and 1818, and almost all concern the Michilimackinac region. Most of them mention a guide occupation, and Laprairie, Québec, as the origin of these voyageurs. Even if matching perfectly the ancestors of Louis Sr. to any of these contracts is close to impossible, the probability of some positive match is very high— especially as Riel was recorded at the end of the 19th century as one of the common Métis surnames at “Mackinac and other place on the Lakes” (Havard 1880, p. 326).

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life in the Gatineau and Lièvre Rivers region, including connections and migrations leading to the coalescence of Métis families from different regions (including Red River).26 Third, researching the story of Violet Lalonde reveals additional evidence that corroborates not only the presence of Louis Riel in the Outaouais, but also that of mixed-blood communities called “Métifs” and “Bois-Brûlés” inhabiting this region—some never discussed before. Fourth, the enduring respect for the oral tradition of Violet Lalonde by a number of Métis living in the Gatineau Valley provides a strong rebuttal against accusations that Eastern Métis would have no “living” continuity when it comes to their culture (Andersen 2016).

Who is Marie-Louise Riel? According to the narrative of Violet Lalonde, Marie-Louise Riel (ca. 1800– 1898) is the daughter of the voyageur Jean-Baptiste Riel and Marguerite Boucher, married à la façon du pays around 1810. It is suggested that Marie- Louise travelled with her parents to Lower Canada following the increasing violence between fur companies out West. After a brief stop at Mattawa, the Riel family went to Sainte-Geneviève-de-Berthier, where two children of Jean- Baptiste were baptized in 1822, Louis (Sr.) and Sophie (GSU, BMS of Sainte- Geneviève-de-Berthier, 1822-09-23). Marie-Louise then married a voyageur and hunter of Scottish descent, Robert McGregor in 1826 (GSU, BMS of Mission du Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes, Oka, 1826-08-14; Newton 1991, p. 16), while Lucie Riel married John Lee to eventually settle near Montréal (GSU, BMS of Notre-Dame, Montréal, 1849-10-23). One question remains: is Marie-Louise really the sister of Louis Riel Sr.? We believe Marie-Louise to be probably the half-sister of Louis Sr., since it would have been very unusual for her not to be baptized at the same time as her alleged siblings at Sainte-Geneviève-de-Berthier in 1822—especially in a

26 We should not expect each element of an oral tradition to be in full compliance with empirically verifiable historical facts. However, the concordance of several important points with the archival data gives general credence to the narrative of Violet Lalonde. The original manuscript is kept at BAnQ-Gatineau, under the quotation P1000, D65. Its author, Violet Lalonde, is described in the Alliance newspaper as a “Métisse de la région de Maniwaki.” The manuscript was given to historian Pierre-Louis Lapointe in the 1980s (Alliance 1986, p. 23). Lapointe touched briefly on the story of Marie-Louise in one of his publications (2006). We must also warmly credit Stéphane Jobin (a Marie-Louise descendant) who made Lalonde’s manuscript available online, and also wrote an article (see Jobin 2013).

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family as Catholic as the Riels.27 There is of course also the possibility that the Riel-Boucher couple adopted Marie-Louise. But no document has been found that could establish a connection with the young Marie-Louise and the Riel family. If Marie-Louise was indeed fathered by Jean-Baptiste Riel, it thus appears plausible that she was born from an unknown Indigenous woman living in Michilimackinac (or in the vicinity), and presumably raised in her mother’s community until she partnered with Robert McGregor, with whom she would have two children before their marriage in 1826. This could explain why the surname Riel was not used at her marriage or baptism but rather the name Chipakijikokwe. However, the Riel surname appears early, for example at the baptism of her daughters in 1825 and 1827 (GSU, BMS of Pointe-Claire, 1825-08-12; 1827-08-12). In support of our hypothesis, we know that Jean- Baptiste Riel’s involvements in Michilimackinac match Marie-Louise’s approximate conception date, prior to his marriage with Marguerite Boucher— this according to the evidence suggesting that Marie-Louise is around 30 years old in 1826. If our hypothesis is correct, Marie-Louise Riel would be the half- sister of Louis Sr., and thus still technically the “aunt” of Louis Riel Jr., as the oral tradition of the Riel-McGregor family suggests.

27 Marie-Louise was baptized a few months before her marriage with the voyageur Robert McGregor, in Oka in 1826, and recorded then as part of the “Sauteux” nation. The couple had two children, baptized in Sault Ste. Marie and Pointe-Claire, who were “legitimized” by the act of union (GSU, BMS of Pointe-Claire, 1825-08-12; Mission du Lac-des-Deux-Montagnes, Oka, 1826-08-14). The priest indicates then that she was around 30 years old at her marriage, and not 15, as suggested by Violet Lalonde. We must also highlight the absence of any Riel family members per Marie Louise’s marriage document, the witnesses rather being identified by Indigenous surnames. Although this does not prove that no Riel family members were present at the marriage, it reinforces our hypothesis of an “illegitimate” birth or adoption in the case of Marie-Louise. How else could we explain the fact that Marie-Louise lives in the vicinity of Sault Ste. Marie, away from the parish of Berthier, that no parents are mentioned on her baptismal document, and no Riel family members are recorded at her marriage?

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Alleged photograph of Marie-Louise Riel. Unknown author and date. A copy of this photograph was given by Violet Lalonde to historian Pierre-Louis Lapointe. Credit: Stéphane Jobin.

Métis culture, peoplehood, and kinship Marie-Louise’s use of the Riel surname may have acknowledged her father’s lineage and heritage—a phenomenon documented elsewhere in the fur trade, as, for instance, on the Missouri (Thorne 1996, pp. 157–170). It may also indicate her attachment to her Métis identity—a self-identification she transmitted to her descendants—which she perhaps felt was boosted by taking more often the Riel surname after 1840 (Jobin 2013, p. 10) already in usage among the Métis families of the Outaouais and Red River from that time. If this were true, the kinship relation between Marie-Louise and Louis would have been symbolic, through the recognition of a shared patronym. Without any baptism, marriage, or death certificate (i.e., “BMS”) establishing a direct link between Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Louise Riel, it is nearly impossible to prove or disprove a biological connection. Proving a direct patrilineal kinship connection is not so important when we consider the impact that this oral tradition has had on shaping the identity of Métis families in the vicinities of Maniwaki, Québec. Many Métis in Maniwaki feel a deep sense of connection with the memory of Louis Riel, especially among the descendants of Marie-Louise, who cherish her memory as a healer who did not hesitate to defy the Law to protect her “nephew.” Elders Mr.

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Benoît Guilbault and Mrs. Liliane Cyr (herself a descendant of Marie-Louise Riel) confirmed in an interview that Louis Riel took refuge in Val-des-Bois (more specifically in the house of “Mr. Latour”). They described Louis as remembered for canoeing via the 31 Miles Lake and the Poisson Blanc, pausing at Lac Sainte-Marie, to reach Maniwaki before going toward the city of Hull, Québec. Liliane Cyr also mentioned that Marie-Louise Riel was well known to her mother as a regional midwife and a healer (Malette 2016). In a separate interview, Mr. Laurier Riel from Maniwaki declared that the uncle of his grandfather (this uncle also a McGregor and an old resident of Lac Sainte-Marie) told him that Marie-Louise Riel stored some of Louis Riel’s belongings in the community of Lac Sainte-Marie (bed sheet, dishes, etc.). Mr. Laurier Riel further described Marie-Louise as the sister28 of Louis, travelling with him as he sojourned in the region because he was supposed to sit as a Member of Parliament (SMC 2016).29

28 Another historical source hints toward Marie-Louise as a relative of Louis Riel. In 1906, the husband of a great-granddaughter of Marie-Louise (also named Marie-Louise), Thomas Bélanger, was killed at Buckingham. The newspaper La Patrie presents Bélanger as the “nephew” of Louis Riel. But in the next day’s edition, the Bélanger family rectifies this: their Bélanger side is not linked to Riel. Even if Marie-Louise is not mentioned, it can be assumed that such confusion arose between the family of Thomas Bélanger and that of his wife Marie- Louise McGregor (the great-granddaughter of the elder Marie-Louise) (La Patrie 1906a, 14; La Patrie 1906b, 5; Lapointe 2006, 235). 29 This interview is part of a SSHRC-funded research project, Le statut de Métis au Canada, under the direction of Dr. Gagnon (U. de Saint Boniface). It should be noted that the different accounts of the kinship connection between Louis and Marie-Louise tend to confirm the authenticity of a transmission based in oral tradition, as they are not emerging out of written or archival narratives, but rather through their performative transmissions across history, thus allowing slight variations based on transgenerational reminiscence. Here is the transcription of the passage in question, in French: Laurier Riel (LR) : Pis lui [McGregor], lui y me l’a dit qu’y demeurait au lac Sainte-Marie, pis y a d’autres McGregor qui restent là. Pis … qu’y ont eu des biens qui appartenaient à Louis Riel aussi. Parce que Marie euh … Marie-Louise, elle a apporté des choses avec elle, elle avait des … des affaires qu’elle a apportées, pour laisser là, des … des … d’la vaisselle, des affaires comme ça. Interviewer (I) : Marie-Louise qui ? LR : Marie-Louise Ri… Marie-Louise Riel. Elle a apporté du stock là, au lac Sainte-Marie. I : Mais c’était qui ça Marie-Louise Riel, c’tait la… ? LR : Ça aurait été la sœur de Louis. Pis a l’a laissé du stock là au lac Sainte- Marie. Des … des … des draps, d’la vaisselle, des choses comme ça … qu’elle avait amenées. I : Pendant, comme, l’exil de Louis Riel ?

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The “people” of Marie-Louise: The Métis Notions of kinship (real or fictive) therefore appear central to the articulation of Métis identity in Maniwaki, Québec. From a symbolic standpoint, we know that the notion of kinship has been discussed in the literature as key to the construction of many collective forms of identity, including national ones (Özkirimli 2010, p. 54; Smith 1997, p. 38). In the building of “national” identities, it is not rare to find extrapolations on what would bind common kinship ties (real or imagined) as the source of processes labelled as “ethnogenesis.” In this respect, being considered a “cousin,” especially in the fur trade voyageur cultural traditions (Podruchny 2006, p. 193), can be seen in a shared common surname and/or a common ancestor, no matter the degree of biological kinship; this could have been enough for Marie-Louise Riel to be considered the aunt of Louis Riel, and the memory of such a relationship in the family’s oral tradition.30 However, not all elements derived from the oral tradition of Marie- Louise belong to the realm of the symbolic. Evidence suggests that Louis Riel did visit the Outaouais region between 1873 and 1875. Riel is remembered for having stayed in Hull, Pointe-Gatineau, and Angers.31 A letter to his mother confirms his stay in the Outaouais region in May 1874, for what seems a period of at least 8–9 months. Louis adds that he benefitted from having many supporters and friends in Québec, or “en Canada” (SHSB 1874a). Interestingly, Louis Riel visited Trois-Rivières (Québec) in 1874, where 20 coureurs de bois are reported as having been mobilized to ensure his protection against police detectives (SHSB 1874b). During one of his visits in Québec, Mr. LaRivière suggests to Riel in a letter dated 17 October 1873 that he uses the countryside of the northern Outaouais region in order to get from Montréal to Hull because it allowed a safer passage:

LR : Dans l’temps qu’a voyageait, là. A voyageait avec lui. Parce que est v’nue … est v’nue avec lui, pour aller à … siéger au parlement. (SMC 2016) 30 Many more or less distant relatives of Riel lived in the Outaouais region, some described as “Métis” or “Half Breed.” For example, Louis Bastien, a former voyageur and freeman, married to a local Algonquin woman, Mani Josette Sipiikwe, located in Mattawa in the 1840s and later was the first cousin of the mother of Louis Riel Jr., Julie Lagimodière (Marcotte 2017, p. 71). In more recent years, the oral tradition concerning Louis’ parentage in the Outaouais was still observable. At least two articles in the 1980s local Métis newspapers mentioned Louis Riel’s aunt, or the Riel métis parentage in the region (Anonymous 1985, p. 17; Riel, M.-J., 1985, pp. 3–5). 31 The oral tradition was still living at Noëlville (Ontario) in the 1950s, concerning the hiding of Riel in Angers. See Villemaire 1953.

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When you will be in Montréal, if you wish to go to Ottawa, I think the best route would be to pass through the countryside at the north of the Ottawa [River], and then until reaching Hull. [...] I have beside no other suggestions to make, as you know your business better than anyone else, to the grace of God! (SHSB 1873; our translation) The “countryside” north of the Ottawa would have been home to the Outaouais Métis. It is there that Marie-Louise came to be known as a figure of humanitarian relief for the inhabitants, including Indians, Métis, and squatters (BAnQ-G 1980, pp. 2, 8, 11). In her testimonies, Mrs. Violet Lalonde depicts Marie-Louise as a woman of an extraordinary longevity, still living a nomadic and independent life. She is portrayed as a medicinal woman and a bone healer with an extensive knowledge of plants. She was also sought for her midwifery skills and did not hesitate to go to the isolated homes of the pioneers and her people, “the Métis,” by using birch bark canoes that she had built herself (BAnQ-G 1980, pp. 2, 39). Marie-Louise is also reported as crafting her own moccasins, and was known for wearing a traditional long black dress, along with a rosary crucifix made of cedar wood.32 Finally, she is remembered as a local hero for helping her “nephew” Louis Riel to escape the Law. As Mrs. Violet Lalonde declared: Let me tell you about the ‘hide-away’ as told to me by my father Wilfred McGregor. Look at a map of Quebec and find the following places: Hull, McGregor Lake, Buckingham, Notre Dame de la Salette, High Falls, Val des Bois and Maniwaki (Lake St. Marie). With a pencil connect these locations and you will see that they make a circular formation on the map. This was where my nomadic grand grand mere lived, fished, traveled the waters- ways, worked amongst the people, and, of course, hid Louis— her fugitive nephew, from the clutches of the law. [...] Grand grand mere McGregor realized that it was important to keep Louis on the move which well suited her nomadic existence, for she too—was constantly on the go. Relatives and friends took turns hiding him. Mary Louise’s children— Robert, Elizabeth, and Maria, as well as her own sister Lucy

32 Archival material supporting Violet Lalonde’s account includes reports of the moccasins manufactured by Marie-Louise. In 1844, she traded to a local merchant on the Lièvre River 32 pairs of moccasins in only nine days (BAnQ-G 1844-1860, folio 152).

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and granddaughter Hermeline, all played a part in this adventure and were known as the “family pack.” That’s what my father called them when he referred to them in his stories. (BAnQ-G 1980, p. 38) Interestingly, the oral tradition making Marie-Louise a Métis healer and protector of Métis leader Louis Riel is supported by a 1904 article in newspaper La Patrie which announces the death of the daughter of Marie- Louise the elder. Here are some salient passages from the article: Mother Valiquette was born in the North-West, around 1818: her mother was a métisse named Riel, cousin33 of Louis Riel, who played a certain role in the Northwest. Her father, J. McGregor, was a Scotsman at the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company on that date. A few years after his birth, her parents came to stay at Bytown and from there to Lake of Two Mountains; They baptized her as they passed through the Sault Sainte-Marie. [...] Mother Valiquette was well known and esteemed by all the settlers of the place, from Buckingham to the Ferme Neuve. Her old mother, who had died on the river a few years ago, at 113 years of age, had taught her art as a midwife and a doctor at the same time. —Art in which mother and daughter excelled. [...] For certain illnesses, they kept her services, eight, fifteen days, a month in advance, and night and day, they came hastily to seek this courageous old mother, by birch bark canoe, the only way to travel at that time—through impossible weather […] The mother, either in the rear or in front of the canoe, according to the skill of her companion, put her rowing in her hands and handled the pallet five or ten, fifteen, or twenty miles to destination [...] A great number of patients have been relieved and cured by her care. The mountains and swamps provided her with the remedies necessary for her art: she knew the values of medicinal plants and always used them successfully. (La Patrie 1904, p. 7; our emphasis) So stated, the daughter of Marie-Louise seems to have been trained as a midwife and healer by her mother in the same region, evoking the possibility of overlapping individual stories in the oral account of Violet Lalonde. At that

33 Here again, a different parentage is attributed to Marie-Louise: Marie-Louise would be a cousin of Louis Riel Jr.

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time, we must remember that the upper regions of the Gatineau Valley were still sparsely inhabited and access to midwifery was both rare and crucial. The low population density can in part be explained by the Gatineau forestry privileges, which halted mass colonization of this region until 1843. Historically part of “les Pays d’en Haut,” the Outaouais region is best known for its fur trade and forestry activities, as well as for its rugged population including many squatters. Independent fur traders took advantage of the absence of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) monopoly in the region, boosted by its strategic proximity to Bytown (Ottawa). In the first half of the nineteenth century, “petty traders” could acquire supplies in Bytown to trade with local Indigenous peoples without any effective oversight from the Company, including transactions of cash and alcohol (Newton 1991). Cases of HBC desertions (HBCA, B.134/c/41, 238) and contraband activities involving Métis families such as the McDougalls34 (HBCA, E.41/10, 11b) were not uncommon in the 1840s. A few decades later, we find the Indian agent of Maniwaki, James Martin, echoing the complaints about the “Half-breeds” of the region for the part they played in similar activities (Martin 1895, p. 31). With such a history, Louis Riel was arguably not taking refuge in just any “countryside”; he was, in fact, taking refuge among resourceful and experienced Métis families, many of them working in the fur trade. Nor was the Outaouais hinterland isolated from the political events occurring in Red River. We know that news of the Métis resistance (1870) reached the distant fur trade posts at the Ottawa River sources, when the HBC engagés McBride (a former half breed) and Anderson are reported as trekking in snowshoes to deliver the pressing news from the Témiscamingue post at Grand Lac (HBCA, B.82/a/4, 17b). To be clear, the backcountry of the Outaouais was described as early as 1829 for harbouring French-speaking “Bois-Brûlés” and “métifs,” known to local “Indians” for trading furs with them (Ingall, Nixon, and Adams 1830, 24 and 25 September). The Ottawa River shore itself also had at least one Métis settlement, near old Fort Coulonge, where the “La Passe” hamlet was described as a “nest of old trading people—French or Bois Brulées,” a population associated here with the underdevelopment of agriculture (Shirreff 1831, p. 265). According to Father Bellefeuille in 1838, not only one but all the fur trade posts stretching from Fort Coulonge to Abitibi (see map 1) were also occupied by “Métif” families:

34 Amable McDougall was a “well known halfbred [sic]” on the Lièvre and Gatineau Rivers and was also known as “Amable Christineau” by local fur traders (HBCA, B.134/g/9-12; Russell 1851, cited in Sabourin 2010, p. 72).

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[Flora] is about 45 years old, and besides her name of Baptism and her Indian name, she also bears the name of L’Évêque [Lévesque] from her late father, a former Canadian or métif voyageur. There is also in this same post [Abitibi] Savages or métifs, like Gaucher and others of the name Chénier. As in Témiskaming there is a numerous family who are descendants of an old voyageur named Leduc. And in all these different Posts there are métifs descendants of Voyageurs or Clerks or Bourgeois, Canadians or Scottish for the most part. These métifs are usually more clever than the others. (BAnQ-RN 1838, p. 6; our translation) The distribution of the Outaouais “Métifs” thus appears regional in scope. The study of the BMS show that the Outaouais Métis are also ethnically diverse through what became the coalescence of local Canadien-Métis, Scottish-Métis, and retired Métis voyageurs from different locations (i.e., Red River and the Northwest Territories). This diversity is not surprising, as most fur trade communities were neither ethnically nor culturally homogeneous (see Jones 2005 and 2011; Ray 1998; Thomson 2005). To take one telling example, the mission of Lac Sainte-Marie is described in the exact same way as the community of Sault Ste. Marie—namely, as made up of Canadiens, Métis, and Indians (Codex Historicus de Longueuil 1847, cited in Carrière 1962, p. 103; Gaulin 1841, p. 54).

Map 1. The Outaouais region with its Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) trading posts and a few settlements mentioned in this essay.

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The David family is a great example of such mobility and diversity at the core of the Métis people.35 Originally from Red River, with Madeleine David taking a Half breed scrip36 and marrying André Gaudry, the Davids did not hesitate to split the nuclei of their family when Joseph David, brother of Madeleine, decided to settle in the Outaouais region, next to another Métis family whose members also travelled between the West and Québec on multiple occasions, the Pauls.37 Interestingly, Pierre Paul is most likely the same individual who, accompanied by his famous father Joseph Paul (“the strongest man in the Northwest”), was involved in the fur wars when they were captured north of Lake Winnipeg, in 1819, by men of the HBC (Rumilly 1980, vol. 2, p. 240). Clearly, Métis families were moving and settling in both Eastern and Western regions of Canada. Another example is the Naud-McPherson family formed from a retired voyageur from the Grand Lac trading post (north-west of Maniwaki) that

35 Basile David, a Canadien married to the Métis Thérèse Dufault, founded the family. Their daughter Madeleine filled a scrip at St. Boniface in 1875 (LAC 1876). Their son Joseph married at the mouth of the Lièvre River in 1840 with Rose Robert. The name of Joseph’s mother is not mentioned, but the priest specified between parentheses that Joseph David was a “metis” (GSU, BMS of Saint-Grégoire-de-Nazianze, Buckingham, 1840-08-17). Recognized as one of the “squatters” established on the Lièvre River, not far from the Hudson’s Bay Company post at Lac des Sables, he settled in this area as early as 1841, and later moved in the township of Cameron (Goudreau 2014, p. 54) near the Métis Pierre Paul. In 1881, thirteen members of the extended family seem to have lived with this “Red River” man (LAC 1881, p. 1). 36 As Nicole O’Byrne makes clear in her article discussing the historical context surrounding negotiations over scrip policy between Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta and the federal government: “At this time, the federal government accepted the fact that in order to enjoy clear title to the newly acquired territories, it would have to recognize and extinguish the Indian title held by the Aboriginal peoples, including Metis, who had traditionally occupied the lands. The federal government used two different legal instruments to extinguish Indian title: Indian treaties and Metis scrip. The main difference between these instruments was that Indian treaties included continuing obligations such as annuities and education, while Metis scrip was a one- time land grant after which the recipients would be treated on the same basis as any other Canadian citizen” (O’Byrne 2007, p. 218). 37 Pierre Paul settled between Maniwaki and Lac Sainte-Marie probably in the second half of the nineteenth century (LAC 1861a, p. 143). In 1800, he was baptized (under the name of Joseph) in Sorel as a natural child of Joseph Hus Paul and a “Sauvagesse de Nation Siouse” (GSU, BMS of Saint-Pierre-de-Sorel, 1800-11-11), at six years old. Given this age, he was surely born in the Northwest. Pierre Paul married Marie Antoinette Richer in Saint-Ours, where he was said to be “a traveler in the upper countries” (GSU, BMS of Saint-Ours, 1820-04-24; our translation). He probably travelled extensively for various fur trade companies, including on the Lièvre River in 1841 (HBCA, B.134/g/16). Later, the Canadian censuses of 1861 and 1871 confirm that he was established in the Outaouais, while mentioning he was born on the territories of Hudson Bay (Rupert’s Land). In 1871, eleven members of his extended family lived in his immediate surroundings near Maniwaki (LAC 1861a, p. 143; 1871, p. 14).

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married a local Métisse woman of Algonquin extraction named Elizabeth McPherson. In this particular case, Francois Naud came to settle in the community of Lac Sainte-Marie in a canoe also transporting his brother-in-law, George McPherson,38 who would later settle at Red River before witnessing in Western Ontario in 1873 (Lefebvre 2006, pp. 21–22; Morris 1880, p. 48). The arrival of these freemen in the Outaouais seemed to worry the HBC, which questioned their real motives for being in the region (HBCA, B.134/c/40, 48). As noted above, the HBC was already struggling to enforce their declining influence in the region. A few decades later, about the same time that Louis Riel was a fugitive in the Outaouais, Jean-Baptiste McDougall, a son of one of the founding couples of the Lac Sainte-Marie mission, is reported to have expelled an Indian agent manu militari from his house, leading the agent to complain about the “half breed” origin from Red River of the McDougall family.39 Clearly, intermarriages between local Outaouais, Sault Ste. Marie, and Red River families are known in the region. Indeed, the “half breed” identity appears to have been expressed not only by outsiders, but also by the local Métis themselves (as a self-ascription). André Lacroix, a freeman born in Mackinac living in Maniwaki, for example, integrated the logical patrilineal filiation of Indigeneity applied by Indian Affairs in Canada when he explains the difference between his daughter (a “half breed”) and his granddaughter (an “Indian”) in a letter addressed to officials.40 Hence, Lacroix was certainly aware of the differential treatment reserved for the “Métis” (or Half breeds) versus the “Indians.” The examples of the Davids, the Pauls, the Nauds, the McPhersons, the McDougalls, and the Lacroix help us to illustrate that the social, political, and cultural horizons of the Métis were not contained by strict geographical boundaries that would artificially disconnect eastern from western Métis

38 Many primary documents enable us to identify George McPherson as being Elizabeth’s brother (see HBCA, B.82/d/3, 1837-06-03; B.134/c/8, 140, 158). 39 The Indian Agent Baudin, when reporting on the census he was doing on the Maniwaki reserve, writes in 1874: “the second day we arrived at a little house where lives a certain John Baptiste McDougall, who has been treated as an Algonquin, though his father was a half breed from the Christinos of Red River” (LAC 1874, pp. 24–25). 40 André Lacroix, born at Mackinac in 1803 (Faribault-Beauregard 1982, p. 149), married Véronique Macteni, an “Indian woman” (GSU, BMS of Notre-Dame, Ottawa, 1834-08-25). In 1879, he contested the expulsion from the Maniwaki reserve of his granddaughter. He explicitly wrote that she was an Indian girl, being the daughter of “Simon Covart (an Algonquin Indian) who married Sophia Lacroix. She [Sophia] was a half breed, being my daughter” (LAC 1879, p. 2).

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families. Exemplifying this point further, the narrative of Violet Lalonde mentions another family that protected Louis Riel in the Outaouais: the family of “J. Lépine,” identified by Lalonde as the cousin of Ambroise-Dydime Lépine, the famous Métis right-hand man of Louis Riel. This information seems exact when we know that the father of Ambroise-Dydime, a Canadien named Jean-Baptiste Lépine, of Saint-Jacques, Québec (Ens 2005), had three brothers who settled from Saint-Jacques to the Lièvre River in the 1840s. Interestingly, Joseph Lépine, the eldest brother, is in fact closely linked to the Paul family (mentioned above), as he was also taken prisoner by the HBC to the north of Winnipeg Lake in 1819 (Masson 1889, p. 147; Morice 1908, p. 183; Rumilly 1980, vol. 2, pp. 240, 248). One year after this dramatic episode, he married, as his brother Jean-Baptiste did in the Prairies, a North West Métis named Marguerite Brousseau, the daughter of Jean-Louis and Marie Suzanne Nantikau.41 Among their children, or in the two other Lépine families already living on the Lièvre, was probably the J. Lépine mentioned by Lalonde.42 Again, the difficulty in pinpointing the exact identity of “J. Lépine” neither negates the obvious East-West kinship Métis connections, nor the political charge associating the Lépine family name and the Red River resistance, providing one more example of the political dimension made explicit by Lalonde through kinship ties (real or fictive). At this point we can safely state that voyageurs and métis families from different origins settled the Outaouais region as early as the 1830s, such as the Cadottes,43 the Riels,44 the Lépines, and other “half breed” families connected

41 We can safely assume that Marguerite Brousseau was born in the North West, since her mother, Marie Suzanne Nantikau (aged 58) was baptized on the day of her daughter’s marriage (GSU, BMS of Saint-Jacques, 1820-10-24). The former “North West” voyageur occupation of Brousseau is confirmed later in the burial documents of his wife, who was described as a “naturelle” (GSU, BMS of Saint-Jacques, 1827-04-18). 42 Joseph Lépine Sr. came to the Lièvre with his new Canadienne wife (Goudreau 2014, p. 62), most likely with the métis children from his first marriage. At least one Métis daughter from Joseph Lépine/Marguerite Brousseau is present in Outaouais (GSU, BMS of Saint-Grégoire-de- Nazianze, Buckingham, 1848-07-03). Joseph Lépine and his second wife would later have another daughter named Marguerite Lépine (GSU, BMS of Saint-Grégoire-de-Nazianze, Buckingham, 1860-05-21). They should not be mingled. According to Stéphane Jobin (2013, 12), “J. Lépine” would be Joseph Trefflé Lépine, son of François Lépine, one of the three brothers on the Lièvre. It is also noteworthy that the extended Lépine family was engaged in the Outaouais fur trade for the HBC as early as 1821, and on the Témiscamingue from 1788 for various traders (HBCA, B.134/g/1-6; E.41/2, pp. 7–8). 43 Two Cadotte clearly identified as “métif” appears on the BMS of the Outaouais missions in the 1830s and 1840s (ADP, BMS of Missions sauvages, 1837-08-10; 1837-08-11; 1842-07-31).

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to petitioners from Sault Ste. Marie to Green Bay. Eventually, the resistance in the North West could have been an extra source of preoccupation for colonial authorities in charge of the Outaouais region; this in continuity with the previous anxiety expressed by HBC staff concerning the activities of freemen, contraband, and cases of desertion. Illustrating such political tensions on a regional basis, the correspondence of Father Nédélec and Indian Agent McBride of Témiscamingue to the Indian Department reveal the attempts of Nédélec to negotiate the entry of the Métis (Half Breeds) to the Témiscamingue reserve in the 1890s, with some “from below” (south and east of Kipawa Lake). Nédélec is moreover asking for two seats for the Métis qua Métis at the Band council. This is ignored both by the Indian agent (a former North West Company half breed, accused here of nepotism but pretending to speak for the Indians) and government officials, who state their intent to prevent Métis and Indian gathering in such a collective yet non-agriculturalist manner (villages), seemingly fearing the consequences that such political empowerment might carry (LAC 1892-1896). This correspondence illuminates in unique ways the government’s attempt to suppress the collective existence of the Métis located in the Outaouais hinterlands late in the nineteenth century, stuck without any possibility to secure land on a collective basis. Furthermore, it highlights the political existence of the Outaouais Métis per the requests for seats “as Métis” on the band council. Such documented revelations from Lacroix to Nédélec, and from Ingall to Bellefeuille, make it increasingly clear that the Métis of the Outaouais region had their own struggles and histories, as the narrative of Mrs. Violet Lalonde confirms when she suggests that Louis Riel came and sought protection among his people in the Outaouais.

Métis Migration along the East-West Continuum Memories of bi-directional East-West migrations and solidarities involving Métis families are another example of the specific mobility highlighted by the narrative of Violet Lalonde. Explaining why the McGregors relocated in the Outaouais, Mrs. Lalonde mentions that they found themselves at the heart of the Patriot insurrections of 1837–38 in Lower Canada. These insurrections would have precipitated the departure of Louis Riel Sr. Westward, and the

44 Paul Riel, son of Émilien Riel and Henriette McDougall, from Lac Sainte-Marie (LAC 1861b, p. 1), was reported to be “part Indian” by colonial authorities, having successfully reached remote First Nations in the backcountry to deliver medicine during a severe smallpox epidemic (LAC 1880-1885, 11, 22).

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McGregors towards the Outaouais. Although we have no knowledge if the husband of Marie-Louise Riel was a Patriot himself, this example highlights the dissemination of political experiences arising in Lower Canada shaping the cultural experience and migrations of a number of Métis families. It is well documented that the British repressive campaigns of 1837–38 forced a number of “Patriots” to go into exile (Filteau 2003). This includes, for example, Francois-Xavier Mathieu, who then took refuge in Red River, and then in Oregon,45 where we also find independent “French” communities described by De Monfras as inhabited by “Bois-Brûlés” shaping their policy around the concept of “responsible government” to form a provisional government, concepts that were then popular both in Lower Canada and in Red River (Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette 2016, p. 362). Confirming the mobility of political ideas along an East-West continuum, we find praises for the Patriot movement among the “half-breeds” of Red River, as described by Alexander Ross: The Papineau rebellion which broke out in Canada about this time, and the echo of which soon reached us, added fresh fuel to the spirit of disaffection. The Canadians of Red River sighed for the success of their brethren’s cause. Patriotic songs were chanted on every side in praise of Papineau. In the plains, the half-breeds made a flag, called the Papineau standard, which was waved in triumph for years, and the rebels’ deeds extolled to the skies. (Ross 1856, cited in O’Toole 2010a, p. 147; our emphasis) Hence, not only peoples but also political ideas and solidarities among the “Half breeds” (or “Métis,” “Metifs,” “Bois-Brulés,” or “Chicot”) appear to have travelled on an East-West bi-directional continuum. In fact, the Riel migration of 1837–38 echoes an earlier displacement involving again the Métis family, only this time in a West-to-East direction. Here it is interesting to note that the oral tradition of Lalonde offers an explanation as to why Riel left the North West for the safety of Berthierville in 1821–22, a location in Québec

45 The mention of “provisional government” planned by Bois-Brûlés and Canadiens populations in Oregon (and the West coast in general) echoes another “national” project reported in 1836 by William Nourse, stationed in Sault Ste. Marie, describing to the HBC agent at Lachine the object of a war party including many Half breed officers under the command of “general Dickson” arriving from Buffalo. The party wished to reach Red River in hopes of gathering along the way Indians and Half breed warriors with the plan to create a new territory in California, under a military government that would be reserved only to those with “Indian blood” (HBCA, B.134/c/31, pp. 228–229). Clearly, the “political consciousness” of “Half breeds” extended well beyond the scope and magnitude of the Red River colony.

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where we find a significant number of children recorded as “Métif” in baptismal records.46 The presence of fur trade conflicts that were getting increasingly violent is Mrs. Lalonde’s explanation—conflicts we know the British authorities wished to subdue especially after the bloody events of La Grenouillère in 1816 (Ens 2012, p. 109). Indeed, the repercussions of the Métis “nationalist” violence47 were clearly felt all across the fur trade network following its 1821 restructuration benefiting the Royal Chartered Hudson Bay Company (against its economic rival, the North West Company), and surely influenced the migrations experienced by Métis families like the Riels, or even the Pauls and Lépines, during this period. In coming East again in 1873, Louis Riel Jr. would thus have experienced a second migration as a political refugee, this time seeking protection against les Anglais among the Eastern Métis and voyageur families of the Outaouais, such as the McGregors and Riels, whom, as Mrs. Lalonde suggests, were part of the “family pack” Louis trusted against the bounty hunters who were tracking him (BAnQ-G 1980, pp. 37, 38, 44).

Conclusion In the first part of this essay we have problematized Métis neo-nationalist discourses that deny the existence of Métis in the eastern provinces of Canada. After exploring the juridical treatment of Métis identity through the Powley and the Daniels decisions, we examined the influence of the Métis neo- nationalist doctrine to show the presence of a fallacy at its core. This fallacy, we have suggested, leads supporters of that doctrine to resort to abusive generalizations, impugning motives to the whole of the Canadian Justice system and non-Prairies Métis alike, accused of being “fake Métis” and part of

46 Berthierville in Québec had a long-standing relation with the Catholic Métis families of the Northwest. Father Pouget and other priests in this parish were baptizing Métif/Métive adults and children at the demand of these families travelling to Lower Canada. The Métis are in fact reported as asking Lord Selkirk to have Catholic priests sent to them. Selkirk, although a “Heretic,” is reported as making this request to Monseigneur Plessis of Québec rather than seeing this continuous exodus of Métis from the Red River colony to Lower Canada (Moreau 1889, 105). 47 Gerhard J. Ens illustrates well how the subject of Métis nationalism gave rise to two opposing narratives held by the rival fur trade companies. Evidence demonstrates that the NWC manipulated symbols such as the infinity flag to mobilize the Métis and Canadien freemen against HBC interests (which later blamed the Métis for the violence that erupted), while the HBC officially denied that such a “Métis new nation” ever existed so as to ensure that the accountability for the Semple massacre could fall squarely with the NWC. As Ens argues, these symbols nevertheless had an impact on many generations to come, who were increasingly vocal about their autonomy and rights to the land. Another contemporary primary source offers a similar portrait of the NWC manipulations over employed Métis (Beltrami 1824, pp. 203–205).

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this disenfranchised “soup kitchen” (Andersen 2014). Based on historical evidence, we have demonstrated that such a doctrine does not stand the scrutiny of Métis leader Louis Riel’s inclusive vision of Métis nationalism. We have shown that as one of the founders of Métis nationalism, Louis Riel mentions explicitly the existence of Métis with equal rights in the eastern provinces of Canada. We have also shown how Métis leader Gabriel Dumont’s self-understanding as a “Métis” refutes the straw man argument, which consists in accusing descendants of Métis who do not adhere to a neo-nationalist identitarian doctrine of encouraging a racist and neo-colonial “mixing” mindset tantamount to cultural appropriation. In the second part of this essay, we took up the challenge to find any historical “evidence” to support the claim that Louis Riel made about the existence of Métis in the Eastern provinces of Canada (in this case, Québec). In other words, we took up the challenge of second-guessing the voice of Louis Riel on such a question. By reviewing the evidence, we have reached the conclusion that dismissing the historical existence of Métis (or even “Bois- Brulés”) in the Eastern provinces of Canada would be erroneous. Louis Riel is reported as visiting communities in the Outaouais region, which both historical documents and oral traditions depict as inhabited by network of Métis/Half breed families. We came to that conclusion first by presenting the oral history of Métis Elder Mrs. Violet Lalonde, which tells how Marie-Louise welcomed and protected her nephew Louis among her people: the Métis. We then provided three additional testimonies from Métis Elders from Maniwaki and Val-des- Bois. Researching the story further, we have shown the coalescence of local Outaouais Métis families with Métis families from Sault Ste. Marie, Red River, and the Northwest Territories. We have added numerous anecdotes, such as when members of the Lépine and Paul families were both arrested together at Lake Winnipeg in 1819 during the fur trade conflict, illustrating long-standing solidarity among the Canadiens and the Métis families we later find in the Outaouais. We then suggested that Louis Riel did not visit just any “countryside” north of the Ottawa River during his exile, but rather took refuge in a region inhabited by a network of Métis families, all from fur trade extraction, among which we find the Lépines, the Riels, the McGregors, the Nauds, the McPhersons, the Davids, the Pauls, and the McDougalls (among others). We have, moreover, offered evidence that ethnonyms such as “Métis,” “Bois- Brulés,” Métifs,” and “Half Breeds” were all used historically to describe the Métis of the Outaouais. We have even added a rarely documented case of self-

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ascription involving differentiation between “half breed” and “Indian” identities. Illustrating the political realities of the Métis located in the Outaouais hinterlands, we have presented the correspondence of Father Nédélec who attempts to negotiate the entry of the Métis to the Témiscamingue reserve in the 1890s (thus in Québec), asking for two seats for the Métis qua Métis at the Band council. Finally, we have discussed evidence suggesting that Métis culture was experienced along a bi-directional East-West continuum, which included the migrations of Métis families and the exchanges of political ideas between Lower Canada and the West. On the basis of this evidence, we feel comfortable asserting that there is a living and ongoing history that justifies the usage of the term “Métis” by the descendants of the Métis of the Outaouais. Together, the evidence compiled and reviewed in this essay offers compelling reasons to assert that the Outaouais Métis are bearers of a distinct identity—an identity that many of their descendants still value today. Clearly, the terms “Métif” and “Bois-Brûlé” were in usage in the Outaouais region in both a distinctive and a collective fashion. Moreover, evidence demonstrates the rejection by colonial authorities of Métis (qua Métis) from the Témiscamingue reserve, proving the assimilative pressures endured by Métis families of the Outaouais hinterland. The sum of this evidence helps us to dismiss the hasty accusations of “ethnic fraud” ascribed to all Eastern Métis—problematic accusations, we suggested, nourished by an equally problematic fallacy held by a number of academics, and in turn echoed by the formulation of a exclusionary Métis neo-nationalism, which has led to questionable “tactics” on social media masquerading as virtuous acts of activism (including impugning motives, unjustifiable generalizations, character assassination, and various psychologisms targeting the “other Métis”). In closing, we believe that the history of the Métis in the eastern provinces of Canada should be important to all Métis, Québécois, and Canadians alike. This history reveals enduring traditions, solidarities, and even connections between the East and the West. In short, we hope for a more constructive dialogue on these issues that keep dividing Métis identities. But for such dialogue to happen, mutual respect, empowering forms of recognition, and a commitment toward the co-existence of the many ways of being Métis must replace the deplorable “tactics” mentioned in this article. Indeed, we are under the impression that Eastern Métis Elders won’t open up, and younger generations of Métis won’t take pride in their heritage if confronted by scholarly work that continues to downplay their “authenticity” because they are not rooted historically in the Prairies, or because they do not fit the exclusionary identitarian definitions recently promulgated by Métis neo-

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nationalism (Andersen 2014; Adese 2016). We feel it would be a terrible loss to artificially cut-off the many transregional and interconnected aspects of Métis culture and history. We can only hope that the oral tradition shared by Violet Lalonde will invite a renewed appreciation for Métis culture in Québec. As a symbol, Marie-Louise embodies to our people the virtues of independence and fearlessness. She is, moreover, a welcome example of an empowered Métis woman in a world of heroism too often dominated by male figures. Finally, Marie-Louise incarnates the spirit of North-Eastern forests, lakes, and rivers that could still protect a Métis relative who sought refuge at a time when the Prairies was under increasing pressure. As a midwife and a spiritual healer, we hope that her inspirational power will help foster the rebirth of Louis Riel’s political vision in achieving a greater unity among Métis peoples.

Acknowledgements We wish to express our gratitude to Stéphane Jobin for sharing his knowledge about the Lalonde Manuscript. A special thanks to Youri Morin for sharing the evidence found in La Patrie newspapers. We are most indebted to two unknown reviewers and the Editors for all their suggestions and encouragement. Any error remains our own. The realization of this article was in part supported by the Fonds de recherche québécois—Société et culture (FRQSC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

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Ray, Arthur J. 1998. An Economic History of the Robinson Treaties Area before 1860. Unpublished report, Ontario Court of Justice. Rennie, Steve. 2014. “Plenty riding on whether high court will hear appeal for Métis and non-status Indians. High-stakes case could extend the federal government's responsibilities to hundreds of thousands.” CBC News Indigenous. Consulted online on May 29, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/plenty-riding-on-whether-high- court-will-hear-appeal-for-m%C3%A9tis-and-non-status-indians- 1.2840628. Report On the affairs of the Indians in Canada. 1847. “Report On the affairs of the Indians in Canada; submitted to the Honorable the Legislative Assembly, for their information. Section III.” In Appendix to the Sixth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada [...] Session 1847, pp. 335–616 [our pagination]. Montréal: Rollo Campbell, Printer. Riel, Louis. 1985a. “3-015. Lettre à J.-V Grandin. 84/09/05.” In The Collected Writings of Louis Riel / Les écrits complets de Louis Riel, edited by George Stanley, Raymond Huel, Gilles Martel, Glen Campbell, Thomas Flanagan and C. Rocan, Vol. 3, pp. 23–25. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press. Riel, Louis. 1985b. “3-072 Lettre à R.B. Deanne, à Edgar Dewdney, et à John A. Macdonald. Régina. 85/07/06.” In The Collected Writings of Louis Riel / Les écrits complets de Louis Riel, edited by George Stanley, Raymond Huel, Gilles Martel, Glen Campbell, Thomas Flanagan and C. Rocan, Vol. 3, pp. 117–129. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press. Riel, Louis. 1985c. “3-154 Les Métis du Nord-Ouest. [Régina]. 85/10-11.” In The Collected Writings of Louis Riel / Les écrits complets de Louis Riel, edited by George Stanley, Raymond Huel, Gilles Martel, Glen Campbell, Thomas Flanagan and C. Rocan, Vol. 3, pp. 272–276. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press. Riel, Louis. 1985d. “3-156 Les Métis du Nord-Ouest. [Régina]. 85/10-11” In The Collected Writings of Louis Riel / Les écrits complets de Louis Riel, edited by George Stanley, Raymond Huel, Gilles Martel, Glen Campbell, Thomas Flanagan and C. Rocan, Vol. 3, pp. 278–294. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press.

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Riel, Marie-Joseph. 1985. “Mon frère Louis Riel.” Alliance: La voix des métis et indiens sans statut du Québec/The voice of Metis and non-status Indians of Quebec, November 16, 1985: 3–5. Ross, Alexander. 1957 [1856]. The Red River Settlement. Its Rise, Progress and Present State. Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, Inc. Rumilly, Robert. 1980. La compagnie du Nord-Ouest: Une épopée montréalaise. 2 volumes. Montréal: Fides. Sabourin, Mathieu. 2010. “Les squatters de la rivière Gatineau entre 1812 et 1870.” M.A. diss., Université Laval. Senate of Canada. 2012. Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. Issue 30 - Evidence - December 11, 2012. Consulted online on May 26, 2017, https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/committee/411/appa/30ev-49910-e. Shirreff, Alexander. 1831. “Topographical Notices of the Country lying between the Mouth of the Rideau and Penetanguishene, on Lake Huron, by Alexander Sherriff [sic], Esquire”. Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec (2): 243–309. Smith, Anthony. 1997. “The Golden Age and National Renewal.” In Myths and Nationhood, edited by Geoffrey A. Hosking and George Schöpflin, pp. 36–59. New York: Routledge. St-Onge, Nicole, and Carolyn Podruchny. 2012. “Scuttling Along the Spider’s Web: Mobility and Kinship in Métis Ethnogenesis.” In Contours of a People: Métis Family, Mobility, and History, edited by Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny, and Brenda Macdougall, pp. 59–92. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Teillet, Jean. 2014. “L’interprétation de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867 à la lumière de la ‘race’ exclut les Métis des peuples autochtones du Canada.” In From Pierre-Esprit Radisson to Louis Riel: Voyageurs and Métis, edited by Denis Combet, Luc Côté, and Gilles Lesage. Winnipeg: Presses Universitaires de Saint-Boniface. Thorne, Tanis C. 1996. The Many Hands of My Relations: French and Indians on the Lower Missouri. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press. Thomson, Duane. 2005. A Historical Profile of North Central British Columbia’s Indian-European Community. Ottawa: Department of Justice Canada.

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Trigger, B. G. 1984. Alternative archaeologies: Nationalist, colonialist, imperialist. Man, 19(3): 355–370. Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. 2012. “Decolonization is not a metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1): 1–40. Villemaire, Don. 1953. “Mark 70 Years Of Marriage At Noëlville.” The Daily Nugget, October 8. Vowel, Chelsea, and Darryl Leroux. 2016. “White Settler Antipathy and the Daniels Decision.” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 36 (Fall 2016): 30–42.

Case Law Daniels v. Canada. 2016. SCC 12. R. v. Powley. 1998 O.J. No. 5310 (P.Ct.). R. v. Powley. 2003. SCC 43.

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REBUILDING IDENTITIES AND RENEWING RELATIONSHIPS: THE NECESSARY CONSOLIDATION OF DEFICIT- AND STRENGTH-BASED DISCOURSES

KIMBERLY MATHESON

Colonization. Cultural genocide. Trauma.

Gangs. Human trafficking. Incarceration.

Racism. Lateral violence. Drug and alcohol use. Suicide.

Inadequate housing. Boil water advisory. State of emergency.

Land-based activities. Holistic. Ancestors. Elders. Wisdom.

Traditional medicines. Country food. Family. Healing.

Language. Community. Culture. Spirituality. Ceremony.

Resistance. Identity. Self-determination. Power.

Indigenous peoples in Canada, and around the world, have been the target of colonialist practices and policies aimed at their subjugation, assimilation, and even eradication. Since contact with European traders, soldiers, and settlers, Indigenous peoples have been exposed to deadly diseases, corralled onto reserves as their lands were usurped and exploited, and controlled by laws not of their own making. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities to attend Indian Residential Schools. There they were socialized to reject their own culture (to be replaced by Christianity), punished for the use of their own language, subjected to neglect, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and provided an education more likely to entail learning menial farm labour or house work than reading (English or French), writing, and arithmetic.

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Even today, Indigenous youth in Canada are more likely to be removed from their home communities and placed into foster care (at a substandard levels of federal funding) (Aboriginal Children in Care Working Group 2015). Rates of criminal victimization and incarceration of youth are excessively high (Matheson, Root, & Horn 2015). They are less likely to complete high school, let alone acquire a post-secondary education, and are more likely to be un(der)employed and to earn lower incomes (Lazar 2015). They suffer disproportionate rates of physical (tuberculosis, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, severe respiratory illnesses) and mental health disturbances (depression, posttraumatic stress, suicide) (Kirmeyer 2014). The fact of these tragic inequities is not disputed. What is in dispute is the meaning that is derived from them, past and present, both by Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples in Canada (and indeed, globally) are increasingly framing the discourse in terms of their strengths, perseverance, and cultural distinctiveness. From their perspective, as a people, they have triumphed—the solution to the “Indian problem,” as envisioned by European settlers, was not achieved (Milloy 1999). There remain Elders who retain their language and traditions and are willing and able to pass them on to the younger generations. Indigenous peoples are rebuilding their communities, schools, and governance structures to establish thriving societies. Young people are actively seeking out their roots, and are using the power of voice to bring about change and the recognition of their right to flourish. Indigenous leaders, in all of their diversity, are collectively advocating for self-determination, justice, and respect as sovereign nations. In effect, Indigenous well-being continues to be firmly rooted in the relationships between children, family, and community, and a continued connection to cultural teachings and practices. The deficit- versus strength-based discourses offer very different images of Indigenous peoples today, and so a fundamentally different understanding for how to move forward to bring about healing and reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and those who have settled on their lands. While both discourses hold truth, as will be considered in the sections that follow, which discourse is salient, for whom, and in what context, might have positive or negative implications for Indigenous identity and action, non-Indigenous attitudes, beliefs and behaviours, and for the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples as they seek to define a new relationship built on respect and equality.

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Indigenous Identity

What one sees in an Indigenous community will depend on the lens through which a person is looking. There are numerous theories, reflecting varying disciplinary roots, for understanding the evolution and meaning of cultural, ethnic, or social identities. In our work, we find Social Identity Theory (Tajfel 1978; Tajfel & Turner 1979) to be particularly helpful, as it allows us to understand identity from the perspective of both advantaged and disadvantaged groups, and provides insights into inter- and intra-group dynamics as identities are negotiated, shift, and evolve. In brief, social identity theory delineates the processes by which individuals identify with social groups, and how these memberships serve as a basis for positive self-worth and provide access to social resources (Haslam et al. 2009). Individuals hold multiple social identities (e.g., religion, occupation, gender, diagnosed illness, ethnicity) that vary in importance across people and

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situations. Social identities have the capacity not only to mobilize support networks, but also to shape appraisals of events, and to furnish individuals with coping strategies to manage adversity. When a group’s identity is threatened, group members will normally act to attain or retain positive identity status by favouring the ingroup (e.g., view their group’s character as superior, acting to advance ingroup interests), and discriminating against outgroups. From a social identity perspective, an Indigenous identity will be strongest when group members self-categorize as Indigenous (which may or may not be linked to ‘status’ as recognized by the Indian Act1) and feel a sense of cultural pride, regard the identity is an important part of who they are, and feel strong bonds with other members of the group. On the whole, having a strong and positive social identity is associated with greater well-being (Haslam et al. 2009) and can provide a buffer against the negative impacts of discrimination (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey 1999; Ysseldyk et al. 2014) and trauma (Jones et al. 2012). The valences of the elements of a social identity (pride, importance, group bonds) do not have to be consonant with one another. Such incongruities, however, have consequences for individuals’ well-being. For example, if group members believe that they are strongly defined by an identity from which they do not derive a sense of pride, they may be more likely to internalize the stigma associated with the negative discourse associated with the identity. On the other hand, pride and connection to others can be protective in the face of adversity (Bombay, Matheson, & Anisman 2010; Ford, Scholz, & Lu 2015). Connecting positively to other members of the group can be the basis of social support, may enable attributing negative encounters to the prejudices of others rather than the individual’s own failings, and can be the basis for collective action-taking to confront adverse events (Matheson & Anisman 2012). The qualitative meaning ascribed by group members to their identity depends on numerous factors associated with characteristics of the leadership of the group (e.g., Elders, chief and council members), the normative values and behaviours that are encouraged (or conversely, discouraged) by the group, and

1 The Indian Act is a federal policy that has governed the lives of Canada’s First Nations peoples (but not Inuit or Métis) since 1876. The Indian Act provides the Canadian government with the exclusive authority to define who has ‘Indian status’, stipulate how communities must govern themselves, determine where First Nations peoples are permitted to live, limit their resource and economic development, and oversee their education, health care, infrastructure, and social and family services. The Indian Act remains contentious, and an aspect of recognizing and respecting Indigenous peoples includes replacing it with a multilateral nation- to-nation relationship with Canada (Government of Canada 2017).

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the cohesiveness of the group (including the ability to embrace differences or diversity) (Reicher, Spears, & Haslam 2010). How features of the group compare to other groups will also be important. For example, poverty may have little intrinsic meaning if everyone is in it together, and is only identity defining if group members believe they have less than others. Conversely, appreciating the strengths of one’s group, such as a connection to the land and environment in which one lives, is appreciated in a remote community when compared to the crowds, smog, and noise of living in the city. In light of the importance of deriving a positive and distinct social identity, Indigenous strength and resilience, cultural traditions, and relationships are highly identity affirming. A social discourse that brings to the forefront the group’s strengths allows Indigenous peoples to dismiss their negative treatment as illegitimate, to counter negative stereotypes, to be empowered to bring about change, and to see hope for a future in which their children can flourish (Mooney-Somers et al. 2012; Restoule et al. 2010). Narratives of cultural pride, perseverance, and resistance are important because they provide a counter-discourse not centred within grief and colonization (Abramowitz 2005). The challenge arises when young people, who often lack historical context, continue to see the difficulties faced by Indigenous people today (Bombay, Matheson, & Anisman 2017). In some Indigenous communities, the disconnect between strength-based assertions and the social and economic gaps that exist relative to mainstream society become confusing and a basis for mistrust of ‘all of the talk’ (Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth 2014). Young people can see the beauty of their environment and they can appreciate the support of family. But in too many cases they also see impoverished living conditions, the trauma that continues to affect adults who have yet to receive the supports needed to heal, or the inability for their community to take advantage of the resources surrounding them to build a profitable economic base because the Indian Act presents legal obstacles to resource development and economic success (National Aboriginal Economic Development Board 2013). These are the day-to-day incongruities that young people face, particularly those living on reserve. Too many express the view that they cannot go forward until the traumatized adults overwhelmed by their past experiences are healed or gone (Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth 2014). Too many see the possibilities in mainstream society and wonder why their own communities flounder (LaFramboise, Albright, & Harris 2010). Too many discover when they leave their community elementary schools for the public school system that they do not have sufficient skills and background to meet expectations (Ontario First Nations Young Peoples Council of the Chiefs of

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Ontario 2016). When faced with such comparisons, what are these young people to believe about who they are? How do they claim an Indigenous identity based on strengths when they see their own aspirations as unreachable, or their futures as fixed by an identity that they do not perceive to serve them well? Reconciling challenges and strengths into an empowered identity involves a process of “identity entrepreneurship” that emanates from the socialization and supports provided to young people in the formation of their identity, and the effective leadership of those members of the group that they look up to (Steffens et al. 2014). Socializing each generation of Indigenous children by acknowledging their history (including well-established political, economic, and educational systems prior to colonialism (Richter 2001)) and its implications for Indigenous peoples today can provide a shared understanding of the external factors that contribute to the intergenerational consequences of systemic discrimination and colonization. There is little research concerning identity socialization processes in Indigenous families, but among other minority groups parental messages transmitted to children about their cultural heritage influence the evolution of positive identities. In addition, parents are more likely to convey positive cultural socialization behaviours when they themselves feel positively about of their own ethnic identity and are able to talk about their own experiences of ethnicity-related discrimination (Thomas, Speights, & Witherspoon 2010; Umaña-Taylor & Guimond 2010). Socializing children to understand their collective experiences, and enabling them to identify with models of resilience and survival is an important step in the development of a protective cultural identity. As with any identity, Indigenous identities are fluid and change over time (Wilson et al., 2016). Young people exposed to traditional ceremonies, such as drumming circles or pow-wows, are more likely to embrace such cultural expressions when they have the power to frame them within their own experiences of the world. The group “A Tribe Called Red”2 is a popular example of the modernization of Indigenous music in Canada. Wilson and colleagues (2016) similarly noted how young Indigenous people embraced hip- hop because for they perceived this medium to be as powerful as more traditional forms of expression (e.g., drumming), and as an extension of their evolving identities. Enabling such integrations of identity (distinct from assimilation to mainstream identity at the expense of traditional culture (Berry 1997)) encourages empowerment strategies centred on cultural reclamation. In so doing, youth develop the cognitive and emotional capacities to critically

2 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAEmjW9J3_o.

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assess their environment and to consolidate their experiences into a meaningful identity that has the ability to reconcile contradictions, change, and complex relations. In achieving this, Indigenous youth learn to have confidence in their own “power to shape, challenge, reclaim and create new cultural norms and traditions that fit with their own personal and communal visions for change” (Wilson et al. 2016, p. 83). Indigenous leaders are key to reconciling the challenges faced by Indigenous peoples with a strength-based identity framework. Applying social identity theory, Steffens and colleagues (2014) depict the role of leaders as defining a shared sense of “we and us.” An effective leader is one who is seen as embodying what it means to be Indigenous (identity prototypicality), and acting in the collective interest. Although not all leaders will be viewed as “heroes,” in many respects those individuals who are perceived to typify the struggles that group members must overcome to succeed, who put the interests of the group ahead of their own, and who are perceived as moral and competent, might well constitute the heroes that young people can relate to and aspire to emulate. In fact, when people are asked who their heroes are, Goethals and Allison (2012) noted that 32% of respondents named family members, and another third named individuals who could be regarded as underdogs that overcame great odds to succeed. Thus, Indigenous leaders have great capacity to inspire young people to recognize and overcome the adversities that they will encounter, and to serve as role models that provide youth with the motivation and confidence to rely on their personal and cultural strengths to act in a good way. In addition to embodying an Indigenous identity, leadership that integrates deficit- and strength-based discourses is more likely to be effective in achieving social change. In particular, status as an undeserving victim of illegitimate harm confers moral credentials, and a right to expect reparations, either symbolic or material (Sullivan et al. 2012). At the same time a leader is an identity entrepreneur who brings group members together on core values, norms, and ideals. It seems quite possible that both deficits and strengths are necessary to bring group members together to mobilize for social change and to achieve concrete outcomes. People are inspired by triumphant underdog leaders, are more motivated to work for them, to identify with their vision, and to believe in their ability to achieve long-term success (Allison & Heilborn 2011, cited in Goethals & Allison 2012). Strong leaders effectively become identity impresarios by organizing events, promoting relevant practices and rituals, and establishing structures that enable Indigenous peoples to have a presence and to matter (Haslam, Reicher, & Platow 2011).

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Non-Indigenous Perceptions

Media headlines shape perceptions of Indigenous peoples by applying a deficit or strength-based lens.

Although groups have considerable power to shape their collective identity, as encapsulated by a social identity framework, they are nonetheless in constant and dynamic negotiations regarding their status in relation to other groups. There has been considerable theory and empirical research to understand and assess the impacts of negative stereotypes, racial prejudices, and discrimination. One does not have to look far to find evidence for such outcomes in Canada. Racism against Indigenous peoples ranges from the violence perpetrated by individuals to the systemic discrimination perpetuated by the policies and practices of the federal government. It has been suggested that Indigenous peoples are the most disadvantaged group in Canada, with instances of racism described as “alarmingly high” (Morrison, Morrison & Borsa 2014). In 2017, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was forced to shut down online comments on any Indigenous story due to the extent of hateful and racist commentary (Bear & Andersen 2017). That said, for the sake of argument, we must assume the majority of the population is not intentionally racist (with the relevance of “intent” being the

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basis of another larger debate). This non-Indigenous majority has the capacity to influence public policy and legislation (voters), are often a part of the institutions that engage with Indigenous peoples (health, education, justice), and can be allies in action. What role does a deficit- versus strength-based discourse play in their perceptions and actions? Just as group members are inspired by leaders who have overcome adversity to succeed on behalf of the group, people, in general, empathize with the underdog. This occurs not only in the cultural stories to which we are socialized (David and Goliath; “The Little Engine That Could”), but such “rags to riches” admiration is part of the fabric of Western meritocratic values. People often root for those who exert great effort to triumph in the face of an implicitly or explicitly advantaged opponent (Kim et al. 2008). Underdogs are not simply at a disadvantage, but are perceived to have invested substantial effort to overcome the odds, so that when they are victorious there is positive emotional gain. Because struggle is a widely shared human experience, the underdog is highly relatable. It becomes important for the underdog to win, and to believe that they deserve to win as a matter of social justice (Goethels & Allison 2012). This human predilection would suggest that perceptions of Indigenous peoples from a deficit perspective, in a continuous struggle to address the challenges they face, can affect non-Indigenous Canadians and inspire greater empathy with and support for Indigenous goals and aspirations. There are many caveats to this perspective, however, and the stereotypes and characteristics of the dominant deficit discourse make these caveats especially salient. The underdog is expected to expend maximum effort. If they are perceived as “coasting” (as when stereotypes and myths depict Indigenous peoples as getting tax breaks, living off of social welfare, getting a “free” education), as complicit in their own disadvantage (as is reflected in expectations that Indigenous peoples should shut down their remote home communities and assimilate into more populated urban centres), or as provided with all of the resources that they need to succeed, but, due to alleged corruption or incompetence, have “squandered” them away, support will vanish (Goethels & Allison 2012; Vandello, Goldschmied, & Richards 2007). Although underdogs are expected to struggle against the odds, they are not expected to succeed (otherwise they wouldn’t be an underdog)—not because they are not exerting the effort, but rather because they are perceived to have less natural ability, intelligence, or talent (Kim et al. 2008; Vandello et al. 2007). In other words, support for the underdog does not translate into respect (or ethos). Nor is it likely to translate into practical solidarity that results in change, especially if positive outcomes compete with the interests of the

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perceiver, or if the outcomes have broad societal consequences (Kim et al. 2008). In effect, if Indigenous peoples’ efforts to achieve social justice compete with the interests of non-Indigenous groups, they might have their sympathy but not their support (Atkinson et al. 2012, cited in Lashta, Berdahl, & Walker 2016). Indeed, Indigenous efforts to achieve equality and compensation for historical injustices, and their active exercise of treaty rights, continue to be opposed by many non-Indigenous Canadians (Denis 2015). The salience of a deficit model also diminishes the likelihood that contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples will successfully reduce negative stereotypes or build a shared identity. The contact conditions that are most likely to improve attitudes include equal status between groups (Lashta et al. 2016). If the dominant discourse is one of deficits, non- Indigenous peoples may regard the individuals that they choose to interact with at a personal level as non-representative of Indigenous peoples in general (ibid.). This perception is reinforced if they primarily interact with Indigenous people who share their racial ideology, potentially stemming from the internalized racism that might be absorbed when a deficit model is salient (Pyke 2010). And when group members feel disempowered in a social context, they are unlikely to challenge negative stereotypes as a strategy for coping with racism (Denis 2015), in part due to the social costs associated with the claim to experiencing racism (Matheson, Raspopow, & Anisman 2012). The accusations of harm intrinsic to a deficit discourse also call into question the moral identity of non-Indigenous peoples (i.e., they have perpetrated illegitimate harm against another). A group’s perceived moral status is more important to members’ sense of identity than is their perceived competence or sociability (Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto 2007). It is not inconceivable that non-Indigenous Canadians would engage in a strategy of competitive victimhood wherein their own perceived victimization and disadvantage takes precedent (Denis 2015; Sullivan et al. 2012). For example, online commentary to the July 2017 death of Barbara Kentner, a First Nations woman in Thunder Bay, Ontario, who was struck by a trailer hitch thrown by a white man in a passing car, included statements such as “White people cannot walk our streets here safely, without being robbed, spat on, called names … and the young [First Nations] children are told NOT to talk to white people.” Despite these and other protestations, the power difference between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples means the actions of disadvantaged groups will be perceived by observers as more moral than those committed by the more powerful group (Vandello, Michniewicz, & Goldshmied 2011). To redress this perceived moral imbalance, the advantaged group may question the legitimacy of the victim group’s claims, and in particular whether the victim group brought

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on its own suffering (Noor et al. 2017). These strategies of competitive victimization and victim blaming do not simply protect the moral identity of non-Indigenous peoples, they encourage a sense of moral outrage regarding the demands of Indigenous peoples who can be construed as “getting what they deserve.” In short: By evoking an image of the underdog struggling against adversity, a deficit discourse may engage the sympathy of non-Indigenous peoples. But this same discourse can perpetuate and reiterate non-Indigenous feelings of superiority. If addressing the power differential threatens either the real resources of non-Indigenous Canadians, or challenges their moral status, such sympathies are unlikely to translate into action that fundamentally changes or challenges the status quo. It would not be unreasonable to think that when a strength-based discourse is evoked non-Indigenous Canadians would feel an even greater threat to their status. However, such a discourse increases the probability of groups being perceived as equals treated with mutual respect (Hettinger & Vandello 2014). To the extent that a focus on strength conveys victory over adversity, the victorious underdog may be perceived as even more competent than members of the advantaged group (Goethals & Allison 2012). Conveying the message that the treatment of Indigenous peoples continues to be inequitable and illegitimate is central to social change, but making salient their successes and strengths that highlight competence and effectiveness might be more likely to elicit action in solidarity (Thomas & Louis 2014). However, a strength-based discourse can also paint a deceptive picture wherein Indigenous peoples are perceived to have already achieved justice and equality, and that continued discrimination is nonexistent (Walls 2008) or perpetuated by few (Denis 2015). As a result, further changes or resources to bring about equality are perceived as “special treatment” (Hettinger & Vandello 2014), and once wounds have been aired and “acknowledged” (e.g., through an official apology), Indigenous peoples are expected to move on (Bombay, Matheson, & Anisman 2013; Denis 2015). If Indigenous peoples are regarded as too empowered or assertive (i.e., “militant”), perceptions of their disadvantage wane and sympathies shift toward the more powerful adversary (Vandello et al. 2011). For example, in Canada’s recent 150th anniversary celebration (or 150 years of colonization), various media portrayed Indigenous peoples as aggressive and disruptive (e.g., repeated coverage of the conflict

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between two First Nations women and a reporter at a press conference3). This coverage set the tone for online commentary, such as “I’m getting real tired of hearing terms like ‘settler colonial’ and using it to refer to white people in derisive terms … especially when its all over the CBC message boards and such, and then to hear the term ‘White Lady’ being used as an insulting term towards the reporter.” Conveying the strengths of a group, especially as they resist and shed the oppressive policies of the past, also elicits expectations of moral responsibility and obligation. A series of studies has demonstrated that when members of a group were subjected to harm in the past (e.g., the Jewish Holocaust), observers expect them to learn from the experience (Warner & Branscombe 2012). Because they know what it means to experience undeserved suffering, victims or members of victimized groups (or their descendants) should be better, stronger people, and are held to a particularly high moral standard of conduct (Branscombe et al. 2015; Fernández et al. 2014). This higher moral standard is more likely to be applied to the victim than to the group or person that perpetrated the harm in the first place (Warner & Branscombe 2011). The perceived obligation, like many intergroup dynamics, is motivated by a need to believe in a just world. When notions of justice are pronounced, observers perceive greater meaning in the lives of those who have experienced tragedy (Anderson, Kay, & Fitzsimons 2010). A belief in a just world is restored when this meaning is believed to have strengthened the character of the victim (i.e., they have benefited from the experience). In turn, the victim has a moral obligation to help others and do no harm (Warner & Branscombe 2012). That said, expectations for a higher moral standard of behaviour are less likely to be applied if the group is still suffering or under threat (Fernández et al. 2014; Warner, Wohl, & Branscombe 2014), whereby victims are regarded as more entitled to act out against adversaries in order to protect themselves (Warner et al. 2014). Ergo the balance of a deficit- and strength-based discourse will be fundamental to how Indigenous peoples are perceived as moral actors, as they assert their rights to justice and equality.

3 See Amy Minsky, “Indigenous Women Call Reporter ‘White Lady,’ Demand She Leave Press Conference,” Global News, 29 June 2017, https://globalnews.ca/news/3565073/indigenous- press-conference-white-lady-demand-leave/.

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Strategic Use of Deficit- and Strength-Based Discourses: How Do We Not Repeat History? Given the complex identity and intergroup reactions and relationships associated with a discourse of deficits versus strengths, the implications for Indigenous peoples as they grow in strength, but continue to fight to address inequities and achieve self-determination, are challenging. Balanced, strong leadership will be critical. But so too will the role of social and mass media that shape the public discourse. Over the past two decades (and before) there have been significant political efforts by and with Indigenous peoples in Canada to raise awareness of their status. This has included painstaking documentation of the historical treatment of Indigenous peoples, amounting to “cultural genocide,” paternalism, broken treaty agreements, resource exploitation, and the requirement to obtain permits to travel off of reserve lands and permissions to manage them. The effects of government legislation on the past, and current gaps in health, justice, education, employment, child and family welfare, mortality, housing, water (and the list goes on) have been quantitatively documented—that is, when the data exist and are made accessible. Detailed comprehensive reports have all included recommendations, or Calls to Action, that have held up as reasonable and appropriate strategies for achieving a just and equitable relationship with Indigenous peoples (Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996; Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 2012, 2015). Most recently, the Canadian public is absorbing the substantial public challenge emanating from the final report of the TRC regarding the Indian Residential Schools. The report, and the communications of the TRC Commissioners as the report was released, reflect a combination of deficit- and strength-based discourses. The question is: What is salient for mainstream Canadians, and what are the implications for action? The mandate of the TRC was to allow the victims of the Indian Residential Schools to document their experiences and stories. For its part, the TRC spent six years going across Canada listening to the stories of the Survivors, and collecting the existing documentation concerning the operations of the Indian Residential Schools. While the Survivors were unquestionably heroic in their perseverance and their willingness to come forward, the stories that captured popular attention were of the physical and sexual abuse Indigenous children experienced at the hands of “people of God”; the torture children were subjected to, which included the use of an electric chair in one school; the over 4000 children who died; and the thousands of others who tried

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to escape. Charlie Wenjack,4 a child who died running away from the school to his home over 400 miles away. St. Anne’s, a residential school where some of the most horrific acts of child abuse occurred. Ralph Rowe,5 an Anglican minister who sexually abused an uncounted number of First Nations boys. The victimization of thousands of Indigenous children, and the cultural genocide of a people, is a painful story. The TRC concluded with their Calls to Action for fundamental change in Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples. In its release, the TRC emphasized that addressing the Calls to Action is a “Canadian problem, not an Indian problem.” Non-indigenous Canadians have choices to make. The hardest choice of all will be to work toward bringing about real change in the relationships with Indigenous peoples. That choice cannot hinge on a de facto welcome or invitation from all Indigenous peoples or nations (however defined). In essence, such welcome cannot be presumed, but must be sought through the choice itself. Welcome might be found by undoing the systems, policies, and histories that have rendered the statuses of settler and colonized—and it is this dismantling, without the affirmation of moral superiority, that will be perhaps most difficult for many non-Indigenous Canadians. Centuries worth of paternalistic systems are in place, and the tenets of these systems reach deeply into the current culture and governance of each nation that makes up the Indigenous peoples in Canada. In such a context, overhauling relations is a daunting challenge for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and governments alike. It is easier to fall back on “fast” ways of thinking that are reflected in the singular, consistent discourses of deficit versus strength, and to react accordingly. So what might a more complex response entail? 1. Recognition that, although social and economic gaps exist, addressing them requires acknowledging their roots in history rather than in individual or community deficits. This will require identifying systems and the underlying beliefs and attitudes that oppress Indigenous peoples. These systems need to be rebuilt in a manner that respects the leadership and wisdom of Indigenous peoples as diverse nations, and, as such, give way to the implementation, adaption, and learning in the process of creating governance systems that meld traditional ways and modern societies.

4 See “The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack,” Maclean’s, http://www.macleans.ca/society/the- lonely-death-of-chanie-wenjack/. 5 See Tanya Talaga, “24 More Native Men Come Forward in Boy Scout Leader’s Sex Abuse Case,” The Star, 8 November 2011, https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/11/08/24_more_native_men_come_forward_in_bo y_scout_leaders_sex_abuse_case.html.

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2. Incorporating into the relationship rebuilding processes the recognition that complexity works at both macro and micro levels. Many Indigenous communities have flourishing economies, ongoing and strong language and cultural heritage, and healthy and successful youths. Other communities are starting the healing process. Some communities are urban, and others are geographically remote. But in all cases communities must be treated with respect, as equal, and accepted for their diverse needs, priorities, and cultural roots. At different stages of the healing process, Canadians should endeavour to support and build the capacity relevant to the aspirations of Indigenous peoples. 3. Truly understanding strengths (and deficits) goes beyond assessing the success of Indigenous peoples through Western metrics. A good example is educational reform. Rather than concluding that Indigenous peoples are “deficient” (with devastating consequences on the esteem and confidence of young people), embracing strengths as culturally defined means confronting the incapacity of universal standards to legitimize other knowledge systems. For example, Spillman (2017) notes that: “‘success’ may take a more relational and place-based flavour…. Beginning with strength-based conversations that honour the diversity and uniqueness of experiences, stories, strengths and aspirations that children and family members bring with them, is much more likely to inspire motivation to participate and learn. They also enable the creation of supportive, inclusive learning environments necessary to nurture and translate that motivation into self-efficacy and resilience” (p. 4). 4. Canadian identity is commonly tied to multiculturalism, and embraced as a celebration of diversity and tolerance. It is assumed that the inclusion of Indigenous ceremony and symbols reflects the equal integration of Indigenous peoples into the Canadian mosaic. At the same time, multiculturalism is a screen behind which non-Indigenous Canadians wilfully withdraw from a responsibility to challenge and erode contemporary operations and mechanisms supporting racism (Dunn & Nelson 2011), especially in relation to Indigenous peoples. Indeed, in 2014 the United Nations Human Rights Council singled out Canada for violating the rights of Indigenous peoples (Anaya 2014), and Indigenous advocates continue to appeal to the United Nations to pressure Canada to address the inequitable treatment of Indigenous peoples (with a specific focus in 2017 on Indigenous women6 and

6 See “Discrimination against Indigenous and Racialized Women in Canada: Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the Occasion of the committee’s

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children7). Left unexamined, Canadians seem perplexed by Indigenous claims of systemic racism. Their understanding of multiculturalism is one of integrating diverse groups that embrace a Canadian identity, and that operate within the core values and structures of a Eurocentric Canadian politic (Hyman, Meinhard, & Shields 2011). In contrast, Indigenous peoples have a unique place in Canada that is qualitatively different from that of other minority groups, and that fundamentally challenges the pre-eminence of an overarching Canadian identity. Until non-Indigenous Canadians put their relationship with Indigenous peoples into historical and political context, Canadian pride in a multicultural identity will ring untrue. There are caveats and pitfalls associated with both a deficit- or strength- based discourse concerning the status of Indigenous peoples. A focus on either is unlikely to enable working together to achieve justice and equality. Nor can the temptation by a deficit discourse to address single gaps at a time be met with any real expectation for change. When the bucket has ten holes, repairing one does not stem the leak. For too long such stopgap solutions have been tried and failed. The gaps and deficits experienced by Indigenous peoples emanate from centuries of applying Western structures and laws. To succeed in addressing this “Canadian problem,” Indigenous communities must be able to fundamentally reframe their political and social systems to reflect their cultural strengths and aspirations. We might discover true value, moral and otherwise, in what we learn from doing so.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant number 895-2016-1016).

twenty-first to twenty-third Periodic Review of Canada,” Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA), Chair in Indigenous Governance, and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS), July 2017, http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared Documents/CAN/INT_CERD_NGO_CAN_28045_E.pdf. 7 See “A historic legal victory for First Nations children and Canada’s failure to comply: Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Finds that Canada is racially discriminating against 165,000 First Nations children and their families,” Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 21st–23rd Reports of Canada, Alternative Report, 29 June 2017, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared Documents/CAN/INT_CERD_NGO_CAN_27941_E.pdf.

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A VULTURE IS NOT A DOVE: THE POLITICS OF INDIGENEITY AND RESISTANCE TO CANADIAN EXTRACTIVISM IN THE AMERICAS

STEVEN SCHNOOR

Introduction Canadian mining companies are the most dominant force in global resource extraction, operating worldwide. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with global assets in excess of a quarter of a trillion dollars.1 Over half of those assets are found in Latin America, where Canadian extractive activities have exploded over the past 15–20 years; Canadian companies are active in every country in the region, where they currently have close to a hundred mines in production or late development, and over a thousand more projects in early exploratory or developmental phases. The majority mine for gold, silver or copper, and use the lower-cost, chemical and water-intensive open-pit method, which can cause dramatic environmental and health consequences in regions surrounding the mine. These projects are often carried out under the discursive banner of bringing badly-needed development and democracy to impoverished regions of the globe; studies have shown, however, that many projects have lead to increased poverty, environmental degradation, violent conflict, militarization and insecurity in nearby communities (Amnesty 2016; Gordon and Webber 2016; Imai et al. 2017; Kuyek 2006; Moore et al. 2015; Munarriz 2008; Veltmeyer and Petras 2014). Several years ago the Toronto Star reported that “Canadian mining companies are far and away the worst offenders in

1 A 27 October 2017 press release from TMX Group, which operates the two exchanges where most Canadian mining companies list—the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange—states that, “TSX and Venture Exchange are home to 1,214 mining companies with a market capitalization of approximately $293 billion, as at September 30, 2017.” Available at: https://www.tmx.com/newsroom/press-releases?id=619. See also, “Canadian Mining Assets. Information Bulletin, December 2016,” Natural Resources Canada, January 2017. Available at: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/mining-materials/publications/19323.

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environmental, human rights and other abuses around the world, according to a global study commissioned by an industry association but never made public” (Whittington 2010). Egregious violations of human rights and grave, potentially irreparable, environmental damages have been documented at Canadian mines throughout the region. Despite this, obtaining the requisite permits, exploration, and exploitation licences from host country governments is often a matter of mere formality. Winning the support of the surrounding communities and the local populations in general, however, has proven far more challenging, as numerous countries in the Americas and beyond have seen burgeoning grassroots resistance movements rejecting the presence of Canadian extractive projects in their regions (Gordon and Webber 2016; Mowforth 2014; Nolin and Stephens 2010; Petras and Veltmeyer 2014; Sieder 2011; Working Group 2014). These projects are frequently built upon or are adjacent to territories inhabited by Indigenous populations,2 and acts of resistance against them are often expressed in the form of defending Indigenous ways of life and human rights claims. These include arguments that the potentially destructive method of mining that Canadian companies have brought or wish to install—again, for the most part being the water and chemical-intensive method of open-pit metal mining—is entirely incompatible and incommensurate with local Indigenous value systems that call for non-dominating and non-exploitative relations, for the husbanding of the environment for generations to come, and forbid inflicting harm upon the earth, water, or air. A common rights-based grievance is that the mine had been installed without the national government having first consulted with and attaining the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of the local Indigenous populations, as legally mandated by International Labor Organization Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (1989), which most countries in the region have ratified (ILO 2013). In response, Canadian mining regimes operating in resistant Indigenous communities throughout Latin America are embarking upon initiatives and campaigns that endeavour to remake the meaning of Indigenous subjectivity, seeking to secure support for mining projects along many of the very lines that they are rejected. This paper argues that discourses of democracy and development increasingly are used to advance projects widely experienced by those most directly affected by them as fundamentally anti-democratic, destructive, and

2 According to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, a majority of the world’s natural resource deposits are on Indigenous territories. See UNPFII (2007) Session 6 Factsheet: Indigenous Peoples – Lands, Territories, and Natural Resources, United Nations. See also Tesia Wood, “Indigenous Peoples,” McGill Research Group Investigating Canadian Mining in Latin America, http://micla.ca/issues/Indigenous-peoples-and-mining/.

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exploitative, and that this represents a critical component of a nascent strategy by which neoliberal regimes of capital accumulation are advanced and legitimized today. This work further argues that strategically configured discourses of Indigeneity are being carefully deployed in regions where a large Indigenous population base is resisting a mine, in attempts at winning “social license” for extractive projects that are simultaneously often resisted on the basis of Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, with resistance claims legally leveraged with, or anchored in, the right to FPIC as mandated by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), and its forerunner, the legally-binding ILO 169.

The Discursive Politics of Indigeneity Canadian resource companies’ engagements with Indigenous communities throughout the Americas increasingly reconfigure discourses of Indigeneity— understood as a common set of values and principles that constitute an Indigenous identity, and the common heritage and collective responsibility that such an identity seeks to defend—along lines that privilege some of the most characteristic features of neoliberalism, including exploitation and accumulation, jettisoning in the process notions of a trans-species “community of life,” collectivity, solidarity, positive reciprocity, and sustainable coexistence. This strategy seeks to co-opt Indigenous movements’ grassroots strivings for self-determination, community empowerment, and state recognition of Indigenous rights in order to channel that energy into supporting, indeed demanding, a model of extractive capitalism that emerges from and replicates many of the very same colonial systems and power structures that these social movements endeavour to resist. This paper offers examples from ongoing extractive-related struggles in Guatemala, Chile, and Panama, through which it considers the implications for political subjectivity. Michel Foucault’s later work on governmentality, along with the work of Indigenous scholars Glen Coulthard and Taiaiake Alfred that addresses processes of decolonization through the assertion of an “authentic” Indigenous identity, will help to ground my claims. Coulthard’s and Alfred’s work on the politics of recognition that foregrounds processes of decolonization, which they both claim are urgently in order, when combined with wider discourses on political economy, provides a useful theoretical framework for understanding how resistance to Canadian mining activities in Latin America is challenged. Political-economic scholars Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber argue that David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession—which he asserts constitutes the dominant economic policy in the West under neoliberalism and

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the modus operandi of contemporary forms of imperialism—is a most useful optic for understanding “the predatory activities” of Canadian mining companies forever seeking new frontiers in Latin America and beyond, and the power of the Canadian state that is marshalled to support them (Gordon and Webber 2008; Harvey 2004). While certainly apt, it is also important to consider how the nature of dispossession morphs when resistance movements emerge against the dispossession that can frequently be brought by the capital accumulative activities of Canadian mining companies in Latin America.3 Coulthard and Alfred both suggest that Indigenous communities will never be well-served by the purportedly conciliatory gestures of accommodation, reciprocity, and mutual recognition advanced by settler states; as both have argued, the contemporary liberal pluralist model of recognition will do little more than reproduce, under the guise of the extension of rights, many of the very same edifices of racism, patriarchy, colonialism, and structural inequality that Indigenous movements are struggling against (Alfred 1999, 2009; Coulthard 2008, 2014b). Instead, both Coulthard and Alfred call for an alternative, resurgent politics of self-determination that is not contingent upon external recognition by the state, but one rather that turns inward and emerges from reconnection with values and traditions that have served Indigenous communities since long before colonial contact. Alfred refers to this as “resurgence and the politics of authentic self-affirmation [which can] combat contemporary colonialism’s objectification and alienation and manipulation of our true selves” (Alfred 2014, x). Coulthard thus calls for a “resurgent politics of recognition,” which he refers to as “one that is less oriented around attaining legal and political recognition by the state, and more about Indigenous peoples empowering themselves through cultural practices of individual and collective self-fashioning that seek to prefigure radical alternatives to the structural and subjective dimensions of colonial power” (Coulthard 2014b, 18).

Accumulation by Self-Dispossession At work in the activities of Canadian miners in Latin America, however, is a globalized neoliberal politics of recognition, whereby attempts are underway to cultivate Indigenous subjectivities in ways that co-opt their aspirations for decolonization, self-determination, and demands for the recognition of

3 Dispossession can take the form of land expropriation and forced evictions of people residing on or near a concession, but also loss of territory from environmental damages effected by the mining project, such as the contamination or drying of water sources, rendering agricultural activities unfeasible or outright impossible.

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Indigenous rights that scholars like Coulthard and Alfred call for and celebrate; it is perversely these aspirations and their commanding assertions of dignity and autonomy as Indigenous populations that are channelled into demands for the political-economic structure that has largely disenfranchised Indigenous populations in the South and enriched a regime of capital accumulation in the North. Canadian mining companies and representatives of the Canadian state are educating desires and aspirations by seducing subjects in Central America to improve and empower themselves via identification with the carefully configured discourses of democracy, development, and Indigeneity that they proffer. Indigenous communities in the Global South are invited to reorient their understandings of and strivings for self-determination, to demand what is ultimately an entrenchment of the political-economic model that bears the hallmarks of colonial power—and all in the name of anti-colonial struggle, Indigenous empowerment, and the recognition of cultural rights. This strategy reflects a contemporary form of accumulation by dispossession: accumulation by self-dispossession (or more pointedly, accumulation by coerced self- dispossession). It is a strategy orchestrated and deployed by the Canadian mining industry, its affiliated industry associations, and a number of willing Indigenous leaders from Canada working as industry consultants, and all with the support of the Canadian state. This paper is not an evaluation of the relative merits and costs of communities engaging with high-impact industrial activities on their territories, important and worthy as those analyses and discussions may be, especially when grounded in specific cases. Nor is this paper meant to essentialize the positions involved—and certainly not to demonize or disparage those who may embrace industrial development, nor to romanticize those who may resist, nor otherwise to oversimplify the myriad of potentially ambivalent and conflicted positions that exist between these two extreme poles. Needless to say, Indigenous communities are neither historical artifacts nor homogeneous entities, and decide upon their futures and possibilities for well-being by navigating, on the one hand, their aspirations for collectively living well and securing the health, security, and prosperity of future generations, and on the other, the often difficult, conflicting, and imperfect conditions of the present that comprise the context in which those aspirations play out. What this paper argues, rather, is that when Indigenous communities in the Global South do present unanimous or near-unanimous rejection of the particular, dominant model of high-impact resource extraction that Canadian mining companies in particular have effectively exported globally—again, mostly open-pit metal mining—they frequently face formidable material and discursive regimes that seek to seduce them into embracing what they reject, and often upon the very

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terms with which they articulate their rejection and defiance. This strategy seeks to counteract the emergence of Indigenous rights movements and community appeals to Indigenous rights in order to assert control over their territories by co-opting the aspirations that fuel those movements, channelling that energy into an embrace of the model of extractivism that is the very target of the resistance. That model becomes discursively cast as an engine of Indigenous development, for which it is one’s Indigenous noble right to demand. Those resisting the mine become discursively cast as agents of externally originating colonial forces seeking to deprive Indigenous communities of their rightful development and prosperity.

Neoliberal Governmentality “Neoliberalism” is admittedly a broadly-applied term, the meaning of which often morphs across the constituencies where it is deployed. Here I refer to an ensemble of economic and political policies (at their core, championing the private control of all economic enterprise, including those related to natural resources; globalized liberalization of trade and industry; and the so-called “deregulation” of the economy writ large), a form of governmentality whereby the entrepreneurial logic of these policies is extended to the social sphere more broadly, and the underlying ideological presumptions that underpin both policy prescriptions and modes of governance. Neoliberal market reforms have radically altered the world in which we live. They have ushered in the privatization of state enterprises, a retreat of the state from the responsibilities of ensuring the public welfare, the debilitation of labour rights and job security, trade liberalization and investment protection measures that encourage foreign investment and secure the global mobility of capital (but not the mobility of labour), and extended the logic of the commodity and market capital to the farthest reaches of the globe. Ideologically speaking, neoliberalism has globally exported the hegemonic notion of the purportedly inexorable superiority of unencumbered market forces and logics dictating the terms and conditions of the social sphere, and not vice-versa. Emerging under these very conditions of neoliberalism, however, has also been the broad dissemination of universal rights discourses that had not been previously accessed in many localities, producing citizens who articulate rights claims on multiple of levels—from land and resources to human rights and self-determination—in ways that were previously unfathomable (or at the very least, inaccessible). The aforementioned ILO 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are but two examples (Couso 2010).

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Foucault’s later work on biopower and governmentality also yields a useful optic to render and distil current struggles over Canadian resource extraction in Indigenous territories in Latin America and beyond. Arturo Escobar succinctly defines biopower as “the appearance of forms of knowledge and regulatory controls centred on the production and optimization of life…. [It entails] the ‘governmentalization’ of social life, that is, the subjection of life to explicit mechanisms of production and administration by the state and other institutions” (Escobar 2012, 228, note 1). Governmentality, which is often defined most basically as the “conduct of conduct,” as Foucault has argued, involves initiatives that may not necessarily be state-based in origin, but which seek to shape the conduct of entire populations along specific lines. Foucault notes that its purpose is to secure the “welfare of the population, the improvement of its condition, the increase of its wealth, longevity, health, and so on” (Foucault 2000, 217). As Tania Li explains, distinct from earlier conceptions of disciplinary power that seeks to transform subjects at the individual level, governmentality, rather, operates by targeting the population as a whole, by “educating desires and configuring habits, aspirations and beliefs” (Li 2007, 275). People with the “right” desires and aspirations need no direct coercion; power under governmentality operates en masse and at a distance, often making it difficult to see how consent to a given distribution of power is being won.

The Discursive Politics of Canadian Mining Discourses on the meaning of Canadian mining practices circulate far beyond merely the communities affected by such activities. On 20 November 2017, less than a week after the Zimbabwean military had initiated its campaign to depose President Robert Mugabe, and a day before he officially resigned, the Toronto Star ran a column urging Canada to take the lead in helping Zimbabwe “onto the path of peaceful, sustainable development,” to ensure that the crisis gripping the country may resolve towards “a more peaceful, democratic and prosperous end.” The column’s author, Sebastian Spio-Garbrah,4 elaborates how peace, democracy, prosperity, and sustainable development may be ushered into a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe: he urges Canadian mining companies to avail themselves of the newfound investment opportunities that would assuredly emerge, and, moreover, for the Canadian state to support these activities. He maintains that,

4 The column lists his affiliation as director of the Canada-Africa Chamber of Business and chief frontier markets analyst of the international risk advisory firm DaMina Advisors.

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If Canadian companies, reputed globally for their equitable governance practices, to corporate social responsibility (CSR) protocols and respect for labour rights, Indigenous rights and environmental consciousness, prepare to work in tandem with the Canadian government to coinvest in a new Zimbabwe, more exploitative non-Canadian companies will not win one of Africa’s final investment prizes. (Spio-Garbrah 2017) Otherwise, he warns of a significant risk that, “exploitative non-Canadian mining companies, which have no regard for CSR or environmental standards, become the prime movers in a new Zimbabwe.” The idea of Canadian mining companies, in tandem with the Canadian government, saving Zimbabwe from exploitative and destructive non-Canadian extractive enterprises and helping to usher in a more peaceful, prosperous, and democratic society, may sound hyperbolic (to say the least), but the conflation of Canadian mining activities worldwide with increased democracy and development in the regions where they operate is not a new trope; indeed, it captures precisely the dominant branding strategy developed and deployed by Canadian mining companies, mining industry associations, and the Canadian state over the past ten to fifteen years. In April 2012, when then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the opportunity to directly address 34 heads of state at the sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, he devoted his entire 10-minute address to extolling the virtues and expertise of Canadian mining companies and the various ways in which the Canadian government facilitates and supports the industry. After boasting that 60 per cent of the world’s mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with global assets then of nearly $200 billion CAD and a contribution of $50 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2011, he announced plans to expand the already extensive Canadian mining investment found throughout the Americas, in an effort to, as he put it, “promote prosperity, democracy and security throughout our hemisphere … [and] to help local governments and communities implement related development projects for the benefit of people living near mines or other development activities.”5 Harper’s government sought to bolster the development credentials of Canadian miners operating in the Americas and beyond, through such taxpayer-funded initiatives as the partnering of Canadian mining companies with Canadian “development NGOs” in order to build CSR “development projects” at the sites of Canadian mines worldwide (Brown

5 See “Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada in Cartagena, Colombia.” https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/04/statement-prime-minister-canada-cartagena- colombia.html.

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2016), eliminating funding to NGOs that had shone critical light on malfeasance perpetrated by Canadian mining companies abroad (Berthiaume 2010), and through steadfast refusal to recognize growing calls from communities worldwide, and civil society organizations within Canada, for legislating a binding accountability mechanism that would hold Canadian mining companies liable for human rights violations or environmental damages abroad (Brown 2016; Canel et al. 2010; Coumans 2010, 2011, 2012).6 These initiatives came in addition to governmental support already provided in the form of diplomatic assistance, favourable financing provided by Export Development Canada, and investment by the Canada Pension Plan. It is likely that the heads of state whom Harper addressed would already have been familiar with his chosen topic, for the sheer scope and scale of Canadian mining activities in Latin America is difficult to exaggerate. Whereas twenty years ago there were only a handful of Canadian mining projects in the region, Canadian extractive activities have since dramatically proliferated throughout, spurred in part by the investment-friendly neoliberal mining law reforms that swept Latin America in the 1990s (of which the Canadian government and companies played a hand in drafting),7 bilateral trade agreements that facilitate extractive activities, favourable tax regulations governing Canadian mining companies that operate abroad, relatively lax disclosure requirements for listing a mining company on Canadian exchanges, and technological developments that have facilitated the profitable exploitation of low-grade deposits (Dougherty 2016; Gordon and Webber 2016; Studnicki- Gizbert 2016).8 As a result, Canadian mining concessions in Latin America

6 In place of binding regulation, the Harper government introduced the Office of the Extractive Sector CSR Counsellor, whose stated mandate is to advise “extractive companies and other stakeholders on the implementation of CSR performance standards and guidelines” (See http://international.gc.ca/csr_counsellor-conseiller_rse). While the office purports to facilitate dialogue between Canadian mining companies abroad and local community members who may hold grievances about the company’s conduct in the area, the office is little more than a red herring, as it lacks the means and mandate to thoroughly investigate complaints, rule if human rights or environmental standards had been breached, and if so, to mete out binding sanctions. Participation by companies is also voluntary. The office persists to this day. 7 Common elements included the removal of limitations on foreign direct investment and foreign ownership restrictions, the provision of tax holidays for foreign mining companies, the establishment of royalty rates that are amongst the lowest in the world, the enabling of forcible expropriation of land from landowners within a mining concession who may be unwilling to sell to the company, the legalization of the chemical and water-intensive open-pit method of mining, and permitting mining companies unlimited access to water available at the mine site and in neighbouring municipalities, in order to meet its extraordinary needs. 8 Peru offers but one example: prior to the 1990s, Canadian mining investment in the country was negligible; by the end of that decade, over 60 Canadian mining companies were active

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now comprise hundreds of millions of hectares, constituting extraordinarily vast amounts of many states’ territories—nearly a third of the entire landmass of Honduras and Panama, and nearly a quarter of the territory of Mexico (Studnicki-Gizbert 2016, 101). While the Harper government is no longer in power, there is certainly nothing antiquated about the discourse that he deployed, nor has the present Canadian government significantly changed tack on this issue, despite publicly presenting itself as advancing a more progressive agenda than its predecessor.9 While Harper was not exaggerating the sheer scope and reach of Canadian mining activities globally, it is curious to deploy the rhetoric of democracy and development in the framing of the activities of Canadian mining companies operating internationally, for as noted earlier, studies have shown that these projects can often lead to increased poverty, environmental harms, violent conflict, and insecurity in nearby communities. The report mentioned above— according to which the Toronto Star reported that “Canadian mining companies are far and away the worst offenders in environmental, human rights and other abuses around the world, according to a global study commissioned by an industry association but never made public” (Whittington 2010)—had been commissioned in 2009 by the mining industry association the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) with a grant contribution from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).10 As the Star there with combined investment exceeding $4 billion USD, comprising over half of the mining projects in the country (De Echave 2006, 17; Munnariz 2008, 440). 9 Calls for the federal government to implement binding mechanisms holding Canadian mining companies accountable for crimes committed abroad have continued unabated since Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government came to power in 2016. In April 2016, over 180 NGOs in Latin America sent a letter to Trudeau, urging his government to finally take seriously the harms caused by Canadian mining companies operating in the region, by regulating their activities in way that would have tangible results on the ground. More recently, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, echoed that call. See: Jaime Porras Ferreyra, “Justin Trudeau and the Sludge of Canadian Mining Companies,” New York Times, 3 November 2016. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/opinion/justin-trudeau- and-the-sludge-of-canadian-mining-companies.html. See also, Jorge Barrera, “UN Indigenous rights watchdog calls on Trudeau government to regulate Canadian mining firms operating overseas,” APTN, 25 July 2017. Available at: http://aptnnews.ca/2017/07/25/un-Indigenous- rights-watchdog-calls-on-trudeau-government-to-regulate-canadian-mining-firms-operating- overseas. As of December 2017, the Canadian government has intimated that it would soon announce the office of an extractive industry ombudsperson, although the details or certainty of such an office are yet to be seen. 10 Entitled, “Corporate Social Responsibility: Movements and Footprints of Canadian Mining and Exploration Firms in the Developing World,” it was written by the independent non-profit think-tank, the Canadian Centre for the Study of Resource Conflict. Available at:

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reports, the study was never released but a leaked copy is telling, not least for revealing why it was likely never meant to see the light of day. It states that Canadian companies have played a much more major role than their peers from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States [in environmental harms and human rights abuses]…. Canadian companies are more likely to be engaged in community conflict, environmental and unethical behaviour…. Of the 171 companies identified in incidents involving mining and exploration companies over the past 10 years, 34 per cent are Canadian. Canada has been the most involved in these incidents, tripling its closest peer, Australia. (Canadian 16) In terms of the nature of the incidents in question, the report avers that, “Of the events involving Canadian companies, 60% are related to community conflict, 40% to environmental degradation and 30% to unethical behaviour.” This, despite most companies’ very public assertions to being valuable and virtuous “corporate citizens” in the regions where they operate—or as the report states, “nearly eight in ten companies that have been involved in incidents currently have a CSR [corporate social responsibility] policy of some kind” (11). Mining-related conflicts have only increased in the years since this report was written. In 2013, the McGill Research Group Investigating Canadian Mining in Latin America (MICLA) and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting documented over 85 ongoing mining-related conflicts involving Canadian projects in Latin America, and MICLA is currently researching an additional 11 conflicts (Studnicki-Gizbert 2016; MICLA). In 2017, the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America (Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros de America Latina/OCMAL) recorded 219 active conflicts related to 229 mining projects in Latin America, affecting 334 different communities (OCMAL).11 This number accounts for all mining-related conflicts, not just those related to Canadian projects; however, between 50 to 70 percent of all mining activity in the region is conducted by Canadian companies (Working Group 2014, 4). The conflicts that have ensued throughout the region between Canadian mining companies and communities resisting unwanted extractive projects in their midst have taken formidable tolls on the local populations (Amnesty 2016; https://miningwatch.ca/sites/default/files/CSR_Movements_and_Footprints.pdf. 11 The Environmental Justice Atlas—EJAtlas—also chronicles mining conflicts in Latin America. See http://ejatlas.org/featured/mining-latam. For further information on the atlas and the work of environmental justice of which it is a part, see Temper et al., 2015.

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Moore et al. 2015; Working Group 2014). In 2017, the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP) at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University released a report compiling acts of violence and criminalization of dissent at Canadian mines in Latin America from 2000–2015. The report documents incidents involving 28 different Canadian companies during this period, involved in 44 deaths, 30 of which we classify as “targeted”; 403 injuries, 363 of which occurred in during protests and confrontations; 709 cases of “criminalization,” including legal complaints, arrests, detentions and charges; and a widespread geographical distribution of documented violence: deaths occurred in 11 countries, injuries were suffered in 13 countries, and criminalization occurred in 12 countries. (Imai et al. 2017, 4) Furthermore, the report observes that publicly-listed Canadian mining companies overwhelmingly neglect to disclose these incidents in their requisite filings, or as the report states: “Canadian companies that are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange do not include reports of violence in their mandatory reports on company performance. Between 2000–2015, publicly listed companies reported 24.2% of the deaths and 12.3% of the injuries listed in this report” (4). Given the report’s methodology that only incidents that could be corroborated by two independent and reliable sources would be included in their tally,12 and the levels of intimidation and fear often experienced by those resisting Canadian mining projects throughout Latin America—and as a consequence, reluctance to report the types of incidents that the report documents, it is almost certain that the actual numbers are higher (47).

Resistance in Guatemala Guatemala tops the list on the JCAP report with the highest number of registered deaths and injuries related to conflict over Canadian extractive activities, at 12 and 89, respectively. Some of the earliest such conflicts surround the open-pit and subterranean Marlin gold mine, which is owned and operated by Canadian mining giant Goldcorp, and located in the western

12 As the report states: “This link [to a Canadian mining company] is established if there are at least two independent reports providing information or analysis that credibly establishes that the project’s presence in the region is likely to have made a substantial contribution to the death, physical injury, instance of sexual violence or instance of criminalization. A Canadian company must have owned or operated the mining project in question at the time of the incident, or be substantially connected to the project or interest at the time” (47).

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highlands of the country. In 2005, when the mine was under construction, it was met with immense levels of protest, including road blockades: people were outraged, claiming they had not been previously consulted, making the project illegal under ILO 169, of which Guatemala is a signatory (Imai et al. 2007; Imai et al. 2012; Maheandiran et al. 2010; Nolin and Stephens 2010). The mining company’s reputation had also already been tarnished, in large part over reports that had been emerging for years from residents of the Siria Valley in neighbouring Honduras, over their experiences of living beside the company’s San Martín open-pit gold mine, which had opened five years previous. Locals residing near that mine had been reporting that a wide variety of problems had been emerging in the region since the mine began operating, most alarming of which included the drying up of 90% of the rivers and streams in the valley and the contamination of water sources that remained, as well as a rash of emergent health problems that had never been seen in the region prior to the mine, including a dramatic spike in the level of miscarriages—both in people and livestock. Locals attributed both to the dangerously high levels of heavy metals, such as mercury, arsenic, and lead, that had been found in blood samples taken from residents living beside the mine13 (Cuffe 2005; Schertow 2012; Spring and Russell 2011; Younger 2008). When the protest movement erupted in Guatemala, Canada’s ambassador at the time, James Lambert, took to the newspapers and airwaves to

13 As open-pit metal mining is incredibly water-intensive, local community members attest to needing to cope with the effects of drastically reduced water supplies since the mine began operation. The main source of economic development in the region had been agriculture; as rivers and streams dried up, the valley that had previously exported its surplus food production to the capital city and beyond found itself importing food. Thousands of agricultural workers also had to embark upon the treacherous journey to the United States to seek employment as undocumented manual labourers. Many locals complained of the emotional and financial strain of spending their diminished financial resources on medical aid in attempts at addressing the health complications that they attest emerged in the region after the mine began operation. Water scarcity and pollution of existing sources also prompted some locals to purchase water, although doing so was an expensive luxury that was simply out of reach for many Hondurans living in the valley. For an account of locals’ responses to living near the mine, see Schnoor 2008; excerpt available at: https://youtu.be/-tmqXc5rX8s. The mining company has consistently denied any connection between the mine and any of these issues, even going so far as to declare that there’s “just nothing that can be corroborated that shows that there’s any contamination or any environmental effect due to our [Honduran] operation”—this, despite the fact that the Honduran government had already fined the company one million lempiras for having contaminated surface and ground water sources, and that world-recognized hydro-geologists have indeed documented alarming examples of contamination emerging from the mine, including acid mine drainage, both during the mine’s operation and subsequent to its closure in 2009 (see for instance Younger 2008).

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extol the virtues of Canadian mining companies and urge Guatemalans to embrace the many development opportunities that Canadian mines would invariably bring. On 23 January 2005, less than two weeks after a protest against the mine’s construction at which the police and army opened fire, leaving one campesino dead and numerous others wounded, Lambert went on the popular Guatemalan television talk show Libre Encuentro to assure the country that Canada’s model of mining development is not only harmless, but greatly beneficial to local communities. He assured viewers that Canadians abide by only the highest of operational and safety standards, and offering a comparison, claimed that Indigenous people in Canada have greatly benefitted, both directly and indirectly, from mining activities on their territories. He invoked Jerry Asp, a Tahltan chief from northern British Columbia, whom he claimed unequivocally praises the rewards that extractive industries have brought to Indigenous people in Canada. Indeed, Asp did bring an appeal directly to the Guatemalan people one month earlier, when he partook in a public forum on mining in Guatemala City. His visit had been arranged by the Canadian embassy in Guatemala City and funded by the Indigenous Peoples Partnership Program (IPPP), a federal government initiative administered at the time by the Canadian International Development Agency, with the stated aim of building “the capacity of Latin American Indigenous organizations [in] natural resource management” (Gordon and Webber 2016, 27).14 Lambert asserted that, In the mining forum that was here [Guatemala City] at the beginning of December [2004] we invited a Canadian chief from an Indigenous group from B.C.—Chief Jerry Asp. He came here, and precisely what he said was that 25 years ago when mining activity came to his Indigenous reservation in B.C., the people had the same concerns that rural Guatemalans have: we don’t have the capacity to face a corporate entity, with lawyers, with so much knowledge—if we did, they’d eat us alive. But he said, rather, that in confronting these challenges, they developed a capacity not only to manage a mine on their territory, but they’ve already worked as consultants with other Indigenous communities in Canada and in other countries to sell this experience. Implying that resistance to this model of development would be both vacuous and futile given the inevitability that he attributed to the form of transnational extractive capitalism that Canada was seeking to import into the country, he

14 See http://w05.international.gc.ca/projectbrowser-banqueprojets/project- projet/details/a031825001.

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concluded in a manner directly echoed in the foregoing Toronto Star opinion piece from twelve years later: Sooner or later, Indigenous communities in Guatemala have to face the reality of a global society. So I believe that we should see it as an opportunity, instead of a threat. One cannot close society nor the economy, so one must seize the opportunity, and hopefully working with companies like the Canadians, which are reliable, is the better way, because if they don’t come, other interests will somehow come to do the same.15 This statement bears several hallmarks of the shoring up of hegemony: the ambassador, an authoritative “expert,” first frames Indigenous communities in Guatemala as being somehow outside of, yet needing to be eventually integrated into global history, or “reality”; he then offers a foreign-owned, mega-mining “development” model as natural and inevitable, given the apparently unavoidable and incontestable “reality of a global society.” The ambassador sounds calm, rational, and definitive. The only conceivable alternative is presented as radical, unrealistic, naïve, and illegitimate: “one cannot close society nor the economy.” Given that a majority of Guatemala’s population is Indigenous, Lambert targets their concerns about Canadian mining by citing a Canadian Indigenous leader, Jerry Asp, who evidently wholeheartedly endorses Canadian mining practices. Crucially, just like Guatemalan subjects today, Asp was similarly concerned when Canadian miners first entered his community 25 years ago, but has since come to see the error of those earlier concerns, as everything has ostensibly transpired optimally. Lambert, as the respected authority, holds out a consummate model of Indigenous subjectivity to which viewers are invited to aspire: the entrepreneurial Indigenous leader who abandons fears of confronting colonial power structures—“to face a corporate entity, with lawyers, with so much knowledge”—and in so doing, has come to realize that not only must Indigenous people embrace the mining model that Guatemalans now confront, but in the enterprising spirit of neoliberal capitalism, has discovered the capacity to leverage that opportunity further, to accrue even more value-added deliverables: they can also work “as consultants with other indigenous communities in Canada and in other countries to sell this experience.”16

15 “Libre Encuentro,” episode 642, 23 January 2005 (see http://www.libreencuentro.com.gt). Transcript and video of the episode on file with the author. The clips of Lambert’s appearance on the show are available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJUwLakTELs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yfv5IrKus. 16 Asp has continued this work, and in 2014 he co-founded the Global Indigenous Development

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It was not unusual for the ambassador to make public declarations of this nature. Two months previously, he had presented a similar sentiment in an editorial that he published in Guatemala’s major national newspaper, Prensa Libre, in which he urged Guatemalans who may be debating the potential impacts of large-scale mining projects, to consider how prosperous Canada has become by exploiting its natural resources, noting that over a thousand Canadian Indigenous communities, “through the sustainable development of their mineral resources … are creating economic, social and cultural infrastructure necessary to secure their future and the future of their children,” and that Canadian companies are “at the forefront of many of the most successful mining operations in the world” (Lambert 2004). Lambert was quickly criticized in the Guatemalan press for making such a crudely over-simplified, jingoistic pitch. As a columnist in the next day’s paper noted, the comparison is sharply misleading: unlike Canada, Guatemala lacks the regulatory frameworks and enforcement mechanisms required to ensure the safety of local residents and the environment,17 nor does it have the political or economic climate to ensure that the wealth generated would indeed produce prosperity that could be enjoyed by society at large (Rey Rosa 2004). Indeed, Guatemala lacks the entire social and political structure through which some Indigenous communities in Canada have managed to negotiate Impact and Benefit Agreements and state concessions that members of some communities have found favourable. The ambassador’s specious comparison also ignored the fact that Guatemala lacks any semblance of a functioning justice system, that labour leaders and rights activists are routinely threatened and assassinated, and that approximately 1% of the population still owns over two-thirds of the land (Amuchastegui 2007). One criticism that never surfaced following Lambert’s television appearance, however, involves not his claims but what he conveniently neglected to mention: at the very moment at which he referenced Canadian Indigenous chief Jerry Asp on Guatemalan national television to exemplify Indigenous support for mining activities in Canada, dozens of Tahltan elders between the ages of 55 and 84 had been occupying his band council office in

Trust, which announces itself as “a new and innovative Canadian Not-for-Profit founded in 2014 by leading Canadian Aboriginal leaders who wanted to empower Indigenous peoples around the world to be authors of their own development.” See http://globalIndigenoustrust.org/about-us. 17 Events such as the 4 August 2014 disaster in which the tailings dam ruptured at Imperial Metals’s Mount Polley mine, also undermine Canada’s claims to effective resource governance and environmental protection. See https://www.desmog.ca/mount-polley-mine-disaster.

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Telegraph Creek, BC, outraged and embarrassed at Asp’s public conduct. They had already been there for a week and would continue to occupy the office for another month. The elders asserted that Asp was corrupt—that he had been thoroughly bought out by pro-mining interests and had utterly abandoned traditional values in pursuit of the money, travel and other personal benefits that he was being showered with for singing the praises of the extractive industries. They also pointed to the glaring conflict of interest of Asp also acting as Chief Operating Officer of Tahltan Nation Development Corporation—a corporation that he’d founded twenty years earlier—which provides construction, maintenance, and support services to several extractive industries operating on or near Tahltan territory. Asp was also the vice-president of Canadian Aboriginal Minerals Association—a group that he had also helped to create— which encourages extractive industries operating on First Nations territory. The Tahltan elders who had occupied Asp’s band council office asserted that he no longer spoke for his people and must therefore step down as chief (Hume 2005; Hume and Stueck 2005). In a joint statement released during the occupation, the elders declared that, “Jerry Asp has lost all credibility. He is far too cozy with industry and government, and poses a threat to our very existence…. He has done enough harm to our people and puts us in danger of losing everything … our land, resources and rights are being sold out from under us … this day will go down in Tahltan history as the day the Elders took back their power” (Paulsen 2005). Lambert had carefully selected not only an Indigenous leader who faithfully conveys and exemplifies the desired discourse on Indigeneity—one that abandons irrationality and fear of colonial power structures, and in so doing, successfully leverages economic development opportunities afforded by engaging with the model of resource extraction that Canadian companies were wishing to install in Guatemala—but he had also selected only those parts of the narrative that assisted in buttressing that particular discursive construct. As noted earlier, the strategy explored here operates by selectively and strategically offering a particular discourse on Indigeneity; in this case, a more full and accurate disclosure—including revealing the lack of legitimacy that Asp experienced from his home constituents, and the fact that there are indeed numerous Canadian Indigenous leaders who publicly espouse the very opposite of the stance that Asp put forth—would have disrupted this carefully configured narrative. It is unclear how Lambert’s pitch can be reconciled with the dramatically different experiences Canadian First Nations have encountered from the federal and provincial governments when, like the resistance movements in Guatemala and beyond, they refuse to accommodate “the imperatives of state and capital” (Coulthard 2008, 192), by, amongst other

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things, resisting resource development upon their territories. In such cases, Canadian First Nations have commonly met a different face of the Canadian state than the benign one presented in public pitches: state repression in the form of criminalization of resistance, incarceration of leaders and campaigns of infiltration and surveillance of Indigenous environmental movements, have been common experiences.18 It is also unclear how Lambert’s pitch can be reconciled with the drastically different social and political realities facing Indigenous peoples in many places outside of Canada, including Guatemala, in which opponents to resource extractive projects are routinely targeted for assassination, in which land expropriation and other forms of dispossession is the norm and not the exception, in which the recognition of even a modicum of the rights enjoyed by some Indigenous peoples within Canada (that is, when they don’t obstruct “the imperatives of state and capital”) is but a faint glimmer on the horizon, in which labour conditions in mines can be appalling, and in which equitable distribution of wealth in mining-affected communities is almost always unheard of.

Choreographing Subjectivity in Marching for Mining in Guatemala Subsequent to the ambassador’s appeals that Guatemalans accept and embrace Canadian metal mining operations in their midst, the Marlin mine was indeed built; resistance, however, not only failed to subside but intensified. A movement of local consultations, or consultas, emerged, in which communities in the general vicinity of the contested project—for the most part claiming that they had never been previously consulted about the project, as is their legal right under ILO 169—took it upon themselves to organize community referenda on the topic of whether to permit mining activities on their territories. These consultas have proved to be opportunities for communities to voice near unanimous opposition to the project in particular and to mining activities in

18 There are numerous examples of this, including the criminalization of members of the Anishnabek community of Ardoch Algonquin First Nation north of Kingston, Ontario, whose co-chiefs Paula Sherman and Robert Lovelace were each sentenced to six months in prison in 2008 for contempt of court and for failing to obey an earlier injunction ordering that they stop their activities blocking an unwanted uranium mine on their territories (Switzer 2008; CBC News 2008). It also includes the Algonquin community of Barriere Lake in Quebec, which has been fighting for years for control of their land, government, way of life, and a fair share of the estimated $100 million made annually from forestry, hydroelectricity and tourism on their unceded territory—of which they assert they do not see a cent. For a compendium of information on Barriere Lake’s struggles, see http://www.barrierelakesolidarity.org. Regarding state surveillance and infiltration of Canadian Indigenous movements involved in environmental defence, see Gill and Zwibel 2017; Robak 2016.

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their regions more generally, and since the first consultas emerged during the construction of the Marlin mine, over a million Guatemalans have used the process to express their adamant rejection of open-pit metal mining on their territories (Laplante and Nolin 2014; see figures 1a–1d, photographs by James Rodríguez).19

Figure 1a: 2007 Consulta in Nentón, Huehuetenango

Figure 1b: 2007 Consulta in Nentón, Huehuetenango

19 Photographs by James Rodríguez. For his photojournalistic overview of mining-related consultas in Guatemala, see “Community Consultations,” available at: https://mimundo.photoshelter.com/gallery-collection/Community- Consultations/C0000474VJDMEvJM.

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Figure 1c: 2007 Consulta in Nentón, Huehuetenango

Figure 1d: 2007 Consulta in Nentón, Huehuetenango In the context of this concerted and growing opposition, Canadian mining companies operating in Guatemala at the time, along with the Guild of Mines, Quarries and Processing (el Gremial de Minas, Canteras y Procesadoras), helped to stage a pro-mining “protest” march. On the morning of 10 August 2006, approximately a thousand people holding what appeared to be professionally manufactured signs declaring their support for the mining industry ambled through the centre of Guatemala City. They had been marshalled into groups, with some groups having their own uniform appearance, with similar t-shirts and other attire. Some marchers had plastic whistles to blow. The march proceeded to the Congressional building where a signed petition was presented to officials, requesting further mining operations in the country and demanding a rejection of a recently proposed moratorium on

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the granting of any future open-pit metal mining concessions.20 According to the Rural Workers Movement (MTC - Movimiento de Trabajadores Campesinos), a Catholic social justice organization based in the diocese of San Marcos—the region where Goldcorp’s Marlin mine operates—the participants largely came from the two regions in the country where Canadian mining companies have open-pit metal mines: the departments of Alta Verapaz and Izabal, where Compañia Guatemalteca de Níquel, the subsidiary of Canada’s Skye Resources, wished to re-open the Fenix nickel mine near Lake Izabal; and the department of San Marcos, where Goldcorp was operating its controversial Marlin mine. According to MTC, both Canadian mining companies coerced their employees to participate, with some miners reporting that they had been threatened with termination had they refused. The mining companies also provided the workers with transportation to the capital city. MTC reports that CGN paid its miners 500 Quetzals each.21 Goldcorp admitted that they provided transport for their workers but denies that they gave them any additional pay, beyond their daily wage.22 Much can be said about manufactured protest in general, and this march in particular. The purpose here, however, is to better understand how the neoliberal regimes of governmentality evinced in this march seek to configure subject positions in ways that would embrace Canadian open-pit metal mining in the country. A discourse analysis of the march reveals an overall strategy whereby the logic of capital and “development” is deployed in attempts at constructing a normative barrier against the increasingly swelling tides of resistance and articulations of rights claims that stand in opposition to the activities of Canadian mining companies operating in the region. Some of the banners carried by protesters bore relatively generic messages, such as “Viva la Minería” (long live mining, see figure 2a). Others baldly connected mining with the discourse of development, such as one banner proclaiming, “Sí al desarollo. Minero responsable” (Yes to development. Responsible mining, see figure 2b). Others were more pointed still, such as one wedding mining activities with religious belief, and by implication, linking an embrace of mining with having a high moral caliber: “Soy minero, y también creo en Dios” (I am a miner and I also believe in God). Another equated mining with three

20 A short clip of the march is available at: http://youtu.be/Dye7Ke4JLYg. 21 See “¿Dónde les quedó la ética a las compañías mineras?” (Where did the mining companies leave their ethics?) for MTC’s account and critique of the march (14 August 2006). Available at: https://miningwatch.ca/es/news/2006/8/16/d-nde-les-qued-la-tica-las-compa-mineras. 22 As relayed by James Schenk, the company’s Manager for Sustainable Development. Personal interview, 11 August 2006. Guatemala City.

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hallmarks of “modern,” advanced, industrialized society: “Minería es: tecnología, capital y progreso. Por ello El Progreso dice Si!! a la minería” (Mining is: technology, capital and progress. Therefore El Progreso says Yes!! to mining, see figure 2c). This banner advances a discourse of mining in line with a dominant hegemonic discourse of development by which the Global North came to exercise power over the South: technology and capital entail “progress,” hence societies lacking in both must, by implication, be inferior and regressive. Under this paradigm, modernization is equated with progress, while “traditional” ways are cast as inferior.23

Figure 2a

23 For a cogent critique of this, see Escobar (2012). Elsewhere he argues that, “it was in the name of modernization and development that an entire productive apparatus took charge of the management of the life of the ‘new’ nations, replacing the older and more visible forms of colonial oppression and bringing forth at the same time a different disposition of the factors of life” (Escobar 1999, 331).

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Figure 2b

Figure 2c Another banner makes this even clearer. It reads: “Sin minería no habría: casas, ni carros, ni celulares, ni compudatoras. Solo ranchos, cuadernos y carretas de bueyes” (Without mining there would be no houses, cars, cell phones nor computers – only small farms, notebooks and ox carts, see figure 2d). The patronizing implication that this banner suggests is that those who carry this sign and those who may identify with its message are patently inferior or defective without the modern technologies of the more “advanced,” industrial societies of the Global North. Mining is presented as the magic key that unlocks the chains that keep a society in the dark, inferior world of small farms, paper notebooks and ox carts, ushering in the paradise of capitalist modernity.

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Figure 2d Tania Li notes that for Nikolas Rose, governmental thought is that which has become “technical,” whereby technology is cast as a social saviour that generically improves quality of life (Rose 1999, 51). She points to other scholars, such as Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (1982), who argue that appeals to “expert knowledge” serve to remove political problems from the domain of political discourse and debate, “recasting it in the neutral language of science” or technology (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, 196). This echoes the concerns that scholars of technology have expressed for decades, in which political and corporate elites in (theoretically) democratic societies justify consolidations of power by appealing to the purportedly neutral, scientific prescriptions of technocratic “experts,” thereby jettisoning the messy business of democratic dialogue and masking political power plays with the language of technical necessity and inevitability.24 Who are we, after all, to politicize (implying to bias, degrade, and pollute) the sacrosanct wisdom of neutral, disinterested experts, whose advice merely serves to advance the “social good”? The appeals to the technologies of “modern” societies in the banners (of figures 2c and 2d) seek to erase the political power that implicitly belittles and delegitimizes Guatemalan society as being at an impaired state of “development.” Rather, the banners state apparent truisms, that cell phones and computers are the golden rings that any healthy society must aspire towards, and that the technology, capital and progress that mining invariably entails can usher Guatemalans toward those sacrosanct goals.

24 Andrew Feenberg (1999) provides a compelling treatment of this critique in his Questioning Technology.

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Many elements of the march merit analysis, but for present purposes, two brief examples will suffice of attempts at wedding an Indigenous identity with open-pit metal mining, as one important component of industry’s strategy of shoring up support and defeating the resistance movements that oppose it. As noted, Guatemala is mostly inhabited by Indigenous peoples and many resisting the Canadian mines voice their concerns in terms of their Indigenous value systems and rights claims. The strategy explored here, of Canadian mining companies and the Canadian government carefully and assiduously working to breach this correlation between Indigenous value systems and resistance to Canadian open-pit mining practices, is reflected in a number of the banners in the march: one reads, “Soy indígena y creo en el desarrollo Minería responsable es vida para todos” (I’m indigenous and I believe in development. Responsible mining is life for everyone, see figure 2e). Here we see efforts at wedding indigenous belief systems that frequently anchor resistance to open-pit metal mining, with support for it. Critically, this banner does not speak of desiring or demanding, but believing, like the previous banner professing a belief in God. This language targets deeper than Indigenous peoples’ surface desires by speaking in the more fundamental language of underlying belief; it seeks to wed subjects’ underlying understandings of the world with a belief in mining as responsible development for the broader Guatemalan collective. Another banner invokes another powerful and fundamental aspect of the psyche: pride. It reads, “Mineros Q’eqchi. Orgullosos de nuestro trabajo” (Q’eqchi’ miners. Proud of our work, see figure 2f).

Figure 2e

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Figure 2f “Q’eqchi’ miners” reinforces the link between indigenous identity and mining, while the second phrase invokes the common collective in speaking of “our work.” Most importantly, however is the notion of pride: not only is one not ashamed to be partaking in potentially destructive activities, but one does so with pride. We are Q’eqchi miners, and we are proud of our work. The strategy behind the march perversely seeks to tap into, and indeed co-opt, some of the most discerning insights of theories of emancipatory politics and self-determination. Melissa Williams situates the locus of an emancipatory politic in subjugated populations reclaiming a space of self- recognition from below, or as she offers, “an emancipatory politics of recognition may depend on the moments in which subaltern groups reorient their activity toward the work of (re)constituting themselves” (Williams 2014, 6). She elaborates: some of the most potent transformations take place when people in dominated social positions turn away from institutionalized power hierarchies, shaping their own social orders without the approval or permission of any authority beyond themselves. These processes of self-constituting power, realized (inter alia) through acts of resistance or through prefigurative political movements, also entail struggles for recognition, but the agents of recognition are the subaltern themselves. (10) Coulthard offers a similar sentiment in an Indigenous context, arguing that, “Indigenous societies must begin to ‘turn away’ from the assimilative lure of settler-state recognition and instead find in their own transformative praxis the

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source of their liberation … [involving] some form of critical individual and collective self-recognition on the part of Indigenous societies” (Coulthard 2008, 201). The invocations of pride and beliefs in development that are reflected in the two preceding banners lie at the heart of any such “transformative praxis.” That said, one could also argue that an industry-organized march hardly constitutes the co-optation or hijacking of the spirit of “emancipatory politics” and “liberation” that Williams and Coulthard discuss, for surely the participants understand the overall strategy behind the march and refuse to invest belief in the slogans displayed on the banners that they carry. In fact, the energy of the march largely betrayed the sense of pride reflected in the banner of figure 2f: most people had staid, placid, disinterested expressions, and ambled lethargically, holding their banners with an aura of utter indifference. The protest march—an age-old symbol of collective will and empowerment—had been mimicked and staged with people choreographed like puppets, holding professionally produced signs bearing messages that they themselves played no part in inscribing. True as that may be, this analysis does not presume to offer any definitive assessment of the full multiplicity of effects the march may have had upon the psyches of the participants or bystanders, but rather to explore the intent in staging this choreographed display. The day after the march, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper with national distribution, featured an anonymously written article covering the march, attesting that over 10,000 people had poured into the streets—a figure that I estimate to be exaggerated by at least a factor of ten. Nowhere did the article touch upon issues of governance and organization of the march; nowhere did it reveal that some of those marching were on a certain payroll; and crucially, nowhere did it state that the march had been a meticulously choreographed performance, and that the performers and their props were but one part of a larger and carefully conceived neoliberal strategy to buttress multinational, and largely, Canadian, mining corporations’ claims to legitimacy against growing movements of grassroots resistance. Inasmuch as one cannot know the sum total of effects that participation in the march had upon the psyches of the participants, nor what effects it had upon each of the thousands of bystanders, nor the effects the media coverage had upon those who encountered those accounts, what the march reveals is an underlying strategy by which subjects’ understandings of their Indigenous identities and aspirations for Indigenous empowerment are targeted by the very regimes that they resist. The march reflects a cross-pollination of purportedly grassroots, emancipatory, prefigurative political movements of Indigenous rights and self-determination on the one hand, and the logic, and indeed often ruthless political calculus of

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inequality, of the low-cost, high-return mega-extractive model that Canadian mining companies have proven so adept at exporting globally, on the other.25

Indigenous Solidarity with Mining Resistance in Chile Attempts at cross-pollinating Indigenous rights, pride, and aspirations for development, with an embrace of large-scale metal mining activities are not confined to Guatemala, nor is Jerry Asp alone in the previously examined role that he played. Shortly after he was encouraging Guatemalans to embrace Canadian mining projects in their midst, Ron Evans, Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) reached out to the Huascoaltino Diaguita Indigenous people in Chile under the guise of cross-cultural solidarity and exchange of Indigenous knowledge and practices. For over a decade the Huascoaltino Diaguita have been resisting Barrick Gold’s Pascua Lama project—an open-pit gold, silver, and copper mine whose deposit sits in the immediate vicinity of Andean glaciers in the Huasco Valley on Chile’s border with Argentina. While Barrick has claimed it could successfully mine without disturbing the glaciers or causing any environmental damage, critics have scoffed at that claim, noting that in its exploratory and construction phases the mining activity had already almost entirely depleted three glaciers. Many residents argued that in so doing, the mine threatened to destroy the water supply used by the 70,000 farmers in the valley.26 The Huascoaltino Diaguita in Chile have been opposing Pascua Lama for the dramatic and irreversible environmental and cultural destruction that they foresee as probable consequences of the project, and in 2005, they sent out an open call for solidarity and support for their stance. The representatives of the AMC responded to the call, and in January 2006, Evans and his assistant Don Clarke traveled to Chile in order to meet with the Diaguita. The Huascoaltino Diaguita were initially willing to engage on good faith Evans’s and Clarke’s gestures of purported solidarity and proposed inter-community cultural exchange initiative, and agreed to meet. At a meeting on 19 January 2006, Evans and Huascoaltino

25 In the terms of critiques of public relations, the march can also be referred to as an example of astroturfing: creating the illusion of grassroots, community-driven campaigns that agitate for the special interests of those who have covertly organized and financed them—generally PR firms for their wealthy clients (astroturf being fake grass, astroturfed formations being fake grassroots initiatives). 26 A summary of environmental concerns over the project compiled by the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales—OLCA) is available at: http://www.olca.cl/oca/chile/pascualama.htm.

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Diaguita chief Sergio Campusano27 signed a formal agreement of cooperation between the two peoples, which among other things, pledged solidarity with the Diaguita’s desires to defend their traditional knowledge and recover control over their traditional lands, which, as the accord states, “in many cases [have been] stolen and illegitimately taken by the State, companies or outsiders.”28 A week later, Evans surprised Campusano when he asked to formally, legally represent the Huascoaltino Diaguita in negotiations with Barrick Gold. As Campusano recalls: “What happened is that at that time, it was the first time we were faced with a project of that scope. They said that in Canada, Indigenous Peoples had good agreements with the companies in their territories—they received up to 50 per cent of the production profits, that they were given university [education], that thanks to the money they had houses, had work” (Cuffe 2012). Campusano was taken aback, noting that he and other members of the Huascoaltino Diaguita leadership who had met with Evans had clearly relayed their community’s opposition to the project, and had understood the AMC overture as a gesture of solidarity in resistance. Campusano recalls that, “Ron Evans said that they could achieve much … but only as long as we gave them the mandate to negotiate for us, because they had experience getting more money, more profits for the benefit of the community. [AMC requested to be] legally authorized representatives” (Cuffe 2012). Nonetheless, the Huascoaltino Diaguita leadership shared this proposal with their community members, who rejected it. Campusano says that he was immediately concerned that AMC representatives Evans and Clarke may have actually been working with Barrick Gold and that the connection between the two parties was not a gesture of solidarity with the Huascoaltino Diaguita’s opposition to mining, as had been communicated and understood, but was actually part of an initiative to gain “social license” at the mine site and undermine community resistance to the project. The Huascoaltino Diaguita leadership demanded an explanation from Evans, and when none was forthcoming, they renounced the program of cooperation and formally cancelled any arrangements or agreements made between the two Indigenous communities. Something else that Campusano did not know was that like Jerry Asp, Ron Evans’s legitimacy as a leader was also problematic within his own home community of Norway House in northern Manitoba, where he stood accused of corruption, election fraud, and other abuses of power (CBC News 2006; Curry

27 Campusano also holds the title of President of the Huascoaltino Diaguita Indigenous and Agricultural Community. 28 Text of the accord is available at http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=195.

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2006; Yake 2010).29 Merely one month after Evans and Campusano signed their accord in Chile, a Canadian Federal Court judge in Ottawa, Justice Pierre Blais, ruled that Evans had flagrantly abused his power as chief of Norway House Cree Nation, engaging in practices that “failed to respect the notion of representative democracy,” including blackmail and influence peddling.30 Justice Blais offered a scathing rebuke of Evans and other band council leaders, stating that their behaviour was “deplorable and has no place in democratic institutions” (Curry 2006). Of great concern to Campusano is how Evans used his status as an Indigenous leader to seduce a relationship of purported solidarity with the Huascoaltino Diaguita people, how he neglected to mention any relationship that he may have had with Barrick Gold, and how he may have been involved in attempts at facilitating the Huascoaltino Diaguita’s acceptance of the mine, despite their clearly stated opposition to the project. Campusano says that he came to understand that Evans may have been working in the capacity that Ambassador Lambert had celebrated on Guatemalan television: as a consultant who had been hired to work “with other Indigenous communities in Canada and in other countries to sell this experience,” of embracing Canadian mining. Instead of being forthright and disclosing this, however, Campusano states that Evans sought to win his trust by speaking of Indigenous issues and values, and of cross-continental Indigenous solidarity.31 Evans even presented himself in traditional Indigenous garb, wearing a beaded vest and a ceremonial eagle-feather headdress (see figures 3a–3c). Campusano maintains that subsequent to Evans’s ill-fated solicitation of the Huascoaltino Diaguita over a decade ago, the region has been visited by further Canadian Indigenous leaders who likewise extol the virtues of mining.32

29 The accusations relate to his conduct towards a band councillor, Marcel Balfour, who’d been openly critical of Evans while Evans was chief there. Balfour was subsequently elected chief of Norway House following Evans’s departure to take up the position of Chief of AMC. 30 Federal Court of Canada decision in Balfour v. Norway House Cree Nation: http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/en/2006/2006fc213/2006fc213.html and http://decisions.fct- cf.gc.ca/en/2006/2006fc266/2006fc266.html. 31 Personal interview with Sergio Campusano. Vancouver, 2 June 2012. 32 Comments delivered at public address at McGill University, 4 April 2017.

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Figure 3a: Sergio Campusano (L, white shirt) and Ron Evans (R, headdress)

Figure 3b: Accord signed by Sergio Campusano and Ron Evans

Figure 3c: Sergio Campusano (L) and Ron Evans (R)

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Educating Desires in Panama Evans’s assistant, Don Clarke, has done similar work in Ecuador and the Indigenous semi-autonomous zone in western Panama, the Ngäbé-Buglé Comarca. Like Evans, Clarke identifies himself as working with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs; he also identifies as a member of the Black River First Nation in Manitoba, as general manager of the firm Clarke Educational Services and as head of a consulting company, Kokopelli. Clarke appears to position himself in two primary ways, depending upon the constituency he’s targeting: to industry, he positions himself as a consultant with an expertise in community engagement, which he can offer to ostensibly prevent or mitigate the social conflict that may sabotage a mining project and threaten investment. He positions himself in this manner in online postings, short writings for industry publications, at conferences that he has organized through his consulting firm Kokopelli—namely “Mining for Success” and “Mining for Success II,”33 which were held in Panama (see figures 4a and 4b)—and at other forums. At a November 2017 mining conference in Colombia, he delivered a presentation on the importance of assessing the social risks that a mining project today will likely face (see figure 4c).34 His slideshow begins by stating that, “As a result of the recent mining boom and an ever increasing global appetite for metals mining companies have ventured into non-traditional mining jurisdictions and not only have discovered a bonanza of new deposits, but they have also encountered a wave of unprecedented social opposition and conflict.” In elaborating upon “social-political risks” that mining projects face today, his presentation warns that, “in today’s political and social environment our sector continues to be more and more exposed to higher levels of activism than ever before as miners continue to struggle to meet the demands of a broad stakeholder base.” He thus asserts that, “Due to these growing risks mining companies need to continue to integrate risk-based corporate social responsibility strategies and develop and measure performance indicators with the same diligence that are used to track exploration and production results.”

33 See http://www.kokopelli.ca/miningforsuccess. 34 His presentation was entitled, “Addressing the Social & Political Challenges of Mining in 21st Century” [sic], and delivered at a session entitled “Optimizing Community Relations” at the Colombia Gold Symposium, held in Medellín, Colombia, 14–15 November 2017. His conference bio states that he “advises several publicly traded junior and mid-tier mining companies on political/social risk management, stakeholder relations and CSR.” His slideshow is available at https://colombiagold.co/memorias/2017/day2/Birsa.pdf and his bio is available at https://colombiagold.co/en/speaker/don-clarke. Other presentations available at https://colombiagold.co/en/2017-cgs-presentations.

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Figure 4a: Don Clarke, Mining for Success

Figure 4b: Don Clarke, Mining for Success

Figure 4c: Don Clarke On the other hand, to local Indigenous groups, he positions himself as a Canadian Indigenous leader and educator with an expertise in community development via resource extraction; in leading “educational sessions” on how mining can bring about collective prosperity, he seeks to build trusting relations. In this apparent strategy, he positions himself as intermediary between

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community and corporation: “educational sessions” that reference the prosperity that has allegedly been attained by Canadian Indigenous communities who have embraced resource extraction on their territories, seek to obtain social license to operate at the local level; this consent, if attained, then bolsters his credentials as an industry consultant with an expertise in community engagement and risk mitigation by facilitating mining activities in potentially reluctant Indigenous communities. One such reluctant Indigenous community is the Ngäbé-Buglé Comarca in western Panama, which is home to Cerro Colorado, one of the largest copper deposits in the world.35 The Ngäbé and Buglé residents in the region have fought for decades, beginning in the 1970s, to expel the various mining companies seeking to develop the concession, and subsequent to the comarca’s establishment in 1997, concerted efforts unfolded seeking to block any mining activities anywhere within the comarca. This resistance is largely based in many of the very same foregoing concerns and grievances expressed in other countries in the region, by communities residing near open-pit projects there (Gjording 1991; Simms and Moolji 2011; Young and Bort 1999). Not only is the mountain considered sacred to local inhabitants, but its delicate position, of lying at or very near the headwaters of three principal rivers—the San Félix, Cuvíbora, and Cricamola ensure that any environmental contamination resulting from mining activities there could be devastating. In fact, in Ngäbé and Buglé cosmology, the spiritual and environmental importance of the mountain are not mutually exclusive, but rather deeply interconnected: as Gjording (1991) reports, the local Indigenous population refers to Cerro Colorado as “a mountain that gives birth to rivers” (Gjording 1991, 7). Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, several mining companies, including Canadian Javelin, spent millions of dollars extensively drilling and exploring the deposits. For several reasons, including concerns over economic feasibility, these operations had largely suspended by the early 1990s, but in 2008, Canada’s Corriente Resources expressed an interest in attaining and developing the concession. The following year, conservative supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli won the presidential election in the country and shortly thereafter, announced his intention to open the country to further mining development. To this end, his government implemented mining law reforms to greater facilitate the entry of foreign direct investment. All of these factors led to a renewed intensification of protest activity in the comarca (see figures 5a–

35 The total resource is estimated at containing approximately 4.5 billion tonnes of copper with 0.45% mineralization. The open-pit component of the reserve is estimated to contain 1.4 billion tonnes at 0.78% copper mineralization (Cumming 1997).

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5b). Facing formidable social opposition to the project, Corriente hired Clarke to help facilitate their acquisition of the Cerro Colorado copper deposit. He had previously done work for EcuaCorriente, Corriente Resources’s subsidiary in Ecuador,36 helping to form a small pro-mining Indigenous Shuar NGO led by an individual who had been expelled from other Indigenous organizations in the country (Cuffe 2012). Part of the work of that NGO involved denouncing voices that had shone a critical light on Corriente’s project, and condemning those who had been resisting the mine as foreign agitators seeking to deprive the Shuar of badly-needed development, in order to keep them impoverished (Moore 2008).37

36 Clarke had also worked in Ecuador as an adviser to the mining committee of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He explained the appeal of working as a mining industry consultant by noting that, “we see a real business opportunity for our First Nations people to capitalize on the knowledge that we have and the experiences” (CBC News 2007). 37 Moore (2008) reports that part of the work of that individual in question, Rubén Naichap, involved writing a “malicious” letter to Canadian mining watchdog NGO MiningWatch Canada (MWC), falsely accusing it of “genocide” and of having paid protesters to block the road in Ecuador. Despite being patently false allegations, on 1 and 2 August 2007, The National Post ran articles by Peter Foster attacking MWC in its The Financial Post, which reported some of Naichap’s spurious claims. These included allegations that MWC has committed “economic, cultural and social genocide,” and that they “live on [Indigenous] poverty.” In response, MWC clarified that the allegations against it were baseless and absurd, stating: “MWC’s entire involvement with Corriente’s Mirador project amounted to posting three (3) texts related to the Mirador mine on the MWC website. All three were posted within a 6-week period in 2006. Two of these were posted only after a Presidential order was issued to immediately suspend all mining activity in the area. None of these three texts were generated by MiningWatch Canada but rather came from groups in Latin America” (MWC 2007). Furthermore, Naichap’s attacks on MWC in the name of defending Indigenous rights to “development” through mining, appear to be initiatives of Corriente Resources that had been designed to appear as though they had come from a “grassroots” Indigenous organization; as Moore reports, “It was later verified that the correspondence from Naichap was written on a computer owned by Corriente Resources” (Moore 2008).

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Figure 5a: Panama protest sign, No a la Mineria

Figure 5b: Panama roadblock, February 2012

A Vulture is Not a Dove Part of Clarke’s work in the Comarca Ngäbé-Buglé entailed orchestrating “educational sessions” to “educate” the local population about mining. He described this work in testimony delivered on 29 November 2010, before a Canadian Parliamentary committee studying the viability of a proposed bilateral trade agreement between Canada and Panama. He referred to himself as a mining promoter, and to his firm, Clarke Educational Services, as “a First Nations-based professional services firm that works with Canadian and Latin American Indigenous communities, governments, and companies in developing inclusive businesses that promote the use of natural resources in a culturally appropriate and socially and environmentally responsible manner” (Standing Committee 2010). He stated that his company had been in the comarca since mid-2008, comprising “a skilled team of professionals who are working with the Ngöbe people … to advance the Cerro Colorado copper project in a socially

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inclusive and economically viable manner.” He referred to Cerro Colorado as a “world-class copper project.” He claimed to have “worked and trained with approximately 2,000 Ngöbe people in the Cerro Colorado area. These are individual landowners and community people who live in the direct and indirect impact area of this potential copper mine development.” In these “training sessions,” he attests that he and his colleagues “had to teach the people what this mining thing is,” and that due to the illiteracy of many, Clarke notes that they needed “to draw pictures, make diagrams.” He testified that he and his firm had been leading the training sessions consistently for over two years, “week after week after week with people, making sure they have the right information.” He claimed to be educating participants on “what to look for in terms of bad projects, what to look for in terms of how to deal with large mining companies, and we believe that now we have an informed population.” University of California Davis student Maria Gray attended one of Clarke’s sessions in Hato Chamí, which she describes in a February 2010 report: With a generator-powered laptop and projector, the presentation given by Clarke was reminiscent of a lecture in a large hall at UC Davis. During the class, only a few men asked questions. One topic raised involved the negative effects of mining, to which Clarke replied that if everything goes according to carefully conducted plans, the Cerro Colorado mine will not have any negative consequences. (Gray 2010, 6– 7)38 Clarke maintained that his sessions were ultimately designed to empower the local population, for he stated, “they’re pushing the Panamanian government right now to participate and they want a percentage of this concession.” This claim is dubious and misleading at best, however, regardless of whether he means to suggest that prior or subsequent to his firm’s arrival, the local population had been “pushing the Panamanian government” for participation in,

38 Gray also elaborates upon how the sessions are structured to incentivize support for mining: “Corriente provided a large-portioned hot meal for every participant of the class. According to Volunteer B, at the end of a series of classes (divided in levels), the participants are to take a test to determine their eligibility to continue to the next level. If they do not obtain a certain score, they must repeat the previous level. At the end of the Responsible Mining sessions, the 10 highest scoring individuals, including at least 2 women, were offered ‘promoter’ positions to ask their community members their opinions concerning the mine. For each of these promoters, Volunteer B has reported that Corriente pays 150 dollars a month, an extremely generous sum in the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé” (Gray 2010, 7).

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and a stake of the Cerro Colorado deposit. In his testimony, he neglected to mention the overwhelming and concerted opposition to the project found in the region. As in previous examples, he also invoked the discourse of Indigenous rights, testifying that “our company is Indigenous-rights focused”; that said, as with the previously examined cases as well, this claim does not appear to include Indigenous rights to outright reject extractive activities on their territories, but rather to embrace them. This may account for why, despite his public proclamations of the need for mining companies to mitigate the risk of social conflict as they venture into projects on Indigenous territory, his activities in the comarca were perceived as having generated immense amounts of conflict. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that, as noted, the region has a long history in which the majority of the population has overwhelmingly rejected mining on their territory, and he held an unabashed interest in working against that interest, or as he testified, “we’re hoping in the future that they will want to advance this project.” While Clarke’s testimony elicited an appreciative response from some committee members, such as the committee chair, Conservative MP Lee Richardson, who acclaimed, “it’s great to hear from someone on the ground,” the response from people within the comarca was anything but grateful. Condemnation from the leadership in the comarca over Clarke’s testimony and his activities in the region was swift and unequivocal. A 23 January 2011 letter sent to Canadian Parliamentarians Peter Julian and John McKay by Pedro Rodriguez and Octavio Rodriguez, President and Secretary, respectively, of the General Congress of the Ngöbé Buglé Comarca, decried that the voices of the elected leaders of the comarca had not been represented before the Parliamentary committee. They condemn Clarke’s activities in the region as manipulative, refer to him as self-interested and debunk his purported claim to be interested in alleviating poverty. In essence, they suggest that his “educational training” classes bankrolled by Corriente amount to little more than propaganda indoctrination sessions that have little to do with providing full, unbiased and balanced information, and everything to do with securing local consent, indeed embrace, of the acquisition and development of the deposit which Corriente aspired to obtain. A 25 January 2011 letter to committee chair MP Lee Richardson from regional chief Celestino Mariano Gallardo (see figure 6) was even more scathing. Mariano excoriates Clarke for having entered the comarca and engaged in his activities without having sought the prior consent of the traditional leadership. The letter calls Clarke’s testimony “quite absurd to our reality and of great disrespect to our peoples, traditional authorities of the Comarca and our legislation.” Mariano disputes Clarke’s claims that thousands

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in the comarca are in favour of mining, and lambasts him for having neglected to follow due process and consult with the directorship of the Congress and the district chiefs prior to embarking upon his activities in the comarca; instead, Mariano alleges that Clarke formed and paid a committee of individuals in the comarca who intimidated locals who were not in favour of mining, and interfered with local elections.39 Mariano did not mince words in condemning how Clarke’s deceptive and manipulative practices purported to emerge from and represent Indigenous values, suggesting that despite his couching of his activities in the discourses of Indigeneity, a predator should not be confused with a bearer of peace and pacifism: “I want to make clear that we do not accept a representation of international organizations or events without authorization of the authorities of the Comarca, regardless of whether or not they are Indigenous (because a vulture is not a dove)”40 (Gallardo 2011).

Figure 6: Celestino Mariano Gallardo gestures at Cerro Colorado

39 See supra note 38 for an account of selected participants of the “Responsible Mining [training] sessions” being paid to work as “promoters” in the communities. 40 “Quiero dejar claro que no aceptamos una representacion antes los organismos internacionales o eventos internacionales sin autorizacion de las autoridades de la Comarca. Ni tampoco si no son indigenas (porque un gallote no es igual a una paloma)” (Gallardo).

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Rejection of Clarke’s activities was not confined to the leadership in the comarca, and opposition to his presence had been growing in the region— something that Clarke also neglected to mention in his testimony. Protests had formed denouncing his activities, and less than three months after his testimony before the Standing Committee, Clarke and his colleague Loretta Cubillos were officially expelled from the comarca for having fomented conflict through their mining promotional activities (La Estrella 2011; La Prensa 2011; Panamá América 2011; Radio Panamá 2011; Zea 2012).41

The Canadian Connection Invocation of the discourse of Indigenous rights to embrace large-scale resource extraction is not the only similarity linking Clarke with previously examined cases; he also deploys the discourse of being Canadian in his overtures abroad. Not unlike Ambassador Lambert deploying Jerry Asp in Guatemala as an example of auspicious relations between the Canadian state, industry, and First Nations, Clarke claims that the relationship that Indigenous people have with resource extraction in Canada forms part of his mining promotional “educational sessions.” He testified that his objective was to educate locals in the comarca “about responsible mining practices and the experiences of Indigenous peoples from Canada with respect to mining and our relationships with Canada” (Standing Committee 2010). To Canadian industry, this translates into a competitive advantage, or as he affirmed, “Canadian business, particularly in the resource sector, has a significant amount of experience in working with First Nations people for common and mutual benefit. These experiences could be used as a competitive edge for Canadian companies interested in working with Indigenous peoples here in Canada and throughout the region,” for Canadian companies, as he stated, operate at “a higher standard of CSR, a higher standard in working in and engaging communities.” Beyond the fact that this claim is contested by numerous studies, even if his claim were valid, his leveraging of a Canadian connection is especially misleading, for Corriente had made no secrets of their intents to secure the concession in order to sell it to another company for exploitation (Zea 2012); as

41 On 23 February 2011, government minister Roxana Méndez issued an expulsion order mandating that all foreigners promoting mining in the comarca must vacate the territory within two weeks. According to a government communiqué, “the measure seeks to prevent persons alien to the Indigenous people from generating unrest, disrupting the peace and tranquility enjoyed by the Ngöbe Buglé community” (“la medida busca evitar que personas ajenas al pueblo indígena generen desasosiego, alteren la paz y la tranquilidad que disfruta la comunidad Ngöbe Buglé” (“Ngöbes No Ceden”).

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such, Clarke would ostensibly have no power or control over which company might end up exploiting the deposit and thus could not possibly know their history of environmental protection and respecting human rights standards. That said, the track record for Canadian open-pit metal mining in Panama is also far from encouraging: the Molejón gold mine, owned and operated by Petaquilla Gold, a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Petaquilla Minerals, operated in Panama from 2009–2013. Clarke referred to it in his testimony, stating, “We’ve had our stakeholders go out to the Petaquilla gold mine. They’ve come back and they’re very excited by what they’ve seen there.” He does not elaborate upon what excited his stakeholders, but the Molejón mine proved to be the cause of severe environmental damage in the area, including water contamination and biodiversity loss. The company was found to have violated 28 provisions of its own environmental impact study.42 Locals residing near the mine complained of several incidents in which the nearby river turned a milky white colour, had a strong chemical odour, and all life forms in the river appeared to have been killed. They also reported burning and itching sensations on their skin when entering the river during the mine’s operation.43 The mine was abandoned in 2013 and the site was never remediated; personal visits to the site in 2015 and 2016 revealed abandoned equipment and chemicals (see figures 7a–7e), including barrels of cyanide sitting in the open in an accessible storage building (see figure 7f). A large pipe leading from an abandoned tailings pond also appeared to be draining the tailings directly into the local river (see figure 7g).44

Figure 7a

42 See http://micla.ca/conflicts/molejon. 43 Personal interviews with locals residing near the concession, April 2015. 44 For a compendium of information on Petaquilla, see https://miningwatch.ca/search/site/Petaquilla.

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Figure 7b

Figure 7c

Figure 7d

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Figure 7e

Figure 7f: Abandoned cyanide barrels

Figure 7g: Pipe draining from tailings pond

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On a deeper level, however, it is even further disingenuous and specious for industry promoters to present as an aspirational model the experience of Canadian Indigenous communities propitiously engaging with the Canadian state and industry, for this narrative occludes the critique that the legal and political system in Canada in no way facilitates the aspirations of Canadian First Nations who may wish to reject the presence of high-impact industrial activities on their territories—which is precisely the position taken by the Latin American Indigenous communities where the Canadian leaders examined here are intervening. As noted earlier, the Canadian state does not balk at criminalizing and surveilling First Nations environmental movements when they resist “the imperatives of state and capital” (Coulthard 2008, 192), by rejecting natural resource development projects on their lands (Crosby and Monaghan 2016).45 In this regard, scholars have also argued that Canada’s land claims process is itself an engine of dispossession (Samson 2016), for in ultimately denying Indigenous peoples consent over the relinquishment of their territories, the process fails to live up to the standards of free prior and informed consent as enumerated in international human rights treaties, including the 2007 UNDRIP (Samson and Cassell 2013). Most importantly for this paper, what may be most eclipsed of all by the mining-promoting consultants examined here and their chosen discourse of mutually advantageous relations between the Canadian state and First Nations, is a cogent and incisive critique offered by Coulthard: he argues that the process of negotiations over land and natural resources in Canada is ultimately designed to convert Indigenous people into willing subjects of colonial sovereignty and market capitalism. In reference to land claims negotiations with the Dene in the 1970s and early 1980s, he argues that in its engagement with Indigenous communities agitating for political-economic sovereignty and self- determination, the Canadian government sought to placate and derail demands deemed threatening to the state’s exclusive and sovereign jurisdiction over territory and natural resources by defusing Indigenous movements’ calls for reconfiguring control over resources and distribution of wealth; this was done in part through offering a diluted and “depoliticized conception of Aboriginal cultural rights divorced from any substantive notion of Indigenous sovereignty or alternative political economies” (Coulthard 2014a, 164). At the time, the Crown entered into land negotiations in order to extinguish broad, undefined rights and title claims in exchange for small, limited sets of rights and benefits. Coulthard notes that in the 1970s, the Crown still explicitly required Indigenous interlocutors to “cede, release and surrender” Aboriginal rights and title before

45 See supra note 18.

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resolving land settlements, in order to guarantee the state’s continued capacity to exploit Indigenous territories for economic development: “the state insisted that any institutionalized accommodation of Indigenous cultural difference be reconcilable with one political formation—namely, colonial sovereignty—and one mode of production—namely, capitalism” (Coulthard 2014a, 160). While the Canadian state may no longer, as a matter of policy, explicitly demand such relinquishment as pre-condition to dialogue—that is, the extinguishment of all undefined rights and title claims anywhere in the Dominion of Canada, Coulthard argues that the purpose of the claims process in Canada today is essentially still the same: it is ultimately an exercise designed to bring Indigenous communities into the fold of the contemporary model of neoliberal capitalism that underpins the Canadian state, or as he writes, to “facilitate the ‘incorporation’ of Indigenous people and territories into the capitalist mode of production and to ensure that alternative ‘socioeconomic visions’ do not threaten the desired functioning of the market economy” (Coulthard 2014a, 160, quoting Green 2003, 52). Support for, and solidarity with “alternative socioeconomic visions” are precisely what Sergio Campusano had thought he had been discussing with the AMC representatives on their aforementioned visit to Chile. As the accord that they had signed states, the mandate was that the two Indigenous communities would work to support the Diaguita’s “work towards building sustainable economies and communities through the development of mutually beneficial long-term partnerships with other Indigenous governments, non-Indigenous governments, industry, and non-government organizations.” As Campusano has asserted, the Huascoaltino Diaguita had been very clear that their community is anything but generically “anti-development,” and indeed welcomed a Canadian Indigenous community’s support for their aspirations to achieve, as the signed accord states, “community level sustainable economic development based on traditional and community based knowledge of the natural environment.” What was explicitly not included in this model of development—and in fact was seen as a fundamental existential threat to the community and its capacity to dictate the terms and conditions of their own development, on economic and other lines—was the exploitative top-down model of development that they felt Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold was imposing upon them. The Huascoaltino Diaguita leadership maintain that AMC representatives Evans and Clarke were attempting to, as Coulthard writes, facilitate their ‘incorporation’ into the model of extractive capitalism that they were explicitly and adamantly opposed to. The fact that this attempted incorporation came under the guise of Indigenous solidarity for the defense of territory and Diaguita values made the endeavour all the more alarming to Campusano, and the same critique could be

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advanced regarding Clarke’s further activities in the Comarca Ngäbé Buglé of Panama.

Marching for Mining in Panama As noted, several months after he lauded his work in testimony before the Parliamentary committee, Clarke and his colleague were expelled from the comarca.46 Conflict over mining in the comarca did not subside with his expulsion, however, and at a 5 February 2012 protest, the police opened fire on a road blockade at a protest against mining and hydroelectric activities, killing three Ngäbé protestors and injuring scores more (Helmore 2012). A month later, the protest movement, after years of struggle, appeared to score a major victory with the National Assembly of Panama passing Special Law 415, which amends the country’s mining law and cancels all concessions for the exploitation of mineral resources in and near the comarca. Law 11, passed the same year, prohibits future mineral exploration or exploitation in the comarca (Cultural Survival 2012). While overwhelmingly celebrated by the majority of the population in the comarca, these prohibitions against mining quickly provoked the ire of a new NGO that had appeared in the comarca shortly after Clarke began his mining promotional activities there. Based in the town of Hato Chamí—the very town where Clarke had led his educational sessions for Corriente—the group is called Jädrán Nigue Nirien Ngöbe (Ngäbere for “something that we Ngöbe all grow together”). Jädrán hosts what appear to be exactly what Clarke had testified he had developed for Corriente: “educational sessions” about mining and the prosperity that it can bring. Jädrán encourages locals to demand a repeal of Law 11 and embrace the development opportunities that mining can bring to the comarca, as part of their Indigenous rights to development. These demands are also expressed at rallies and protest marches that Jädrán organizes in the comarca.47 Distributed materials at Jädrán events include coloring books for children about mining, and T-shirts adorned with the Jädrán logo and the slogan “Cerro Colorado is Ours!!!” (see figures 8a–8f).48 They also host a nightly radio show in which they wed narratives of

46 See supra note 41. 47 For example, see https://youtu.be/XaMgEt8rfeY. 48 Gray reports a similar strategy used by Corriente during her time in the comarca. She writes, “As part of Corriente’s local publicity efforts, many community members in the surrounding areas of Cerro Colorado received large stickers marked with the company name and its motto “Responsible Mining,” written in Spanish. While working with the children of Hato Chamí, we noticed that many notebooks displayed these large stickers. Similarly, Volunteer A has informed me that the company has been distributing “a ridiculous number of T-shirts to the

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Indigenous empowerment and self-determination with an embrace of the economic development opportunities that exploiting the Cerro Colorado deposit may bring. A 2013 letter penned by the leadership of Jädrán to James Anaya, the then UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, decries the injustice of Law 11, demands the right—indeed Indigenous right—to embrace large-scale mining projects within the comarca, and denounces those who resist mining as the dupes of foreign-originating colonial forces that wish to keep the local population impoverished (Sandoya et al. 2013).

Figure 8a: Jadran website

Figure 8b: Jadran t-shirt, Cerro Colorado is Ours!!!

people” with catchy slogans such as “No Más Pobreza, Minería Responsible” (translated to “No more poverty, Responsible Mining”) and “Los Mineros Somos Más” (“Us Miners are Better”)” (Gray 2010, 8).

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Figure 8c: Woman with colouring book at Jadran gathering, “What is a Mine?”

Figure 8d: Child with colouring book at Jadran gathering

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Figure 8e: Child with colouring book at Jadran gathering

Figure 8f: Child with colouring book at Jadran gathering There are striking similarities between the August 2006 pro-mining “protest march” in Guatemala described earlier and Jädrán’s marches in the comarca, in that both are ultimately the creations of industry seeking to coalesce support for extractive activities they wish to partake in, in the face of staunch resistance. What the marches target in participants and bystanders is also strikingly similar, and again, Coulthard and Alfred prove most useful in revealing the strategy at work here: as noted, Coulthard has incisively argued how discourses of Indigenous empowerment, self-determination and anti- colonialism can insidiously and perniciously form the core of contemporary forms of misrecognition, by which grossly inequitable colonial political and economic relations come to be stabilized (Coulthard 2008, 2014a, 2014b). At

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root, a similar strategic function is at work in regards to the constitution of subjectivity in the practices explored here: for Coulthard, the Canadian state’s proffering of politically inert and innocuous cultural rights to Indigenous communities as a means of diverting and disarming more radical demands for reconfigurations of existing distributions of wealth and resources, functions as a form of governmentality that seeks to produce Indigenous subjectivities that are amenable to maintaining the status quo of inequitable and oppressive social, political and economic relations. It is a strategy that reveals, as he argues, “the productive capacity of colonial power to construct conciliatory Indigenous subjectivities through the scripted exchange of recognition” (Coulthard 2014a, 169). The incidents examined here, such as pro-mining “protest” marches, extend the logic that Coulthard examines a critical step further: calls for the advancement and defense of Indigenous rights, as explored in the foregoing case studies, do not merely seek to leave undisturbed the colonial logic of capital accumulation, but in fact function to further entrench it. The strategy examined here is less intent upon pacifying a potential force of resistance against this logic than activating a sector of the local population into agitating and struggling for it, which perversely seeks to exploit the very ways in which Coulthard and other contemporary Indigenous thinkers have suggested their communities respond to the challenges that they currently confront. The fuel of that activation is the Indigenous pride that is invoked in the banners of both pro-mining marches examined here, such as the banners at a Jädrán march through the comarca on 27 January 2011, which stated, “Jadran es Orgullo Ngöbe” (Jadran is Ngöbe Pride, see figure 9a).49 Coulthard, in invoking thinkers such as Fanon and Alfred, urges Indigenous communities to empower themselves through self-recognition that rejects colonial forms of misrecognition that devalue Indigenous societies, or as he writes: “the colonized must initiate the process of decolonization by first recognizing themselves as free, dignified, and distinct contributors to humanity” (Coulthard 2014b, 43). As mentioned earlier, it is the very struggle entailed in the process that is crucial, or as he states: “Indigenous societies must begin to ‘turn away’ from the assimilative lure of settler-state recognition and instead find in their own transformative praxis the source of their liberation” (Coulthard 2008, 201). For Coulthard, this “transformative praxis” is key to decolonization; he argues that, it is through struggle and conflict … that the colonized come to purge the “arsenal of complexes” driven into the core of their

49 Video of the march is available at https://youtu.be/u9xSALI3eBA.

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being through the colonial process. In this sense, struggle—or as I will argue later, transformative practice—serves as a mediating force through which the colonized shed their colonial mentalities and imperial modes of conduct. (Coulthard 2008, 194) The regimes of governmentality responsible for the marches, along with the other elements in the case studies explored here, are targeting grassroots struggles for liberation and emancipation. Struggle becomes the key to the promise of decolonization that permeates Jädrán’s march, along with the other cases examined. This accounts for the language of struggle and rights found in other banners, such as one reading, “Luchamos por Nuestros Derechos” (We are struggling for our rights, see figure 9b), and another stating, “No Mas Pobreza, No Mas Mentiras. Por Nuestros Derechos y la Ley 10” (No more poverty, no more lies. For our rights and Law 10, see figure 9c).

Figure 9a

Figure 9b

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Figure 9c As noted, it is perversely in demanding a form of economic development that so closely resembles “imperial modes of conduct,” as Coulthard writes, that subjects in the pro-mining marches are coerced to express their struggles for decolonization. Alfred adopts a similar stance, speaking in the language of love and self-affirmation in addition to struggle. In an assessment of “the present reality of Indigenous Peoples,” he argues that, the problem that we have inherited in this generation is our disconnection from what it is to be Indigenous.... Living our responsibilities as humans, struggling for balance, demanding respect is the Indigenous way … fighting for our survival in the twenty-first century is less about defeating the aggression of an external enemy than it is about finding new ways to love the land, and new ways to love ourselves and our people. (Alfred 2008, 9–10; emphasis mine) The pro-mining protest marches from Guatemala and Panama seek to choreograph a subjectivity of, as Alfred writes, “what it is to be indigenous,” to channel demonstrations of pride and self-love into an embrace of the large-scale model of resource extraction that Canadian companies are wishing to install. Banners in the Jädrán march that link discourses of pride and rights aspirations with a mining project make this clearer, such as: “Sin Jadran No Hay Proyecto” (Without Jadran, there is no [mining] project, see figure 9d) and “Nuestros Recursos. Nuestros Derechos. Nuestro Futuro” (Our Resources. Our Rights. Our Future, see figure 9e).

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Figure 9d

Figure 9e: Jadran protest march, “Our Resources, Our Rights, Our Future” Extending Coulthard’s and Alfred’s insights into dynamics of recognition and colonization/decolonization is not intended to presume that their own analyses are blind to the possibilities that the “transformative praxis” of which they write can itself be hijacked. In fact Alfred offers a withering account of the colonization process in Canada that suggests such a possibility. He writes: The white élite undertook to manufacture a Native élite. They picked promising youths, they made them drink the firewater principles of capitalism and of Western culture; they educated the Indian out of them, and their heads were filled and their mouths were stuffed with smart-sounding hypocrisies, grand greedy words that stuck in their throats but which they spit out nonetheless. After a short stay in the university they were sent home to their reserves or unleashed in the cities, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing to say to their brothers and sisters that did not sound false, ugly, and harmful; they only mimicked their masters. From buildings in Toronto, from

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Montréal, from Vancouver, businessmen would utter the words, “Development! Progress!” and somewhere on a reserve lips would open “. . . opment! . . . gress!” The Natives were complacent and compliant; it was a rich time for the white élite. Then things changed. The mouths of Natives started opening by themselves; brown voices still spoke of the whites’ law, democracy, and liberal humanism, but only to reproach them for their unfairness and inhumanity. (Alfred 2014, ix) If one were to extend his analysis to the context examined here, the buzzwords marshalled to seduce consent for a particular form of capital accumulation are not only “Development!” and “Progress!” but “Self-determination!” and “Indigenous rights!” That said, lest it be unclear, it is worth restating that the present purpose is neither to essentialize nor demonize selected individuals, nor offer an anti- industrial development polemic. Many First Nations in Canada are engaging in business dealings with forestry, mining,50 and hydroelectric companies, and while some communities are internally conflicted over the terms, conditions, and implications of these projects, others may find the arrangements that they have negotiated to be ultimately positive and mutually advantageous; if so, this analysis is by no means intended to disparage that. What ultimately is problematic is that Indigenous communities in the Global South that are clearly and unequivocally expressing their rejection of a certain model of industrial development on their territories—at times on cultural and spiritual terms, and at times on the realization that the social and political realities that they confront likely makes it a losing gamble to accept this model of development—are being coerced into embracing, indeed demanding it. Their rejection and resistance of what they often foresee as the ultimate destruction of their territories and the befalling of a host of environmental and social calamities, should be honoured and respected—inasmuch as First Nations that have decided to proceed with industrial development on their territories according to their own collectively agreed-upon terms, would likewise wish that their decisions and positions be respected.

50 For an online atlas of Indigenous communities in Canada that have signed mining agreements for projects on their territories, see Natural Resources Canada, “The Atlas of Canada - Indigenous Mining Agreements.” Available at: http://atlas.gc.ca/imaema.

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Conclusion Despite their differences, the case studies examined here all emerge from a similar strategy: a cross-pollination of purportedly grass-roots, emancipatory, prefigurative political movements of Indigenous struggles for rights and self- determination, with the logic, and indeed often ruthless political calculus, of inequality, of the low-cost, high-return mega-extractive model that Canadian mining companies have proven so adept at exporting globally. It marks a dramatic extension of, yet also a departure from, the phenomenon Coulthard has outlined in his analysis of Dene land claims and the politics of recognition in Canada’s North, where he argues that the Canadian state has employed “a carefully circumscribed politics of recognition” (Coulthard 2014a, 169) whereby “a limited set of cultural rights … [may] be exercised solely within the parameters of state sovereignty and the capitalist mode of production” ensuring that the land and resource base “remain open for exploitation and capitalist development.” Something qualitatively different and arguably more perverse is occurring here: the neoliberal regimes of governmentality driving Canadian mining projects in Latin America and elsewhere are insidiously tapping into strivings for Indigenous self-empowerment or, as Alfred writes, “new ways to love ourselves and our people,” by channelling these aspirations towards embracing—indeed, demanding—mega-extractive projects, whose actual legacies are far more likely than not to achieve the very opposite of community empowerment and the safeguarding of land and ways of being for generations to come. Regimes of governmentality seeking to shore up Indigenous support for Canadian extractive activities globally have cleverly cast aspirations for those projects in terms of decolonization: to those seduced by these interpellations, Canadian mining companies become discursively constructed as catalysts of self-determination and Indigenous empowerment, and those resisting the mining projects—on the grounds of seeking to protect land and culture for present and future generations, and often expressed in terms of Indigenous rights claims—are cast as externally-originating colonial forces that seek to subjugate Indigenous populations to prevent their empowerment and self-determination. This strategy seeks to co-opt the “transformative praxis” of Indigenous rights claims that becomes the “source of their liberation,” by incorporating within that praxis an embrace of large-scale industrial extraction as an engine of empowerment. This phenomenon is also not limited to the case studies presented: in the face of growing Indigenous rights movements in Canada and beyond, various attempts are underway to cultivate Indigenous subjectivities within Canada that are largely amenable to the accumulation of capital through large-scale industrial extractive projects. One such recent initiative is the conference, “Our

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Land, Our Future: National Summit on Indigenous Youth and Natural Resource Development,” organized by the business think-tank Conference Board of Canada and held in Calgary in November 2017. It flew in Indigenous youth from across Canada for dialogue sessions with representatives of resource extraction companies and other conference participants. The conference’s appeal to sponsors notes that “many critical challenges persist” in natural resource development in Canada, and “one such challenge is the effective and meaningful engagement of Indigenous youth.”51 It is unclear how successful it was on this front, however, for in one account of the conference, in response to a vice-president from SNC-Lavalin who, as moderator of a panel with Indigenous youth (see figure 10), had asked the young panellists to define the good life, one Indigenous youth noted the need for clean rivers and the preservation of traditional life-ways, a second affirmed that, “Living the good life has nothing to do with money,” while a third declared that, “the government has tried to tell us who we are. We are so much more than they think.” The responses reportedly engendered loud and boisterous applause from the youth in the audience.52

Figure 10: Our Land, Our Future conference, photo by Martin Lukacs Their replies reflect a prominent stance that Alfred celebrates in the younger, emerging generation of Indigenous activists and scholars today: he writes, “they do not surrender to despair and advocate collaboration with

51 Available at: http://www.conferenceboard.ca/docs/default-source/conf-pdfs-public/17-0073_sponsorship.pdf 52 As reported by journalist Martin Lukacs.

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colonialism or stoke mindless rage. They have a stronger vision of liberation … and turn inward to focus on the resurgence of an authentic Indigenous existence and the recapturing of physical, political and psychic spaces of freedom for our people” (Alfred 2008, 11). This paper has argued that that quest for reclaiming one’s authentic Indigenous subjectivity is being targeted by regimes of governmentality seeking to coerce support for a method of economic accumulation that lies counter to many expressed Indigenous value systems, but it is not to presume that such an effect is in any way guaranteed. As noted earlier, this paper does not presume to know the totality of effects that these strategies have upon subjects; this cannot be known. That said, inasmuch as it would be erroneous to presume that the strategies explored here have no effect, it would be equally mistaken to presume an overdetermination of the intended effect of the regimes of governmentality presently treated. Rather, it is important to stress that the spirit of resistance evinced in the youth at the conference in Calgary is also clearly palpable in each incident explored in the preceding pages. In each case study explored here there have been fierce and formidable pushbacks, such as the condemnation of Clarke’s activities in the comarca by the traditional leadership there. That rejection is also not limited to the leadership; according to Pedro Nola Flores, the current President of the Congreso Ngäbé-Buglé, most people in the comarca doubt the integrity and legitimacy of Jädrán. In October 2017 he attested that if I were to bring you up there, right now, to the place where [Jädrán is] operating, ninety-five, ninety-nine percent are opposed to their position. Because … each [member of Jädrán] has ambition for themselves, a very personal one, not for the population. Do you think that when they say 50/5053 they are thinking of life and of the future generations? Of the kind of devastation this will cause to the ecology? Of the contamination? No. They’re not looking out for that. They’re looking to see how and in what way … they catch some crumbs from the company. This is what they’re looking for— not to benefits of a more social, collective kind, and above all, of [benefits] for the entire territory of the Comarca.54 A powerful rejection of Ron Evans’s and Don Clarke’s overtures in Chile was also offered by the Huascoaltino Diaguita. In October of 2006, they released a

53 One way that Jädrán endorses mining as an engine of economic development involves encouraging locals to demand 50% ownership of the Cerro Colorado deposit (Cuffe 2012). 54 Remarks made at the International Colloquium, “Indigenous Struggles for Territory: Latin America and Quebec,” 12 October 2017, https://youtu.be/vmws96XHMDA?t=19m14s.

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public communiqué to warn participants gathering at an Indigenous encuentro in Bolivia where Ron Evans and Don Clarke were expected to attend.55 According to the release, subsequent to their ill-fated proposition to the Huascoaltino Diaguita to represent them in dealings with Barrick Gold, the AMC reps had been busy networking, including meeting with the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet. According to the communiqué, they apparently had been seeking to build an AMC “embassy” somewhere in the region, ostensibly as a base from where they may replicate what they had attempted with the Huascoaltino Diaguita. A Canadian newspaper report from the time corroborates this claim (Wiebe 2006).56 The Huascoaltino communiqué warns of the tactics used by the AMC representatives, and states, “in reality, they are commercial consultants and spearheads of the new invasion of the continent by traitors.” Rather than using the Spanish word traidor, however, the text uses “malinches,” which more infers an Indigenous turncoat.57 After warning participants of the Encuentro that the AMC representatives may try to seduce a relationship by extending overtures of Indigenous solidarity, it states, “then come the mirrors that the foreign invaders brought from their arrival to our lands, but this time in the hands of the AMC: travel promises,58 exchange of territories, eagle feathers and other trinkets and gadgets that try to confuse, waste time, and make the recipients dizzy and tired, easier to be destroyed.” The final phrase is conveyed by the idiom, “marear la perdiz,” which literally means to make the partridge dizzy. It emerges from a strategy of hunting partridges by repeatedly scaring them so they take flight; the tactic appears as though time is being wasted, but as the birds become fatigued, they become much easier to kill. Text of the communiqué is offered here at some length, in an effort to convey the full extent of the rejection of the strategy that this paper has

55 The gathering was the “Encuentro Continental de Pueblos y Nacionalidades Indigenas del Abya Yala,” La Paz, Bolivia, 8–12 October 2006, https://www.movimientos.org/enlacei/encuentroabyayala. 56 The Winnipeg Free Press reports that the AMC was seeking to set up an office in Chile, and quotes Don Clarke, as “chief of political staff for the AMC,” as stating, “Right now we’re in the process of finalizing our lease and setting up our legal status to operate in Chile … [the office] is going to also create a permanent presence for our people in Latin America” (Wiebe 2006). 57 It comes from La Malinche, who according to history was an early 16th century Nahua woman who was a mistress to Hernán Cortés, and was said to have become his advisor, interpreter, and general intermediary for the conquistadores. 58 The communiqué claims that the AMC representatives had earlier promised to fly Sergio Campusano to Canada as part of their discussed cross-cultural exchanges. Campusano asserts that this promised trip never materialized.

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outlined. As Mariano lambasted in his letter denouncing Don Clarke, a vulture may not be a dove, but neither are the intended victims of these manipulative and deceptive tactics partridges who are easily confused and dizzied. The closing lines of the communiqué make this abundantly clear: I warn the Indigenous organizations to be very careful with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, its Grand Chief Ron Evans, his Political Delegate Don Clarke … and other mercantile mercenaries, disguised as Indigenous. They believe that we Indigenous people of the South should be taught and that they know the HOW to do lucrative business with the transnationals, and that THEY ARE SURE TO HAVE THE DEVELOPMENT MODEL THAT WE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN THE SOUTH MUST ACQUIRE FROM THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF THE NORTH. They do not realize that we are rebellious, proud people and that we have our own forms of government, our own definition of development and our own way of getting rid of the traitors. For a Free, Sovereign, Rebellious Indigenous America! Let us keep a watchful eye on the mercenaries that come from the North: Canada, Australia, Chile and others! (my translation; capitalization in the original)59 Alfred has urged Indigenous communities to do precisely what the Huascoaltino communiqué accomplishes: a clear and unequivocal unmasking and rejection of colonial epistemologies and moralities that have historically facilitated the disenfranchisement of Indigenous societies, to embrace instead value systems and ways of being and knowing that have anchored Indigenous societies for millennia prior to colonial contact. This is especially pertinent given Alfred’s observation that under today’s “postmodern” imperial conditions, oppression operates less in the form of flagrant land-grabs and more in the realms of psychology and culture (Alfred 1999, 2008). He asserts that, “Ignorance and racism are the founding principles of the colonial state, and concepts of Indigenous sovereignty that don’t challenge these principles in fact serve to perpetuate them” (Alfred 1999, 59). For Alfred, the stakes of the struggle are synonymous with its objective: “the heart and soul of Indigenous

59 Text of the communiqué on file with the author. It had previously been published on a Spanish-language Indymedia site and on the Centro de Políticas Públicas website, but those pages are no longer available. Previously published at: https://prod.sucre.indymedia.org/es/2006/10/34633.shtml and http://www.politicaspublicas.net/panel/news/?p=3415.

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nations: a set of values that challenge the destructive and homogenizing force of Western liberalism and free-market capitalism; that honor the autonomy of individual conscience, non-coercive authority, and the deep interconnection between human beings and other elements of creation” (Alfred 1999, 60). Throughout his work, Alfred offers a palpable sense of hope and optimism in the prospects that he sees for the task of decolonization facing Indigenous communities today. He celebrates emergent returns to “a way of life that has respect, sacrifice, love, honesty, and the quest for balance at its core” (Alfred 2014, 11) and heralds the emergence and evolution of a new critical consciousness, an “Indigenous resurgence,” evinced in thinkers such as Coulthard, who are savvy to contemporary strategies of cooptation and neocolonization. If the resistance against the tactics explored here are any indication, prospects for the resurgence that Alfred calls for appear hopeful. In this context, the grounds for hope lie in Indigenous communities in Canada and abroad, as well as their non-Indigenous allies, increasingly coming to discern the nature of the strategies underway to seduce consent for extractive projects that may, in fact, be entirely contrary to their best interests, with the result being less confusion and more capacities to both detect the forces at work and effectively defuse and resist them. May doing so lead to clarity on the best ways to confront the formidable challenges that lie ahead and open increased possibilities for alliances of solidarity that may support and invigorate struggles in defense of life, livelihoods, and territory.

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Simms, Rosie, and Salma Moolji. 2011. “In the Belly of the Machine: Indigenous Mining Experiences in Panama.” Prepared for McGill University, Centro de Incidencia Ambiental (CIAM), The Smithsonian Institute of Tropical Research, Panama (STRI) and the Comarca Ngöbe- Buglé. 25 April. Spio-Garbrah, Sebastian. 2017. “How Canada Can Help a Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.” Toronto Star, 20 November. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2017/11/20/how-canada- can-help-a-post-mugabe-zimbabwe.html. Spring, Karen, and Grahame Russell. 2011. “The Real Cost of Gold in Honduras: Goldcorp and Honduras Regime Cover-up Blood and Urine Testing and Poisoning at San Martin Mine.” 9 May. http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/the-real-cost-of- gold-in-honduras-goldcorp-and-honduras-regime-cover-up-blood-and- urine-testing-and-poisoning-at-san-martin-mine. Standing Committee on International Trade. 2010. Evidence. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. 40th Parliament. 3rd Session. 29 November. Studnicki-Gizbert, Daviken. 2016. “Canadian Mining in Latin America (1990 to Present): A Provisional History.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 41 (1): 95–113. Switzer, Jane. 2008. “Queen’s Professor Jailed for Protest: Ardoch Algonquin Aboriginals Oppose Uranium Mining on Land Involved in Claim Dispute.” Queen’s Journal, 29 February. http://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2008-02-29/news/mining-prof. Temper, Leah, Daniela del Bene, and Joan Martinez-Alier. 2015. “Mapping the Frontiers and Front Lines of Global Environmental Justice: The EJAtlas.” Journal of Political Ecology 22: 255–278. Veltmeyer, Henry, and James F. Petras. 2014. The New Extractivism: A Post- Neoliberal Development Model or Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century? London: Zed. Whittington, Les. 2010. “Canadian Mining Firms Worst for Environment, Rights: Report.” Toronto Star, 19 October. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2010/10/19/canadian_mining_fir ms_worst_for_environment_rights_report.html. Williams, Melissa S. 2014. “On the Use and Abuse of Recognition in Politics.” In Recognition versus Self-Determination: Dilemmas of Emancipatory

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Politics, edited by Avigail Eisenberg, Jeremy Webber, Glen Coulthard, and Andrée Boisselle, 3–20. Vancouver: UBC Press. Wiebe, Lindsay. 2006. “Chiefs’ Organization to Open Latin American Office.” Winnipeg Free Press, 20 September. Working Group on Mining and Human Rights in Latin America. 2014. “The Impact of Canadian Mining in Latin America and Canada’s Responsibility—Executive Summary of the Report submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.” Washington, DC: Due Process Law Foundation. http://www.dplf.org/sites/default/files/report_canadian_mining_executiv e_summary.pdf. Yake, Rosalyn. 2010. “No News is Bad News: The 2006 Norway House Elections.” Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. http://www.friends.ca/DCA/2010_winners/RosalynYake. Young, Philip D., and John R. Bort. 1999. “Ngóbe Adaptive Responses to Globalization in Panama.” In Globalization and the Rural Poor in Latin America, edited by William M. Loker, 111–136. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Younger, Paul. 2008. “Report on a Visit to Honduras in Relation to Gold Mine Closure Issues, Undertaken in Collaboration with CAFOD and Caritas Arquidiocesana. (Tegucigalpa), November 15–17th 2008.” 16 December. Newcastle, UK. Zea, Mary Triny. 2012. “Chiriquí: Las intenciones manifestas en la comarca.” La Prensa, 3 February. https://impresa.prensa.com/nacionales/CHIRIQUI-intenciones- manifiestas-comarca_0_3311668868.html.

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#INDIGENOUS: A TECHNICAL AND DECOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF ACTIVIST USES OF HASHTAGS ACROSS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

MARISA ELENA DUARTE AND MORGAN VIGIL-HAYES

Introduction While it is clear that Indigenous peoples utilize social media and digital infrastructures to support social and political goals, work remains to be done to investigate the relationship and impacts of those sociotechnical assemblages in light of the political rights and quality-of-life of Indigenous peoples. This essay offers a snapshot of the content, circulation, and amount of data Native American activists circulated through Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election, revealing the contours of the technical challenges as well as the social and political boundaries shaping Native American political life. By comparing Native American content to a mainstream American dataset from the same period, our study further reveals that tweets propagated by Native American rights activists characteristically focus on life-and-death issues, which situates Native American and First Nations social media communication in an existential sphere. The work of Indigenous Internet researchers is therefore shifted beyond that of the researcher who ‘finds-out-how’ to the praxis of the activist researcher who discerns colonial effects, interrogates normative thought and practice, and designs alternatives that are commensurate with Indigenous worldviews through interpersonal experience, technical expertise, policy and governance, and metaphysical understanding.

The Praxis of Indigenous Digital Studies At present, a fair amount of Indigenous Internet researchers are producing work that parallels popular Internet research approaches: technical design projects, user studies, network/system analyses, and conceptual/philosophical framings—but from an Indigenous research paradigm (Carlson 2017; Deschine Parkhurst 2017; Dreher et al. 2016; Latimore et al. 2017, LaPensee 2014; Vigil et al. 2015; Waitoa et al. 2015). Investigating uses of social media from an

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Indigenous research paradigm means that researchers typically consider political, social, geographic, linguistic, historical, economic, and technological conditions as integral forces shaping Indigeneity as a political status (Duarte 2017). Indigenous peoples’ orchestrations of digital assemblages are at once evidence for both the exigency and material expressions of Indigeneity. For example, while a researcher may presume that an Indigenous people’s well-populated Facebook group is evidence of progressing economic development through increased access to mobile devices, the Indigenous researcher will also note how individuals in that same group post regularly about enduring police brutality. The challenge is multi-fold: intellectual and epistemic, assumptions about structural violence, the liberatory potential of digital media, and what it means to be Indigenous. Attempting to research Indigenous peoples’ uses of social media outside of this paradigm erroneously renders Indigenous peoples as ethnic minorities of more perfect nation-states, or, narrowly, as users operating under anomalous or exceptional conditions. Both of these depictions are conceptually violent and reproduce epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007; Medina 2012). Understanding how large-scale sociotechnical infrastructures intersect and interoperate to allow for the productive transmission of data in colonial contexts substantiates theories of the social and political mechanisms of coloniality, and provides the grounds for understanding the realistic conditions of decoloniality. Thus while there is evidence that groups of Indigenous peoples in different countries utilize social media and digital infrastructures to support their social and political goals, more work needs to be done to investigate the relationships afforded by and impacts of those sociotechnical assemblages in light of the political rights and quality-of-life of Indigenous peoples. As Dreher et al. (2016) note, despite the occasional embrace of the politics of Indigenous recognition by nation-states, there remains the failure to structurally sustain the “architectures of listening” that make recognition worthwhile. The Indigenous Internet researcher must learn to appreciate and characterize the depth of the ecology shaping Indigenous digital assemblages beyond visual representation (Gorzelak et al. 2015), akin to the ecologist who researches fungal communication systems at the roots of mother trees. Indigenous activist researchers ask questions such as: How do Indigenous rights advocates utilize social media, and to what end? What technical affordances do certain kinds of social media offer to Indigenous peoples? How can systems that enable the political and social mobilization of autonomous Indigenous peoples be made? How do the politics of social media platforms interface with the daily experiences of Indigenous peoples? How

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does the circulation of content through available channels relate to the effectiveness of Indigenous messaging? What distinguishes Indigenous peoples’ uses of social media from non-Indigenous uses of social media? How does transmitting digital data about Indigeneity relate to being Indigenous? Layered tacitly beneath these lines of inquiry lies the researcher’s hopes and strategies for ensuring that accessible digital media will allow Indigenous peoples to spread awareness and gain public support for the just nature of their causes. Furthermore, the goal is to identify and establish digital relational best practices that can guide global societal technological practices and ethics, as practitioners weave increasingly complex webs connecting the virtual and the real, the human and the artificial, the free and the secure, and on- and offline.

Tracing the Twitter Content of Native American Activists In the winter of 2016, our team of Internet researchers was faced with three intertwined Indigenous intellectual challenges. The first was to address criticism of a grant proposal that was designed to discern the technical capacity of FM radio waves to transmit Internet data through sovereign Indian land (in the United States). Reviewers of the grant proposal characterized the augmentation of existing telecommunications infrastructures and resources as inadequately innovative; instead, they encouraged a research agenda that emphasized the deployment of brand new technology and infrastructure. Due to colonial economic development policies, however, many Indigenous communities cannot easily afford to invest in brand new large-scale infrastructure and technologies, hence the search for innovative modification of existing infrastructure. Moreover, research funders often discount this type of work due to the statistical insignificance of the Native American population size within the context of the broader US population. The second intellectual challenge was to conceptualize the cumulative effects of Native American activist uses of social media after working in activist circles and qualitatively researching the digital tactics of one particular social movement. After focusing extensively on large-scale digital infrastructure studies, a third researcher attempted to conceptualize the relationship between connective action and the technical requirements of social media networks. Together the team designed a study that would provide evidence to address each line of inquiry. All three researchers were motivated to find evidence 1) of the relationship between political participation, social media, and bandwidth; 2) to support technical network innovation in Indian Country; and 3) to quantify Indigenous connective informational practices using pre-existing platforms and infrastructures.

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Methodology: Situational Indigenous Internet Research The team conducted a mixed-methods social network analysis of a small sample (n = 33) of Native American activist uses of Twitter from 11 February to 31 March 2016, paying specific attention to the political content circulating through the sample dataset, the network characteristics shaped by hashtags and affinity groups, and the bandwidth characteristics of the content propagated within the sample dataset. In spring 2016, the US presidential race was marked by increasingly extremist rhetoric from the Trump campaign, socialist solutions from the Sanders campaign, and a neoliberal democratic line from the Clinton campaign. Our team analyzed social media as a critical micro-media channel for disseminating news among Native American social groups, particularly in the absence of accessible structural means of political participation within state and federal governments. The researchers thus conceptualized Indigenous political messaging via Twitter as evidence of digital political participation by a structurally marginalized social group. The team asked three research questions: 1) What political content do Native American advocates share on Twitter? 2) What are the network characteristics of sub-communities present within the Native American advocates dataset? 3) In light of bandwidth restrictions in Indian Country, what are the bandwidth characteristics of content propagated by and from Native American advocates? While the immediate objectives of the research were to collect quantitative and qualitative data to inform Internet infrastructural innovation in low-resource reservation environments, a parallel goal was to produce conceptual evidence of the materiality of Native American activism and political participation through digital means. Additionally, cognizant of the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) preference for projects rooted in evidence-based practice, and the need for evidence to support policy-making, the project was designed with the culture of the NSF and the broadband regulatory mechanisms of the US Federal Communications Commission in mind. The research team thus entered the project attuned to the concept of research as political, tactical, strategic, and oriented toward changing the mindsets of gatekeepers within a colonial environment. Data Collection For the first round of data collection, the team reviewed their own social media accounts to identify the top hashtags and user accounts they follow for updates

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about Indigenous politics and rights work. They also consulted within their own personal networks, asking fifteen reputable Indigenous rights advocates to list the top Indigenous-rights-focused Twitter and Facebook accounts they follow. The resulting list was narrowed to 33 Twitter user accounts and 45 hashtags. From 11 February to 31 March 2016, the team queried the Twitter Streaming API with the list of 33 user accounts and 45 hashtags. The query yielded 5,172 unique tweets created by 2,086 content creators, and 5,930 retweets propagated by 5,019 users, resulting in a total of 11,102 tweets. For purposes of comparison, a random 1% sample of US tweets was collected through the same dates. Both samples were filtered to yield content relating to political matters based on terms relating to the US presidential race, rights, and advocacy. Data Analysis The team employed a four-stage process for analyzing the data. The first stage consisted of loosely categorizing topics emerging from random samples of the Native American advocates dataset. The second stage consisted of assessing media richness, which included measuring the size of content per tweet and trends in the photos, videos, and links associated with tweets. The third stage consisted of applying social network analytic methods, including hashtag- centric ego networks,1 descriptive statistics, sequence analysis, and cluster analysis to discern the top trending hashtags and actors, relationships, and dynamics between ego networks and characteristics shaping the propagation of content through the sample set. The fourth stage of analysis consisted of interpreting the findings through the lenses of connective action and media richness,2 as well as through a sociological understanding of factors and conditions shaping the Internet infrastructural and social media landscape in Indian Country (Bennett and Segerberg 2013; Daft 1984).

1 Ego networks represent a neighbourhood, wherein the ego node is the focal vertex and neighbours are vertices that form edges with the ego node. For hashtag-centric ego networks, social media hashtags function as the ego nodes and Twitter users function as the neighbours. When examined in aggregate, our data can be represented as a bipartite graph (where hashtags form one set of nodes and users form the other set); however, for ease of temporal analysis, we rely upon the ego network representation. 2 Connective action refers to the ability of actors who may not know each other face-to-face to communicate and articulate a coherent political vision and goals as well as a set of actions to achieve those goals through the affordances of social media networks rather than through purely social face-to-face means or through the affordances of brick-and-mortar institutions. Media richness refers to the meaningful qualities and amounts of information circulating through an array of media channels. In the field of information systems, media richness offers a means by which to assess the relative weight of meaningful packets of information, in this case bytes flowing through digital channels.

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Findings: Life-and-Death Issues, Strategic Hashtags, and Need for Greater Bandwidth Each stage of analysis produced results that addressed the research questions from both technical and social perspectives. Read in complementary fashion, the findings reveal how during an integral moment in US political agenda- setting, Native American advocates—such as journalists, bloggers, academics, activists, educators, and writers—were disseminating critical news about violations of human rights, civil rights, sovereign tribal rights, and the environment, alongside consciousness-raising messaging about the status of Native American and Indigenous peoples. This messaging was circulating through affiliated issue groups comprised of Twitter user accounts via tweet/retweet functions and the deliberate application of hashtags with conscientious use of photos and links to videos, indicating reliance on multiple interoperable platforms such as YouTube and web browsers. The size of the content, and rates of content propagation, indicated the minimum bandwidth and technical system affordances required for such activity to continue among that sample set of users. From 11 February to 31 March 2016, Native American advocates tweeted political content relating to life-and-death issues in Indigenous contexts more often than updates about the 2016 US presidential election. The Native American advocates sample dataset consisted of 11,102 tweets, and included 2,885 distinct hashtags. The top ten most tweeted hashtags were, in descending order, #indigenous; #mmiw (an abbreviation for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women); #tairp (an abbreviation for the American Indian Red Power movement); #nativelivesmatter (which is a movement that parallels the Black Lives Matter movement, and raises awareness of police brutality); #nativeamerican; #idlenomore; #ndn (which is a colloquial abbreviation of Indian); #hiring; #colonialism; and #cdnpoli (which refers to Canadian politics). Only one of these hashtags, #hiring, appeared to emerge from an automated content aggregator. Out of 11,102 tweets, #indigenous appeared in 2,303 original tweets and in 3,042 retweets, and was applied by 2,839 users. The second most propagated hashtag was #mmiw, which appeared in 607 original tweets and in 1,054 retweets, and was applied by 1,031 users. Out of the top ten hashtags, five capture the politically exigent status of Native American and Indigenous peoples: #mmiw, #nativelivesmatter, #idlenomore, #colonialism, and #cdnpoli. 55% of the tweets in the Native American advocates dataset referred to matters of Indigenous identity and 32% referred to matters pertaining to civil rights, while in the random 1% general population dataset only 22% of tweets referred to matters of identity, and mostly

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referenced celebrities. None of the top 100 hashtags in the random 1% general Twitter dataset referred to civil rights issues. Additionally, comparative statistical analysis of the top 100 most mentioned user accounts associated with political action revealed compelling differences between the Native American advocates dataset and the random 1% general population dataset. The top ten user accounts associated with political action within the Native American advocates dataset were, in descending order: @POTUS, @BernieSanders, @zhaabowekwe, @HillaryClinton, @goldmanprize, @indiancountry, @SenSanders, @BarackObama, @WinonaLaduke, and @realDonaldTrump. Comparatively, the top ten user accounts associated with political action within the random 1% general population dataset were, in descending order: @realDonaldTrump, @tedcruz, @HillaryClinton, @BernieSanders, @marcorubio, @FoxNews, @POTUS, @YouTube, @CNN, and @JonKasich. The comparison of the distinct datasets is not intended to create a dichotomous relationship between Native American advocates and a presumed mainstream US population, but rather, reveals the distinctiveness of the issues as these discursively emerge through sub- communities of Twitter users who advocate and raise awareness of matters affecting Indian Country. The fact that half of the top ten hashtags circulating through the Native American advocates dataset during the spring 2016 US presidential campaign relate to basic civil rights, police brutality, the sovereign rights of tribes, and missing and murdered Indigenous women reveals the divergence between the platforms of the US presidential candidates and the needs of Native American and Indigenous peoples. From 11 February to 31 March 2016, distinct sub-communities of Native American advocates disseminated a range of content through common frequent use of #indigenous. Cluster analysis3 (Louvain method4 using the Jaccard similarity index5 as a distance metric) of hashtag-centric (egocentric) networks within the Native American dataset revealed trends in the propagation of certain sets of hashtags across distinct yet affiliated topical sub-communities. For example, one of the largest topical sub-communities consisted of approximately 591 actors within the sample timeframe, and was characterized by user affiliation through the hashtags #tairp, #freeleonardpeltier, and #indigenous.

3A methodological approach used by network scientists to group individual data points with similar data points, forming clusters within a dataset. 4 A method used for community detection in a larger network structure. 5 An index used to determine how similar two sets of objects are with respect to set membership. In our analysis, we compare sets of actors that are part of each hashtag-centric network.

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Meanwhile, a distinct neighboring large topical sub-community consisted of approximately 183 actors within the sample timeframe, and was characterized by user affiliation through circulation of the hashtags #mmiw, #idlenomore, #cdnpoli, and #turtleisland. Yet another neighboring topical sub-community consisted of approximately 96 stable actors within the same timeframe and was characterized by circulation of the hashtags #nativelivesmatter and #blacklivesmatter. Comparison of these three distinct neighboring topical sub- communities shows how stable user accounts—or actors—tweet and retweet certain sets of hashtags through distinct issue groups, which manifest as topical sub-communities in a social graph of a Twitter dataset. The persistence of actor engagement around individual hashtags and sets of hashtags reifies the affiliation occurring between different issue groups using Twitter to disseminate information. In that sense, tweeting and retweeting certain hashtags and following and referencing associated sets of user accounts heightens the propensity of consolidating issue groups through Twitter. A comparison of the three abovementioned topical sub-communities reveals slight differences in perspectives in North American Indigenous politics, with the largest group shaped by discourse and issues shaping the American Indian Movement (AIM), the second largest group shaped by an apparent First Nations focus,6 and the latter group, Native Lives Matter, influenced by the discourse of Black Lives Matter (BLM). From a social scientific perspective, what binds AIM, First Nations issues, and Native Lives Matter is the political status of Indigenous peoples: Indigeneity. In the sample dataset comprised of tweets produced by Native American advocates, this is shown through the persistence and prevalence of the hashtag #indigenous across all of the topical sub-communities, where the hashtag #indigenous appears more frequently than any other hashtag, both on its own and in combination with other hashtags. For this research, persistence is characterized as the frequency of consecutive time segments—minutes, hours, and days—in which a hashtag appears after an original post. Hashtags that appear for minutes at a time after original posting are ephemeral. In this dataset, #wearebernie was the most persistent ephemeral hashtag. Hashtags that appear for hours at a time after original posting are event-driven. In this dataset, #mmiw was the most persistent event-driven hashtag; the research team hypothesized this may have

6 First Nations-focused tweets referred overtly to Canadian politics; First Nations tribes, reserves, or communities; and/or social movements or issues emerging from specific First Nations experiences as opposed to social movements or issues emerging from specific Native American (US) experiences.

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been due to a planned grassroots MMIW event. Hashtags that appear for days at a time after original posting are pervasive, and #indigenous is the most persistent pervasive hashtag. Finally, prevalence measures the frequency of days hashtags persist relative to all other time segments. For the Native American advocates dataset, #indigenous, #nativeamerican, #tairp, #mmiw, and #jobs were the most prevalent. Out of these five, #jobs is the only one that appeared to emerge from an automated content aggregator. Interpreting these measures of content circulation against the topical sub-communities, it is possible to ascertain the function of #indigenous—and to a slightly lesser but still important extent, #nativeamerican, #tairp, and #mmiw—as a technical boundary spanner linking distinct issue groups. From a social scientific perspective, this finding indicates the discursive strength of the concept of Indigeneity insofar as it works through a sample of the Twitter digital sphere in this particular historical moment. From 11 February to 31 March 2016, Native American advocates were more likely to tweet and retweet content with photos, indicating a demand for high- speed bandwidth in the context of Native American political uses of Twitter. A major motivation of this research was to obtain a realistic sample of uses of a commonly available social media platform—Twitter, in this case—that could be used to deduce characteristics of the size in bytes and content in file types that Native American advocates might rely on for distributing critical news and updates relevant to Indian Country. Our approach to understanding bandwidth demand entailed mining our collected tweets for the presence of embedded and hyperlinked media. Of the 5,172 unique tweets we observed in the Native American advocates dataset, 1.7% contained embedded video content, 35.8% contained embedded photo content, and 62.5% did not contain any embedded content. Per Daft and Lengel’s (1984) definition, we consider tweets with embedded media to be richer7 than those that lack embedded media. Moreover, we consider tweets with embedded videos or GIFs to be richer than tweets with embedded photos based on the fact that such media offers the “simultaneous transmission of multiple information cues” (Lengel and Daft 1984). Similarly, we consider tweets with embedded videos to be richer than tweets with embedded GIFs, as the audio component lends the expression of a greater “variety of languages” (Lengel and Daft 1984). Critically, we examined the relationship between embedded media and content propagation. We based our comparisons on our collected tweets that

7 Containing more information via larger media files.

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contained embedded content, and those that did not contain embedded content, using two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests.8 Overall, we observed that 66% of tweets with embedded media received at least one retweet while only 41% of tweets without embedded media were retweeted at least once. Additionally, we found that tweets with embedded media (photo or video) received higher levels of user engagement (p < 2 × 10−16 ); on average, tweets with embedded media reached 2.6 users and tweets without embedded media only reached 1.8 users. Similar to our analysis of hashtags present in the dataset, we also examined the prevalence of tweets with embedded media, where prevalence is the percentage of days between 11 February and 31 March 2016 in which the tweet appeared. When examining the prevalence of tweets containing embedded media, we found no significant difference between tweets with and without embedded media. However, we noted that 7 of the top 10 most prevalent tweets contained embedded media. As with the hashtags, we measured churn of specific tweets using the persistence metric at the scale of minutes, hours, days, and weeks. Most tweets did not exhibit persistence at any scale. We found that only 1.8% of all tweets were persistent on the scale of days (i.e., “recurrent”), and of these 66% contained embedded media (of which all but one were photos). Moreover, when analyzing the 0.4% of tweets that are persistent on a week-long scale, we found that 85% contained embedded media. A pernicious lack of communications infrastructure in Indian Country prevents Native Americans in these communities from fully engaging with political discourse that increasingly takes place on media-rich platforms (Baldy 2016; Waitoa et al. 2015). Our results demonstrate that the content richest in media is the content that reaches the largest audiences and is the most enduring in Native American advocates’ political conversations on Twitter. In particular, our investigation into circulation with respect to tweets’ persistence and prevalence further highlights the value of embedded photos. Overall, our findings with respect to embedded media agree with Daft and Lengel’s (1984) assertion that some media are superior to others for communicating information (as measured by propagation and circulation metrics), but it also demonstrates that there are limits to the benefits of increasing media richness—namely, the cost of resources required to support richer media might make “less rich” media a more appropriate communication tool. For instance, only 1.1% of the most persistent tweets in the Native American advocates dataset contain video, whereas 65% of the most persistent tweets contain a photo. While Native American advocates may not consciously craft and propagate content with

8 The two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test compares the statistical similarity between the distributions of two samples.

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bandwidth requirements in mind, the fact that limitations of the underlying IP network may impact information diffusion across the relatively bandwidth-light Twitter platform is worth consideration, particularly if the desired audience for content is connecting from areas with limited ICT infrastructure (Tufekci 2014). While the team was unable to discern precise geographic locations of types of content creation—such as, for example, mobile uploads in Chicago— this snapshot of the richness of the media types that Native American advocates circulate through Twitter can nevertheless be understood within the technical landscape of US reservations, and remote, rural, and urban communities in which Indigenous peoples reside. The implications of these findings suggest that without accessible bandwidth, social media platforms, devices, and social media savvy, Native American advocates may not have the capacity to distribute content about Native American and Indigenous issues in the midst of mass media focus on mainstream American agenda-setting and political campaigns.

Discussion: Demystifying Digital Affordances for Indigenous Goals One of the most challenging aspects of activist research has to do with summarizing conceptually rich findings through a single evocative story that compels people—and especially policy-makers—to make the structural changes that will alleviate systemic social inequity. For Indigenous Internet researchers, weaving praxis into our research occurs in at least four ways. This particular study inspires renewed understanding of the field and practice of Indigenous Internet studies at the levels of experience, technique, policy and government, and at the level of ontology, or metaphysics. 1. At the level of experience It is important to note that a major motivation for this research was the experience of researchers enduring marginalization not only in the academy but also as people advocating for Native American rights in everyday life. Combining doctoral-level research experience with a keen understanding of the technical aspects of social media specifications and uses, and grassroots organizing by and for Native and Indigenous peoples, introduces a level of nuance into both the accompanying research and activism. Erica Violet Lee (Nēhiyaw/Cree) writes about surviving “wastelands”—harsh environments wherein Indigenous peoples and lands become marginalized within the constraints of industrial infrastructure:

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We deserve things written for us, and written by us. We deserve to know our medicines and our laws, but this place is not any utopia, so we grow our medicines from the cracks in concrete sidewalks or in between railroad tracks. We have to dig our laws out from underneath gravel logging roads and tend to our worlds in contaminated fields. (Lee 2016, n.p.) Finding the data to conduct this research study required just such digging. Each member of the research team moved beyond the assumption that ‘everything can be found on the Internet’ and reached out to their personal networks. Those networks consisted of Native and Indigenous individuals who likewise have spent years cultivating personal relationships with other Native and Indigenous advocates, and who relate through a positive change-oriented mentality in spite of living in a ‘contaminated’ colonized life-world. Indeed a fourth research team member who later joined the team to assist with statistical and network analysis noted early on how without the ability to tap into personal networks it would be challenging to identify hashtags and user accounts that would yield the essential data. Similarly, the construction of the political context and the literature framing the research questions very much required an inherently Indigenous interpretation of known relevant studies and historical explanations. In this sense, designing and conducting Indigenous Internet research is still very much tied to the experience of being Indigenous while being digitally connected. The investigation and interpretation of Native and Indigenous digital spheres and experiences becomes not about setting up false binaries between nature and machine, or spirituality and technology, but rather becomes about understanding how Native and Indigenous peoples move their political and social efforts through media that rely on digital infrastructure. The medicine in the work—and by medicine we refer to the physical, social, emotional, intellectual, and metaphysical means by which Indigenous peoples heal themselves, lands and waters, and others—is in the broader praxis-based impacts of the research findings. 2. At the level of technique A decolonizing and/or Indigenous approach to Internet studies requires a technical understanding of what the Internet is made of, how digital systems work, and the discourses and methods characterizing the fields and sub-fields that shape computing and digital media. By its nature, Indigenous work requires that activist researchers contribute to Indigenous ways of life. This occurs

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through conscientious methodological design, preparation and dissemination of findings, advocacy work, and other forms of creative expression. On many different occasions the research team reflected on their own Internet-based practices, and renewed commitments to lines of inquiry, personal practices, and ethical commitments. After the conclusion of this study, one researcher began encouraging activists in her personal network to tag #indigenous and to attach photos as a way to spread messaging further within their various social media campaigns. In addition to her usual level of activism, another researcher began contributing more to her fashion blog, challenging stereotypes, and showing positive images of Native women. Two of the researchers have started planning projects to articulate these findings with regard to cybersecurity, information assurance, trust and privacy, and the technical requirements and digital literacy needed for citizen journalists, bloggers, students, educators, scholars, and writers to continue using social media platforms to disseminate critical updates in Indian Country. Due to the technical constraints shaping Indian Country, to advocate for Native and Indigenous rights through social media is to advocate for digital media communication, which leads to advocating for and learning techniques for the construction of stable and secure infrastructure. 3. For policy and governmental consideration After the research team completed the final analysis, a number of events profoundly shaped Internet and telecommunications policy and research as well as activism in Indian Country. These included: 1) the November 2016 election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States; 2) Russian hacking of multiple US data-sharing infrastructures—including social media platforms—for the purpose of destabilizing US electoral processes; and 3) the September–December 2016 militarized corporate and government attacks on Native American activists, journalists, and elders protesting the illegally constructed Dakota Access Pipeline. Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, TigerSwan, and other associated government and security firms were actively surveilling NoDAPL activists and their allies via social media, and possibly through the use of cell tower-mimicking devices around the sovereign lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (Brown et al. 2017). Government surveillance of marginalized populations has long-term structural and social effects. On September 1, 2017, a Whatcom County Superior Court judge granted the Whatcom County Prosecutor and the Department of Justice a warrant to search a Bellingham NoDAPL Facebook group, which, due to the expected undefined amalgamation of an unknown

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amount of personal data gleaned from the individual accounts associated with a Facebook group, is expected to affect the privacy rights and civil rights of the approximately 1,700 members of the group (Last Real Indians 2017; Relyea 2017). The outcome of the case may establish precedent for the courts to grant law enforcement searches of loosely affiliated groups of social media users allegedly engaged in acts of civil disobedience, and depending on the amalgamation and presentation of the data, may also grant law enforcement and attorneys with the capacity to collect ephemeral and potentially unreliable and unverifiable social media data in the construction of a case against potential defendants. As these examples, and indeed our own research demonstrates, with just a bit of technical data it is possible to identify associations between user accounts. But how will this data be used or abused? This study occurs in a historical moment when governments themselves use social media to advance policies, spread fear, and to characterize and define terror groups; when corporate social media giants apply consumer-friendly formulas to control— and in some cases block—the flow of user-generated information; and when massive data breaches challenge all levels of government, including tribal governments (Dreyfus 2016; Roberts 2016; Schwirtz and Goldstein 2017). The social, political, and technological stakes for Indigenous Internet research are grounded within particular politico-historical moments. The quality and epistemic truth-value of the work lies in the capacity of researchers to discern the struggles, infrastructures, practices, and conditions of justice— social, relational, political, and juridical—shaping Indigeneity. Situating the work in a contemporary milieu, while being Indigenous and being digitally connected, imbues the work with a quality of credibility in speaking truth to power. In this case, the research team recognized both the relative vulnerability of Native American rights advocates of all backgrounds as well as the need to strengthen more robust technical Internet infrastructure and secure data environments for marginalized peoples. Because Internet infrastructures, social media platforms, and digital devices are complex, the solutions must be both through technical, as well as policy work and education. 4. For metaphysical consideration Meanwhile, in Native and Indigenous studies, the combination of concepts of relationality and a poststructuralist approach to human and nonhuman relationships are allowing researchers to rethink ontological orderings of various Indigenous life-worlds. (Tallbear 2017; Watts 2013) At an ontological level, the utterance—in this case the tweet—is meaningful due to the actionable capacity—the potentiality—it co-creates among all beings that experience its existence, from machine-readable systems to civil rights attorneys.

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From the perspective of social theory, it is surprising to see the work that a hashtag—#indigenous—is doing in binding together political issue groups through Twitter. But as Indigenous thinkers who, as Lee (2016) characterizes, “grow our medicines from the cracks,” the understanding that a hashtag affords responsive actionable communication between diverse land and water defenders points to a mutual experience—a shared language of the senses—cohering and emerging among diverse geographically widespread actively-decolonizing peoples. From a social scientific perspective, more studies are needed to trace the rhetoric and connective action of loosely affiliated converging and diverging Indigenous issue groups emerging by means of social media platforms. Yet with regard to praxis, what this means is that to construct decolonizing technologies, an Indigenous person must also deeply understand the relationality around them—the energetic and actionable qualities among animate and inanimate beings—and how that ecology co- constitutes humanity and belonging. Decolonizing technologies must likewise be co-created, and bring forth a particular pace and rhythm of life—in particular, one that restores dignity in spite of the absence of “architectures of listening” (Dreher et al. 2016). Of course, not all decolonizing technologies are necessarily digital. Many are pressed into clay, planted in the earth, or are enacted in private ceremonies. But they are all structures that Indigenous peoples can safely live by and through. What decolonizing technologies have in common is that they afford dimensions of human utterances, and those utterances define the justice of relationality in spite of the persistence of colonialism.

Conclusion Though Indigenous Internet research is enacted through technological praxis, it is also grounded by distinct ontological orderings of Indigenous life-worlds, rooted as they are in the sacred homelands and waterways. Creating digital technologies in situ requires a keen understanding of the social, historical, and technical constraints shaping Indigenous demand for useful and effective digital systems. While the results of a 2016 assessment of Native American activist uses of Twitter provide data that can be used to improve user experience and enhance technical networks, a decolonial interpretation of the results, and of the study as a whole, reveals the levels of intellectual labour through which Indigenous digital praxis occurs. As a mode of resistance, Indigenous Internet research and praxis is in phases scientific, experiential, technical, governmental, political, and metaphysical. Above all, it is oriented toward an interrogation of

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brutality, and aims to shape a healthier quality-of-life for Native American and global Indigenous peoples.

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Works Cited Baldy, C. 2016. “The New Native Intellectualism: #ElizabethCook-Lynn, Social Media Movements and the Millennial Native American Studies Scholar.” Wicazo Sa Review 31 (1): 90–110. Bennett, L. and Segerberg, W. 2013. The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, A., Parrish, W., and Sperri, A. 2017. “Leaked Documents Reveal Counter-Terrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to ‘Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies.’” The Intercept, 27 May. https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security- firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline- insurgencies/. Accessed 20 September 2017. Carlson, B., et al. 2017. “Trauma, Shared Recognition, and Indigenous Resistance on Social Media.” Australasian Journal of Information Systems 21: 1–18. http://journal.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/1570/775. Accessed 26 December 2017. Daft, R., and Lengel, R. 1984. “Information Richness: A New Approach to Manager Information Processing and Organisational Design.” In Research in Organizational Behavior 6, ed. Cummings, L. & Staw, B. (pp. 191–233). Homewood, IL: JAI Press. Deschine Parkhurst, N. 2017. “Protecting Oak Flat: Narratives of Survivance as Observed through Digital Activism.” Australasian Journal of Information Systems 21: 1–18. http://journal.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/1567/774. Accessed 26 December 2017. Dreher, T., McCallum, K., and Waller, L. 2016. “Indigenous Voices and Mediatized Policy-making in the Digital Age.” Information, Communication, and Society 19 (1): 23–39. Dreyfuss, E. 2016. “As Standing Rock Protestors Face Down Armored Trucks, the World Watches on Facebook.” Wired, 27 October. https://www.wired.com/2016/10/standing-rock-protesters-face-police- world-watches-facebook/ Accessed 16 December 2017. Duarte, M. 2017. “Connected Activism: Indigenous Uses of Social Media for Shaping Political Change.” Australasian Journal of Information Systems

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21: 1–12. http://journal.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/1525/769. Accessed 26 December 2017. Fricker, M. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Ethics and the Power of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gorzelak, M., Pickles, B., Asay, A., and Simard, S. 2015. “Inter-plant Communication Through Mycorrhizal Networks Mediates Complex Adaptive Behavior in Plant Communities.” Annals of Botany Plants 7: plv050. Latimore, J. et al. 2017. “Reassembling the Indigenous Public Sphere.” Australasian Journal of Information Systems 21: 1–15. http://journal.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/1529/773. Accessed 26 December 2017. LaPensee, E. 2014. Survivance: An Indigenous Social Impact Game. PhD thesis. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Last Real Indians. 2017. “Warrant Granted Against NoDAPL Facebook Page is Anti-Indigenous.” Last Real Indians, 30 August. http://lastrealindians.com/warrant-granted-against-nodapl-water- protector-facebook-page-is-anti-indigenous/. Accessed 20 September 2017. Lee, E. 2016. “In Defence of the Wastelands: A Survival Guide,” Guts Magazine 7, http://gutsmagazine.ca/wastelands/. Lengel, R., and Daft, R. 1984. An Exploratory Analysis of the Relationship Between Media Richness and Managerial Information Processing. Organizations as Information Processing Systems. Technical Report, US Office of Naval Research. Department of Management, Texas A&M University, 1984. Medina, J. 2012. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Relyea, K. 2017. “Judge Upholds Warrant to Search Bellingham #NoDAPL Facebook Page.” The Bellingham Herald, 31 August. http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article170359632.html. Accessed 20 September 2017. Roberts, S. 2016. “Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborer’s Dirty Work.” In The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, and Culture

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Online, ed. Noble, S.J. and Tynes, B. (pp. 146–160). New York: Peter Lang. Schwirtz, M., and Goldstein, J. 2017. “Russian Espionage Piggybacks on a Cybercriminal’s Hacking.” New York Times, 12 March. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/world/europe/russia-hacker- evgeniy-bogachev.html. Accessed 20 September 2017. Tallbear, K. 2017. “Beyond the Life/Not Life Binary: A Feminist-Indigenous Reading of Cryopreservation, Interspecies Thinking and the New Materialisms.” In Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World, eds. Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tufekci, Z. 2014. “Big Questions for Social Media Big Data: Representativeness, Validity and Other Methodological Pitfalls.” In ICWSM ’14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, May 2014, Ann Arbor, MI. https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM14/paper/viewFile/ 8062/8151. Vigil, M., Rantanen, M., and Belding, E. 2015. “A First Look at Tribal Web Traffic.” Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on the World Wide Web 2015, 18–22 May 2015, Florence, Italy. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2736277.2741645. Waitoa, J., Scheyvens, R., and Warren, T. 2015. “E-Whanaungatanga: The Role of Social Media in Maori Political Empowerment.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 11 (1): 45–58. Watts, V. 2013. “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go On a European World Tour!),” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 2 (1): 20– 33.

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“WHO WE ARE NOW”: IÑUPIAQ YOUTH ON THE ICE

JOANNA HEARNE

Introduction Cinema from the Arctic has been at the forefront of the global rise of Indigenous filmmaking. Many of these feature films—such as Atanarjuat, the Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Ofelas, and the Kautokeino Rebellion—are either set in a pre-contact past or address conflicts and resistance efforts stemming from earlier periods of colonization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presenting challenges of and to traditional subsistence systems, cultural and spiritual practices, or political rights. Like other exemplars of Arctic cinema, Iñupiaq director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s first feature film, On the Ice, tells a story that originates in the community where it was shot, but it also expands this small canon in several ways.1 MacLean’s English-language film focuses on the lives of present-day youth, sharing with other Indigenous new wave films—Smoke Signals, Four Sheets to the Wind, Boy and Rhymes for Young Ghouls, among others—the uptake of Hollywood film genres (road films, comedies, science fiction) to tell Indigenous coming-of-age stories. As director MacLean said in an interview with Filmmaker magazine, “One of the stereotypes about Indigenous filmmaking is that you see many idealized versions of the past, and I wanted to do a film about who we are now.” To convey this sense of “who we are now,” MacLean’s Iñupiaq youth stage their

1 Of the ten or so feature-length dramas by Arctic Indigenous peoples in distribution, the films of the Igloolik groups Isuma Productions and Arnait Video are the most widely available— Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner, 2001), The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006) and Before Tomorrow, (2009) all stream on Isuma.tv—followed by Sami filmmaker Nils Gaup’s Ofelas (Pathfinder, 1987) and The Kautokeino Rebellion (2007) and the filmmaking team Anastasia Lapsui (Nenets) and Markku Lehmuskallio’s Seitseman laulau tundralta (Seven Songs of the Tundra, 1999), and Jumalan Morisan (A Bride of the Seventh Heaven, 2004). These films share a range of aesthetic and production practices: fluidity between documentary and dramatic discursive modes; location shooting; use of nonprofessional actors; privileging of Indigenous languages; economic and aesthetic valuation of traditional subsistence hunting skills and crafts; and attention to traditional social organization as well as storytelling, song, and shamanic forms of spirituality.

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identities in a contemporary moment that is also embedded in generational time, shifting languages and codes as they interact with parents and grandparents, and explicitly weighing what traditional elements to carry forward in their future families. The film follows two close friends coping with their transitions to adulthood as well as an influx of methamphetamines in the small Iñupiaq community of Barrow, Alaska. As Qalli (Josiah Patkotak) prepares to leave for college with the support of a strict, stable family, his friend Aivaaq (Frank Qutuq Irelan), who lives with his alcoholic mother, plans to find a job (or possibly begin selling drugs to make money) after learning that his girlfriend may be pregnant. The teenagers decide to hunt seal on the spring sea ice with their friend James (John Miller), but when Qalli arrives to rendezvous with them he finds Aivaaq and James fighting and still high from the previous night’s party; he tries to intervene but accidentally kills James with Aivaaq’s hunting knife. Rather than bringing James’ body back to the community, they sink it and his snowmobile in the sea, and return to town claiming that James hit a patch of fog and fell through the ice. Although their story is believed, Qalli’s father Egasak (Teddy Kyle Smith), a member of Barrow Search & Rescue, continues to investigate and eventually finds their tracks and the body of their friend. MacLean explains that he “decided to tell a story that had very universal aspects. It’s a story that could happen anywhere: two boys get involved in a killing and cover-up. You could set that story in suburban New Jersey if you wanted to.” What makes On the Ice an Iñupiaq story and not a New Jersey story is that much of the film’s action, and much of its production, is specific to a landscape dominated by sea ice. Exploring MacLean’s filmmaking practices and the film text in relation to the film’s location on the ice—including local casting and the intergenerational blending of Iñupiaq culture and global influences—reveals the film’s relationship to broader issues in the field of Indigenous media production. Fourth Cinema films continue to occupy and decolonize First Cinema genre systems—not only Westerns but increasingly also genres such as gothic, vampire and zombie films, that have less often incorporated Indigenous images. By wielding First Cinema’s genre systems, MacLean adopts a system of stories that could be told anywhere (“you could set that story in suburban New Jersey if you wanted to”) but makes them unique to the Arctic climate and geography—unique to Arctic ice— and to Inuit knowledge. He describes the film in terms of his understanding of contemporary youth culture in the Arctic:

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I decided to make it about young people, because I think that the young people in the Arctic right now are going through the kind of change that’s analogous to what my grandfather’s generation was going through. It’s this last generation … who have never experienced the isolation of the Arctic, and presumably no generation ever will again … because of the internet. Everything is so connected, everything is so fast…. It’s a fundamental change. When I was growing up there … there was just a feeling of separation from the rest of the world that doesn’t quite exist anymore. And so what that does to the young people up there— it grants them so many more opportunities. It gives them a kind of power, it allows them to tap into the wider culture. But that also then ends up presenting a choice that you really have to define yourself a little bit more. You have to define yourself as an Inuit person, as an Iñupiaq person, if that’s what you want to do. It’s a much more conscious thing. (Hearne, Land, and MacLean, 206) On the Ice explores the stakes of this new and powerful youth self-definition in the context of both Arctic specificity and the “placelessness” of the internet, for if sea ice was the condition of isolation for northern peoples, that isolation is now an artifact of the pre-digital age, and the film reaches out to Indigenous youth by recognizing that this audience is as immersed in mainstream global popular culture as an audience in New Jersey. Yet rather than the cliché of Indigenous youth in stasis (“trapped between two worlds”), the film’s characters convey both agency and fluidity in their identity-making from multiple sources, using their generation’s mastery of snowmobiles and hip-hop as well as hunting to seek community validation. Much as the characters in On the Ice appropriate widely distributed urban rap music to express their Iñupiaq identities, MacLean himself engages established film genres (the thriller, the Western) in order to explore generational dynamics in the Arctic—some critics have called On the Ice “Arctic noir,” or “film blanc” (Means). These related threads—the representation of contemporary Indigenous youth and the translation of their moment to wider audiences, Fourth Cinema appropriation of First Cinema genre forms, and the specificity of potentially generic plot elements to the setting on Arctic sea ice—undergird an overarching concern with the continuation of Iñupiaq systems of knowledge.

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Inuit knowledge and Iñupiaq worldview in On the Ice In its focus on “who we are now,” On the Ice measures this generation’s negotiation of Indigenous knowledge and the intergenerational transmission of that knowledge amidst systemic incursions from colonizing forces. Mindful of the diversity of Arctic peoples, in this essay I follow Andrew MacLean’s use of “Iñupiaq” to refer to the western Arctic community in the area of Barrow (or Utqiaġvik) represented in On the Ice, while reaching more tentatively towards some wider contexts from Inuit peoples in the eastern Arctic. Rachel Qitsualik- Tinsley writes that the translation of “Inuit” is not simply “Humans” or “The People” as is sometimes assumed, but rather “The Living Ones Who Are Here.” While this more precise translation may evoke associations for Inuit who remember, through oral traditions, earlier “Tunit” Arctic cultures, it also underscores the sense of “here, now” in the reflexive work of Inuit designation. As Tad Lemieux has noted, “‘Who we are now’ is always an articulation of ‘Inuit.’” In her 2012 study of Inuit literature, Stories in a New Skin, Keavy Martin turns to a document outlining Inuit cultural concepts, the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (“IQ”) (“what Inuit have known for a very long time”), which was commissioned by the government of Nunavut, the largest of Canada’s three territories and the first Inuit majority territory, to guide the integration of Inuit values within the self-governing province. The IQ framework describes the quality of qanuqtuurniq, or “a quality of resourcefulness in problem-solving,” suggestive of resilience or plasticity; as Qitsualik-Tinsley asserts, “Inuit are the embodiment of adaptability itself” (qtd. in Martin 3, 8). The IQ report foregrounds a model of traditional Inuit conceptions of knowledge that already encodes systems for incorporating the new, because its very definition as knowledge entails the ability to adapt resourcefully to changed circumstances as a central value. While Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (“IQ”) is linguistically and culturally Inuit, built from the participation and knowledge of elders from the eastern Arctic (Nunavummiut communities), its articulation of a mode of Inuit knowledge—along with western Arctic Iñupiaq concepts—can begin to offer a broad scaffold for understanding the characters’ interactions with ice and with each other in On the Ice, and for thinking through the film’s Indigenization of American film genre forms. MacLean’s concern with the transmission and adaptation of Iñupiaq knowledge also engages “a core belief in the Iñupiat community called paalaqtautainniq, which roughly translates as ‘non-violence’ or ‘avoidance of

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conflict’” (“Andrew Okpeaha MacLean”). Beginning as early as the 1950s, MacLean says, all of a sudden the way we lived started to be more directly impacted by the larger society and things like Western models of justice became more relevant and became more present in the society…. There’s a concept in the Iñupiaq world view called paallaqtautainniq.… It’s like non-violence but more to do with finding ways to resolve a situation that don’t create antagonism…. And I think that was at the heart of what had been the model of justice, what had been the model of the way community works out these sorts of things. I was comparing that with the Western model, which is a much more antagonistic one. You know, somebody commits a crime, uses force in a criminal way, and so the response is to use force against them, to forcibly imprison, even forcibly kill somebody. (Hearne, Land, and MacLean, 204–205) The setting of the film, in Barrow and on the ice, contextualizes the importance of these differing knowledges as they are manifested by hunting skills and forms of performativity. These Inuit and Iñupiaq value systems privileging adaptability and nonviolence saturate On the Ice’s structural movements between interior shots of group performances and outdoor action sequences on the ice. The film’s engagement with the thriller and Western genres is especially important in this regard, because the suspense of concealment and detection hinges on the differing horizons of each character’s local knowledge and that of the audience. On the Ice is concerned with the transmission of knowledge in these different ways: in the village, where characters establish degrees of traditionality and demonstrate the adoption of new cultural systems through performances, social interactions, and closely watched relationships; on the ice, a place signifying both lawlessness and the discipline demanded by Iñupiaq territorial environment; and in the production of the film itself, where the filmmakers and actors had to have working knowledge of the Arctic and Iñupiaq systems in order to make the film, yet also acquired and shared new filmmaking skills with community members. While hunting and the violence that displaces it occur on the ice, three community performance scenes—the opening scene of a traditional dance and drumming event, spontaneous rapping at a house party, and a singspiration (an informal memorial service or wake)—take place in town and integrate the youth more deeply into their community. In contrast to these public performances, watched by all, action on the ice that takes place out in the open

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is physically hidden from community view (yet simultaneously suffused with the very community presence made visible in the scenes of performance). The lead characters’ occupation of these different spaces—and the deep intergenerational reverberations in the community in response to events on the ice—reveal transformed social relations in the new Arctic.

In Barrow One current manifestation of Indigenous adaptability—and in On the Ice, a specifically Iñupiaq way becoming “who we are now”—is the widespread immersion in the remix culture of hip-hop. For Mark Lanctot, curator at the Montréal, Québec museum where the Indigenous hip-hop art show Beat Nation was recently a featured exhibit, Aboriginal culture is “always changing, always takes from other cultures” while “the idea behind hip-hop is the idea of a mix” (Sommerstein). Artist SCZ attributes to Indigenous remixing the power to “disorient the logic of coloniality”: “Indigenous mobilizations of technology” recognize the historical connections among Indigenous and diasporic peoples through “sampling (reclaiming sonic pasts), remixing (renaming to create new meaning) and redistributing (reoccupying sonic spaces).” For scholar and DJ Mark V. Campbell, hip-hop provides the “lingua franca” or “common grammar” needed for intersectional conversation in public space—the art of the mix teaches us “how we might live with social difference,” “bringing into relation that which is sold to us as distinctly different, separate and unrelated.” Sonic “mixes” challenge genre systems—systems based on marketing the distinctions of “kinds”—by recombining categories. Northern adaptability— manifested as “remix”—is on display in many of the village scenes in On the Ice, and although the teenagers seem to feel a tension between the confrontational aesthetics of some hip-hop and paalaqtautainniq, the underlying discourses of law and lawlessness are also articulated to the specificities of Indigenous knowledge and justice systems. Arguments over music and lyrics divide the young men (argumentativeness already indicating a non-Iñupiaq form of knowledge or world-making), yet the characters also integrate the local by referring constantly to their environment—snow, northern lights—in their own rhymes. On the Ice observes the integration of hip-hop in northern communities by juxtaposing two scenes of music and dance performance early in the film— scenes which illustrate the way young people are faced with choices, yet also able to “remix” across shared colonial contexts in ways that are often synergetic. The first scene—just after the first establishing shots of Barrow— depicts a large gathering involving Iñupiaq drumming, song, and dance in a

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brightly lit community space, with participants wearing traditional dress including purple cotton parkas, skin boots and mittens. A series of medium shots depict the row of drummers, and the men dancing. Qalli and Aivaaq leave the drum line to perform, displaying their traditional dance skills to enthusiastic applause. Immediately after this series of evocative shots of the dance, viewers are re-introduced to the characters in their ordinary clothes, as they exchange news, plans, insults and rap rhymes. They mix English slang with Inuktut, calling one another “dude” and “Inuk,” bragging about selling “chronic” and catching natchiq (seal pup). Qalli and Aivaaq parse the new roles and relationships they expect to have once Aivaaq’s child is born; Aivaaq says “it’s about time I made my mom an aaka [grandmother]” and that “you know you’re gonna be like my boy’s uncle, right? Give him all that wisdom you got in your head, you know, keep him on the level.” However once they join a larger group of young men, gathered around a video camera loaded with home-made snowmobiling videos, they begin trading barbed insults with the others about hunting, girlfriends, and music, eventually crossing the line from verbal to physical altercation when James insults Aivaaq’s mother. These conversations negotiate an emergent adulthood, and while both Aivaaq and Qalli seem comfortable blending local and transnational discourses, they are also clearly feeling their way toward establishing their generation’s level of traditional practice. For example, at a house party that evening, Aivaaq tries to reassure his girlfriend Uvlu that he will live up to his responsibilities as a new father. But when he happily declares that he is going on a hunting trip (“You ain’t gotta worry about a thing. I’ll provide! You got to learn how to cut a seal, though. I’m gonna be a hunter … I’m old school!”), the less-traditional Uvlu reacts with scorn. She wants him to get wage work: “Well, I’m new school. I’m not changing no fox-skin diapers so your ass is getting a job.” Qalli’s father Egasak had, earlier, over a family dinner of caribou, (nikipiaq, which means “Iñupiaq food,” but which Egasak translates as “real food”) expressed deep satisfaction on hearing that the boys planned to go hunting to restock the family freezer with seal pup meat, but the traditional ways of becoming an adult man—including successful hunting—are suddenly no longer enough as Aivaaq and Uvlu are further challenged by the need to agree on how traditional their family subsistence will be. The camera catches glancing fragments of conversation, mimicking the way that everyone watches everyone else in the close quarters of the crowded, dimly lit party (a dynamic that echoes traditional practices of trading and performing songs in the qaggiq or community space). This complex matrix of gazes becomes full-fledged spectatorship when the young men begin performing their rhymes, watched by the crowd. Aivaaq’s rap situates youth drug use in their community (“Northern

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lights up above, green as bud”), describes himself as a “professional Eskimo, gangsta in the snow,” and asks the audience to “show some love for these Arctic thugs.” The film’s textual and titular connection of signature elements of the Arctic to the material substance of illegal drugs (the green of northern lights and marijuana, the white transparency of ice and crystal meth) create a sonic aesthetic and visual parallels between environmental specificity and the film’s primary sources of narrative conflict (especially methamphetamines). The song encapsulates the previous conversational tension over “traditional” and “modern” ways of making a living in Arctic territory, since Aivaaq is planning to sell marijuana to support his new family, even as the material production of the music itself makes such distinctions irrelevant by creating a syncretic space for blended realities. As scholar Kyle Mays argues, “embracing the great diversity of what it means to be Indigenous today” means advocating “indigenous modernity” over the “false lens of ‘modern/traditional.’” Aivaaq’s demand that audiences “show some love for these Arctic thugs” suggests what Lakota hip-hop artist Frank Waln argues Indigenous hip-hop does, offering people “born with historical trauma, frustration and colonial rage” a “framework for decolonial love” and a way to “feel the full spectrum of emotions like all other human beings.” MacLean’s placement of these drumming and hip-hop performative sequences in close proximity invites audiences to see them as concurrent forms of cultural expression and sources of value and status for young people. Waln notes the similarity of rap’s beat and storytelling to Indigenous drumming and music—“sharing communal narratives through song and lyric.” The teens are applauded and affirmed for their mastery of both Iñupiaq ceremonial dance and rap rhymes, and their pairing in both performances and in their hunting expedition (they share Qalli’s snowmobile) signals their partnership and emotional bond (see Wenzel on snowmobiles and hunting travel in an eastern Arctic community). It also rehearses the way that the boys must perform in an everyday context later in the film, when they struggle to keep the killing a secret and maintain a front of normalcy while withstanding significant community scrutiny after James’ death. Their ultimate inability to do so is suggested by a failed performance, when Aivaaq refuses to stay at the singspiration, although Qalli had reminded him that participation would be expected. Each of these performative sequences reinforces a visual language of spectatorship that furthers the narrative while allegorizing the work of the film itself. In the context of changed politics of viewership arising from the Indigenization of media production and reception, scenes involving audience- performer relationships freight the film itself with a dual performative role as the film speaks to its audiences in emergent, adaptive ways that are both

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traditionally Iñupiaq and appropriated from popular urban genres. Part of this expanding expressive repertoire of Arctic audiences involves the generational negotiation of knowledge, measures of cultural continuity mapped onto discourses around hunting and portraits of functional and dysfunctional family life realized through images of domestic space (Qalli’s family’s house, Aivaaq’s family’s house, and Qalli’s grandmother’s house). After these performative sequences, at the center of the narrative, Aivaaq and James’ drug use takes place off screen while the camera instead follows Qalli, who leaves the house party to visit with his grandmother (Aivaaq later expresses incredulity over this—“Who leaves a party to visit their aaka?”—suggesting that Qalli’s choice signals an unusual closeness across generations). Qalli understands his grandmother’s Inuktut but answers her in English; their conversation alludes to various kinds of addiction, suggesting the longevity of the community’s need to address the consequences of dangerous imports. First, Qalli cautions her not to take too much pain medication for her arthritis, and then she invites him to play cards while warning him about the dangers of this potential habit: “Right now you and I are gonna play some cards, but playing cards when you’re supposed to be hunting, that’s a bad thing. Like right now you would be out hunting somewhere trying to get a natchiq for me, if you’re hooked to these you’ll never be a good hunter. Never, ever. Play some cribbage?” Although she asserts that playing cards interferes with hunting, here it also keeps Qalli away from the meth at the house party, and later he takes refuge at his grandmother’s house during the worst of his own grieving and guilt over James’ death. The scene reinforces the generational and cyclical emphases in the film—the younger generation’s repetition of and differentiation from older adaptive patterns, as we see in their continued dedication to hunting and in Qalli and Aivaaq’s relationship with Egasak.

On the Ice Unlike the small, dark, somewhat claustrophobic interiors of houses in town, much of the film’s action takes place on the bright expanse of sea ice. The sea ice critical to the film’s production, action, and genre revision is also the sustaining environmental condition for Iñupiaq culture. It is the context for, and signifies the value of, Iñupiaq knowledge. “Iced” as slang for killing connects the murder at the heart of the film’s story with both the fragility of that cultural knowledge and the threatened loss of sea ice on a warming planet. While the ice is sustaining (the site of harvests), crystal meth (“ice”) represents the harsher environment of colonization (reaching beyond the specificity of Iñupiaq youth towards broader parallels with other disenfranchised communities). On the Ice

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engages both meanings, as the accidental killing of James happens on the ice and while he is under the influence of methamphetamines. Ice becomes a flexible signifying system—a metaphor for drugs and for both the strength and the tenuousness of Iñupiaq knowledge transmission within the community. In the context of climate-related discourses about ice in the broader mediascape, the film’s images of ice also signal the actual instability of the Arctic during environmental warming. Thus the crime that evidences Indigenous interruption (death on the ice, substance abuse) can also be read to signify environmental degradation and the potential disintegration of the sea ice itself. Ice is, then, both the subject and environmental condition for filming, becoming the site of equivalent production activities (filming and whaling) for the community. The way that ice structures the narrative propulsion—the uniqueness of ice as a setting, as well as production location—distinguishes it from other genre films and lends it the material territoriality of Fourth Cinema. The film underscores the importance of icy ground (and transit across it) early on, when the teenagers show one another home videos of their snow-machine stunts. The shots prefigure the film’s later preoccupation with tracking the movements of individual snow machines, while pointing to the youth’s mediated lives and the Indigenization of machine technologies, from walkmans and video cameras to snowmobiles. The ice determines elements of the story as well as the way the film is shot, with the crew moving back and forth between Barrow and the open, shifting shelf of sea ice. Suppressed conflicts in town become violent on the ice, which then becomes the site of crime, search and rescue efforts, and detection that signal the film’s activation of the thriller genre. But Arctic ice also works well as a “Western” landscape in its visual qualities—its expanse dwarfing human figures—if not its temperature or aridity. Maclean describes the ice as a location evocative of the lawlessness of the film Western: “You have the environments of the ice, which it feels very open, it seems like you can see forever… It feels like it’s possible to kill somebody and to hide it, much like a desert in the Western. Then you have the town, which it’s completely different, you are surrounded by people that know your entire life, the most are related to you, there’s no secrets so that has a very claustrophobic feeling” (Moreno). “…Westerns to me were all about people being able to reinvent themselves, people finding themselves outside of the normal bounds, and sort of being able to rewrite the rules. And there’s a feeling of that that you can kind of get outside of town in a place like Barrow, you’re just in this wide open vastness. It just creates this feeling of possibility—of like, okay, I can get away with things out here—in a way that’s at the heart of Westerns” (Hearne, Land, and MacLean, 207). Maclean thus relocates generic patterns of the thriller and the

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Western to the sea ice, a landscape far enough away from community expectations to invite violent action and subsequent detection as well as hunting for provision, infusing First Cinema generic structures with an Iñupiaq story about Arctic knowledge and community rivalry. Generational negotiations and demonstrations of qanuqtuurniq take place here as well, especially around the management and exchange of imported technologies, such as rifles and snow machines that are instrumental to the plot. The apparatus, locations and discussion of hunting permeate the film, but there are no hunting scenes. Hunting weapons (knives, rifles) are repurposed against friends and hunting skills like tracking are engaged to find human bodies instead of animals. Qalli’s father Egasak’s revelation—that he has found James’ body—is initially hidden, as Egasak stops the hunt near a ridge that separates them from the view of the hole in the ice. He presides over a lunch break, first commenting that Aivaaq’s rifle has been well cared-for, and then telling the story of how the rifle, once Egasak’s, was won by Aivaaq’s father in a dog-sled race. Although Egasak’s dogs were known to be faster, Aivaaq’s father surreptitiously fed them large amounts of walrus meat before the race, slowing them down enough to win the race and rifle. Egasak’s story of losing a prized rifle in a rigged contest between friends, and the continued care of the rifle through generations, manifests the longevity of relationships and rivalries in the community—instead of a Western gunfight, we get stories about complicated social interactions and the re-distribution of resources. The rifle has survived technological changes (from dog teams to snowmobiles), as well as the contests of young men with their peers, and the transition from fathers to sons. The rifle story—another connection to the Western—measures the depth of relationships over time and across multiple generations, signifying other, unspoken stories about the origins of intracommunity gossip, rivalries, hidden guilt, and the potential future of destructive secrets. It also models ethical action taught through choices informed by storytelling, not enforced through violence. Egasak’s determined truth-finding as he scans tracks and interrogates each character’s story for veracity, illustrates the way the film’s action depends on the characters’ and the community’s relationship to ice—it is much more than simply a place where the contained conflicts of village life can erupt into unchecked violence. The cracks, coastline, and breathing holes (where seals breathe and can be hunted) are all important to the plot; much of the travel takes place on flat ice, but rises and ridges are strategic to the film’s action (as when Egasak first hides and then reveals his knowledge of the killing and retrieval of the body). The ground itself is evidence because of the visibility of blood in the snow and the capacity of snow to record and erase tracks. The ice horizon and the coastline are the focus of many panning and aerial shots across the

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landscape, which reinforce the characters’ activities of tracking and scanning for a number of purposes—including weather conditions, orientation, detection. The film returns again and again to sequences in which characters follow tracks and scan the horizon, as Qalli does when heading out onto the ice trailing the snow machine tracks left by his friends, and when Egasak tracks the marks left by Qalli and Aivaaq’s snow machine, attempting to discern the actual events of James’ death. In contrast to what Stephen Leuthold describes as a focus on “unmarked” landscapes in Indigenous films, several establishing aerial shots and the many panning shots in On the Ice inventory roads, towns, and satellite dishes.2 The left to right pans, overhead and bird’s eye view shots, and other kinds of cinematic grammar fuse the documentary’s representation of land with the dramatic establishment of setting. On the Ice is not a documentary, yet the film also must engage in some of the explanatory or pedagogical work of documentaries in order for its action to make sense to non-Iñupiaq viewers. This need to provide multiple audiences with differing access to the specifics of the contemporary Arctic location and Iñupiaq cultural practice is articulated textually in constructions of local knowledge. The outsider-audience orientation implied by the “showing” and “explaining” of documentary is occasionally the topic of conversation among characters who are simultaneously embedded in the dramatic play of concealing, detecting, and revealing integral to the suspense of the genre film/thriller. For example, in an early scene after Qalli leaves the house party, he stands for a moment to watch

2 In his book on Indigenous documentary media, Indigenous Aesthetics, Stephen Leuthold writes that “aerial landscape flyover shots” and other “images of nature are subjects in their own right but are also used to construct frameworks for viewing other issues” (126) in Indigenous documentaries from the twentieth century, such as Burdeau’s The Pueblo Peoples: First Contact, Bigcrane and Smith’s The Place of Falling Waters (1990), and Bearclaw’s Warrior Chiefs in the New Age (1991). On the Ice, although it is a drama rather than a documentary, features similar pans and “flyover shots appear in key opening and transitional passages.” Such shots express “a continuity of physical relationship” to the area of land “that transcends any specific historical period.” Leuthold asserts that “significantly, all of these aerial shots are of natural landscapes unmarked by roads, towns, phone lines, satellite dishes…” (126) and that rather than “inventory natural resources,” as wilderness and Forest Service documentaries have been said to do, Indigenous documentaries frequently activate spiritual relationships to land, as well as the territorial sovereignty that is authorized by spiritual and material knowledge of the land. On the Ice showcases the way Iñupiaq community stories and histories transmit knowledge of places, and snow and ice conditions, while its panning and flyover shots do different work than in the thriller, the Western, and the documentary, even as these shots call up associations with all three genre conventions.

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the sun, which is low on the horizon. His friend and love interest Michelle, who has also left the party early, approaches and comments: “You’re going to be waiting a long time.” “What?” “The sun doesn’t set till August.” “Thanks for the info. I would have been out here all night if it wasn’t for you.” Michelle’s pretence that Qalli has mistaken the Arctic’s long late spring day for a sunset establishes a shared humour that prefigures their later intimacy. Treating Qalli like a tenderfoot invites us to measure the distance between an imagined tourist, unfamiliar with the most basic elements of the Arctic, and the depth of Qalli’s cultural fluency and skill as a newly minted independent hunter. The sequence brings our attention back to the distinctiveness of this landscape and the knowledge needed to live there—knowledge as basic as when a day begins and ends. We are reminded that the characters are not in New Jersey despite the opening shots of graffiti, water tanks, and other standard infrastructure in contemporary Barrow, and that they are not in a Western desert despite the structural invocation of frontier lawlessness on the open ice. These visual grammars, organized around an environment of sea ice, invite us to see how systems of law might work in post-contact Iñupiaq communities where traditions of ameliorating conflict exist alongside imported legal systems that deploy punitive use of force to address crime.

Production on the Ice The sea ice functions in the film as interstitial space—not land, not sea—that is a rich site for the harvest of migratory sea animals yet also physically dangerous and outside of community law. It is constantly changing yet consistently present as a world-making force for Arctic peoples, a condition that demands both continuity and adaptation. Ice matters as the site where flows of transnational products—both material goods (rifles, snowmobiles) and cultural products (rap, cards, and of course movies)—move in and out of the community. The legibility of ice, then, and the need for and acquisition of specific skill sets to read it, are conveyed by the film’s narrative and visual preoccupation with tracking and detection (fusing the Arctic setting with the thriller genre) and investment in hunting as a signal element of Indigenous identity in the Arctic. If On the Ice instantiates visual sovereignty as Michelle Raheja has defined it—a “reading practice for thinking about the space between

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resistance and compliance” (193)—it does so by rendering Indigenous knowledge as a visual practice, an interpretive relationship with landscape honed by interdependence with ice. Although the film is not about climate change, its release in 2011 in the midst of amplified public culture discourses about melting Arctic ice also makes it hard to read the ice in On the Ice without considering the changing land and seascape upon which the action takes place. MacLean describes the ice as a unique shooting location: There’s something fundamentally unstable about it. It’s a landscape that just constantly is reinventing itself, at a rate that can be actually dangerous to human life, and that sense of danger is important and informs the feeling the characters have about going to this place. And that from a practical plot perspective creates the plausibility of a death out there, and it also creates the need for the characters to be skilled…. It also has cultural significance to it, in that the kind of knowledge that you need to be out on the ice is something that previous generations learned from the time that they were walking. Now within the culture it’s much more of a learned thing and there are people who should not be out on the ice without supervision … and then there are people that know the ice, they can read it, they know the wind conditions, the current conditions, they can be there safely, so that the environment itself becomes a kind of a test of identity. (Hearne, Land, and MacLean, 209) Thus as both a symbolic and physical location, the sea ice stands for what is at stake for Iñupiaq peoples of this generation—not only the continuation of their specialized skills and lifeways but also the existence of the Arctic as a physical place and an Indigenous territory. The film’s Indigenization of the thriller is here an exemplar of adaptation for survival, grafting Iñupiaq relationships with ice to a film genre developed in southern California and intended to transcend specificities of location to portray action taking place anywhere. Filming itself, then, is an Indigenous adaptation not unrelated to hunting in its emphasis on location, upon activities such as scanning, detecting, and tracking, and in its opportunism, the need to stay alert for imported resources and those that float to shore from elsewhere. Given all the dangers on the ice, MacLean had to bring a film set out there and finding a safe day and a safe spot to put a film set that would also give us the looks and the shots that we needed was probably the biggest challenge of the film and it was a very challenging film to make…. It’s also just a very beautiful place…. It’s like shooting on a gigantic bounce

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board. The light just reflects from every direction and it reflects and picks up and shows you every color—it changes color drastically. It’s pure white, but then you start to film it and you look at the dailies and you realize it’s not white at all, there’s not a single moment of whiteness. Every single shot at every single time of day, the ice and the snow is a different color…. It’s just one of my favorite places to be of anywhere in the world for those reasons, for the complex relationship that it has with who we are. (Hearne, Land, and MacLean, 209–210) We can begin to think about some of MacLean’s narrative focus on intergenerational continuity by expanding Faye Ginsburg’s observation—that Indigenous media engages in the “mediation of rupture” through the work of film production—to consider the relationship between the film text and the social practice of its production. Translating Iñupiaq familiarity with Arctic ice, animals, and seasonal conditions to the work of filming in the Arctic engaged an already culturally privileged emphasis on readiness and learning new skills. Weather, whaling activity, and the hazards of spring ice and changing shore conditions wreaked havoc with the shooting schedule and transportation, while the necessity of hauling people and equipment to and from locations on the ice made the crew dependent on a limited number of snowmobiles, which frequently broke down and stalled the schedule. The local cast engaged with the production as a new source of economic sustenance, since MacLean cast nonprofessional actors for the major roles. The lead actors are already the hunters that their characters aspire to be, since hunting is the primary subsistence activity in Barrow along with whaling (hunting bowhead whales in the spring and late fall is one of the Iñupiaq practices that is distinct from Canadian and Greenland Inuit peoples). MacLean has described the way the production was shaped by ongoing community subsistence work: “The whaling was in full swing while we were shooting. We had to be very careful about not disturbing the whaling crews…. In the scenes shot at the Barrow Search & Rescue, which is a lot like a headquarters for the whaling crews, we had to call the shoot early because they landed a whale while we were there. Everyone [in town] started showing up.” Frank Qutuq Irelan (who plays Aivaaq) notes that “In Barrow, kids can’t wait to go hunting, they can’t wait for springtime and they can’t wait to go whaling.” Josiah Patkotak, too, describes making the film as a novel alternative to the more familiar activity of whaling: Well, I would’ve been out on the ice anyway. I was gonna go whaling if I didn’t do the movie. Most of the time when we were

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filming I didn’t want to sit around. I’d crack jokes with the crew and learn about all their jobs. I learned about the work behind the camera. Sometimes I helped out the continuity guy ’cause I was good at that, or the director of photography. I liked the machine that measures the amount of light that falls on your face. (MacLean, “Press Kit”) The aesthetic of equivalence (filming/whaling) in production casts these activities as alternative forms of generative sustenance, their similar locations on and around the sea ice and similar need for technical skills intertwining hunting with its representation, not unlike the snowmobile videos that the teenagers share with one another early on in the film. On the Ice is about Iñupiaq skills and knowledge of how their world works, manifested here in Qalli’s aaka’s advice about hunting, Egasak’s dog race story and consummate tracking, and Qalli and Aivaaq’s emerging skills on the ice, including their ability to cover their tracks. The setting of the action on spring sea ice signifies among other things the necessity of this knowledge as well as its fragility in the face of global transnational imports.

Conclusion The last shot of the film depicts Qalli, abandoned by his father and his friend, walking home on the ice, a small figure in the vastness. Ice, as a setting, represents the key point of articulation between Iñupiaq territorial identity and mainstream film genres, the place where generic devices can be Indigenized. The very grammar of the camera—eyeline match, shot/reverse shot, tracking shot—Indigenizes the cinematic gaze by appropriating the focalization of accurate vision, re-aligning the skills required to scan, track, and identify marks in the landscape. Suspense hinges on Iñupiaq knowledge of ice and on the uniquely western Arctic tension within communities defined by their relationship with the open ice. The film’s Indigenization of the thriller and the Western grafts Iñupiaq relationships with ice to film genres developed in southern California, genres intended to indicate yet transcend specificities of location through aesthetics of substitution—from redfacing and styrofoam igloos to Westerns filmed in Spain or New Jersey. At the same time that it re- draws the boundaries of Iñupiaq identity, On the Ice makes visible to non- Arctic viewers the environmental horizons of their genres—the somewhat limited purview of Westerns in which the law resides at one or the other end of a gunsight, and sunsets are always sunsets. At the same time, the Iñupiaq sovereignty of the camera, as an adaptive aesthetic practice, strengthens the work and the value of traditional knowledge in a connected world.

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Works Cited “Andrew Okpeaha MacLean.” 2013. Native Arts and Cultures. http://nativeartsandcultures.org/andrew-okpeaha-maclean Barclay, Barry. 2003. “Celebrating Fourth Cinema.” Illusions 35: 10. “Beat Nation: Hip Hop as Indigenous Culture.” N.d. http://www.beatnation.org/index.html accessed 20 February 2015. Campbell, Mark V. 2015. “Sonic Intimacies: On Djing Better Futures.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 25 March. https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/sonic-intimacies-on- djing-better-futures/ accessed 27 May 2015. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit Task Force. 2002. First Annual Report of the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) Task Force. Ginsburg, Faye. 1991. “Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?” Cultural Anthropology 6(1): 92–112. Hearne, Joanna, Land, Jacqueline and Andrew Okpeaha MacLean. 2017. “‘You Have to Define Yourself as an Inuit Person, if That Is What You Want to Do’: An Interview with Andrew Okpeaha MacLean.” In Native Apparitions: Critical Perspectives on Hollywood’s Indians, edited by Tom Holm, M. Elise Marubbio, and Steve Pavlik, 198–224. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Lemieux, Tad. 2017. Personal communication, 5 September. Leuthold, Steven. 1998. Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art Media and Identity. Austin: University of Texas Press. MacLean, Andrew Okpeaha. 2011. Press Kit, On the Ice. http://www.ontheicethemovie.com. Martin, Keavy. 2012. Stories in a New Skin: Approaches to Inuit Literature. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Mays, Kyle T. 2015. “Can We Live—and Be Modern?: Decolonization, Indigenous Modernity, and Hip Hop.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 12 March. https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/can-we-live-and-be- modern-decolonization-indigenous-modernity-and-hip-hop/ accessed 27 March 2015.

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Means, Sean P. 2011. “Sundance Review: ‘On the Ice.’” The Salt Lake Tribune. 28 January. Moreno, Victor. 2011. “Stockholm Film Festival 2011.” Shift. 19 December. http://www.shift.jp.org/en/archives/2011/12/stockholm_film_festival_20 11.html accessed 24 August 2017. Qitsualik-Tinsley, Rachel. 2004. “Is It ‘Eskimo’ or ‘Inuit?’” Indian Country Today. 11 February. https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/qitsualik-is-it-eskimo-or- inuit/ accessed 1 November 2017. Quinn, Ellis. 2014. “Eye on the Arctic—Indigenous Art & Urban Culture.” 3 January. http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2014/01/03/eye-on-the-Arctic- indigenous-art-urban-culture/ accessed 20 February 2015. Raheja, Michelle. 2011. Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representation of Native Americans in Film. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. SCZ. 2015. “Remixing: Decolonial Strategies in Cultural Production.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 10 March. https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/remixing-decolonial- strategies-in-cultural-production/ accessed 23 March 2015. Smith, Damon. 2012. “Andrew Okpeaha MacLean: On the Ice.” Filmmaker Magazine. 15 February. http://filmmakermagazine.com/40519-andrew- okpeaha-maclean-on-the-ice/#.UtAaov2CPN8 accessed 20 February 2015. Sommerstein, David. 2014. “Hip-Hop’s Aboriginal Connection.” NPR, 3 January. http://www.npr.org/2014/01/04/259428743/hip-hops- aboriginal-connection accessed 20 February 2015. Waln, Frank. 2015. “Indigenous Hip Hop and Performance as Resurgence.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 19 March. https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/indigenous-hip-hop- and-performance-as-resurgence/ accessed 27 March 2015. Wenzel, George, Condon, Richard and Peter Collings. 1995. “The Best Part of Life: Subsistence Hunting, Ethnicity and Economic Adaptation Among Young Adult Inuit Males.” Arctic 48(1): 31–46.

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THE EXPANDING DIGITAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE OF QUALITATIVE AND DECOLONIZING RESEARCH: EXAMINING COLLABORATIVE PODCASTING AS A RESEARCH METHOD

LINDSAY DAY, ASHLEE CUNSOLO, HEATHER CASTLEDEN, DEBBIE MARTIN, CATHERINE HART, TIM ANAVIAPIK-SOUCIE, GEORGE RUSSELL, CLIFFORD PAUL, CATE DEWEY, AND SHERILEE L. HARPER

“We have three ears to listen with. Two on the sides of our head and one in our heart.” —Cited by Jo-Ann Archibald (2008, p. 76)

Introduction Continually emerging and evolving technologies have transformed our ability to create, modify, store, and share digital media and, in so doing, have presented new possibilities for how social science research can be conducted and mobilized. The growing use and accessibility of digital media technologies—such as digital cameras, online sharing platforms, and mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets)—offers new tools and opportunities for augmenting, enriching, and introducing new collaborative dimensions to established and emergent methods of inquiry (Nagy Hesse-Biber 2011). Indeed, methods such as digital storytelling (Cunsolo Willox, Harper, & Edge 2012; Gubrium 2009; Gubrium & Turner 2011; Lambert 2013), PhotoVoice (Castleden, Garvin, & Huu-ay-aht First Nation 2008; Catalani & Minkler 2010; Wang 1999; Wang & Burris 1997), participatory video (Kindon 2003; Milne, Mitchell, & de Lange 2012; Petrasek Macdonald et al. 2015), and other community-based and collaborative approaches to audiovisual media production (Chalfen 2011; Chávez et al. 2004; Mitchell & de Lange 2011; Parr 2007; Pink 2013; Schleser 2012; Tacchi, Watkins, & Keerthirathne 2009) illustrate the synergies that researchers are finding between (increasingly digital) media modalities, creative practice, and participant-centred approaches in research.

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Encompassing a range of processes and techniques, these collaborative and participatory media methods together illustrate an evolving, dynamic, and diverse field of practice that takes media creation processes and products as sites of co-learning and collaborative knowledge building. Grounded in participatory action research (PAR), community-based participatory research (CBPR), and related frameworks dedicated to social justice and equity, these methods fit within the decolonizing methodologies continuum by attempting to deconstruct unequal power dynamics in research relationships through the meaningful and equitable inclusion of participants throughout the research and decision-making processes (Castleden et al. 2008; Cunsolo Willox et al. 2012; Kindon 2003; Wang & Burris 1997). Participant-directed media creation, facilitated by the increasing uptake of related digital technologies in qualitative inquiry, therefore has the potential to prioritize community concerns, honour local knowledge and participant expertise, and develop meaningful research outcomes (Gubrium & Harper 2013). Thus, our goal for this paper is to outline and describe the process and use of collaborative podcasting, using a case study example from a multi-year, cross-Canada research initiative aimed at integrating Indigenous1 and Western sciences to support the development of improved water management and policies, and to learn how to better care for and live with water (Castleden, Hart, et al. in press; Castleden, Martin, et al. in press). We begin with an overview of the literature concerning digital media in the context of decolonizing research. We then explore podcasting as a research methodology before laying out our case study. Our discussion of the case concentrates on four key “projects” of a decolonizing research agenda: storytelling, representing, reframing, and sharing. We conclude with critical reflections on our praxis, and discuss how collaborative podcasting may contribute to and support research within a decolonizing agenda.

Digital Media and Decolonizing Research Since the landmark publication of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999), research has increasingly examined how Indigenous ways of knowing have been subjugated, subordinated, silenced, marginalized, and ignored through Western-based research methods and approaches. As Smith argued, “from the vantage point of

1 We use the term Indigenous to refer to the original inhabitants of the lands now known by the names of today’s nation-states, and their decedents. In Canada, there are three constitutionally recognized Indigenous groups: First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

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the colonized … the term ‘research’ is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The word itself, ‘research’, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous vocabulary” (1999, p. 1). The push for decolonizing methodologies has been taken up by scholars such as Margaret Kovach (2009), Shawn Wilson (2008), Bagele Chilisa (2012), and Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang (2014), as well as in edited volumes such as The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith 2008). Together with many other voices, within and beyond the academy, these scholars argue for the transformation of research structures and institutions, and challenge the underlying assumptions about what counts as knowledge and research, and how research should be conducted and disseminated (e.g., Smith 1999). Part of a larger movement towards reclaiming Indigenous lands, languages, sovereignty, and ways of knowing, doing, and being, a decolonizing agenda supports the centering of Indigenous epistemologies within research such that Indigenous values, knowledge, and protocols become an integral part of methodology, rather than a peripheral consideration (e.g., Kovach 2009; Smith 1999; Wilson 2008). Decolonizing research and methodologies have, therefore, demanded new methods and approaches that more adequately, richly, and meaningfully engage Indigenous ways of knowing, as well as cultural values and processes such as oral storytelling and sharing knowledge and wisdom through collective dialogue. In this way, research is “gradually coming to be seen as a potential means to reclaim language, histories, and knowledge, to find solutions to negative impacts of colonialism, and to give voice to an alternative way of knowing and being” (Smith 2005, p. 91). Participatory media creation processes, such as PhotoVoice (Castleden et al. 2008; Healey et al. 2011; Maclean & Woodward 2013; Moffitt & Vollman 2004), participatory photography (Fresque-Baxter 2013), digital storytelling (Cueva et al. 2013; Cunsolo Willox et al. 2012; Iseke & Moore 2011; Wexler, Eglinton, & Gubrium 2014), audio-documentary (Restoule, Gruner, & Metatawabin 2013), and participatory video (Petrasek Macdonald et al. 2015; Stewart et al. 2008) are being increasingly employed in Indigenous-led and Indigenous-engaged research methods, with promising results for deconstructing power dynamics between “researchers” and “researched,” “Indigenous” and “non-Indigenous” (Cunsolo Willox et al. 2012), while remaining adaptable to local needs and contexts. Another digital platform that has not yet been widely explored within the realm of research, but may hold potential as both a participatory and decolonizing method, is collaborative podcasting.

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Podcasting as a Research Method Podcasts are digital audio files made available on the Internet for downloading or streaming to a computer or mobile device, and are often offered as a series listeners can subscribe to in order to receive automatic notification as new installments become available.2 In contrast to traditional radio broadcast, podcast content can be accessed “on-demand,” providing listeners with control over when, where, and how they listen. In addition, technological advances contributing to lower-cost digital recording equipment and audio-editing software, together with the growth of online sharing platforms and Internet access, have opened the possibilities for podcast creation (i.e., podcasting) to a greater range of potential producers (Berry 2006; Bottomley 2015), though we recognize that access to technology to produce and receive podcasts is still “a privilege”—not yet a universal. As a form of alternative media, podcasts are credited with bringing a greater diversity of voices and perspectives to public audiences (Atton 2008; Florini 2015), and providing a “sonic space” for traditionally-oppressed voices (Tiffe & Hoffmann 2017). As a communication medium, podcasts offer a great deal of flexibility in terms of how audio material is presented and may, for example, consist of anything from a recorded lecture, speech, or interview, to a highly produced and richly textured narrative documentary with multiple voices, sounds, and music. In contrast to radio, podcasts need not run to specified time lengths to fit within programming schedules, and, when produced independently, gives control over content, style, and editing to the creator(s). As an aural medium, podcasts also share with other audio formats the unique affective qualities associated with communicating through (recorded) sound (McHugh 2012), and generally require less expertise and equipment to produce than video and film. In addition, audio-recording may be less intrusive and/or disruptive than the use of video cameras (McHugh 2014). With the ubiquity of smartphones and other mobile electronic devices, podcasts have the added advantage of portability for the listener, insofar as they can be heard on the go, or while engaged in other activities. Given the utility and range of potential applications, podcasts have been used in a variety of contexts since their first appearance in 2004 (Berry 2006; Bottomley 2015), including by traditional media (such as newspapers, magazines, and radio programs), scholarly journals (Picardi & Regina 2008), advocacy groups and organizations (Waters et al. 2012), by academic

2 As an emergent medium, we note that podcasts have been defined in varying ways in the literature over time. We follow the current definition offered by the Oxford English Dictionary.

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institutions as an educational platform (Hew 2009; Kay 2012), and as a public health education tool (Avery et al. 2010). While research related to podcasting is growing, the current discourse is primarily focused on examining the role and efficacy of podcasting as a communication tool: to enhance student learning in education (Fernandez, Simo, & Sallan 2009; McGarr 2009; Shim et al. 2007), in the media landscape (Berry 2016; Ginsburg 2006), and for health promotion (Turner-McGrievy, Campbell, & Crosby 2009; Turner-McGrievy, Kalyanaraman, & Campbell 2013). Podcasting, however, can be more than a communication tool: podcasting can be a method of qualitative data collection and analysis, critical inquiry, and knowledge mobilization. When collaborative approaches to design, content, data-gathering and data analysis, and dissemination are used, podcasts can be mobilized as another participatory strategy.

Background and Context: The Water Dialogues Project This collaborative podcast initiative arose out of an 18-month transdisciplinary research project, which sought to examine methods and models for bringing together Indigenous and Western knowledge in water research and management (Castleden et al. 2015; Castleden et al. 2017). Globally, Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by water-related challenges such as freshwater contamination, flooding, lack of access to safe drinking water, and inappropriate and/or inadequate wastewater and drinking infrastructure (King, Smith, & Gracey 2009; Patrick 2011; Phare 2009; Simeone 2009; Toussaint, Sullivan, & Yu 2005). The inadequacy (and often outright failure) of prevailing approaches to address these issues—which are often embedded in colonial structures and policies, and a predominance of Western-based science—has underscored the urgent need for Indigenous leadership, as well as equitable and respectful non-Indigenous partnerships with Indigenous peoples, to develop strategies that facilitate the meaningful inclusion and implementation of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing in water research and management (Basdeo & Bharadwaj 2013; Boelens, Chiba, & Nakashima 2006; Mascarenhas 2007; McGregor 2012; Walkem 2007). Funded by the Canadian Water Network, this larger research project was premised on the principles of collaborative and participatory research, including shared decision-making; co-learning and empowerment through cyclical and iterative processes; knowledge and action for the mutual benefit of all partners; recognition of the strengths and resources of all partners; and valuing, and sharing, with partners all knowledge generated (Castleden et al. 2015). To this end, a National Advisory Committee (NAC) of Indigenous

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knowledge-holders and other Canadian water experts (policy-makers, engineers, natural scientists, social scientists, and health researchers) was established to guide the research team in the design and implementation of the research. The project began with the first of two National Water Gatherings (June 2014) to engage the NAC and additional Indigenous and non-Indigenous water experts, researchers, and knowledge-holders from across Canada in a dialogue around water and how best to proceed with the project—which ultimately included a systematic literature review (Castleden, Hart, et al. in press) and in-depth interviews with academic researchers, community-based partners, and knowledge-holders (Castleden, Martin, et al. in press). A second Water Gathering was held one year later (June 2015), allowing us to return together and discuss, as a group, preliminary research findings and next steps. The research was grounded in a Two-Eyed Seeing approach (Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall 2012; Martin 2012), a Mi’kmaw framework for integrating the strengths of Indigenous knowledge and methodologies alongside Western-based approaches. We were therefore mindful of finding ways within our work to honour the perspectives, experiences, stories, knowledge, and wisdom of project partners and participants. The NAC also emphasized the importance and value of sharing this research and our team’s co-learning journey with a wide audience, including the sense of goodwill and meaningful relations that informed, and were generated through, the Water Gathering dialogues and collaborative research process. The expressed need to ensure that these dialogues transcended us and were heard by others motivated our desire to explore multi-media methods that could complement other data gathering strategies and facilitate broad dissemination beyond conventional academic peer-reviewed publications. We sought to do this in ways that would be resonant with Indigenous methodologies while simultaneously promoting, sharing, and celebrating Indigenous perspectives, knowledge, ways of knowing, and sciences around water. In addition, we also sought a method that would be amenable to a collaborative approach, while fitting within the context of a broad national- scale project designed around two in-person gatherings. Given the context in which we were working, and the desire for knowledge sharing, we considered that podcasting could provide a promising medium and method, given its potential to weave together multiple voices and perspectives in an accessible and engaging format. Thus, with the support of the NAC and Water Gathering participants, we embarked on a project to pilot the use of collaborative podcasting as a knowledge mobilization tool, both facilitating data gathering and also representing data in and of itself.

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The Collaborative Podcasting Process Given the noted lack of literature regarding the use of podcasting as a research method, we describe our process here, presented in six stages (Figure 1). Though described in a step-by-step manner, and led by the first author in collaboration with the research team, the creation of this podcast was very much an iterative and reflective process throughout its production.3

Figure 1. Summary of production stages in creating the Water Dialogues podcast. The research team was composed of the core research team and three Water Gathering participant volunteers.

Stage One: Audio collection Podcasting requires the gathering of data in audio form, and, in our case, the second National Water Gathering event, held as part of the larger research project, provided the main venue for data collection. The 32 attendees included the NAC and core research team, as well as a cross-section of water researchers and knowledge-holders from First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities and organizations across Canada, the majority of which had participated in the initial Water Gathering. Through ceremony, storytelling, and dialogue, the purpose of the second Gathering was to share and discuss preliminary research

3 This research protocol received Research Ethics Board approval from the University of Guelph, Queen’s University, and Cape Breton University.

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findings, co-develop recommendations, and to reconnect with one another as we continued to build relationships through the research process (Hart et al. 2015). With written and informed consent from all participants, the full proceedings of the one-day Gathering were audio-recorded.4 Group dialogue was facilitated through a series of three sharing circles (Lavallée 2009; Tachine, Yellow Bird, & Cabrera 2016), a format that differs from focus groups as it provides an equal opportunity for everyone to participate because each person has a turn to speak going around the circle (Figure 2). This approach to group dialogue (also referred to as “talking circles”) encourages respectful and attentive listening, and fosters collaborative learning through an emergent and reflective process of sharing and inquiry (Graveline 1998; Wilson 2008). In addition, short one-on-one interviews, ranging in length from seven to 25 minutes, were conducted with 18 of the participants. These interviews were conducted on an opportunistic basis during breaks (with two interviews conducted in the days immediately following the Water Gathering), with the aim of prioritizing Indigenous voices. Though a general interview guide was developed, the interviews were predominantly unstructured and conversational in nature (Kvale & Brinkmann 2009). The interviews provided an opportunity to delve deeper into topics and experiences shared during the circle, and allowed participants to focus on what they felt was most important with respect to the purpose of the podcast and larger research project. Together, the sharing circles and interviews provided a rich foundation for the podcast, both aurally and with respect to the content of what was shared. To provide additional sound elements with which to craft the podcast, ambient sounds from the Water Gathering were also recorded, as well as natural water sounds (e.g., rain, a river flowing) recorded elsewhere.

4 Two Zoom-H5 digital multi-track recorders hooked up to two Apex Pencil condenser microphones set up on stands at either end of the gathering space, and the venue’s Public Address (PA) system were used to record the group discussion. An Olympus Linear PCM Recorder with an Audio-Technica ATR-3350 lavalier omnidirectional condenser microphone was used for one-on-one interviews, with an Olympus VN-7200 digital voice recorder running as back up. Audio was recorded in uncompressed .WAV format, with the exception of the PA system recording, which was MP3 format.

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Figure 2. Water Gathering photos depicting sharing circle dialogue at the Wabano Aboriginal Health Centre, Ottawa, Ontario. Audio-recordings for the Water Dialogues podcast were collected during the second Water Gathering (June 2015) of the larger research project. Group dialogue was facilitated through a sharing circle format where each person has a turn to speak. Photos taken with permission and photo credits to Lori Hoddinott.

Stage Two: Review and analysis In total, approximately 12 hours of recordings were collected, and a research team was assembled to assist with the task of determining how to meaningfully organize and present the material through the podcast. Three volunteers from among the Water Gathering participants, representing First Nations and Inuit perspectives, identified their willingness to be involved (an option offered to all participants), and worked together with the core research team through two conference calls, as well as email correspondence, to inform the podcast’s creation throughout the production process. Analysis followed a multistage, iterative process that involved immersion in the material; identification of key themes; and selection of quotations for potential inclusion in the podcast. Audio-recordings were imported into an audio-editing software program (Hindenberg Journalist, Version 1.5, 2015) and were transcribed with time codes noted in the margin to create a complete audio log of the Water Gathering proceedings and interviews.5 Through multiple readings and re-listening to the material, notes were added to highlight the nature of what was said, as well as how it was said (e.g., tone, pacing, emotive power). Thematic categories through which the content could be summarized were identified inductively, and were presented to, and discussed with, the research team to further develop and refine key themes and messages to be explored through the podcast. Three overarching themes were identified: relationships and responsibilities to water;

5 The data were not de-identified, with consent, due to the nature of the project.

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confronting colonialism in the water sphere; and, working together across diverse knowledge systems to improve how we live with water (Day et al. in press). Quotations of sufficient sound quality6 were then organized in a word document by theme, sub-theme, and other story elements (e.g., Water Gathering context).

Stage Three: Sequencing and structure Through discussion with the research team, it was decided that narration within the podcast would be kept to a minimum in order to allow the stories, experiences, and insights shared by participants to speak for themselves. While all recorded content was considered in the analysis stage, it was necessary to significantly, and selectively, reduce the amount of material to be included in the podcast in order to create a coherent and engaging representation of the larger research findings and Water Gathering dialogue. This was a challenging process, with the research team again providing important guidance. During a second conference call, a number of audio-quotations were played so the team could provide feedback in terms of their fit and potential inclusion and/or placement. The first author selected these quotations, informed by the discussion with team members during the previous conference call meeting regarding thematic focus. We sought to prioritize material that would illustrate various dimensions of the key themes through diverse perspectives and experience, and that could be woven together in such a way as to create a cohesive narrative reflective of the Water Gathering dialogue. Framing the podcast narrative around the structure of the Water Gathering itself, we chose to develop a long-form audio-documentary piece, ultimately told in three parts, rather than produce a series of shorter episodes with a specific focus to each. Indeed, much like the sharing circle dialogue during the Water Gathering, the podcast structure came to follow a more circuitous path, with concepts, ideas, or issues raised or foreshadowed, then revisited later in nuanced ways, thus eliciting a layered and contextualized understanding as the podcast unfolds. Assembly of the component parts also followed an iterative process that took place both on paper with transcribed text and digitally with the audio-files.

6 Occasional and intermittent noise interruptions (e.g., doors slamming, cups dropping, issues with the PA system) rendered some segments of the recordings unusable for sharing via the podcast. In this way, and together with other elements of the collaborative editing process described here, it is important to note that speaking is another element ultimately mediated and editorialized through the podcasting process.

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Key segments of text were printed, cut out, and arranged (and re-arranged) on Bristol board, then considered aurally by arranging the selected components of the audio-files in a parallel form in the editing software. This process involved a further refining of material to be included through an approach similar to a constant comparative method (Boeije 2002; Glasser 1965), whereby choices to include or exclude elements of the selected material were weighed against the ability of other quotations to convey a similar idea or insight, albeit through a different expression, voice, or experience. Ultimately, quotations were included based on consideration of a range of factors including their sound quality, resonance with key themes, affective quality, level of technical language (which we sought to minimize), their ability to be woven into the fabric of the larger piece in an interconnected way, and a desire prioritize Indigenous voices while also presenting the diverse geographic and cultural perspectives, and areas of expertise represented within the group. These selected quotations were reviewed and approved by the research team (and subsequently all Water Gathering participants—Stage five, below). In total, the voices of 17 participants were included,7 with all 32 Water Gathering participants thanked and acknowledged in the closing credits.

Stage Four: Sound editing With the contributor-based content in place, the limited narration (scripted and recorded in draft form), music, and natural and ambient sounds were added through the audio-editing software to assist with pacing, mood, and context. These elements were informed by discussion with the team, with the opportunity for review and feedback from all team members and participants during subsequent stages. Similar to the way in which “rich, thick description” may be used in written presentations of qualitative research to help “transport readers to the setting and give the discussion an element of shared experience” (Creswell 2009, p. 192), these additional sound elements helped create a more nuanced depiction of the Water Gathering event and dialogue through an aurally textured soundscape. In some segments, the layering of voices and sounds also allowed for a more poetic expression and exploration of meaning,

7 Of the 17 participants whose quotations were included in the finished piece, 15 had been interviewed, though quotations from these interviews were not included in all cases. Of the 3 participants that were interviewed and whose quotations did not appear in the podcast, 2 were non-Indigenous participants, while the other was not included for the reasons cited regarding selection of quotations, including, in particular, the (in)ability to be woven into the fabric of the larger piece, as well as use of technical language.

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as is the case in arts-based (including digital media) approaches to research (Smith & Dean 2009). Following approval of the final draft (stage five, below), and with the assistance of a small knowledge translation grant, an audio engineer was hired to optimize sound levels and provide professional sound editing. The final narration was also recorded at a professional studio for consistency of sound.

Stage Five: Participant review A script of the draft podcast was created as a textual representation of the content and included transcribed quotations noting the context (i.e., sharing circle or interview) and contributor name, narration, and a description of sound effects, music, and transitions (e.g., “fade under”). This script was shared with the research team, together with the audio-file for listening, to allow for ease of feedback via “track-changes.” Once the team’s suggestions were incorporated, a revised audio draft was shared first with all participants whose voices were included, and then following their approval and support, for review by all other Water Gathering participants as a means of soliciting feedback and identifying and addressing any potential concerns.

Stage Six: Public release and dissemination A website with a dedicated webpage was created to host the podcast in an Open Access format, where it can be streamed or downloaded at any time (www.WaterDialogues.ca). Upon its release in May 2016, the podcast was promoted via social and other news media, as well as through conference presentations. In addition, it has been included as a required listening assignment in a graduate level course offered jointly by the University of Guelph, University of Toronto, University of Northern British Columbia, and Université du Québec à Montréal (Ecosystems Approaches to Health, Summer 2016, 2017), and aired on local radio (CFRU 93.3FM, October 2016). At the time of writing, the podcast website has been accessed by over 12,000 unique visitors.

Contributions to Decolonizing Methods: A Critical Reflection In reflecting on how collaborative podcasting may be applied within, and have the potential to contribute to, a decolonizing research agenda, we draw on Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (2012) description of an Indigenous research programme,

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comprised of a number of interrelated “projects” that Indigenous communities around the world are currently undertaking. In Decolonizing Methodologies (2012), Smith outlines 25 projects through which “a new field of indigenous research is being formed … a field which privileges indigenous concerns, indigenous practices and indigenous participation” (p. 111). United by themes of cultural survival, self-determination, healing, restoration, and social justice, these overlapping projects “have multiple goals and involve different indigenous communities of interest” (Smith 2012, p. 143). We focus on four of these projects here: storytelling, representing, reframing, and sharing.

Storytelling Storytelling was immediately resonant with the process of creating this collaborative podcast. Stories are a powerful medium for conveying meaning, knowledge, and understanding, and maintain a privileged place across diverse Indigenous cultures and oral traditions (Archibald 2008; King 2003). As Smith describes, qualitative research tools and approaches that foreground Indigenous knowledge, voices, and lived experience through storytelling are integral within a decolonizing research agenda; indeed, “embedded in these stories are the ways of knowing, deep metaphors, and motivational drivers that inspire the transformative praxis that many Indigenous researchers identify as a powerful agent for resistance and change” (2005, p. 89). Conceptualizing story as “both method and meaning,” Margaret Kovach highlights the interrelationship between stories, knowing and Indigenous methodologies, suggesting that such approaches support research through which holistic and contextualized meaning can arise (2009, p. 94), while Russell Bishop points to the way in which stories “allow the diversity of truths to be heard” (1995, p. 78). Storytelling was a central component of the Water Dialogues podcast, both through the dialogic process involved in its creation, facilitated by the sharing circles and supplemental interviews, as well as the multi-voiced narrative shared via the podcast itself. As applied within the context of our research, collaborative podcasting thus provided a platform to share and listen to individual and collective stories across diverse perspectives and experiences. Combining “the affective power of sound and voice … with the intimacy of the listening process” (McHugh 2012, p. 195), the aural and oral nature of audio- based storytelling can make it a particularly engaging medium. With respect to this unique aspect of aural communication, sound scholar Yvon Bonenfant has described, “when we [create] sound... [a] vibratory field leaves us, but is of us, and it voyages through space. Other people hear it. Other people feel it” (qtd. in Tiffe & Hoffmann 2017, p. 116). In addition, the flexibility afforded by

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podcasting format and structure further contributed to the suitability of its use as a medium for storytelling within the context of this work. Given the unique place of story in Indigenous cultures and epistemologies, and the responsibility involved in sharing the stories of others in these contexts (Archibald 2008; Kovach 2009; Wilson 2008), the collaborative and deliberative production process outlined in the preceding section, including participant vetting of the podcast content before release, were essential to adapting the use of podcasting within a decolonizing methodological framework.

Representing The project of representing “spans both the notion of representation as a political concept and representation as a form of voice and expression” (Smith 2012, p. 151). Within research, the project of representing seeks to challenge and address issues of objectification, appropriation, and colonization pertaining to the ways in which Indigenous knowledge, perspectives, and lived experience have been collected, documented, and perceived through Western-based approaches. Therefore, representation relates not only to the ideas, knowledges, and perspectives being shared, but who shares them and on what terms. Aligning with this project, collaborative podcasting offers a pathway for the expression of Indigenous knowledges and worldviews, as well as participant stories, perspectives, and lived experience, shared through the voices of contributors themselves; and provides a discursive space to engage diverse knowledges. Indeed, audio-storytelling methods of inquiry and representation have the potential to move beyond the limitations and privileging of written text in academia, allowing listeners to encounter the subtle dynamics and texture of the speaker’s voice through intonation, emphasis, narrative rhythm, and timing (Lindgren 2014; McHugh 2012). These nuances of speech can imbue meaning within dialogue that is not easily detected or conveyed through a reliance on written text alone. In addition, the sparing use of narration in the Water Dialogues podcast, which was limited to providing context rather than analysis, allowed participants’ stories, insights, and experiences shared to “speak for themselves,” without interpretation. However, as in any process of selecting and condensing empirical materials for presentation, the role of the researcher cannot be overlooked (Buckingham 2009; Kovach 2009). The composition of our research team, which included Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers from multiple regions across the country, assisted in bringing a diversity of perspectives to the work. Moreover, our ultimate accountability to participants (Bishop 2005) and the collaborative approach taken were key elements of navigating the responsibilities of representation in a respectful and ethical way.

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Reframing Related to representing is the project of reframing, which involves achieving “greater control over the ways in which Indigenous issues and social problems are discussed and handled” (Smith 2012, p. 154). As Smith describes, “The framing of an issue is about making decisions about its parameters, about what is in the foreground, what is in the background, and what shadings or complexities exist within the frame” (ibid.). In this way, reframing is fundamental to knowledge production in decolonizing research that seeks to transcend the categories and concepts rooted in, and perpetuated through, dominant Western-based discourses. As Smith and others (see Battiste 2000; Kovach 2009; Simpson 2011) have noted, the persistence and seeming intractability of many of the issues faced by Indigenous communities can be linked with the ways in which these issues have been perceived and addressed through Western-based frameworks, and the related power-structures in which they are embedded; frameworks and practices that have tended to ignore, devalue, or otherwise obscure Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, including with respect to water (McGregor 2012; Walkem 2007). As a method and medium responsive to engaging the richness of Indigenous languages, knowledge, and oral traditions, collaborative podcasting thus offered a valuable discursive space for a dialogue around water grounded in and examined through Indigenous perspectives, experiences, values, and worldviews. From this convergence and privileging of diverse Indigenous voices emerged a more holistic, relational dialogue around water, divergent from dominant resource- and rights-based discourses, and unconstrained by the need to filter such understandings through the conventions and structure of traditional academic- based texts.

Sharing The project of sharing relates to the idea of knowledge as a collective benefit, and the sharing of knowledge as both a form of resistance as well as a responsibility of research (Smith 2012). This project includes sharing within and beyond Indigenous communities, and recognizes that “Indigenous communities also have something to offer the non-Indigenous world” (Smith 2012, p. 160). Indeed, the dialogue that arose from the Water Gathering, and shared in the podcast, reflects the transformative potential of sharing stories and reflections about water together in ways that connect knowledge, lived experience, and relationships in a respectful space. In weaving together

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individual stories, reflections, teachings, and research in a narrative form, collaborative podcasting offers an innovative method for telling nuanced and multifaceted stories while fostering dialogue among diverse peoples and groups. In so doing, collaborative podcasting can contribute to, and support the communication of, increasingly expansive understandings of complex issues within a decolonizing agenda. As a method of knowledge mobilization and dissemination, podcasting provides an engaging and informative medium for bringing research to a wide audience, accessible across literacy levels (so long as technical/context-specific jargon is avoided), and available at any time through ‘on-demand’ streaming or download via the Internet. This online access requires less bandwidth than video (which may be a concern in areas with poor Internet connection). Radio broadcast, or distribution on a USB stick, provides other potential avenues for sharing. The public nature of podcasting and lack of participant anonymity, however, are important considerations with respect to the suitability of its use as a method of research dissemination, particularly in contexts dealing with sensitive or personal issues, or cultural teachings, stories, and knowledges that are not intended for sharing outside appropriate cultural contexts and protocols. While we have centered our discussion around four projects, collaborative podcasting could also potentially relate to, and align with, several other decolonizing projects described by Smith (2012), including: testimonies; celebrating survival; indigenizing and indigenist processes; revitalizing and regenerating; connecting; envisioning; gendering; restoring; democratizing and indigenist governance; networking; naming; and, discovering the “beauty” of [Indigenous] knowledge. We chose to focus on storytelling, representing, reframing, and sharing, as they are most resonant with our experience in using collaborative podcasting in this particular research context.

Conclusion Podcasts are continuing to gain traction, popularity, and widespread interest as a method for storytelling in mainstream and alternative media, and are increasingly employed in educational institutions and contexts. Their use in research, however, is relatively new territory; yet as we have experienced through the use of podcasting in this research context, exciting and rich opportunities exist, both as a research method and as a sharing and learning platform, particularly within a decolonizing context. Indeed, as Linda Tuhiwai Smith explained, “an important task of Indigenous research in ‘becoming’ a community of researchers is about … creating the space and support for new

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approaches to research and new examinations of Indigenous research” (2005, p. 92). This resonates with our experience as a team of Indigenous and non- Indigenous researchers collaboratively creating and sharing the Water Dialogues podcast, and is indicative of the potential that the process of creating a podcast may have as a method of collaborative research, and a knowledge preservation and promotion strategy within a decolonizing framework.

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