Armed with an Eagle Feather Against the Parliamentary Mace: A
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Armed with an Eagle Feather Against the Parliamentary Mace: A Discussion of Discourse on Indigenous Sovereignty and Spirituality in a Settler Colonial Canada, 1990-2017 Stacie A. Swain A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master’s degree in Religious Studies Department of Classics and Religious Studies Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Stacie A. Swain, Ottawa, Canada, 2017 Table of Contents Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... iv Preface............................................................................................................................................ v Introduction: A Number of Things and Canada 150...................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Contextualizing Indigenous Peoples and Canada................................................... 9 i. Acts of Identification: The Term “Indigenous” and its Utility................................... 11 ii. Theorizing Canada as “Settler Colonial” in relation to Indigenous Peoples.............. 17 iii. Legislative Acts and the Establishment of Canadian Dominance.............................. 19 iv. Acting Sovereign: Canada and the Past 150 Years..................................................... 23 v. Questioning the “Settler Common Sense” of Canadian Sovereignty........................ 25 Chapter Two: Parsing the Canadian Parliamentary Mace.......................................................... 27 i. Making “Stuff” into “Things” and Critical Discourse Analysis................................ 29 ii. “Religion,” “Civilization,” and Settler Colonial Sovereignty.................................... 32 iii. A History and Context to Produce Canada’s Parliamentary Mace............................ 34 iv. Critically Analyzing Authority: The Parliamentary Mace, Metonymy, and Monarchy.......................................................................................................... 36 v. The Mace as an Item of Discourse at Canada’s Sesquicentennial............................. 40 vi. Occlusion, Authority, and Anticipated Futures in Conflict....................................... 42 Chapter Three: Examining Three Eagle Feathers Amidst an “Indian Summer” of “National Crises”........................................................................................ 45 i. “The Man with the Eagle Feather” vs. the Meech Lake Accord................................ 47 ii ii. Characterizing the Eagle Feather as a Collective Representation in Indigenous Canada.............................................................................................. 51 iii. From the Manitoba Legislative Assembly to Kanien’kéha:ka Mohawk Territory................................................................................................................... 55 iv. Categories and Contrasts: Different Groups and Ways of Life................................. 61 Chapter Four: Armed with An Eagle Feather? ........................................................................... 63 i. Knowledge Production and “Religion” as a Concept and Category.......................... 64 ii. An Introduction to Critical Religion and Vestigial State Theory............................... 69 iii. First Nations, Once and Future Nations, and the Second Nation............................... 72 iv. The Eagle Feather Meets the Parliamentary Mace..................................................... 76 v. The Politics of Materializing Indigenous Peoples as Nations.................................... 81 Chapter Five: Conceptualizing Twenty-First Century Indigenous Sovereignty........................... 83 i. Idle No More and the Eagle Feather: Citing the Past to Stand Up for a Future....................................................................................................................... 84 ii. Rethinking Indigenous Identity and Sovereignty....................................................... 90 iii. An Eagle Feather Against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police................................ 92 iv. Events of Refusal and Acts of Recognition................................................................ 97 Conclusion: Indigenous Spirituality and the Performance of Dissent within a Settler Colonial Nation-State............................................................................................ 100 Bibliography............................................................................................................................... 113 iii Abstract Canada 150, or the sesquicentennial anniversary of Confederation, celebrates a nation- state that can be described as “settler colonial” in relation to Indigenous peoples. This thesis brings a Critical Religion and Critical Discourse Analysis methodology into conversation with Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies to ask: how is Canadian settler colonial sovereignty enacted, and how do Indigenous peoples perform challenges to that sovereignty? The parliamentary mace and the eagle feather are conceptualized as emblematic and condensed metaphors, or metonyms, that assert and represent Canadian and Indigenous sovereignties. As a settler colonial sovereignty, established and naturalized partially through discourses on religion, Canadian sovereignty requires the displacement of Indigenous sovereignty. In events from 1990 to 2017, Indigenous people wielding eagle feathers disrupt Canadian governance and challenge the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty. Indigenous sovereignty is (re)asserted as identity-based, oppositional, and spiritualized. Discourses on Indigenous sovereignty and spirituality provide categories and concepts through which Indigenous resistance occurs within Canada. Keywords: Canada, Canadian Sovereignty, Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Religion, Eagle Feather, Elijah Harper, Elsipogtog, Identity, Idle No More, Indigenous-Canadian Relations, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Resistance, Indigenous Spirituality, Oka, Parliamentary Mace, Religion, Religious Studies, Settler Colonialism, Sovereignty. iv Preface I would like to acknowledge that this thesis was primarily researched and written from within unceded Algonquin territory in Ottawa, Ontario. Segments were written within territory covered by Treaty Six, which was signed between the Plains and Wood Cree, Nakota, Saulteaux, and Dene peoples and the British Crown. This thesis was financially supported by the University of Ottawa and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). In this thesis, I perform a critical inquiry of materials from the public sphere, including news media, Internet content, and various events. Chapter three is partly comprised by an informal conversation and personal correspondence with Anishinaabe scholar Rodney Nelson of Carleton University. His guidance is sincerely appreciated, as is the belated but impactful experience of the Carleton University Institute for the Ethics of Research with Indigenous Peoples (CUIERIP) in June 2017. Firstly, I want to thank my supervisor, Naomi R. Goldenberg, for her knowledge, encouragement, and confidence in my abilities. Naomi, your sharp intellect and wit made working with you both enjoyable and inspirational. Secondly, I want to thank Willi Braun, Russell McCutcheon, and Craig Martin amongst too many professors and academics to name, as well as junior scholars and fellow graduate students, for offering me advice, mentorship, and collegiality. And thirdly but most necessarily, I want to thank my mother, Bernadette Synyshyn- Swain. Ma, words can’t express how much I appreciate your love, friendship, and faith in me—it has meant the world, wherever life has taken me. v INTRODUCTION A Number of Things and Canada 150 From one of our nation’s most beloved and iconic authors comes a lyrical 150th birthday gift to Canada. Jane Urquhart chooses fifty Canadian objects that tell us who we are in a way never done before… Urquhart composes a symphonic memory bank filled with items that resonate with the pulse of our collective experience. -A Number of Things, frontispiece1 These words introduce the book that Canadian author Jane Urquhart was invited to write to mark the 150th birthday of Canada, the nation-state’s sesquicentennial anniversary in 2017. The book contains a collection of written chapters and scratchboard-style illustrations, pairs of which depict objects that Urquhart considers important to the national narrative of Canada. Urquhart’s book demonstrates the way in which objects and our descriptions of them represent more than simply a moment frozen in time; by inflecting objects with upcycled narratives and recent understandings, we revivify the contexts in which they are found and the people who used or encountered the objects in question. Social actors—including Urquhart and her readers— reconstruct histories and pasts around fifty objects for present purposes and anticipated futures. However, A Number of Things not only tells us who and what was in order to tell us what is, but also cites these objects and reconstructs their narratives in service of a royal “we.” The book not only commemorates, but (re)constructs and (re)produces the nation-state of Canada through an appeal to collective memory. A Number of Things also serves as a lay example of what I do within this thesis: I examine two objects, the Canadian parliamentary mace and the eagle feather, within a set of narrative connections to discuss the