Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Human Rights Studies Master of Arts Program (Ref)Using Human Rights: Indigenous Activism and the Politics of Refusal in Settler Colonial Contexts Tim Wyman-McCarthy Thesis adviser: Professor Audra Simpson Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts January 2016 © 2016 Tim Wyman-McCarthy All rights reserved Abstract This thesis is a critical history of ideas—or a history of repressed and repressive ideas (and histories)—that analyses how liberal internationalism, in the form of human rights, presses upon, covers over, brushes against, interacts with, or is used instrumentally by Indigenous activism and political life. By situating these interactions between human rights and Indigenous political life in the context of settler colonialism, it aims to bring out the complexity of a politics of (ref)usal that permeates this relationship, in this context. First, the thesis reads critiques of human rights against emerging literature in settler colonial studies, showing how the irreducible element of an eliminatory drive for land, which characterizes settler colonialism, is not accounted for in the existing critical literature on human rights. Second, it presents a critical history of the normative evolution of the right to self-determination in both law and discourse as these relate to Indigenous peoples, showing how the norm is constructed both to make illegible other forms of Indigenous political life and to reify anthropological tropes about Indigenous culture. Third, it tests proposals for ‘saving’ human rights from its colonial-hegemonic past—by repoliticizing it—against writing on settler decolonization, to ask about the role of human rights in/as decolonial politics. The thesis, finally, considers how the normative and historical terrain it has mapped might help us think through the politics of human rights and Indigenous activism (namely, the Idle No More movement) in Canada in light of Justin Trudeau’s election as Prime Minister in October, 2015. Ultimately, the aim of this work is to interrogate the normative political optics of the settler state—what it can and cannot make legible—as it makes use of liberal internationalist discourse to make illegible (to eliminate from view) other, Indigenous, modes of political life which stubbornly (politically) refuse this imposition. i Table of Contents i Contents ii Acknowledgements 1 - 47 CHAPTER ONE: Indigenous Rights, Human Rights, and Settler Colonialism 48 - 89 CHAPTER TWO: The Normative Politics of Self-Determination 90 - 157 CHAPTER THREE: Settler Decolonization and Human Rights 158 - 170 POST-SCRIPT: Idle No More in the Era of Trudeau 2.0 171 Bibliography ii Acknowledgements Many places and people made the writing of this thesis possible. First, I would like to acknowledge two peoples: the Lenape, on whose land now stands Columbia University, where this thesis was largely written; and the Mississauga, on whose land I was raised and still call home, in Ontario, Canada. Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam Avenue provided an internet- free space where actual thinking could happen; and International House afforded a comfortable and congenial home to return to at the end of the day. Learning from ones friends is perhaps the single most fulfilling part of graduate work, blurring the boundary between work and fun. My first debt is to Alexis Comninos, to whom the ideas in this thesis were originally articulated during long conversations over countless (Milanos) lunches, home-cooked dinners, and study breaks. I am truly grateful for his patience, his insight, his interest in these ideas, and most of all for his friendship. Mille mercis! For their illuminating conversations, and most of all for their friendship and support, I would like to thank all my HRSMA peers, and in particular Trip Carpenter, Caroline Dönmez, Kathryn Herrera, Aisha Onsando, Meaghan Shevell, and the whole Lehman Study Group. At International House, Stephanie Martinez, Stephanie Sodero, and Robert Robinson have kept me sane-ish (for which I am grateful). They are also friends with whom laughter is the default setting—I cannot express how much this means to me. Thanks are also due to the students in Professor Simpson’s “Settler Colonialism in North America” seminar, who helped me remember how exciting and unsettling learning can be. Alison Carey and Renata Colwell, in addition to being dear friends, provided comments on drafts of this work. I thank them profusely for the gift of their time and talents. Kristina Eberbach and Gergana Halpern at ISHR made this Masters program what it is. I am grateful to them for their care and dedication. A number of teachers, past and present, across Canada (Queen’s University), the UK (Oxford University), and the United States (Columbia University), have formed so much of who I am and how I think that it is necessary and important to me that they are acknowledged: Professors Christopher Bongie, Amitava Chowdhury, Saidyia Hartman, Dame Hermione Lee, Edward Lobb, Harold Mah, Mahmood Mamdani, Ankhi Mukherjee, David Scott, Michael Snediker, Elsa Stamatopoulou, and Neferti Tadiar. Whether through teaching a challenging course, displaying a unique style of thought, offering wisdom on life in general, or helping me navigate academia in particular, these individuals have influenced and inspired me—I thank you. Of course, Asha Varadharajan remains my most important teacher, as well as cherished friend, interlocutor, collaborator, and partner in crime! Your belief in me means more than I can say. Professor Audra Simpson, who supervised this thesis, provides an example towards which I will always aspire and inevitably fall short: intellectually generous and rigorous, committed and compassionate, she has taught me invaluable lessons about what academic life can and should do. Her teaching, scholarship, and mentorship have made this work possible, and enjoyable. Above all, I would like to thank my family: my brothers Matt and Nate, my parents Kathryn Wyman and Tom McCarthy, and my grandmother, Dorothy Wyman. I thank you all, so much, and with love. 1 CHAPTER ONE Indigenous Rights, Human Rights, and Settler Colonialism I. Indigenous Rights at the UN The stories that movements, institutions, and peoples tell about themselves matter—they matter because narrating where they came from and where they are in part determines where they might go and what they might become. Such stories also, as Gordon Christie says, “police meaning”: “the stories we tell define who we are and how we think of the world—while they also work to control what can be thought (and so what we can see as ‘possible’ action)” (2011: 338). Stories, the imaginative parameters of thought, and action, are inextricable entwined. The story that the global Indigenous rights movement tells of itself is both specific and general. It usually starts with Cayuga chief Deskaheh (1872-1925), travelling to Switzerland on his Haudenosaunee Confederacy passport in September 1923, walking into the halls of the League of Nations in Geneva, demanding an audience, and creating a space of/for Indigenous activism and engagement in a globalizing world of nation-states.1 Deskaheh’s powerful originary claim to attention, so the story goes, would then develop over the next century, culminating in institutional recognition through the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) in 1982 and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) in 2000. Between Deskaheh’s intervention and the PFII, the narrative is punctuated by a number of key moments and achievements: International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 107 (1957) and its revision as ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (1989); the UN- 1 Two years after Deskaheh’s trip, in 1925, Maori T.W. Ratana made a similar journey to the League to bring international attention to New Zealand’s violation of treaty agreements. A number of scholars, including Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015), see the actions of these two men, combined, as forming the “political roots” (174) of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 2 The year 1977 saw the first national or regional meetings of Indigenous leaders in Panama, Ecuador, and Sweden, 2 sponsored International Nongovernmental Organization Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas in 1977; the North American regional Indigenous rights movement that developed in the 1970s, having gained advocacy experience from civil rights movements;2 Martinez Cobo’s monumental report on discrimination against Indigenous people presented to the UN between 1981-1983; the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio in 1992; and the naming of 1995-2004 as the first UN Indigenous Decade (Lawlor 172-173).3 This is the specific picture the international Indigenous rights movement paints, its characters, actions, and settings. The broader narrative arc, however, like many origin stories, is moral: it makes an argument for the value and validity of the movement’s existence. In this story, the Indigenous rights movement is one of struggle for a seat at the human rights table—and, above all, the carving out of meaningful space. The battle, the tale goes, was fought by Indigenous peoples in an arena where the deck was stacked against them: states did not want indigenous peoples to succeed; states were threatened by them; states were products, in some cases, of Indigenous dispossession. Thus, the