Edited Book by Elaine Coburn
“More Will Sing Their Way to Freedom”:
Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence//
Table of Contents... more “More Will Sing Their Way to Freedom”:
Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence//
Table of Contents//
Foreword: “Resist No Longer”:
Reflections on Resistance Writing and Teaching
Emma LaRocque//
An Introduction: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence
Elaine Coburn//
Part I: Stories of Resistance//
Chapter ONE The Split Head Resistance:
Using Imperial Law to Contradict Colonial Law for Aboriginal Justice
James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson//
Chapter TWO Incarceration and Aboriginal Women in Canada:
Acts of Resilience and Resistance
Christine Walsh and Jennifer Arrested//
Chapter THREE “Who is Ready to Listen?”:
Aboriginal Peoples with Disabilities
Douglas Durst and Elaine Coburn//
Chapter FOUR Indigenous Resistance in Perspective:
An Overview with an Auto-biographical Research Critique
Rima Wilkes//
Part II : Stories of Resurgence//
Chapter FIVE Behaving Unexpectedly in Expected Places:
First Nations Artists and the Embodiment of Visual Sovereignty
Jennifer Adese//
Chapter SIX
Aboriginal Economic Development and Living Nuu-chah-nulth-aht
Clifford (Kam'ayaam/Chachim'multhnii) Atleo//
Chapter SEVEN The Problem with “Indigenous Peoples”:
Re-considering International Indigenous Rights Activism
Hayden King//
Part III : Stories of Idle No More//
Chapter EIGHT Telling Stories:
Idle No More, Indigenous Resurgence and Political Theory
Kelly Aguirre//
Chapter NINE A Four Directions Model:
Understanding the Rise and Resonance of an Indigenous Self-determination Movement
Jeff Denis//
Chapter TEN Rhythms of Change:
Mobilizing Decolonial Consciousness, Indigenous Resurgence and the Idle No More Movement
Jarrett Martineau//
Afterword: A Steadily Beating Heart:
Persistence, Resistance and Resurgence
Alex Wilson
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Forthcoming Articles and Book Chapters by Elaine Coburn
Feministing in Political Science, 2024
In this chapter, we share our understanding and practice of anti-racist and Indigenous feminisms ... more In this chapter, we share our understanding and practice of anti-racist and Indigenous feminisms in political science. We intentionally specify anti-racist and Indigenous feminisms to differentiate our work from mainstream white feminisms that reinforce the status quo; indeed, some white feminists and white feminisms participate in erasing and quashing questions of race and Indigeneity. Specifically, we reflect upon and draw out insights from an instance where we came together, in 2021, to enact a critique that would disrupt decisions made within our discipline, concerning our flagship journal, the Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS). We saw the matter as one that erased Indigenous voices and expertise, in a project that was all about both. We return to some of the specificities of this incident later to illustrate our argument that mainstream political science not only systemically excludes Indigenous and racialized voices but actively works to restrain and control critical Indigenous and anti-racist voices. In the first part of the chapter, we explore some of these modes of restraint and control, and in the second part we offer a typology of practices to disrupt hegemonies of political science that we refer to as anti-racist and Indigenous feministing.
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Settler Colonialism in Canada: Perspectives, Comparisons, Cases. Vol. 1. David MacDonald and Emily Grafton, eds. University of Regina Press, 2024
In this chapter, we explore the incoherent politics of land acknowledgements in an era of contest... more In this chapter, we explore the incoherent politics of land acknowledgements in an era of contested reconciliation. We open by bringing together Gina Starblanket’s concept of the politics of incoherency with Glend Coulthard’s work critiquing colonial state recognition in an era of state defined reconciliation. We then explore divergent Indigenous and colonial state deployments of land acknowledgements and struggles over their meanings, by tracing the genealogy of LAs, originally from Indigenous protocols, through their uptake in re-settler space. We next show how the Government of Canada deploys a recognition framework of performative “reconciliation”, suggesting continuities between this politics and the state’s efforts to contain, constrain and interpret Indigenous worldviews in ways congruent own interests. We will offer ways that LAs can be read within this framework. In our discussion we argue that land acknowledgements must be linked with land back, for a transformed relationship that restores state and re-settler responsibilities to Indigenous peoples and the land, a struggle now ongoing for more than half a millennium.
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Philosophy Today -- forthcoming
“The human other, each singular and whole in its own right, is never the same but always a differ... more “The human other, each singular and whole in its own right, is never the same but always a different person. Human beings don’t repeat each other; they contradict each other” (p.17). Originally published in German in 1976, in the long shadow of the Shoah, in response to the threat of atomic holocaust, and amidst growing recognition of ecological disaster, Goldschmidt’s Contradictions Set Free argues that emancipation lies in diversity rather than in unity, in the freeing up of contradiction rather than in uniformity. I offer a close reading of Goldschmidt’s plea for pluralism, the foundation for our inescapable moral and political responsibilities to others. Today, what insights -- and what hope --does his dialogic offer for the “joyfully creative” (p.50) realization of our responsibilities to the other, both human and in the natural world?
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Published Articles and Book Chapters by Elaine Coburn
International Encyclopedia of Education 4th Edition. , 2022
Contemporary debates pertaining to social justice and education remain a major concern among educ... more Contemporary debates pertaining to social justice and education remain a major concern among educators advocating for equitable education. We maintain that the moral and political urgency of arguments related to social justice and education arises, ironically, in the absence of social justice in and through formal education systems. Scholars and policy makers, educators and community activists are motivated to theorize about social justice in order to understand and then challenge injustices. Debates about social justice and education are thus rooted in a normative desire to challenge unjust relationships (or inequities) while creating right relationships in and through formal education systems.A central aim of this contribution is therefore to explore debates about what social justice is and how these inform varied understandings of socially just education systems.
To those ends, we first conceptualize social justice theorizing from above and consider how three influential Western philosophical arguments about social justice have informed understandings of what socially just education does (or should do). Next, we turn to intellectual traditions from below that emphasize the necessity of theorizing historically specific injustices in education, especially class inequities, racisms and colonialism, rooted in insights gained from the lived experiences of the most marginalized and racialized individuals. Then, we briefly consider some arguments against socially just education from the left and from the right, before concluding with a brief survey of contemporary concerns about social justice and education in our times.
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Intenational Sociology Review
This review essay critically engages with recent works by Mark Granovetter, an American sociologi... more This review essay critically engages with recent works by Mark Granovetter, an American sociologist whose articles about social networks are among the most-cited in the history of the discipline, and Thomas Piketty, a French economist whose early, illustrious career turned to worldwide public recognition with the publication of le Capital au XXieme siècle in 2015. The contrast is therefore between a well-known sociologist, one of the foremost scholars in economic sociology in the English language, and an economist of international renown who has challenged mainstream economics with his research on economic inequality and his call for participatory public involvement in economic decision-making. Both insist on the economic as social, but in distinctive ways. In this essay, first, I consider Granovetter’s long-awaited, Society and Economy: Framework and Principles, and Piketty’s recent Capital et idéologie, a follow-up to his earlier, best-selling book, on their own terms. Second, I think through how each scholar might understand and critique the other, pointing to complementarities and important differences in their approaches. I conclude that although both Granovetter and Piketty challenge mainstream economistic accounts of economic life, while emphasizing human agency and so the contingency of given economic relationships, they differ significantly in their respective analytical and political-normative focus. For Granovetter, what matters is that economic life is a social fact, while for Piketty it is an urgent social struggle.
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Canadian Review of Sociology, 2023
“We are destroying all intellectual and aesthetic standards in the humanities and social science... more “We are destroying all intellectual and aesthetic standards in the humanities and social sciences, in the name of justice.” –Harold Bloom (1995: 35).
“Racialized and Indigenous academics and students across the country are raising critical questions such as: Whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is discounted? Whose voice is heard and who is ignored?” – Frances Henry and Carole Tator (2009: 22)
“As universities adopt the ideology of the transnational corporation and become subordinated to the needs of capital they are less concerned about how they might educate students in the ideology and civic practices of democratic governance and the necessity of using knowledge to address the challenges of public life.” – Henry Giroux (2009: 671)
Is the university worth saving and if so, from what, for whom and to what ends? This essay explores three different answers to that question, from traditionalists like Bloom, social justice scholars, like Henry and Tator and anti-capitalist academics like Henry Giroux. I do not try and answer which approach is better, but to explore their reasons, on their own terms, and their critiques of the other approaches.
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The Time is Now: Feminist Leadership for a New Era (UNESCO), 2019
This paper contrasts the feminist leader who “takes space” as an honorary man with feminist leade... more This paper contrasts the feminist leader who “takes space” as an honorary man with feminist leadership practices that seek to “make space” for each and all women. The feminist leader who is an honorary man integrates into existing unequal social relationships, largely without disrupting or challenging them. She is a political leader, the head of a key financial institution, the director of a major non-governmental organization or a well-known artist. The success of the honorary man is symbolically important, affirming the possibility of women’s access to major responsibilities against a history of their absence. Yet, little may change for other women, and broader structures of gendered inequalities may remain largely intact, despite her (by definition exceptional) presence. In contrast to the model of feminist leadership predicated on being the honorary man, many women, especially those working from the margins, have created a different understanding of leadership by and for women. I draw on the work of Indigenous feminist Joyce Green (2017), who suggests that we “make space” in our political struggles, scholarship and everyday lives, to argue for a feminist leadership that opens up and so transforms unequal relationships.
Keywords:
feminism, honorary man, leadership, making space, patriarchy
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Health inequalities are central to current health policy internationally and in many nations. As ... more Health inequalities are central to current health policy internationally and in many nations. As health improvements have slowed, the extent and depth of health inequalities in the developed world have become too obvious to ignore. At the same time the profound differences in health between the developed and underdeveloped world, between obesity for some and starvation for others, has created a moral crisis. Yet, the often proclaimed solution to human problems, neo-liberal free-trade producing economic growth and improved human wellbeing, i.e., market fundamentalism, has proven a failure. The dogmatic application of neo-liberal doctrines perversely increases those social inequalities that are among the basic causes of health inequities. The issue then becomes one of creating conditions that would permit more variegated approaches to improving human well-being and reducing inequalities. Ironically, the dynamics of globalization, broadly defined as a view of human beings sharing the same planet and the same fate, has produced opposition to the untrammelled dominance of multinational corporations and the states they influence or control. If we know something about who and what the enemy is, we do not as yet know solutions other than doing something differently and more humanely. There are examples of countries and areas that do better than others at translating economic growth into improvements in human welfare. We can learn from them. Yet the onus remains on us to do whatever is within our capabilities to develop a more just and equal world.
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the Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Canadian Politics, 2020
We offer an overview of Indigenous women’s voices, concerning gender and sexuality, across a rang... more We offer an overview of Indigenous women’s voices, concerning gender and sexuality, across a range of Indigenous civilizations, historically and today. In their activism, in their artistry and in their scholarly writing, Indigenous women affirm their agency and humanity against oppressive, dehumanizing colonial relationships. Yet Indigenous women are diverse and their political positions around gender equity and sexuality are varied and sometimes conflicting, reflecting rich debates within contemporary Indigenous feminist scholarship.
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Canadian Political Economy , 2020
"This country has another story" − Katherena Vermette. This line is from a poem by Vermette (2018... more "This country has another story" − Katherena Vermette. This line is from a poem by Vermette (2018), a Métis writer and poet from Treaty One territory. Without taking away from other readings of these lines, we might offer one possible interpretation as an introduction to thinking through the conversations between Canadian political economy and Indigenous feminist scholarship and struggles. Specifically, Vermette troubles mainstream stories about Canada, and recalls alternate, relational narratives of life in these lands. This is because, for many, perhaps most, Indigenous Peoples, Canada is a violent imposition, a way of naming and claiming Indigenous lands by and for the colonizer. Far from being self-evident, much less self-evidently desirable, the settler colonial project that is currently called "Canada" is part of the deliberate erasure of layers of Indigenous names and relationships with Creation. For, as Kwakwaka'wakw scholar Sarah Hunt (2013) observes, Indigenous names for themselves and their territories are much more than a form of identification. They represent complex overlapping networks of relationships, including rich and ongoing cultural, political, spiritual, ceremonial, and legal relations. Informed by such insights, we might interpret Vermette's statement, "this country has another story," as an opening that invites the reader to think otherwise about the stories that they hold relative to the geog- aphies they inhabit. Here, the land does not signify an object that is merely taken away, returned, and repossessed. Rather, for many Indigenous Peoples, the land represents a web of living, constitutive relations...
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Political Studies, 2021
NOTE: Article is open-access so you can freely read at this link:
https://journals.sagepub.com/d... more NOTE: Article is open-access so you can freely read at this link:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00323217211018127
Or email ecoburnATSIGNyorku.ca for a copy of the article.
This essay relies on the insight that settler colonialism is an ongoing structure geared toward the elimination of Indigenous presence to argue that ideologies that legitimate and naturalize settler occupation are equally ongoing. More specifically, the ideologies that justify settler colonialism in major states like Australia, Canada, and the United States, are like Flying Heads that shape-shift and recur over time. We explore how two notorious ideological tropes—terra nullius and the myth of the Vanishing Race—recur in the work of contrasting contemporary theorists. Ultimately, Flying Head ideologies of settler colonialism cannot be defeated by reasoned argument alone, but by structural transformations beyond the settler-colonial relations that necessitate and sustain them. Following diverse Indigenous theorists and activists, we briefly explore prefigurative
resurgent practices and how Indigenous political imaginaries, like the Dish with One Spoon, offer alternatives to transcend the settler colonial present.
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Canadian Review of Sociology, 2020
Without providing a map, this contribution is nonetheless guided by commitments to social justice... more Without providing a map, this contribution is nonetheless guided by commitments to social justice and specifically for Black liberation, which we understand as vital to human flourishing in all its varied forms and possibilities. The academy is where we work and teach and therefore it is one site for this labour, which is intellectual, collegial and pedagogical. This has informed our own scholarship, in different ways, over many years and it is what motivates us to open this space and this conversation here, with our fellow contributors. We hope that it is seen as an entry point, an invitation, into an ongoing conversation about what is required to challenge anti-Black racisms in our scholarly practices and more to a sociology that supports Black liberation.
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Social Justice Studies, 2020
Abstract: In this article, I review contemporary Indigenous women’s scholarship, describing trans... more Abstract: In this article, I review contemporary Indigenous women’s scholarship, describing transformations from 1985 to the present, first to characterize this scholarship on its own terms and second to situate this literature with respect to recent, nascent dialogues with anti-racist feminisms. What is the focus and range of Indigenous women’s scholarship, from 1985 until today? What does this work seek
to do, that is, what are the intertwined political and scholarly aims of this
scholarship? I suggest that Indigenous women’s scholarly writing is concerned with resilience, or survival, resistance or challenges to colonial power and relationships, and resurgence, or a turning-inward to renew Indigenous knowledges and practices. In the discussion, I briefly consider how the increasingly rich and diverse field of Indigenous women’s theorizing and praxis informs an emerging dialogue with antiracist feminist scholars within the academy and in the broader context of colonial Canada.
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Antipode, 2020
Race is a story that endures, from its beginnings in the origins of racial capitalism, slavery, t... more Race is a story that endures, from its beginnings in the origins of racial capitalism, slavery, the racial wealth gap and long-standing political struggles. During the pandemic, persistent anti-Black racisms, expressed both in violent deaths at the hands of police and in disproportionate deaths linked to the virus, deny the humanity of Black people. This means that what is at stake in this symposium about the pandemic and associated social distancing and surveillance measures is nothing less than Black human-ness. In featuring diverse Black scholars, Gertrude Mianda, Myrna Lashley, Emma Joseph, Tamari Kitossa, Joseph Mensah, Wisdom Tettey, and George Dei and Kathy Lewis, we seek to reaffirm Black expertise and the importance of Black insights into the pandemic, in the radically unequal world in which we live. If race is a story of injustice, we need to build on the work of Black artists, scholars, activists, and Elders, to write new ones.
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This book raises important questions about race, nationalism, colonialism, politics, and the law,... more This book raises important questions about race, nationalism, colonialism, politics, and the law, and how politicized personal identity is shaped, in the contemporary context, by (real or imagined) genealogical ties and genetic ancestry. The empirical focus is the ongoing, contemporary struggles over Indigenous self-determination in the province of Québec, Canada. Leroux offers an important, necessary and politically charged intervention, including a wealth of detailed evidence about race shifting from white to "Indigenous", undertaken mainly by French-speaking Québécois men involved in hunting and fishing. Some of these race shifters, naively motivated by a vaguely rumoured or instinctively felt familial sense of Indigenous belonging, scour genealogical records online or take scientifically dubious commercial DNA tests, in an attempt to “discover” real or imagined Indigenous ancestry. In what is only an apparent paradox, some of these race shifters are self-avowed white supremacists, seeking to indigenize themselves literally, but also spuriously, through highly selective readings of genealogical records and, at times, frankly eugenicist arguments. If motivated by necessary moral and political solidarity with Indigenous peoples against the white usurpation of Indigenous identity -- perversely facilitated by unscrupulous for-profit DNA companies -- Leroux’s book ultimately raises more questions than it answers.
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Socialist Studies , 2020
Although this is not the whole truth of his life, I knew Mel Watkins only as a "happy warrior," a... more Although this is not the whole truth of his life, I knew Mel Watkins only as a "happy warrior," as my family might say. At the University of Toronto in the mid to late 1990s, I was one of many students in his packed Canadian Studies classes, where he moved from theory to current events and back with his characteristic insight and wit. As might be expected, we read Harold Innis and staples' theorists. Less self-evidently, he had a soft spot for Kim Campbell, after her short-lived stint as Prime Minister and so, we were also assigned Reading "Kim" Right, by Frank Davey, notable for its violent pink cover and media analysis of ex-PM Campbell's public image. Quite contrary to the general public opinion at the time, Mel discussed the Quebec referendum and bid for independence that year with enormous sympathy. I remember, too, his straightforward praise for Bob Rae, after Rae's immediate condemnation of the Jacques Parizeau's racist and anti-Semitic comment about losing Quebec independence to "money and the ethnic vote." This was typical of class conversations that encompassed the news of the day and linked these concerns, in a very immediate way, with scholarly readings about Canada's place in the global political economy and the right of all peoples to self-determination-emphatically not to be confused with xenophobic nationalisms.
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International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2019
What forms do gender equity arguments take in major international institutions? What broader stru... more What forms do gender equity arguments take in major international institutions? What broader struggles do these reflect? What contradictions does gender mainstreaming reproduce and what feminist possibilities does it open up? This contribution describes, critiques and tentatively explains the recent, understudied “gender turn” in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the Fund, a major international financial institution. The IMF’s concern with gender is late compared to other multilateral institutions, like the United Nations and the World Bank. Nonetheless, since 2013, the IMF has published more than 2,900 documents, videos, and podcasts specifically about women, alerting the public to gender equity matters through a dedicated “Gender and IMF” homepage and through Twitter, via the hashtags #Women4Growth and #IMFGender. In so doing, the IMF draws on existing, economistic “women’s empowerment” initiatives by major finance and corporate enterprises, in newly opened policy space following the 2008–09 crisis, under unprecedented feminist leadership at the highest level of the Fund. The IMF’s attentiveness to gender, pursued alongside market-led economic efficiency aims, produces a new actor, “femina economica.” This elastic figure is symptomatic of tensions within the organization and of broader contradictions in the current, uncertain moment of the capitalist world political economy.
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Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 2017
“I was born into a whirlpool of keyams and karmas. But I was born asking” (1990: 84).
Professo... more “I was born into a whirlpool of keyams and karmas. But I was born asking” (1990: 84).
Professor LaRocque, Cree-speaking Métis feminist, scholar, and poet, has forged a unique interdisciplinary scholarly and creative body of work, now spanning four decades. Among other concerns, her scholarly writings have critically analysed:
• the representation of Canadian Aboriginal people in history, literature and popular culture;
• Aboriginal identities, including Métis history and identities;
• Contemporary Native literature and post-colonial criticism
• Decolonization and resistance, including by Métis and Native women
• Colonial schooling and Native education
Her poetry has been widely anthologized. Taken separately, LaRocque’s contributions are impressive and important, but taken together, we contend that new resonances and tensions became apparent across her scholarly and creative writing. This interview, preceded by a brief biography at once personal and intellectual, engages with the full range of Professor LaRocque’s theorizing and creative writing to shed new light on a major intellectual in Canada.
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Les êtres humains font et refont le sexe, le genre et la sexualité, avec des implications à la fo... more Les êtres humains font et refont le sexe, le genre et la sexualité, avec des implications à la fois sociales, politiques, culturelles, juridiques et économiques. En même temps, nul ne peut refaire le monde ni se refaire soi-même exactement comme on l’entend. Les relations, les discours et les institutions historiques, normatives, disciplinaires pèsent sur ce que Janik
Bastien Charlebois (2014) appelle « la matrice sexe/genre/sexualité ». Cette matrice normalisatrice structure les relations au quotidien, tout comme les savoirs, y compris ceux produits au sein de l’Université. Contestée, elle incarne néanmoins le sens commun. Ainsi, dans l’Europe contemporaine, il semble évident à la majorité qu’il y a deux sexes, que seules l’hétérosexualité ainsi que certaines formes d’homosexualité sont possibles, que le genre est distinct du sexe et qu’ils sont tous deux stables, depuis la naissance. Ces idées façonnent nos droits et nos institutions politiques, les médias et la culture populaire, nos vies quotidiennes et les mouvements sociaux.
Les dernières décennies ont vu de nouvelles voix venir contester ces idées reçues. Les sciences sociales pourraient s’inspirer des efforts riches et divers de ces chercheurs venant des marges, ainsi que des analyses qui sont en dialogue avec leurs contributions. En particulier, ces recherches fournissent de nouvelles généalogies du pouvoir institutionnalisé, genré et sexué, depuis les colonialismes du xixe siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. En outre, d’une manière inévitablement partielle, fragmentée, parfois contradictoire, elles nous aident à imaginer des relations sociales au-delà des pratiques et des normes, souvent étroites, du présent.
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Edited Book by Elaine Coburn
Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence//
Table of Contents//
Foreword: “Resist No Longer”:
Reflections on Resistance Writing and Teaching
Emma LaRocque//
An Introduction: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence
Elaine Coburn//
Part I: Stories of Resistance//
Chapter ONE The Split Head Resistance:
Using Imperial Law to Contradict Colonial Law for Aboriginal Justice
James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson//
Chapter TWO Incarceration and Aboriginal Women in Canada:
Acts of Resilience and Resistance
Christine Walsh and Jennifer Arrested//
Chapter THREE “Who is Ready to Listen?”:
Aboriginal Peoples with Disabilities
Douglas Durst and Elaine Coburn//
Chapter FOUR Indigenous Resistance in Perspective:
An Overview with an Auto-biographical Research Critique
Rima Wilkes//
Part II : Stories of Resurgence//
Chapter FIVE Behaving Unexpectedly in Expected Places:
First Nations Artists and the Embodiment of Visual Sovereignty
Jennifer Adese//
Chapter SIX
Aboriginal Economic Development and Living Nuu-chah-nulth-aht
Clifford (Kam'ayaam/Chachim'multhnii) Atleo//
Chapter SEVEN The Problem with “Indigenous Peoples”:
Re-considering International Indigenous Rights Activism
Hayden King//
Part III : Stories of Idle No More//
Chapter EIGHT Telling Stories:
Idle No More, Indigenous Resurgence and Political Theory
Kelly Aguirre//
Chapter NINE A Four Directions Model:
Understanding the Rise and Resonance of an Indigenous Self-determination Movement
Jeff Denis//
Chapter TEN Rhythms of Change:
Mobilizing Decolonial Consciousness, Indigenous Resurgence and the Idle No More Movement
Jarrett Martineau//
Afterword: A Steadily Beating Heart:
Persistence, Resistance and Resurgence
Alex Wilson
Forthcoming Articles and Book Chapters by Elaine Coburn
Published Articles and Book Chapters by Elaine Coburn
To those ends, we first conceptualize social justice theorizing from above and consider how three influential Western philosophical arguments about social justice have informed understandings of what socially just education does (or should do). Next, we turn to intellectual traditions from below that emphasize the necessity of theorizing historically specific injustices in education, especially class inequities, racisms and colonialism, rooted in insights gained from the lived experiences of the most marginalized and racialized individuals. Then, we briefly consider some arguments against socially just education from the left and from the right, before concluding with a brief survey of contemporary concerns about social justice and education in our times.
“Racialized and Indigenous academics and students across the country are raising critical questions such as: Whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is discounted? Whose voice is heard and who is ignored?” – Frances Henry and Carole Tator (2009: 22)
“As universities adopt the ideology of the transnational corporation and become subordinated to the needs of capital they are less concerned about how they might educate students in the ideology and civic practices of democratic governance and the necessity of using knowledge to address the challenges of public life.” – Henry Giroux (2009: 671)
Is the university worth saving and if so, from what, for whom and to what ends? This essay explores three different answers to that question, from traditionalists like Bloom, social justice scholars, like Henry and Tator and anti-capitalist academics like Henry Giroux. I do not try and answer which approach is better, but to explore their reasons, on their own terms, and their critiques of the other approaches.
Keywords:
feminism, honorary man, leadership, making space, patriarchy
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00323217211018127
Or email ecoburnATSIGNyorku.ca for a copy of the article.
This essay relies on the insight that settler colonialism is an ongoing structure geared toward the elimination of Indigenous presence to argue that ideologies that legitimate and naturalize settler occupation are equally ongoing. More specifically, the ideologies that justify settler colonialism in major states like Australia, Canada, and the United States, are like Flying Heads that shape-shift and recur over time. We explore how two notorious ideological tropes—terra nullius and the myth of the Vanishing Race—recur in the work of contrasting contemporary theorists. Ultimately, Flying Head ideologies of settler colonialism cannot be defeated by reasoned argument alone, but by structural transformations beyond the settler-colonial relations that necessitate and sustain them. Following diverse Indigenous theorists and activists, we briefly explore prefigurative
resurgent practices and how Indigenous political imaginaries, like the Dish with One Spoon, offer alternatives to transcend the settler colonial present.
to do, that is, what are the intertwined political and scholarly aims of this
scholarship? I suggest that Indigenous women’s scholarly writing is concerned with resilience, or survival, resistance or challenges to colonial power and relationships, and resurgence, or a turning-inward to renew Indigenous knowledges and practices. In the discussion, I briefly consider how the increasingly rich and diverse field of Indigenous women’s theorizing and praxis informs an emerging dialogue with antiracist feminist scholars within the academy and in the broader context of colonial Canada.
Professor LaRocque, Cree-speaking Métis feminist, scholar, and poet, has forged a unique interdisciplinary scholarly and creative body of work, now spanning four decades. Among other concerns, her scholarly writings have critically analysed:
• the representation of Canadian Aboriginal people in history, literature and popular culture;
• Aboriginal identities, including Métis history and identities;
• Contemporary Native literature and post-colonial criticism
• Decolonization and resistance, including by Métis and Native women
• Colonial schooling and Native education
Her poetry has been widely anthologized. Taken separately, LaRocque’s contributions are impressive and important, but taken together, we contend that new resonances and tensions became apparent across her scholarly and creative writing. This interview, preceded by a brief biography at once personal and intellectual, engages with the full range of Professor LaRocque’s theorizing and creative writing to shed new light on a major intellectual in Canada.
Bastien Charlebois (2014) appelle « la matrice sexe/genre/sexualité ». Cette matrice normalisatrice structure les relations au quotidien, tout comme les savoirs, y compris ceux produits au sein de l’Université. Contestée, elle incarne néanmoins le sens commun. Ainsi, dans l’Europe contemporaine, il semble évident à la majorité qu’il y a deux sexes, que seules l’hétérosexualité ainsi que certaines formes d’homosexualité sont possibles, que le genre est distinct du sexe et qu’ils sont tous deux stables, depuis la naissance. Ces idées façonnent nos droits et nos institutions politiques, les médias et la culture populaire, nos vies quotidiennes et les mouvements sociaux.
Les dernières décennies ont vu de nouvelles voix venir contester ces idées reçues. Les sciences sociales pourraient s’inspirer des efforts riches et divers de ces chercheurs venant des marges, ainsi que des analyses qui sont en dialogue avec leurs contributions. En particulier, ces recherches fournissent de nouvelles généalogies du pouvoir institutionnalisé, genré et sexué, depuis les colonialismes du xixe siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. En outre, d’une manière inévitablement partielle, fragmentée, parfois contradictoire, elles nous aident à imaginer des relations sociales au-delà des pratiques et des normes, souvent étroites, du présent.
Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence//
Table of Contents//
Foreword: “Resist No Longer”:
Reflections on Resistance Writing and Teaching
Emma LaRocque//
An Introduction: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence
Elaine Coburn//
Part I: Stories of Resistance//
Chapter ONE The Split Head Resistance:
Using Imperial Law to Contradict Colonial Law for Aboriginal Justice
James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson//
Chapter TWO Incarceration and Aboriginal Women in Canada:
Acts of Resilience and Resistance
Christine Walsh and Jennifer Arrested//
Chapter THREE “Who is Ready to Listen?”:
Aboriginal Peoples with Disabilities
Douglas Durst and Elaine Coburn//
Chapter FOUR Indigenous Resistance in Perspective:
An Overview with an Auto-biographical Research Critique
Rima Wilkes//
Part II : Stories of Resurgence//
Chapter FIVE Behaving Unexpectedly in Expected Places:
First Nations Artists and the Embodiment of Visual Sovereignty
Jennifer Adese//
Chapter SIX
Aboriginal Economic Development and Living Nuu-chah-nulth-aht
Clifford (Kam'ayaam/Chachim'multhnii) Atleo//
Chapter SEVEN The Problem with “Indigenous Peoples”:
Re-considering International Indigenous Rights Activism
Hayden King//
Part III : Stories of Idle No More//
Chapter EIGHT Telling Stories:
Idle No More, Indigenous Resurgence and Political Theory
Kelly Aguirre//
Chapter NINE A Four Directions Model:
Understanding the Rise and Resonance of an Indigenous Self-determination Movement
Jeff Denis//
Chapter TEN Rhythms of Change:
Mobilizing Decolonial Consciousness, Indigenous Resurgence and the Idle No More Movement
Jarrett Martineau//
Afterword: A Steadily Beating Heart:
Persistence, Resistance and Resurgence
Alex Wilson
To those ends, we first conceptualize social justice theorizing from above and consider how three influential Western philosophical arguments about social justice have informed understandings of what socially just education does (or should do). Next, we turn to intellectual traditions from below that emphasize the necessity of theorizing historically specific injustices in education, especially class inequities, racisms and colonialism, rooted in insights gained from the lived experiences of the most marginalized and racialized individuals. Then, we briefly consider some arguments against socially just education from the left and from the right, before concluding with a brief survey of contemporary concerns about social justice and education in our times.
“Racialized and Indigenous academics and students across the country are raising critical questions such as: Whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is discounted? Whose voice is heard and who is ignored?” – Frances Henry and Carole Tator (2009: 22)
“As universities adopt the ideology of the transnational corporation and become subordinated to the needs of capital they are less concerned about how they might educate students in the ideology and civic practices of democratic governance and the necessity of using knowledge to address the challenges of public life.” – Henry Giroux (2009: 671)
Is the university worth saving and if so, from what, for whom and to what ends? This essay explores three different answers to that question, from traditionalists like Bloom, social justice scholars, like Henry and Tator and anti-capitalist academics like Henry Giroux. I do not try and answer which approach is better, but to explore their reasons, on their own terms, and their critiques of the other approaches.
Keywords:
feminism, honorary man, leadership, making space, patriarchy
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00323217211018127
Or email ecoburnATSIGNyorku.ca for a copy of the article.
This essay relies on the insight that settler colonialism is an ongoing structure geared toward the elimination of Indigenous presence to argue that ideologies that legitimate and naturalize settler occupation are equally ongoing. More specifically, the ideologies that justify settler colonialism in major states like Australia, Canada, and the United States, are like Flying Heads that shape-shift and recur over time. We explore how two notorious ideological tropes—terra nullius and the myth of the Vanishing Race—recur in the work of contrasting contemporary theorists. Ultimately, Flying Head ideologies of settler colonialism cannot be defeated by reasoned argument alone, but by structural transformations beyond the settler-colonial relations that necessitate and sustain them. Following diverse Indigenous theorists and activists, we briefly explore prefigurative
resurgent practices and how Indigenous political imaginaries, like the Dish with One Spoon, offer alternatives to transcend the settler colonial present.
to do, that is, what are the intertwined political and scholarly aims of this
scholarship? I suggest that Indigenous women’s scholarly writing is concerned with resilience, or survival, resistance or challenges to colonial power and relationships, and resurgence, or a turning-inward to renew Indigenous knowledges and practices. In the discussion, I briefly consider how the increasingly rich and diverse field of Indigenous women’s theorizing and praxis informs an emerging dialogue with antiracist feminist scholars within the academy and in the broader context of colonial Canada.
Professor LaRocque, Cree-speaking Métis feminist, scholar, and poet, has forged a unique interdisciplinary scholarly and creative body of work, now spanning four decades. Among other concerns, her scholarly writings have critically analysed:
• the representation of Canadian Aboriginal people in history, literature and popular culture;
• Aboriginal identities, including Métis history and identities;
• Contemporary Native literature and post-colonial criticism
• Decolonization and resistance, including by Métis and Native women
• Colonial schooling and Native education
Her poetry has been widely anthologized. Taken separately, LaRocque’s contributions are impressive and important, but taken together, we contend that new resonances and tensions became apparent across her scholarly and creative writing. This interview, preceded by a brief biography at once personal and intellectual, engages with the full range of Professor LaRocque’s theorizing and creative writing to shed new light on a major intellectual in Canada.
Bastien Charlebois (2014) appelle « la matrice sexe/genre/sexualité ». Cette matrice normalisatrice structure les relations au quotidien, tout comme les savoirs, y compris ceux produits au sein de l’Université. Contestée, elle incarne néanmoins le sens commun. Ainsi, dans l’Europe contemporaine, il semble évident à la majorité qu’il y a deux sexes, que seules l’hétérosexualité ainsi que certaines formes d’homosexualité sont possibles, que le genre est distinct du sexe et qu’ils sont tous deux stables, depuis la naissance. Ces idées façonnent nos droits et nos institutions politiques, les médias et la culture populaire, nos vies quotidiennes et les mouvements sociaux.
Les dernières décennies ont vu de nouvelles voix venir contester ces idées reçues. Les sciences sociales pourraient s’inspirer des efforts riches et divers de ces chercheurs venant des marges, ainsi que des analyses qui sont en dialogue avec leurs contributions. En particulier, ces recherches fournissent de nouvelles généalogies du pouvoir institutionnalisé, genré et sexué, depuis les colonialismes du xixe siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. En outre, d’une manière inévitablement partielle, fragmentée, parfois contradictoire, elles nous aident à imaginer des relations sociales au-delà des pratiques et des normes, souvent étroites, du présent.
Against such colonial recognition politics, Coulthard draws critical inspi- ration from a range of sources, including Frantz Fanon’s political philosophy of self-affirmation, Dene politics of place-based or ‘grounded’ normativity
and the recent ‘Idle No More’ Indigenous movement. From this political philosophy and praxis, Coulthard develops five theses for an alternative, prefigurative politics of Indigenous self-determina- tion, rooted in relationships with the natural world and committed to gender justice, among other aims.
They address debates about a wide range of cultural differences, and remind us that these differences are often profound, going far beyond varying traditions around food and dress. People disagree about questions like the right to a medically assisted death, for instance: whether or not it is ever allowable; or, for instance, only allowable in specific, well-defined circumstances. Given deep-rooted moral differences over real-world issues such as these, how can we live together in multicultural societies?
Worse, the authors document a systemic, self-interested unwillingness by the government and the university to speak about and document, much less challenge, racisms. This book therefore performs the labour that the authors would like to see across the academy, more broadly, and in government policy. That is, the authors systematically examine the evidence, which shows the reproduction of race inequities across the university, and then, against self- interested refusals to name the source of the problem, they forthrightly point to racism as the cause. The authors’ underlying political aim is to challenge racism in the authors’ own workplaces, transforming the university into a space where “Indigenous and racialized faculty are recognized or accepted as legitimate members of the academy” (308), despite their historical and ongoing exclusion and marginalization.
such, Canada enjoys political and economic autonomy and exercises considerable influence abroad, including through foreign direct investment, despite its small population. Normatively and politically, Kellogg rejects the left-nationalism associated with the staples tradition in CPE, for focusing on the “wrong enemy” (228), non-resident economic control. Instead, he warns of the dangers of all nationalisms, whether left or right. Overall, this book is important, worthwhile and (mostly) rigorous.
I interviewed William Carroll on 20 February 2010, via the internet. He answered questions with characteristic thoughtfulness and in full, sometimes complex sentences that required only very light editing for purposes of clarity. In one instance, additional material was inserted into the interview via email. My questions were edited for purposes of space.
We live in an unequal world; these inequalities do not stop at the university classroom door. In this five-part blog series, I consider some ways unjust inequalities are (re)produced in the classroom. These inequalities affect the pedagogical relationship. Moreover, critically investigating them matters if the university is to be a site for challenging, not reproducing, social inequalities.
Part I: Pedagogy is not (just) about technique
Part II: The problems with the conscientious pedagogue
Part III: The practical challenges of broadening the scholarly canon
Part IV: As professors, we are not all equal before our students
Part V: "Imagine Otherwise" -- Ways Forward
Different disciplines, including economics, sociology, political science, and philosophy use various theories and approaches to measure, describe, and explain patterns and trends in economic inequality worldwide. These arguments are informed by normative assessments about inequality's moral justifications, as well as broad debates about the relationship between global economic inequality and capitalism.