Unsettled Expectations: Uncertainty, Land and Settler Decolonization

by Eva Mackey

Overview

What do local conflicts about land rights tell us about Indigenous-settler relations and the challenges and possibilities of decolonization? In Unsettled Expectations, Eva Mackey draws on ethnographic case studies about land rights conflicts in Canada and the U.S. to argue that critical analysis of present-day disputes over land, belonging and sovereignty will help us understand how colonization is reproduced today and how to challenge it. Employing theoretical approaches from Indigenous and settler colonial studies, and in the context of critical historical and legal analysis, Mackey urges us to rethink the assumptions of settler certainty that underpin current conflicts between settlers and Indigenous peoples and reveals settler privilege to be a doomed fantasy of entitlement.

Finally, Mackey draws on case studies of Indigenous-settler alliances to show how embracing difficult uncertainty can be an integral part of undoing settler privilege and a step toward decolonization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781552668986
Publisher:	Fernwood Publishing
Publication date:	09/15/2016
Sold by:	De Marque
Format:	eBook
Pages:	234
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Eva Mackey is the author of House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada and is an associate professor in the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Part 1 Contact Zones and the Settler Colonial Present 1

Introduction: Settler Colonialism and Contested Homelands 2

Land, Property, History and the Emergence of "Settler Structures of Feeling" 7

Settled and Unsettled Expectations 8

Fantasies of Entitlement 9

The "Settler Problem," Indigenous Sovereignty and Decolonization 13

Land Rights Land Claims and Decolonization 16

Uncertainty, Anger, and Settler States of Feeling 17

Dismantling and Rebuilding 20

1 Genealogies of Certainty and Uncertainty 27

Neoliberalism and Uncertainty 31

Property and (Un)Certainties in Settler Colonialism 33

Settler Anxiety 35

Uncertainty and Decolonizing Strategies 36

Terra Nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery in Everyday Life 38

2 Fantasizing and Legitimating Possession 41

Property and "First Possession" 43

Tracing Terra Nullius 47

Locke's Improving Labour, Property and Personhood Law and Certainty 55

Land Rights, Extinguishment and the Search for Certainty 60

The Modification of Rights Certainty Technique: The Nisga'a Agreement 63

The Non-Assertion of Rights Certainty Technique: 'As if these rights did not exist" 64

Part 2 Ontological Uncertainties and Resurgent Colonialism 69

Introduction: Unsettled Feelings and Communities 70

Land Claim Crises 70

CKCN and UCE in their Communities 72

3 Defending Expectations 78

Community Heritage in Danger 79

First Possession? "We Were Here First" 83

Nomads and "Warring Tribes" 86

Defining Legitimate Sovereignty 88

States of Nature: Subsistence Histories in the Margins 89

"Indians don't farm land!"⁵ Drainage and Doctrines 92

Swamps, Labour, Land and Jurisdiction: The Drainage Issue 93

Ontological Uncertainty and Threatened Jurisdictional Authority 95

4 Settler Jurisdictional Imaginaries in Practice: Equality, Law, Race and Multiculturalism 101

One Nation Discourses 106

We "Certainly Aren't Racist": Cultural Pluralism, Race and Settler Innocence 108

Culture, Blood and Taxes 113

Taxes and Nations: Delegitimizing Indigenous Sovereignty 116

Concluding Thoughts on Part Two 121

Part 3 Imagining Otherwise: Embracing Settler Uncertainty 123

Introduction: Treaty as a Verb 124

Epistemological Shifts 126

Who Decolonizes? And How? 128

Theorizing Treaty Relationships 132

Treaty as a Verb - The Spaces Between the Rows 134

Reconciling Autonomy 137

Renewal: Treaty as a Verb 139

5 "Turning the Doctrine of Discovery on its Head": The Onondaga Land Rights Action 145

The Legal Context: Sherrill v. Oneida 150

Treatying in Court 154

6 Creative Uncertainty and Decolonizing Relations 165

Encounters in Shared Homelands 169

Listening Otherwise: New Stories, Histories and Relational Responsibilities 171

Risking Responsible Relationality 173

Unsettling Subjects: Risk, Uncertainty and Decentering 176

Creative Uncertainty and Risking Connection 176

Invigorating Uncertainty 179

NOON: Pedagogies of Relationality 180

Decentring: Negotiating Relational Autonomy 182

Concluding Thoughts 189

Epilogue 193

References 196

Index 215

Editorial Reviews

Provides the reader with a comprehensive and highly insightful depiction of settlers’ understandings of relations with Indigenous peoples as these are played out on issues of land rights on both sides of the border.

Michael Asch

An invaluable contribution to the scholarly literature on settler colonialism.

Mark Rifkin

Lucid and accessible, Unsettled Expectations will appeal to general readers, students and professors, activists and NGO workers, government policy-makers, members of the legal profession, and media.

Daniel Coleman