Rudy and Brendan join Tyler Shipley, author of Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Canadian state. We discuss the terms “Settler Capitalism” and “Colonial Imagination”, the formation of Canada through Confederation, the historical policy of Canada towards indigenous people and the current debates around residential schools and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), how Canada is falsely posited as a gentler alternative to the U.S. and the difference between the “Canadian mosaic” and “American melting pot” approaches to immigration. We also discuss the centrality of decolonization and the impossibility of sanitizing the signifier of Canada.
We strongly recommend checking out American Indian voices on the topics covered. Aside from the classics by Howard Adams: Prison of Grass and A Tortured People, and Glen Sean Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, the book Stringing Rosaries: the History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of North American Indian Boarding School Survivors by Denise Lajimodiere and Mary Annette Plumber‘s numerous articles are good ways to continue learning.
M. Gouldhake’s writings are also an invaluable source on the Canadian context and aswell as a resource on Marxism/anarchism and Indigenous people. We also recommend the following Red Nation Podcast episodes as a basic introduction to the ways indigenous people are organizing around these issues: No Apologies, Land Back (on Boarding Schools) and MMIWG2S+: No more red hand prints!
We also alluded to (non-indigenous) Patrick Wolfe’s Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race in the episode.
