In this interview, a leading scholar of Indigeneity, Bonita Lawrence, discusses some of the crucial issues facing Native people in Canada today. She reflects on the denial of citizenship arising from the Indian Act’s definition of ‘Indianness’ — which, in Lawrence’s words, reduces cultural identity to racial identity. Also examined are the dilemmas of finding common ground between Indigenous struggles against the colonialism of the Canadian settler-state and the anti-racist struggles of Black people and other racialised groups. Exploring the interaction of Black and Indigenous peoples in Canada, it is argued, reveals the limitations of a superficial multiculturalism.
The residential school system was a government-directed assimilation policy which began in the 1880s and involved Aboriginal children being removed from their homes and placed in church-run residential schools. In 1969, it was decided to close residential schools and in 2008 the government offered a formal apology for the residential school system.
2.
Dionne Brand, What We All Long For(Toronto, Vintage Canada, 2005).
3.
Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua , ‘Decolonizing anti-racism’, Social Justice: a journal of crime, conflict and world order (Vol. 32, no. 4, 2005).
4.
Zainab Amadahy and Bonita Lawrence, ‘Indigenous peoples and Black people in Canada: settlers or allies?’ in Arlo Kempf, ed., Breaching the Colonial Contract: anti-colonialism in the US and Canada( New York, Springer Publishing, 2009 ).
5.
Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous pathways of action and freedom ( Toronto, UTP Higher Education, 2005 ).
6.
Leanne Simpson, ed., Lighting the Eighth Fire: the liberation, resurgence and protection of Indigenous nations( Winnipeg, MB, Arbeiter Ring, 2008 ).
