Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Indigenous Americas) by Glen Sean Coulthard
Authors: Glen Sean Coulthard
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Portions of chapter 1 were previously published as “This Is Not a Peace Pipe: Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy,” University of Toronto Quarterly 77, no. 1 (2008): 164–66, reprinted with permission from University of Toronto Press, www.utpjournals.com ; and as “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6, no. 4 (2007): 437–60. Portions of chapter 3 were previously published as “Resisting Culture: Seyla Benhabib’s Deliberative Approach to the Politics of Recognition in Colonial Contexts,” in Deliberative Democracy in Practice , ed. David Kahane (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), 138-54, reprinted with permission of the publisher, copyright University of British Columbia Press 2009, all rights reserved.
Copyright 2014 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coulthard, Glen Sean.
Red skin, white masks : rejecting the colonial politics of recognition / Glen Sean Coulthard ; foreword by Taiaiake Alfred.
(Indigenous Americas)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4529-4243-8
1. Indians of North America—Canada—Government relations. 2. Indians of North America—Canada—Politics and government. 3. Indians of North America—Legal status, laws. etc.—Canada. 4. Indians, Treatment of—Canada. 5. Canada—Ethnic relations—Political aspects. I. Title.
E92.C68 2014
323.1197´071—dc23
2013049674
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
For Richard Park Coulthard (1942–2012)
Foreword
Taiaiake Alfred
Not so very long ago, in Canada there numbered just less than fourteen million inhabitants: thirteen million human beings, and half a million Natives. The former had the land; the others had the memory of it. Between the two there were hired chiefs, an Indian Affairs bureaucracy, and a small bourgeoisie, all three shams from the very beginning to the end, which served as go-betweens. In this unending colony the truth stood naked, but the settlers preferred it hidden away or at least dressed: the Natives had to love them and all they had done, something in the way a cruel father is still loved by the children who are wounded by his selfish hands. The white élite undertook to manufacture a Native élite. They picked promising youths, they made them drink the fire-water principles of capitalism and of Western culture; they educated the Indian out of them, and their heads were filled and their mouths were stuffed with smart-sounding hypocrisies, grand greedy words that stuck in their throats but which they spit out nonetheless. After a short stay in the university they were sent home to their reserves or unleashed in the cities, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing to say to their brothers and sisters that did not sound false, ugly, and harmful; they only mimicked their masters. From buildings in Toronto, from Montréal, from Vancouver, businessmen would utter the words, “Development! Progress!” and somewhere on a reserve lips would open “. . . opment! . . . gress!” The Natives were complacent and compliant; it was a rich time for the white élite.
Then things changed. The mouths of Natives started opening by themselves; brown voices still spoke of the whites’ law, democracy, and liberal humanism, but only to reproach them for their unfairness and inhumanity.White élites listened without displeasure to these polite statements of resentment and reproach, these pleas for
Copyright 2014 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coulthard, Glen Sean.
Red skin, white masks : rejecting the colonial politics of recognition / Glen Sean Coulthard ; foreword by Taiaiake Alfred.
(Indigenous Americas)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4529-4243-8
1. Indians of North America—Canada—Government relations. 2. Indians of North America—Canada—Politics and government. 3. Indians of North America—Legal status, laws. etc.—Canada. 4. Indians, Treatment of—Canada. 5. Canada—Ethnic relations—Political aspects. I. Title.
E92.C68 2014
323.1197´071—dc23
2013049674
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
For Richard Park Coulthard (1942–2012)
Foreword
Taiaiake Alfred
Not so very long ago, in Canada there numbered just less than fourteen million inhabitants: thirteen million human beings, and half a million Natives. The former had the land; the others had the memory of it. Between the two there were hired chiefs, an Indian Affairs bureaucracy, and a small bourgeoisie, all three shams from the very beginning to the end, which served as go-betweens. In this unending colony the truth stood naked, but the settlers preferred it hidden away or at least dressed: the Natives had to love them and all they had done, something in the way a cruel father is still loved by the children who are wounded by his selfish hands. The white élite undertook to manufacture a Native élite. They picked promising youths, they made them drink the fire-water principles of capitalism and of Western culture; they educated the Indian out of them, and their heads were filled and their mouths were stuffed with smart-sounding hypocrisies, grand greedy words that stuck in their throats but which they spit out nonetheless. After a short stay in the university they were sent home to their reserves or unleashed in the cities, whitewashed. These walking lies had nothing to say to their brothers and sisters that did not sound false, ugly, and harmful; they only mimicked their masters. From buildings in Toronto, from Montréal, from Vancouver, businessmen would utter the words, “Development! Progress!” and somewhere on a reserve lips would open “. . . opment! . . . gress!” The Natives were complacent and compliant; it was a rich time for the white élite.
Then things changed. The mouths of Natives started opening by themselves; brown voices still spoke of the whites’ law, democracy, and liberal humanism, but only to reproach them for their unfairness and inhumanity.White élites listened without displeasure to these polite statements of resentment and reproach, these pleas for
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