Canadian Journal of Urban Research / Revue canadienne de recherche urbaine CJUR

Canadian Journal of Urban Research / Revue canadienne de recherche urbaine CJUR summer 25:1 2016 8 Canadian Journal of Urban Research, Volume 25, Issue 1, pages 8-21. Copyright © 2016 by the Institute of Urban Studies. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 2371-0292 Unsettling Ottawa: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Resistance, and the Politics of Scale Julie Tomiak Department of Sociology Ryerson University Abstract Th e city of Ottawa is on unceded Algonquin territory and, as the centre of formal political power in what is now known as Canada, has represented an important site for local, regional, national and international Indigenous networks organizing to resist settler state agendas of dispossession and assimilation. Yet the city-region is rarely acknowledged as a deeply contested space where competing ideologies and imaginaries reproduce and disrupt settler colonial common sense and state power. Based on a critical interrogation of methodological settler colonialism, this paper proposes a decolonizing scalar lens to analyze Indigenous contestations that unsettle Ottawa. Th rough brief case studies of local community-building, the Algonquin land claims process, and Chief Th eresa Spence’s hunger strike on Victoria Island, it illustrates the contested, interconnected, and competing nature of scalar confi gurations and spatial ontologies and the role of “Ottawa” in settler colonialism and Indigenous resurgence. Keywords: settler colonialism, contested cities, scales of Indigenous resistance, Ottawa, decolonization Résumé La ville d’Ottawa est sur un territoire Algonquin non cédé, et, en tant que centre du pouvoir politique offi ciel dans ce qui est maintenant connu comme le Canada, celle-ci représente un site important pour les autorités locales, régionales, nationales et les réseaux autochtones internationales qui résiste l’agenda de l’état de dépossession et d’assimilation. Et pourtant la ville-région (Ottawa) est rarement reconnu comme un espace contesté où se dispute des idéologies et où des représentations se reproduisent et perturbent le bon sens colonial et le pouvoir de l’État. En se fondant sur une interrogation critique méthodologique du colonialisme, l’article propose une ‘lentille’ scalaire décolonisée afi n d’analyser les contestations qui perturbent Ottawa. Par le biais de brèves études de cas de collectivités locales, du processus de règlement des revendications territoriales des Algonquins, et de la grève de la faim de Chef Th eresa Spence sur l’île Victoria, j’illustre le caractère contesté, interconnecté de la nature concurrente des confi gurations scalaires et des ontologies spatiales et le rôle de «Ottawa» dans la colonisation et la résurgence autochtones. Mots-clés: villes coloniales, résistance autochtone, Ottawa, décolonisation CJUR summer 25:1 2016 9 Unsettling Ottawa Introduction In the Canadian context, cities have been constructed as settler space through discursive and non-discursive practices intended to evict, displace, and invisibilize Indigenous peoples and place-making in urban areas (Razack 2002; Barman 2007; Peters 1996; Peters and Andersen 2013). Despite their foundational nature, the historical and ongoing processes of settler colonialism are largely ignored in scholarly discourses on urban space- making, mirroring settler state practices of erasure (Tomiak 2011a, 2011b). Th e starting point of my analysis is the contention that any examination of Ottawa1—in this special issue and elsewhere—must not reproduce the dispossessing and genocidal logic of settler colonialism, but should interrogate the relationships between “Ottawa”, the settler state, and Indigenous peoples. Th is critical engagement is a political imperative and, as I will argue, a methodological necessity as well. In order to write against an unexamined reifi cation that erases the city’s colonial foundations and ongoing project of dispossessing and disappearing Indigenous peoples, my aim with this paper is to destabilize notions that unproblematically posit “Ottawa” as an object of inquiry, as a settled, stable and knowable social, spatial, and scalar constellation, without acknowledging its deeply contested status and the ongoing relationships and responsibilities that the Anishinaabek have to the land and waters that constitute the city-region that has come to be known as Ottawa. Normalized notions of what and where the city of Ottawa is rely on a common sense that asserts space from a white settler point of view. Ottawa, however, is on unceded Algonquin territory2, as is much of Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec (Lawrence 2012).3 Th e city is not only on deeply contested ground, but also the terrain of persistent anti-colonial Indigenous struggles for life, land, and self-determination, which include struggles over the meanings and defi nitions of territory, place, scale, identities, and modes of governance. Th is paper uses case studies to show how anti-colonial politics of scale and Indigenous knowledges and practices contest dominant space- and meaning-making in, of, and through Ottawa. First, I discuss local community-building and scale-jumping as a key strategy of urban Indigenous self-governance. Second, a brief overview of the Algonquin land claims process in Ontario highlights how Indigenous nation-building eff orts, as fraught as the land claims process is, are reframing Ottawa as part of Algonquin nation territory. Th ird, Chief Th eresa Spence’s hunger strike on Victoria Island in December 2012 and January 2013, together with the Idle No More movement, have demonstrated the importance of cities as sites and catalysts of decolonization. Data from a number of sources inform the analysis, including interviews4, grey literature, media content, and the academic literatures on decolonization, cities, and scale. I argue that a critical scalar lens can help denaturalize the settler colonial production of urban space and the normalized structures, processes, and meanings of the settler city.5 Th is paper interrogates the conceptual trajectory of the urban, more generally. It addresses the lack of engagement with (urban) Indigeneity, decolonization, and Indigenous ways of knowing in the critical urban theory, political economy, and politics of scale literatures, challenging the ways in which scholarship has reinforced rather than disrupted settler colonialism and settler state power. My goals with this project of unsettling Ottawa are to: 1) disrupt methodological settler colonialism by deconstructing normalized understandings of the city; 2) critically engage the politics of scale from anti-colonial, feminist perspectives and examine what this theoretical lens can add to the analysis of Indigenous struggles and resistance to settler state politics; and 3) highlight case studies of Indigenous resistance that advance alternative socio-spatial narratives and practices and thereby illustrate the effi cacy and diversity of anti-colonial scale politics. A commonality across various forms and scales of resistance lies in the centrality of asserting collective Indigenous agency and visibility, thereby refuting settler narratives that claim Indigenous peoples, as rights and title holders, do not belong and do not exist in cities. Disrupting methodological settler colonialism and the city How we know Ottawa and think about the city matters. In academic and everyday praxis, methodological choices matter, because they are productive of the realities we seek to analyze. As Law and Urry (2004, 392) stress, “[…] the social sciences, including sociology, are relational or interactive. Th ey participate in, refl ect upon, and enact the social in a wide range of locations including the state.” In capturing and explaining social realities, we are also inadvertently co-producers of specifi c realities and relationships. In this section, I outline a theoretical stance intended to destabilize and replace settler colonial constructions of the city. It entails disrupting methodological settler colonialism—the assumptions, values, principles and ways of knowing through which Canadian Journal of Urban Research / Revue canadienne de recherche urbaine CJUR summer 25:1 2016 10 settler cities have become known and normalized. Settler colonial city-making takes on heightened signifi cance in the context of the national capital. As the capital, the City of Ottawa has been constructed as the centre within the socio-spatial scaff olding of formal political power in the Canadian nation-state. In this sense, Ottawa’s reach in terms of governance and the production of dominant meanings is not confi ned to local and regional scales; the city is often conceptualized as a stand-in for national interests and federal politics. Th is has made the city an important site for those challenging settler colonialism. Local, regional, national, and international Indigenous networks organizing to resist settler state agendas of dispossession and assimilation have advanced agendas of self-determination in Ottawa in many ways, including through direct action, engaging the federal policy and legislative processes, and creating a permanent presence through representative organizations. To some extent, this speaks to the importance of cities, more generally. As Nicholas Blomley notes (2004, 127), given “that the city is a site of particular ideological, material, and representational investments on the part of a settler society, native contestation has a particular valence here.” Ottawa is unique in this regard because of the city’s role as capital. What happens in Ottawa, does not stay in Ottawa. Actions here have shaped the trajectory of settler colonialism and Indigenous- state relations like no other city in Canada. To understand the relationship between settler colonialism and the city—and how Indigenous-non- Indigenous relations have been governed through a specifi c understanding of this relationship—I approach the problematic of the settler city by focusing on the production of space and the production of knowledge as closely connected and mutually reinforcing processes. I use the term settler city to denote specifi c, yet unstable and varied, socio-spatial uploads/Geographie/ unsettling-ottawa-settler-colonialism-indigenous-resistance-and-the-politics-of-scale.pdf

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