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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

CPSA/ISA-Canada section on International Relations



C15(b) - Beyond the Boundaries of IR: Power, Indigeneity, and the Settler State, Part 2

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Gabrielle Slowey (York University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Sheryl Lightfoot (University of British Columbia)


Session Abstract: This panel is part of a growing network of early-career scholars researching the intersections between Indigenous global politics and International Relations (IR). It provides a forum to examine Indigenous peoples and politics both as inter-national relations and as part of the field of International Relations, with a view to contesting the boundaries often employed between the international and domestic realms. Despite increased attention following developments such as the promulgation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the relationships between Indigenous peoples and settler states are largely omitted from the core questions of the field of IR. While political scientists have increasingly recognized the political agency of Indigenous governments and nations as actors within multilevel governance, and the institutionalization of Indigenous peoples within international law and organizations, these literatures primarily situate Indigenous political agency within domestic or institutional contexts that reinforce the colonial position of Indigenous peoples within the settler state. Such perspectives elide central questions arising from IR’s disciplinary focus on questions of power, sovereignty, security, and survival, and persist despite the assertion of many scholars that relations between Indigenous nations and settler states are essentially foreign relations. Panellists refute state-centric assumptions fundamental to traditional practices of International Relations related to which and how actors affect International Relations; ultimately, we are reimagining who counts in International Relations. In this vein, part one focuses on issues of land and governance, while part two highlights the intersections of theory and practice.


Embodying Insecurity: Pipelines, Protests, and Indigenous Survival in Western Canada: Wilfrid Greaves (University of Victoria)
Abstract: This paper uses constructivist and postcolonial theoretical tools to examine protests and other forms of direct political action by Indigenous peoples and their allies within Canada as efforts to construct alternative meanings of security/insecurity within popular discourse and public policy. Drawing on critical methodologies that emphasize non-verbal and unwritten ways of expressing insecurity, I argue that protests against non-renewable resource extraction, climate change, and settler colonialism are examples of ‘bodily enacted’ security claims undertaken by non-state actors when they are unable to have their spoken or written security claims accepted by the state. In this respect, protests are not merely an expression of dissenting views within a society; they can also function as a way to identify existential threats and dangers facing non-dominant societal groups that states or other powerful actors refuse to acknowledge or effectively respond to. This argument is supported with original evidence from the ongoing protest campaigns against the TransMountain and Coastal Gaslink pipeline projects in Alberta and British Columbia. This paper contributes to better understanding: different meanings of security and insecurity held by Indigenous peoples and their allies within Canada, the social processes through which meanings of security are produced, and the strategic behaviour of non-state actors challenging state policies and the state itself.


Authority, Governance, and Indigenous Global Politics: Leah Sarson (Dalhousie University)
Abstract: Across the north, and indeed internationally, Indigenous peoples are carving out space for themselves in the decision-making processes that affect them. Through a study of the Canadian mining sector, this paper reveals the primary mechanisms through which Indigenous peoples challenge the authority of the state in the international arena, despite the state’s overwhelming relative power. Drawing on stories from dozens of Indigenous communities from across Canada, it shows how Indigenous actors disrupt and unsettle international perceptions of Canada’s economic certainty, bureaucratic stability, and ethical business practices by bypassing local levels of government to build direct relationships with foreign governments and actors, establish new governance and bureaucratic structures, and otherwise challenge the authority of government and capacity of industry. These profiles demonstrate how Indigenous governments can unexpectedly constrain state behaviour and challenge the state’s ability to realize its international preferences as they relate to how other states perceive Canada. The questions of the authority and legitimacy of states that are bound up in explorations of international perceptions and norms inform this research, but while much of the existing scholarships focuses on the outcome of rights regimes, this paper argues that the primary outcome of the transformative effects of Indigenous global politics are increasingly messy and unstable governance structures. Overall, this paper highlights the potential for Indigenous governments to shape global politics and the inherent policy-making challenges of these changing power dynamics. These amorphous structures of authority ultimately lead to the question and the title of the paper: who is in charge?


'Rightness’ and Decolonial World-making: Treaties as Cosmological Encounters: Liam Midzain-Gobin (McMaster University)
Abstract: Treaties are a central concern for understanding the practice of world politics. Indeed, much of IR reads treaties such as the Treaty of Westphalia and the Treaty of Versailles as establishing the very conditions for the international, while those such as the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute set the rules within which world politics occurs. Consequently, treaties are a part of the world-making process – a process which privileges treaties between states and other sovereigns, with other actors participating, but not necessarily signing the world into existence. This paper engages differently with treaties to make two claims. The first is that the above understanding of international treaties is inadequate, offering Indigenous-settler treaties as a corollary. These treaties cover much of what is today Canada and the United States, and the paper outlines the way they exist as a series of international, but also cosmological encounters of a pluriversal nature. Second, the paper uses the Dish with One Spoon Wampum to argue that the construction of settler coloniality involves a form of (incomplete) cosmological colonization. Finally, the paper takes these claims and follows the Indigenous resurgence literature to argue for a decolonial world-making through the revitalization of what has been termed a relationship of ‘rightness’ through the recovery of the pluriversality and harmonization of multiple cosmologies.


The ILO Legal Regime: 1919-?: Danielle Delaney (Queen's University)
Abstract: While the promulgation of the United Nation’s Declaration of Indigenous Rights (UNDRIP) met with positive acclaim for the thoughtful attentiveness it demonstrated towards Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, as an instrument of international law it remains lacking any substantive mechanism for the enforcement of its provisions. UNDRIP was, and continues to be, presented as the legal successor of the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169—UNDRIP was a move away from the colonial biases of international law towards giving meaningful weight to Indigenous sovereignty. This perception stems from the ability of Indigenous peoples to represent themselves directly at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) opposed to the ILO where Indigenous peoples must partner with either an employer or workers’ representative to present their claims before the General Assembly. As a practical matter of law, Convention 169 continues to be controlling legal document because it includes enforcement mechanisms even though the governmental structure of the ILO is not ideal for Indigenous peoples to directly represent themselves. However, there remains the unexplored possibility of Indigenous peoples demanding representation in the ILO as a sovereign state rather than relying upon institutional partners to present their claims for themselves. The internal bylaws of the ILO allow for the direct representation of Indigenous nations if they demand to be recognized as a state. This paper explores how Indigenous nations could use the ILO bylaws to demand recognition as sovereign states and why it might be desirable to do so.




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