“Complicated Pathways: Settler Canadians Learning to Re/Frame Themselves and Their Relationships with Indigenous Peoples,” a collaboration between Lynne Davis, Chris Hiller, Cherylanne James, Kristen Lloyd, Tessa Nasca, and Sara Taylor, is another article my friend Matthew Anderson suggested I read. The paper begins with the release of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools and, in particular, its 94 “Calls to Action” and the federal government’s stated intention to implement them. “It is too tempting to think we have entered a unique moment in the history of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada,” the authors write, but they recollect the attempts to develop partnerships and “agreements based on mutual understandings” between settlers and Indigenous peoples in the past, which “were swept away by the structures, processes, values, greed and actions of the settler colonial state, its industrial capitalist economic imperatives and its well-indoctrinated citizens” (398-99). They note that the term “reconciliation” has been extensively critiqued, and that Haudenosaunee scholar Taiaiake Alfred has advocated for “restitution” as first step towards changing the status quo in Canada. Many Canadians happily adopt the position of “helper,” they note, citing the efforts at resettling Syrian refugees in 2015 as an example, but “[l]ess comfortable—if not unthinkable—is the entanglement of Canadians in colonial violence, the removal of Indigenous people from ancestral homelands and the perpetuation of cultural genocide” (399). They note that many Canadians see no connection between themselves and the events that took place in residential schools (399).

“What will help shift the consciousness of contemporary Canadians to a new story, where Canadians recognize and acknowledge themselves as occupiers of Indigenous homelands, perpetrators of cultural genocide and sustainers of settler colonial practices in the present?” the authors ask (399). How can settler Canadians become unsettled in their daily lives, where Indigenous peoples may be invisible? (399). Providing education and information is not enough, as decades of research indicates, because “Canadians have a deep emotional and cultural investment in the status quo and are the beneficiaries of past and present injustices, particularly with respect to the occupation of Indigenous lands which settlers consider to be their own” (399). Decolonization, they continue, citing Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, requires the return of land, and “[i]f Canadians are to move toward concrete conversations about land, there is an important foundation to be laid” which “will require a significant re-shaping of settler consciousness and the deep attachments that construct Canadian identities” (399).

“Insights from anti-racist, anti-oppressive pedagogical practices point to the emotionality of learning in which one’s own investments and identities are called into question and the need to embrace a ‘pedagogy of discomfort,’” the authors state (400). The literature on such pedagogical practices “points to the complexity of changing the consciousness of Canadians so that they hear and understand the voices of Indigenous peoples” (400). “The literatures on alliance building and solidarities emphasize the importance of learning and self-education as a critical part of the relationship process,” they continue (400). 

This paper addresses these complex challenges “by reporting on a project that has documented many initiatives and events underway which are aimed at changing the way in which Canadians think about historical and contemporary Indigenous-non-Indigenous relationships” (400). That project, which began in 2014, came out of an undergraduate course at Trent University, and it addressed the unsettling questions involved “in trying to think through what it means to take up historic and generational responsibilities in intervening in the narratives that sustain settler colonial mechanisms” (400). That project involved a website that documented “initiatives being undertaken that attempt to reshape settler historic consciousness and transform Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations” (400-01). At the time of writing, that website listed over 200 projects. It was being updated and expanded every year by students in the course that initiated the project.

The project’s working definition of “transformation of settler consciousness” is grounded in the writing of scholars Patrick Wolfe, Paulette Regan, and Susan Dion (401). It is “firmly rooted” in Wolfe’s argument that settler colonialism is an ongoing process. It uses Regan’s contention that “settler consciousness” is “the narratives, practices, and collective Canadian identity that are based solidly in a foundation of national historical myths” which “pervade all spheres of society” (401). And it draws from Dion’s description of “the school system as a place of historical erasure, where counter-narratives are denied space, and countless stories are silenced” (401). Regan points out that it is easier “for settlers to live in denial than to unlearn ‘truths’ and engage with counter-narratives—an inherently uncomfortable and unsettling process,” and from that understanding the group set out to discover “how to create conditions in which individuals choose to engage and act, instead of deny” (401). The research also drew on Davis’s book, Alliances: Re/envisiooning Indigenous-non-Indigenous Relationships, which “demonstrates the complexity of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations in contemporary Canada” and “the dangers that can arise from even the best intentioned deeds when they are not rooted in a critical, self-reflexive consciousness and understanding of history, and how instead they can perpetuate and deepen paternalistic colonial relationships, often causing more harm than good” (401-02). 

Based in this work, then, the group understands transforming settler consciousness in the following ways:

• Creating narratives, processes and practices that hold settlers accountable to their responsibilities and beneficiaries of colonization, both historic and ongoing.
• Naming and upsetting the status quo, and challenging the power dynamics that perpetuate settler colonialism.
• Building just and decolonized relationships with Indigenous peoples, the land, and all beings.
• Engaging in an ongoing, complex and dynamic process grounded in a lifetime commitment, which occurs at the level of the individual, family, community, and nation. (402)

They realize that changing consciousness is not synonymous with or sufficient for decolonization; it must be paired with action or settlers may never move beyond guilt and shame, but they contend that transforming settler consciousness is “an uncomfortable but necessary first step in a lifelong and urgent journey of dismantling colonial systems and structures” (402).

The research the group conducted focused on online sources and media coverage, and they used a WordPress blog to present the research. The four-month timeframe for the project was a problem, and they found that it was impossible to develop “an exhaustive collection in nits initial development” (403). Some types of initiatives were excluded; the research was limited to work happening inside Canada, “despite our acknowledgement of borders as colonial constructs, and the fact that the work of the documented initiatives often transcended them” (403). Keeping the website up-to-date is an ongoing challenge. By May 2015, they had catalogued over 200 projects in 16 main categories, although some initiatives didn’t fit neatly into those divisions and had to be included in more than one category. They also note that “the language and understanding of ‘settler’ as advanced in settler colonial studies” is rarely used outside of a small number of academics and activist groups, and so the projects they included were rooted in other discourses (405). However, “the framing of initiatives” evolved rapidly, with the term “reconciliation,” for instance, becoming more important after the release of the TRC’s final report (406).

Their analysis of these initiatives noted a number of tensions. Few of the projects they included used the terms “settler” or “colonization,” which are “deeply discomforting and at times defensively dismissed” (406). When that language is not used, however, “critical insights about the nature and workings of settler colonial society are lost, and liberal discourses based in notions of equality and social justice persist” (406). That framing might engage more people in events or issues, but “it does not position non-Indigenous Canadians as beneficiaries of colonization” or “imply specific responsibilities and commitments on the part of non-Indigenous Canadians to challenge or undo current colonizing practices or structures,” limiting their transformative potential (406). On the other hand, some projects demonstrated a mastery of “the art of using decolonial rhetoric” without a similar mastery of substantive action (406). Another tension the study revealed was “knowing how big a role Indigenous peoples should play in settler education and in striking a balance between, on the one hand, learning from Indigenous peoples, knowledge and pedagogies, and on the other, settlers taking responsibility for their own education and unlearning of dominant narratives and histories” (407). A third tension involved knowing how to raise critical questions about initiatives without undermining their value (407).

The research also generated concerns about the projects the group documented. The focus and goals of many initiatives “were not implemented to address the needs of Indigenous peoples, or to offer the support that Indigenous communities are actually seeking” (407). The failure of many initiatives to consider colonialism as an ongoing process, particularly government and corporate cultural competency training programs, did not address “the underlying issues and contemporary ramifications” (407). Few of the projects addressed “questions of land reclamation, reparations, Indigenous sovereignty and jurisdiction, or Canadian sovereignty on stolen Indigenous lands”; instead, most “focused on liberal goals of ‘raising awareness’ or imparting information,” suggesting that awareness is the “end game” of decolonization (408). Projects focused on Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, for instance, failed to grasp “Indigenous understandings of the larger settler colonial context in which MMIW is embedded” and thus “do not challenge settler positionalities in any fundamental way” (408). Most initiatives involved settler “moves to innocence” because they asked participants to do nothing more than listen (408). Such projects “may succeed in making settlers feel good about themselves while failing to promote substantive change” (408).

The research raised important questions. How do we move beyond easy or superficial changes? Will straightforward changes in understanding and consciousness “have the power to facilitate greater, more substantive shifts in the future?” (408-09). How can a “movement toward the next stage of thought and action in the transformation process, in which the realities of settler colonialism and consciousness are understood plainly, and the land and Indigenous sovereignty are central to discussions of reconciliation,” be fostered (409)? In addition, what would constitute a challenge to settler colonial positionality? Is “the centring of Indigenous perspectives and leadership, and the related decentering of settler narratives,” in themselves unsettling or transformational (409)? How, the authors ask, “do we get to the stage where settlers are both engaging with and centering Indigenous knowledge and narratives (learning) while simultaneously deconstructing settler identities (unlearning), and actively challenging settler colonial practices of Indigenous displacement and settler encroachment?” (409). 

Alliances and coalitions are sites of learning and transformation, particularly for settlers, the authors continue; projects that bring “settler Canadians into contact with Indigenous spiritual ceremonies, protocols, and cultural practices,” for example, can open “their eyes and minds to other ways of being in the universe” (409). “Such contact,” they write, “brings challenges to the Canadian narratives that undergird Canadian historical consciousness” (409). They refer to Davis’s research into what members of a social-justice group had learned and how their perspectives had shifted over time. Conversations were important in this learning, but that observation raises the question of which voices end up with enough credibility to make changes happen. In addition, “despite providing deep analyses and insightful critiques of Canadian society, participants did not talk about themselves as beneficiaries of Indigenous dispossession from their homelands” (410). That’s because of the power settler colonial narratives have to naturalize settlers on the land while making Indigenous peoples invisible (410). 

“When taken together, the large number of diverse initiatives collected on the Transforming Relations website offers the suggestion of momentum for change,” but “we cannot lose sight of the need to ‘unsettle’ the settler colonial logic, narratives and practices embedded in everyday write,” the authors state (410). More research is necessary “to explore the dynamic interplay of forces that impact the complex layers of settler consciousness transformation,” particularly research that is focused on “the simultaneous processes of learning and unlearning that are engaged in any ongoing journey of decolonization and change” (410). There are theoretical resources that explore “the challenges of transforming settler consciousness and disrupting settler colonialism,” including work by Margaret Heffernan, Paulette Regan, and Megan Boler and Michalinos Zembylas, but the authors seem to be suggesting that there is a gap between that theory and the actual practice of change. I’m not surprised, though, given the big ambitions of the theory and the practical difficulties of convincing people to leave settled positions of comfort for unsettled positions of discomfort. If one is offered a discursive or ideological position in which one’s futurity is denied—and that’s what I see in arguments like those of Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, which condemn notions of settler futurity—one is likely to be unwilling to accept that positioning. 

The final point the authors raise about transforming settler consciousness is “that it requires ‘engaging in an ongoing, complex, and dynamic process grounded in a lifetime commitment, which occurs at the level of the individual, family, community, and nation’” (they are quoting themselves here) (411). “Each of the initiatives documented on the Transforming Relations website represent[s] entry points to different stages in this unfolding process, not panaceas for transformation in and of themselves,” they write. “Our analysis showed that most of these initiatives represent early ‘learning’ stages, and that a disconnect exists between these and later stages that actually confront settler positionalities and privilege” (411). More research and analysis of the projects their work documents is needed. Nevertheless, the study of the transformation of settler consciousness “is unfolding through different disciplines through the study of the complex psychological and sociological demands involved in shifting the way the beneficiaries of colonization come to see their place in relation to Indigenous peoples” (411). What are the conditions “that help settlers turn toward, and acknowledge, their own implication in the settler colonial project” (411)? What kind of pedagogy can bring about change instead of “denial or paralyzing guilt” (411)? The momentum represented by the projects documented on the Transforming Relations website needs to be “strategically analyzed” and “future efforts” will need to “seek to understand the conditions that allow the move from simply acknowledging, to meaningfully transforming settler consciousness, in a way that furthers processes of decolonization and supports Indigenous resurgence and nationhood” (411).

The Transforming Relations project is interesting; the website is still live, although it doesn’t seem to have been updated recently, and the questions the authors raise about settler decolonization are important ones. They are the questions I’ve been grappling with, although I’m a little less sanguine about the possibilities for the kinds of change they are calling on settlers to embrace. I wonder what the kind of pedagogy the authors ask about in their conclusion might look like, for instance. I noticed a tremendous level of shame and guilt in my students last semester whenever we discussed Indigenous issues, and that’s simply not sustainable. Yes, settlers have benefitted from Indigenous dispossession, but at the same time, people need to be offered something other than a negative conception of themselves or they will refuse to engage. I don’t know how settlers could be offered a positive conception of themselves, given the realities of ongoing colonization, and I don’t know how substantive change—the repatriation of land that Tuck and Wang call for—can take place given the realities of settler occupation of land. Is decolonization, in the end, a zero-sum game, where one side wins while the other loses? If so, what could convince a majority of settlers to participate? I don’t have answers to these questions; I don’t know how to move from the theory of settler decolonization to its practice. I wonder if anyone does. I will have to keep reading to find out.

Works Cited

Davis, Lynne, Chris Hiller, Cherylanne James, Kristen Lloyd, Tessa Nasca, and Sara Taylor. “Complicated Pathways: Settler Canadians Learning to Re/Frame Themselves and Their Relationships with Indigenous Peoples.” Settler Colonial Studies, vol. 7, no. 4, 2017, pp. 398-414. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2016.1243086.

Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630/15554.