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Members and guests of the Prairie Indigenous Relationality Network met for their 2024 Spring Gathering at Red River on Friday, April 19th. In line with the location of the meeting, this workshop centred transgenerational Indigenous relationalities, community building, storytelling, and identity formation. The day started off in a good way with Robert Innes situating the discussion by sharing a history of his relationship with land and community while growing up here. Following this, Indigenous Governance masters students from the University of Victoria, Madeline Burns and Sam Furlonger, had the opportunity to share their research interests, “Land Back: An Indigenous Feminist Analysis” and “Métis Identity: Governance and Relationality” in order to receive valuable feedback from leading scholars in their field.
The third presentation, “It’s Not About Land: Bill C-53 and the Métis Land Claims in British Columbia,” was shared by Dr. Daniel Sims from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC). Dr. Sims discussed his research surrounding Canada’s Bill C-53, considering its potential to facilitate modern treaties with Métis Nation Alberta (MNA), Métis Nation – Saskatchewan (MN-S), and the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO). He described how highly controversial this bill is, since the Métis Nation of BC (MNBC) was left out. This presentation discussed why that is the case, including MNBC’s recent land claims. In doing so, Dr. Sims challenged the assertion that Bill C-53 and the treaties they may create could be about anything but the land since, under Canadian settler colonialism, everything is about the land.
After lunch, Dr. Daniel Voth from the University of Calgary presented a proposal for a new book titled, “Overcoming Origins: Métis-First Nations Tensions in Manitoba and the Project of Red Unity.” By examining the often tense political relationship between Métis and First Nations, Dr. Voth noted that the reason for this tension is frequently based on legal distinctions between First Nations and Métis in the Indian Act. However, a closer look at pre-Canada Manitoba clarifies that something older than the Indian Act is also at play. This talk highlighted how choices made by Métis political leaders at key moments before July 15, 1870, set the stage for some of the divisions that were codified in the Indian Act of 1876. Choices which reverberate into the 1960s- informing the creation of the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood and Manitoba Métis Federation as exclusive and competitive political organizations- and continue to frustrate Indigenous political coordination. To explore overcoming these political divisions into the present, Dr. Voth drew on threads of Indigenous social unity, highlighting youth organizing and social life as potential spaces where political divisions are challenged or overcome. The talk concluded with a call to think differently about Métis-First Nations divisions in service of a project rooted in Red Unity that can transcend Indigenous national differences.
Dr. Kelly Aguirre from the University of Victoria spoke next about her proposed book, "Re-Storying Political Theory: Indigenous Storywork Refusing Colonial Apprehension.” Her presentation analyzed how settlement is maintained by political theorists who attempt to narrativize Indigenous life through what she called, “colonial apprehension.” Dr. Aguirre used colonial apprehension to refer to epistemic maneuvers that work to capture Indigenous life. She argued against these narratives by looking at the role of ‘resurgence’ as a multiplicity of individual and collective practices which embody and enact a reorientation away from external recognition and move toward regenerating self-determining Indigenous polities. By looking at narratives, Dr. Aguiree conceptualized the role of political theorists as storytellers of political life and the possibility of re-telling stories of Indigenous life in political theory scholarship in ways that refuse an authoritarian narrative approach and recapitulations of colonial apprehension.
Dr. Gina Starblanket from the University of Victoria gave the day's final presentation on her in-progress work, the “Noel Starblanket Manuscript Project.” Dr. Starblanket shared that her project began as a series of interviews with her Mosom (great-uncle), Noel Starblanket, with the intent of sharing stories of his life. Between 2017 and 2019, when he passed, Dr. Starblanket noted that they visited regularly to chat about his life and record his stories. In turn, the project began as a memoir but has transformed into a compilation of stories in his voice, highlighting thoughts and intentions in his own words. This presentation generated a discussion surrounding the accessibility of academic material and ways of bridging imposed gaps between scholarly and creative writing styles in one piece. In fact, all of the presentations at the Spring Gathering bolstered wonderful and insightful conversations, demonstrating the network’s commitment to strengthening each other’s works and ideas, through relational praxis.
