This article examines the failure of Canada’s larger, Left-leaning NGOs active in global justice networks to properly engage with the struggles of Indigenous peoples. Taking a ‘White progressive economic nationalist’ position that fails to examine Canada’s historical and contemporary exercise of colonialism, such NGOs end up reproducing myths of nation-building, fail to address colonial injustices closer to home and ignore the resources that Indigenous struggles offer in the fight against neoliberalism.
UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, Committee on the elimination of discrimination against women, 42nd session , 20 October -7 November 2008, <http://www.2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/co/CEDAW-C-CAN-CO-7.pdf> ;.
2.
D. Bedford and D. Irving, The Tragedy of Progress: Marxism, modernity and the Aboriginal question ( Halifax, Fernwood, 2001); W. Churchill, ‘Marxism and the Native American’ in W. Churchill, ed., Marxism and Native Americans(Boston, South End, 1983), pp. 183-203.
3.
It would be a gross misrepresentation, however, to characterise and homogenise all Indigenous peoples’ positions as being inherently anti-capitalist and anti-colonial. There are many internal debates and conflicts among Indigenous peoples regarding values and models of ‘development’. For the purposes of this article, however, I am referring to those movements, communities, networks and mobilisations that critique and oppose neoliberalism.
4.
S. Venne, ‘Same beast, new name’, Colours of Resistance .
5.
A. Choudry, ‘NGOs, social movements and anti-APEC activism: a study in power, knowledge and struggle’, unpublished PhD thesis, Concordia University, Montreal, 2008.
6.
M. Barlow, The Canada We Want: a citizens’ alternative to deep integration ( Ottawa, Council of Canadians , January 2005), p. 23.
7.
M. Jackson, ‘Colonization as myth-making: a case study in Aotearoa’ , in S. Greymorning, ed., A Will to Survive: Indigenous essays on the politics of culture, language and identity (New York, McGraw-Hill , 2004), p. 98.
8.
G. Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism: searching for hope in a shrinking society ( London and Sydney, Pluto Press , 2003), p. 47.
9.
V. Burgmann and A. Ure, ‘Resistance to neo-liberalism in Australia and Oceania’ , in F. Polet and Cetri, eds, Globalizing Resistance: the state of struggle (London, Pluto Press , 2004), p. 57.
10.
Ibid.
11.
M. Blaser, H. Feit and G. McRae, eds, In the Way of Development: Indigenous peoples, life projects and globalization (London and New York , Zed Books, 2004), pp. 4-5.
12.
K. Thomas, ‘Friends of the Lubicon: how a small group of people can change the world’, in J. Bird, L. Land and M. McAdam , eds., Nation to Nation: Aboriginal sovereignty and the future of Canada (Toronto and Vancouver, Irwin, 2001), p. 216.
