Multicultural Feeling,Feminist Rage,Indigenous Refusal

Abstract

This article discusses the persistence of figuring Canadian multiculturalism as a success story, in the face of growing international attention to the degradation of Indigenous life and sovereignty in Canada. It examines three issues: nationalist investments in and scholarly/activist critiques of multiculturalism; dehumanizing bodily and discursive violence directed at Indigenous women by way of government policies, interpersonal violence, and media narratives; and recent activist expressions of anti-settler colonial politics diffused through social media. Gender is central to the interrogation of difference-making in Canada; it is conspicuously absent in mainstream formulations of multiculturalism, grievously present in gender-based violence, and a key basis for resistance to settler colonialism. The article’s aim is to complement the growing body of writing that connects multiculturalism and the politics of recognition to dismissals of Indigenous claims to political sovereignty, cultural self-determination, and freedom from bodily harm. The connection is not paradoxical—It is correlational.