Overview
Decolonizing Blockades: Settler-Citizen Solidarities with Indigenous Blockades
Presented by Dr. Peter Nyers, Department of Political Science, McMaster University
In the Winter 2020, Canada witnessed an extraordinary number of blockades and solidarity protests in support of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. The Wet’suwet’en had for years been fighting against the construction of an oil pipeline across their traditional territories. After a police raid dismantled their blockade, the traditional chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en issued a call for solidarity and support. The response was overwhelming with an enormous number of solidarity actions, including blockades of critical infrastructure, organized across Canada and internationally. This paper critically examines how settler-citizens engaged in acts of solidarity with Indigenous people, with a particular focus on how these acts of solidarity can contribute to the decolonization of Canadian citizenship. Since the Wet’suwet’en struggle involved the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty, the solidarity actions of Canadians raise important questions about the meaning of settler forms of citizenship. This paper takes a relational and decolonial perspective on solidarity blockades. Such an approach allows us to ask questions that are outside the scope of assessments concerned with the efficacy of a particular blockading action. The paper investigates the forms of solidarity found at the blockades, noting that a wide range of antagonistic, agonistic, and spatio-temporal relations were enacted at the various blockading actions. These relations allowed for a contentious production of new political subjectivities, collectivities, and citizenships.
Peter Nyers is Professor of the Politics of Citizenship and Intercultural Relations in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University. His research focuses on the social movements of non-status refugees and migrants, in particular their campaigns against deportation and detention and for regularization and global mobility rights. Nyers is the author of two monographs, Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation and Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency. He has also edited four books on the politics of citizenship and migration, most recently the Routledge Handbook on Global Citizenship (with Engin Isin). Nyers is a founding member of the research group, Critical Refugee and Migration Studies in Canada, and a Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies.