“You people have your stories; we have ours”: a narrative analysis of land use in settler Canada

Abstract

This dissertation uses storytelling to examine the nature of settler colonial relations (SCRs) in Canada. It examines testimonies about land use in settler Canada from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). Utilizing a combined Tribal Critical Race Theory (TCRT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this study compares testimonies about land use from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples and asks the question what, if anything, does this comparison tell us about settler Canada? The comparison reveals how settler Canada depends on the liberal racialization of Indigenous peoples’ national identity. To undertake this comparison I narrated the RCAP testimonies into small stories and analyzed their morals, or the point of these stories, using dialogical narrative analysis. The narrated stories laid bare a stark contrast in the way Indigenous peoples spoke of their social relations with the land and the way non-indigenous Canadians spoke of theirs. This study demonstrates how the narrated testimonies from Canadians, or what are referred to as cultural narratives in the language of CRT, are about land use that racialized the national identity of Indigenous peoples through the discourse of the liberal order, whereas the narrated testimonies from Indigenous peoples, considered as counter stories in this study, contradict the cultural narratives and reveal a national identity rooted in language, spirituality, the Creator, and the consequences for Indigenous peoples from settler colonial relations. The narrated counter stories in this study not only contradict the cultural narratives from settlers by describing the consequences of settler colonial relations but they also provide a blueprint in a narrative sense to decolonize land use in contemporary settler Canada.