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Topic

A Clash of Modes of Thought: Settler-Colonial Rationality and Indigenous Relationality in Canada’s Settler Colonialism

Department of Political Science

Date & location

• Thursday, August 21, 2025
• 3:00 P.M.
• Clearihue Building, Room B007

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Matt James, Department of Political Science, ßÉßɱ¬ÁÏ (Supervisor)
• Dr. Mara Marin, Department of Political Science, UVic (Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, School of Indigenous Governance, UVic

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Olga Petrovskaya, School of Nursing, UVic

Abstract

In a decolonizing context, coming to terms with the past requires a long journey of courage and tolerance. The operation of the Canadian Indian Residential Schools (IRS) policy and the subsequent striving by Canada to reconcile with Indigenous peoples is one such long journey. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) officially recognized that IRS injustice constituted cultural genocide and further acknowledged that it was one manifestation of settler colonialism. Accordingly, the TRC contextualized the IRS injustice as having both human (i.e. the denial of Indigenous human rights) and structural (i.e. an attempt to dispossess Indigenous lands through colonialism) dimensions. Since then, the colonial rationales of the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius which legitimated the very operation of colonialism have been subject to calls that they be renounced. The significance of such recognition is great as not only did the TRC attempt to frame the IRS injustice under the category of genocide, but also the Commission linked the IRS injustice and the broader structure of colonialism. In the post-TRC era, the implementation of the TRC’s recommendations is now left to Canadians as a whole. This thesis is one attempt to find a possible way to keep the TRC’s aspirations alive and to foster IRS reconciliation.

As a preface to my arguments contained in the three chapters in this thesis, my fundamental contention that flows throughout this thesis is that at the conceptual level, IRS reconciliation politics involve the clash of modes of thought between settler-colonial rationality and Indigenous relationality. Settler-colonial rationality provides the settler with reasons or a logical framework to legitimize the settler’s dispossession of Indigenous lands, resources, and identities. In the context of IRS reconciliation, such a mode of thought is akin to “the colonial way of thinking” acknowledged by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his 2017 apology statement offered to the former Indigenous students in the IRS system. On the other hand, Indigenous modes of thought are centered around the concept of relationality which sits at the core of Indigenous legal traditions and governance systems. Indigenous conceptions of reconciliation, restitution, and apology are also derived from their relational modes of thought.

Within the Canadian government structure, settler-colonial rationality is still governing the contemporary Canadian value structure by ceaselessly providing justifications for their occupation of the country backed up by Eurocentric logic. On conceptual grounds, it is this settler-colonial rationality that is one of the driving forces behind both the operation of settler colonialism and the IRS injustice; hence, this rationality is one that impedes IRS reconciliation processes. While the settler-colonial rationality that was being applied to the human dimension of the IRS injustice took the shape of the dichotomization of settler superiority and Indigenous inferiority, the same rationality being applied to the structural dimension of the injustice took the form of the colonial rationales of the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius which have justified the colonial settlement of North America through the construction of the Canada-Indigenous hierarchical relationship.

In this paper, based on my contention that IRS reconciliation politics involve the clash of modes of thought between settler-colonial rationality and Indigenous relationality, I argue that for Canada to realize meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, searching for possible ways to reconcile the above modes of thought is crucial. In both Chapter 1 and 2, I will deal with the human dimension of the IRS injustice and introduce possible ways to incorporate Indigenous relationality into IRS reconciliation politics in order to raise the moral consciousness of Canada, something which would allow the country to voluntarily and sincerely apologize to Indigenous peoples. In Chapter 3, I will focus on the structural dimension of the IRS injustice by clarifying the nature of the clash of modes of thought between settler-colonial rationality and Indigenous relationality.

Chapter 1 argues that political apologies, in the form of relational apologies, can generate a necessary dialogical space wherein both parties can continue to search for the way to foster their reconciliation. Chapter 2 contends that relational shaming, conceptualized and modeled after the theory of reintegrative shaming and the Gitxsan Feast Hall system, has the potential to make the perpetrator state undergo introspection and learning necessary to fundamentally confront their wrongdoing. Chapter 3 discusses that settler-colonial rationality, which continues to sustain the structural aspect of the IRS injustice, has deeply permeated the mindset of the settler and has produced a certain mentality called the settler mentality of superiority, resulting in the unilateral construction of the Canada-Indigenous hierarchical relationship. I argue that reconciling the modes of thought, settler-colonial rationality and relationality, in both the human and structural dimensions is an important component of IRS reconciliation.