By Karl Gardner and Devin Clancy,
Upping the Anti
Glen Coulthard is a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and an associate professor of political science and Indigenous studies at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver. Coulthard’s recent book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014) is an incisive critique of Canadian settler colonialism that centres Indigenous peoples’ resistance to the state and capital. In May 2016, Coulthard was a visiting scholar at York University in Toronto where he taught a course on Indigenous resurgence, and hosted a public discussion at Beit Zatoun on “Symbolic Violence and Liberal Settler-Colonialism.” Joined by Leanne Simpson and Jarrett Martineau, the panel grappled with the challenges posed by a new Liberal government and its ongoing commitment to settler colonial dispossession and limited recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination. Karl Gardner and Devin Clancy sat down with Coulthard to further explore the themes that emerged in these discussions.