Indigenous dispossession, settler illegitimacy: Jeremy Patzer, ‘Frail Legitimacies: Examining the Settler-Colonial Legal-Politics Underlying the Wet’suwet’en Crisis’, in Kathryn M. Campbell, Stephanie Wellman (eds), Justice, Indigenous Peoples, and Canada: A History of Courage and Resilience, Routledge, 2023 | settler colonial studies blog

Indigenous dispossession, settler illegitimacy: Jeremy Patzer, ‘Frail Legitimacies: Examining the Settler-Colonial Legal-Politics Underlying the Wet’suwet’en Crisis’, in Kathryn M. Campbell, Stephanie Wellman (eds), Justice, Indigenous Peoples, and Canada: A History of Courage and Resilience, Routledge, 2023

08Dec23

Abstract: Professor Patzer provides a current example in this chapter for understanding settler colonialism in practice, illustrated through what occurred during the recent crisis affecting the Wet’suwet’en land defenders in British Columbia. Here, he scrutinizes the mixture of law and politics that has dispossessed the Wet’suwet’en of much of their land and ability to fully determine their future, given they are facing the pending imposition of a pipeline on their unceded territory. By delegitimizing Wet’suwet’en traditionalists, the settler state ignores and obscures how they have been challenged when called upon to explain the legitimacy of colonial dispossession, especially in British Columbia, where much of the land is not accounted for by historical land cession treaties. Patzer maintains that while the higher courts have recently been engaged in rewriting Canadian Aboriginal law to produce new legal principles to address past controversies, in effect, what they have produced are “half-measures” of justice. These practices are reflective of an inability to engage with difficult questions about the legitimacy of the Crown’s sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and their lands, further perpetuating colonial conflicts.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed