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1. The LGBT Purge, its Demise, and the Aftermath: Retired Servicewomen Paving the Way

Author:
Charlotte Duval-Lantoine
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In 1992, a court case lifted put an end to the persecution of 2SLGBTQI+ service members in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). To some researchers, the end of discriminatory policies translated into tolerance for and the welcoming of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians in the rank of the military. However, scandals over sexual misconduct, gender-based violence, and homo- and transphobic incidents in the CAF is painting a drastically different picture. Instead of a history of burgeoning inclusion and diversity, the end of what became known as the LGBT Purge led to different types of violence and struggles for 2SLGBTQI+ members. This article provides a chronology of the last years of the LGBT Purge in the military and the aftermath of Douglas v. the Canadian Armed Forces. It recounts an history of an institution that did not live up to its duty of care obligations because of members’ sexual orientation and gender identity. But this piece also underlines the role that women, both serving and retired, in bringing the issues to light and drive change in the military.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Women, LGBT+, Indigenous, and Military
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

2. Military Service and Serving the Community: How the Second World War Propelled Activism Forward for Indigenous and Native American Servicewomen

Author:
Isabella Sun
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Native Canadian Centre of Toronto (NCCT), originally named the Native American Indian Club of Toronto, was founded in 1950 by community volunteers – the majority of whom were Indigenous women.1 The club was founded to build a network and create an inclusive social space through shared culture, art, and language in Toronto. Indigenous women-led organizations such as the NCCT were not uncommon to find after the Second World War, since the wartime era empowered many Indigenous women to find and create their place in society. Today, the NCCT continues to prioritize Indigenous community building through promoting traditional knowledge and culture through language courses, art classes, and other events. Although this centre is unrelated to the war effort, it can be considered a by-product of Indigenous empowerment after the Second World War. Whether Indigenous women voluntarily enlisted or not, the war changed the daily realities of these many women. This article will explore similar themes of Indigenous servicewomen’s experiences throughout the Second World War and afterwards in Canada, and compare it with those of Native American servicewomen in the United States. It will highlight how their service affected post-war actions and activism for Indigenous rights in the latter twentieth century.
Topic:
Women, Indigenous, Activism, and Military
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

3. Money and Colonialism in Canada: An Interview with Brian Gettler

Author:
Brian Gettler and Martin Crevier
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
On 30 April 2013, live from the International Space Station, the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield unveiled a new $5 banknote. It featured some of Canada’s contribution to space exploration. Here the country is imagined as a modern state, willing to contribute to multilateral scientific endeavours for the common good of humankind. Earth and the Great Lakes appear in the background, rendered from photographs supplied by the Department of Natural Resources. Having developed its own landmass, the image seems to imply, Canada now projects its knowhow to the confines of space. The twinned themes of internationalism and development are reinforced on the other side of the note. There features Wilfrid Laurier, a prime minister remembered for furthering an independent Canadian foreign policy within the British Empire and as an advocate of state-led Western settlement. If unlikely, Laurier and space exploration appear in the end an effective association for a banknote part of the “Frontier Series.” Money, we might glean from this anecdote, is far from a commonplace and benign object. It carries political significance and power even beyond the symbols emblazoned upon notes and coins. Yet money and currencies seldom emerge as a focal point in histories of colonialism and empire; normally they are an accessory to express value, a tool of exchange, or a medium of early encounters. In Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820–1950, Brian Gettler sets out to correct this narrative. He shows how money, in its materiality and from the practices surrounding it, can be conceived of as a political force that reshapes space, mediates the colonial project, extends sovereignty, and modulates behaviours. It is for him, more precisely, a technology that allows us to trace the emergence of the colonial state in what becomes Canada, as well as its complex and changing relationships with Indigenous peoples. Brian Gettler is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. He has just published Colonialism’s Currency with McGill-Queen’s University Press. In our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed his new book, his historical interests, and how the history of currency in British North America can inform larger conversations about empire and colonialism.
Topic:
History, Colonialism, Empire, Money, Currency, Indigenous, and First Nations
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

4. Disrupting Settler-Colonial Capitalism: Indigenous Intifadas and Resurgent Solidarity from Turtle Island to Palestine

Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the resurgence of Indigenous/Palestine solidarity during the Wet’suwet’en land sovereignty struggle in Canada that took place around the same time Donald Trump’s Middle East “peace plan” was released in early 2020. Historicizing this resurgence within a longer period of anti-colonial resistance, the article attends to the distinct historical, political- economic, and juridical formations that undergird settler colonialism in Canada and Israel/Palestine. It contends with the theoretical limits of the settler-colonial framework, pushing back against narratives of settler success, and shows how anti-colonial resistance accelerated economic crises that led both settler states to enter into “negotiations” with the colonized (reconciliation in one case, and peace talks in the other) as a strategy to maintain capitalist settler control over stolen lands. The analysis also sheds light on a praxis of solidarity that has implications for movement building and joint struggle.
Topic:
Political Activism, Solidarity, Conflict, Peace, Settler Colonialism, Indigenous, Reconciliation, and Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Political Geography:
Canada, Israel, and Palestine

5. Indigenous Reserve Lands in Canada Face High Flood Risk

Author:
Jason Thistlethwaite, Andrea Minano, Daniel Henstra, and Daniel Scott
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
Nearly every year, Indigenous peoples in First Nations communities face property damage, disrupted livelihoods and the severe social and psychological burdens associated with evacuation due to flooding. Perhaps the most striking example is the recurrent flooding that afflicts the Kashechewan First Nation in Northern Ontario, whose residents have been forced to evacuate their homes every spring for 17 years. Although it’s known that Indigenous communities face a greater flood risk and experience more flood emergencies than the general Canadian population, the scope and magnitude of the current threat, and how it might evolve under climate change, has been little studied. This policy brief reports on research at the University of Waterloo that is assessing, quantifying and mapping the flood risk to Indigenous peoples living on reserve lands and includes policy recommendations to help with better understanding and reducing that risk.
Topic:
Climate Change, Natural Disasters, Indigenous, and Flood
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

6. Ensuring Respect for Indigenous Cultures: A Moral Rights Approach

Author:
Brigitte Vézina
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
From commercials to movies to fashion, Indigenous artworks have been misused in ways that are offensive to the artists who created them and disrespectful of the cultures that inspired them. Using Indigenous traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) without acknowledging their sources or providing financial compensation to the artists undermines the TCEs' traditional value and amounts to cultural theft. This paper looks at protecting TCEs using copyright's moral rights approach, which provides intellectual property protection based on acknowledgement, respect and integrity.
Topic:
Arts, Intellectual Property/Copyright, Culture, and Indigenous
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

7. A Comparison of Nisga’a Self-Government and International Standards of Indigenous Self-Determination

Author:
Agnieszka Szpak
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Polish Political Science Yearbook
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
The paper concentrates on the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples on the basis of the Nisga’a Nation. The author analyzes the most important provisions of the Nisga’a Final Agreement, in particular those envisaging self-determination of the Nisga’a Nation. Then the author briefly examines the Nisga’a Constitution which may be regarded as a means to implement the Nisga’a Final Agreement. It shows how the Nisga’a selfgovernance model fits into the provisions on self-determination of indigenous peoples. The thesis of this paper is that the Nisga’a self-governance is consonant with international legal standards expressed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Nisga’a selfgovernment model is much more than just cultural autonomy: it actually amounts to political autonomy. This subject is worth exploring because it may serve as a pattern to be followed with reference to other indigenous peoples, not only in Canada.
Topic:
Governance, Self Determination, Leadership, and Indigenous
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

8. “The Exigencies of the Military Situation Must be the Primary Consideration”: the Department of Indian Affairs, Communication Control, and Indigenous Families in the First World War

Author:
Tim Clarke
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
During the First World War Indigenous peoples in Canada contributed to the war effort through enlistment in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), the Patriotic Fund, and agricultural and industrial production. Their contributions, however, were not universally accepted in Indigenous communities. For many aging, non-military eligible, individuals, enlistment and off-reserve work deprived families of care-givers, bread-winners, and youth, essential to household and community well-being. Their petitions to the Canadian government, filtered through the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA), reveal the breadth of opinion and sources of frustration from across Indigenous communities in Canada. For the DIA, however, the years from 1914-1918 provided a crucial opportunity to solidify its power over Indigenous communities. Through a three-pillared archetype of communication control, the DIA increased its unilateral dominion over Indigenous affairs, largely at the expense of the eldest members of Indigenous communities, remaining traditional governance structures, and especially women. While the DIA rightly lauded Indigenous contributions to Canada’s war effort in post-war declarations, it conveniently ignored the costs associated with such contributions, thus denying a crucial aspect of Indigenous First World War history; an omission historians have too often indulged.
Topic:
Communications, Military Strategy, World War I, Indigenous, and Indian Affairs
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

9. Exploring the Meaning of Indigenous Military Service during the Second World War in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States

Author:
R. Scott Sheffield
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the meaning of military service for Indigenous men who volunteered during the Second World War. At its core, this question can help elucidate what is often the “big why?” invariably asked by people encountering this subject for the first time: why did young Indigenous men fight for a freedom, democracy and equality that they had never experienced? Employing a transnational lens, the article seeks to do interrelated things. First, it examines the meaning of military service for Indigenous men in each of three distinct phases: prior to their enlistment, while serving in the army and in combat, and after demobilisation and transitioning to veterans. Second, this study considers Indigenous perspectives and experiences in relation to, and the broader context of, the non-Indigenous comrades-in-arms with whom they enlisted, served, and sacrificed. In the end, this examination reveals a diversity of interpretations amongst Indigenous soldiers at each stage, but cannot be definitive in the face of such complexity and the ultimately idiosyncratic and personal nature of veterans’ lived experiences.
Topic:
Military Affairs, transnationalism, Indigenous, and Military Service
Political Geography:
United States, Canada, Australia, North America, and New Zealand

10. Embracing Indigenous culture in military organizations: the experience of Māori in the New Zealand military

Author:
Grazia Scoppio
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This article builds on a 2007 research on Indigenous peoples in the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) which identified best practices from New Zealand that Canada could draw upon to enhance participation of Indigenous peoples within the Canadian Armed Forces. Using organizational culture theory as a conceptual framework, this article further investigates the main approaches and practices that have enabled a positive partnership with Māori and the successful inclusion of Māori culture in the NZDF. Specifically, the paper investigates the mechanisms used by the NZDF and the internal and external environments of the organization supporting the participation of Indigenous groups in the New Zealand military. The discussion explores ways in which Indigenous practices and customs can be incorporated into other military systems and protocols. The paper concludes that, among military organizations, the NZDF is a leader in transforming the organizational culture by enabling the organization to embrace Indigenous culture and empowering Indigenous members within their ranks.
Topic:
Culture, Military Affairs, Indigenous, and Defense Industry
Political Geography:
Canada, Australia, North America, and New Zealand