Reducing self-determination to economic investments assimilates native peoples into the colonialist state and undermines decolonization.

The relationship between Indigenous peoples and the settler state remains fraught due to ongoing violence and mistrust. Numerous attempts have been made to ‘reconcile’ this beleaguered relationship over the past three decades. Indigenous peoples have advocated for the decolonization of the settler state and a suitable land base using the language of public investment. In response, settler governments reframe these requests as opportunities for economic investment that is guaranteed to produce self-esteem and social inclusion for Indigenous peoples. This article documents and problematizes an ideological shift whereby holistic decolonial approaches to reconciliation give way to an investment rationale that is used to bypass demands for Indigenous peoples’ jurisdiction and self-determination. The ramifications of this shift are examined in three ‘eras of reconciliation’ (Section 37 Constitutional Talks, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, reparations for Indian residential school [IRS] Survivors) that also coincide with three types of investment: a) national; b) social; and c) therapeutic. Introduction The Crown-First Nations Gathering held on 24 January 2012 was organized to create a dialogue between First Nations and the settler state. The participants made a commitment to develop equitable Indigenous–settler relationships to renew those marred by the subjugation and dispossession legislated by the Indian Act, 1876. The Assembly of First Nations publicly stated that the event would ‘directly build’ upon official reconciliatory initiatives such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.1 At the event, Prime Minister Stephen Harper emphasized the concrete action taken to reconcile Indigenous– settler relationships such as ‘accelerating specific and comprehensive claims’, ‘secur[ing] water-system accountability’ and ‘rout[ing] more than a billion dollars of Economic Action Plan funding to investments for Aboriginal and northern communities’.2 He goes on to state that, ‘these things we have done, Ladies and Gentlemen, as a down payment on what we wish to achieve. For our goal is self-sufficient citizens and self-governing communities. Our goal is to promote improved governance. Our goal is much increased aboriginal participation in the economy and in the country’s prosperity’.3 In outlining these policy and programme actions, Prime Minister Harper demonstrates a commitment to improving the lives of Indigenous peoples; yet, embedded in this statement is a form of capitalist logic that resembles the practice of investment whereby the nation-state seeks a financial return on these designated monies. This article is animated by the following question: how does investment rationale shape Indigenous–settler reconciliation processes in Canada? This article employs a problematization approach that is used to ‘question what appears to be well-ordered, rational, responsible, self-evident, universal or natural in order to show the selective format of these practices and the power effects inscribed in them’.4 By using this approach, I interrogate the presumed neutrality of investment discourse and the accounting techniques that are used to normalize this economic practice. To support my claims, I analyse public documents, speeches and policies that ‘represent key sites of hegemonic struggle over the principles and values’ of Indigenous–settler reconciliation. The history presented here is partial and selective because I only examine instances where Indigenous leaders and settler state representatives enter into official dialogue. While the reconciliation process may inspire knowledge transfer and cultural sharing, I am reminded of Jennifer Henderson’s caveat that, ‘[l]ike monetary exchanges, discursive exchanges in the field of redress function to standardize—to convert incommensurabilities into a shared form’.6 This article argues that the settler state deploys investment logic to determine specific reconciliatory exchanges that ensure the containment of Indigenous claims to restitution and the creation of mutual economic beneficiaries. These demands may retrench the social debt owed to Indigenous peoples by the settler state and undercut the spirit of restitution and justice. Stated more clearly, investment rationale is used to bypass Indigenous peoples’ assertions of self-determination and to ensure the economic success of the settler state. Therefore, this article argues that the settler state must be rendered ‘incomprehensible’ so ‘Eurocentric epistemologies and judicial doctrines no longer hold unquestioned authority’.7 In this article, I examine how Indigenous peoples routinely advocate for holistic social investments and a suitable land base to economically develop by using the language of investment and the extension of jurisdiction. In response, settler governments reframe these requests for social investment as opportunities for economic investment. In the following sections, I document how grievance and redress become financialized to contain claims to Indigenous self-determination and to establish a profit or return for the settler state. In doing so, this article contributes to fields of Indigenous–state relations and transitional justice by examining how market relations are introduced to seemingly politically progressive and affective practices such as Indigenous–settler reconciliation. Firstly, I outline the concomitant projects of genocide, neoliberalism and settler colonialism in Canada. Secondly, I explore how investment rationale reframes holistic decolonial approaches to reconciliation advocated by Indigenous peoples. Lastly, I examine how three ‘eras of reconciliation’ that I identify as Section 37 Constitutional Talks, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and reparations for Indian residential school (IRS) Survivors coincide with three types of investment: a) national; b) social; and c) therapeutic.Genocide, neoliberalism and the settler state in Canada The question of genocide in Canada is complicated because the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians, rather contrarily, is defined by the political and economic subjugation of an entire people existing alongside a spectacle of cultural diversity and reconciliation.8 The limits of cultural appreciation are reached when grassroots movements and Indigenous organizations publicly challenge capitalist accumulation.9 Any resistance demonstrated by Indigenous peoples is linked to settler assumptions that Indigenous peoples are economically ‘privileged’ through Indian Act legislation, despite numerous scholarly accounts that demonstrate that this legislation actually has created economic dependency that is profitable only to the nation-state.10 For these reasons, the assimilation of Indigenous peoples into Canada’s capitalist system is assumed by settler Canadians to be an acceptable goal because it supposedly ensures equitable access to prosperity. Taking these contradictions into account, the Canadian settler state should not be understood as a monolithic institution but as ‘an ideological project’ that ‘confers legitimacy upon the complex constellation of government institutions and processes that have many different (and often contradictory) agendas and interests’.11 I employ Joyce Green’s concept ‘Project Canada’ that refers ‘to the state constructed from the colonies by colonial and then settler elites, evolving but firmly grounded on the original and continuing appropriation of indigenous land and resources, and built on racist and sexist practices’.12 A central goal of this project is to eliminate Indian Act legislation and thereby reduce Indigenous difference to an ethnicity that can be subsumed into the Canadian cultural mosaic. The complicity of reconciliation in maintaining Project Canada is a recurring question in scholarly examinations of this process.13 Indigeneity, however, can be particularly useful in imagining a reconciled Canada because it prescribes ‘a principled framework for [Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians] “living together differently”’14 that includes ‘an innovative, if unorthodox, pattern of belonging that endorses the notion of nation-states as sites of multiple yet interlocking jurisdictions, each autonomous and self-determining yet sharing in governance of the whole’.15 Jurisdiction over territory and services is tantamount to an extension of decision-making powers that would also require significant land and capital transfer to bolster autonomous communities. An emphasis on self-government (and self-management), as noted in the statement made by Stephen Harper in the introduction, has frequently replaced the language of selfdetermination in government speeches and documents over the last thirty years. This discursive shift gestures to a convergence of the settler colonial and neoliberal projects. Self-determining Indigenous communities are viewed by the settler state as disruptive to practices of accumulation by dispossession that have reached ascendancy in an era of neoliberalism. This practice ‘involves the dispossession of people from their wealth’ whether this is in the form of natural resources or land or access to government finances.17 Neoliberalism functions genocidically through a process of regime replacement where ‘the federal government pursued economic policies amounting to genocide by limiting the ability of Indigenous peoples to pursue their traditional livelihoods, sustain their own economic systems, and participate in the management or use of their resources within their territories’.18 Regime replacement serves as an organizing principle of the settler society’s political economy and as a tactic it is deployed to integrate Indigenous territories into national and global economies. For instance, neoliberal economic policies have initiated resource extraction projects that have over time resulted in the destruction of Indigenous territory, culture and identity.19 Despite documented genocidal outcomes related to the neoliberalization of the settler state, this rationale has become further entrenched in Indigenous–state relationships. This article is primarily concerned with the role neoliberalism plays in the economization of the social whereby the accumulation of capital is situated as the ultimate goal of not only businesses or states but also individuals and communities. As a consequence of neoliberal logic, ‘regimes of public investment and finance increasingly come to mimic these marketized conditions’20 because they are assumed to engender efficiency and profit (although historically the beneficiaries of this system are relatively few). Under neoliberalism, social welfare is increasingly subjected to cutbacks as service provision is privatized by encouraging ‘people to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for enhancing their own well-being’.21 As a result, those who advocate for redress or social change increasingly articulate their claims through an economic frame that increases the potential for imposition of capitalist ‘solutions’ on those peoples already deeply exploited by that system.22 Moreover, the state interprets grievance through the lens of well-being. For instance, a 2003 document released by the federal government entitled Resolving Aboriginal claims: a practical guide to Canadian experiences states that, ‘together with Aboriginal peoples, the Government of Canada is transforming the approach to indigenous issues from an earlier focus on “rights” and “grievances”; into an integrated approach to quality of life, encompassing economic development, human capital, community infrastructure and governance’.23A focus on mutual wellbeing for Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians delegitimizes grievance and legitimizes the emancipatory capacities of capital. Building on this rationale, the following sections document how under neoliberalism, investment rationale is formed to undermine the possibility for the decolonization of Indigenous– settler relationships.