Red Skin, White Masks by Glen Sean Coulthard

In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization. Glen Sean Coulthard Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition Paperback Sept. This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics-one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism.Ĭoulthard demonstrates how a “place-based” modification of Karl Marx’s theory of “primitive accumulation” throws light on Indigenous–state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon’s critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. The term “recognition” shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples’ right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. “Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. These politics involve policy measures that recognize but. Here is a description, and a video of a talk Glen gave at the University of Victoria on Rage against Empire.įrom the University of Minnesota Press website: Glen Sean Coulthard, in his book Red Skin, White Masks critiques the colonial politics of recognition.

Red Skin, White Masks by Glen Sean Coulthard