Making Space in Canadian Sociology

Indigenous Peoples have been studied by governments and social scientists (largely anthropologists) for over two centuries. Indigenous Peoples in Canadian sociology have historically been imbedded into the discipline as an unsolved problem of modernity. Indigenous social lives are therefore largely constructed through markers of success and failure situated within a settler-colonial lens. Further, sociological notions of “society” and “culture” are largely defined by the interrelations between humans only, limiting considerations of other-than-human relations on societal formations and the dynamics therein. Through a discussion about epistemology, ontology, and other-than-human relations, this chapter examines the ways in which Indigenous worlds both conceive of societal formations and articulate social events.