Indigenous Access to Social Assistance and Identity: A Gendered Relational Reading of Settler Colonial Containment in Shubenacadie Indian Band v. Canada

Abstract:In Canada, the settler colonial state uses the regulation of the so-called Indian identity as a dispossessive strategy, a racialized and gendered means of controlling access to resources and attempting to contain Indigenous human, nonhuman, and land-based relations. This regulation is informed by Western patriarchal ideals and mechanisms. We examine settler accounts of “Indian” identity and their effects through a gendered reading of Shubenacadie Indian Band v. Canada, a legal case centering on the provision of social assistance. Our critique is grounded in a relational approach to Indigenous self-recognition, an approach that transcends the false dichotomy between individual (women’s) rights and group (cultural) rights, critiqued by Joyce Green. This case exemplifies individualized approaches to identity that obscure the relational practices seeking to retain, reproduce, and revitalize Indigenous modes of life, an ongoing terrain of de/colonizing struggle.