A Feeling of Unease: Distance, Emotion, and Securitizing Indigenous Protest in Canada

Why do public officials sometimes avoid using security claims to frame an issue, even when there are strong incentives and historical precedent for doing so? Efforts to portray indigenous protest as a security issue are a recurring feature of Canada's settler colonial history. Recently, however, a series of public officials have emphatically rejected these kinds of claims. To explain this puzzle, I argue that a growing feeling of unease over the history of settler colonialism has transformed once acceptable security claims into sources of controversy and racism. Generated through diverse social repertoires linked to indigenous-led forms of reconciliation, this unease has resulted in officials facing pressure to distance themselves—through denials, apologies, and euphemisms—from claims that have become increasingly controversial. The result is not a direct end to the securitization of indigenous protest—some figures may actively court controversy, while others can still make these claims in private conversation or internal documents. Instead, the effect of this unease is to render these claims less publicly defensible and thus make security practices targeting indigenous communities appear increasingly illegitimate.