The conflict between the Gitxsan and so-called Canada highlights the State's inherently colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples. In 1868, Queen Victoria transferred the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada, making the Canadian government the owner of lands already occupied by hundreds of thousands of people. Since then, colonial authorities have continued to suppress the inhabitants of these lands, who resist and fight to preserve their traditional way of life. In an effort to undermine this presence that challenges it, the Canadian state has implemented a series of measures. These actions reveal the deeply ingrained nature of "Canada" as a state that perpetuates settler colonialism. This article will first define the term before outlining its three main characteristics.
Settler Colonialism: A Definition
Colonialism is the process by which a colonizer invades a territory, occupies it, and exploits its resources and population—the colonized. This is happening right here in so-called Canada, where the land is increasingly used to develop capitalist industry. This domination is also sustained by a system of justifications. For example, the principle of terra nullius was used by colonizers to legitimize the occupation of the land. According to this doctrine, since many Indigenous peoples were nomadic, Europeans considered the land uninhabited because it was not cultivated. This rationale allowed them to claim the land as their own. Later, with the rise of modernity in Europe, racist ideologies—falsely asserting that races exist and that they determine the hierarchy of human beings—were used to naturalize the "dominated" status of Indigenous peoples.
The concept of settler colonialism characterizes the relationship between the so-called Canadian state and Indigenous peoples. It helps to specify the type of colonization occurring on this territory (Dabin, 2021, p. 18). Unlike exploitative colonialism, where the goal is to profit from Indigenous labour, settler colonialism has a different aim. It is defined as the set of practices and structures employed by colonizers to eliminate the Indigenous population in order to permanently settle the land.
The Logic of Elimination
Firstly, one of the defining characteristics of settler colonialism is that it constitutes a perpetual invasion. Its underlying logic is to eliminate the colonized population—Indigenous peoples—culturally, politically, or physically, in order to fully establish the dominance of the colonizers—the Canadians. As a result, so-called Canada has consistently implemented, and continues to implement, policies aligned with this logic of elimination. Historically, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the federal government established residential schools to assimilate Indigenous peoples into the white population. Today, various political and economic measures reflect this ongoing invasion and elimination: forced sterilizations, the extinguishment of ancestral rights and titles during treaty negotiations, the imposition of colonial infrastructures such as the construction of Coastal GasLink and its terminal despite opposition from traditional Wet'suwet'en chiefs, and more.
Moreover, a report commissioned by the Canadian government itself—the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, published in 2019—asserts that Indigenous peoples are suffering genocide at the hands of the Canadian state. This report, denouncing the horrors committed, will, however, be added to the pile of others, while authorizations for more projects on stolen land continue to be signed, as growth remains the priority for the capitalist state.
Settlers Are Here to Stay
Secondly, the settlers are here to stay, establishing state and colonial institutions to which the colonized population is subjected under the threat of repression and violence. This repression manifests not only through incarceration but also through recurring disputes over fishing rights and territorial occupation.
More symbolic forms of violence are also having a devastating impact on communities, as band councils and their elected representatives have been uniformly imposed, disregarding the traditional decision-making processes of various communities. For example, the Indian Act seeks to bring Indigenous populations under federal authority. Furthermore, to solidify its colonial structures, the state attempts to impose a system of governance on them, namely band councils. So-called Canada turns to the elected officials of these councils when it wishes to address Indigenous peoples. Under the Indian Act, these individuals are recognized as the legitimate interlocutors in the eyes of the state.
However, within these communities, the colonial structure of band councils and the elected officials who sit on them lack legitimacy. Some Nations, such as the Wet'suwet'en, maintain their own traditional governance systems alongside the colonial structure. For instance, before the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, elected band council members supported the project, while traditional Wet'suwet'en chiefs, with greater internal legitimacy, opposed it. Despite this opposition, the colonial state chose to listen only to the elected representatives of the band councils and proceeded with the project, violently repressing Wet'suwet'en members who occupied the territory to block the pipeline's construction. In short, to consolidate its presence, so-called Canada imposes its state and colonial institutions on Indigenous peoples, under the threat of violent repression in the event of dissent.
The Art of Concealing Its True Nature
Thirdly, the colonial state seeks to monopolize sovereignty over territory. In other words, it aims to assimilate Indigenous nations into Canadian citizenship without granting collective rights. The existence of Indigenous nations within the "Canadian nation" challenges the colonial state, as it reveals that its sovereignty is incomplete and fundamentally illegitimate. While so-called Canada claims exclusive control over the territory it asserts as its own, the reality is that much of its surface area has never been ceded. Even when certain parcels of land were subject to signed treaties, the consent was often falsified. Frequently, the terms written on these treaties did not reflect the agreements made orally. For instance, the territory where the Gitxsan people live, called Lax'yip, was never ceded. As a result, the Canadian state, in theory, cannot carry out projects on lands that do not belong to it. Its claim to sovereignty rests on a piece of paper signed by the Queen of England in the late 19th century—a document of such little consequence that the government itself sought to negotiate further treaties afterwards. In short, the presence of Indigenous peoples within the territory the Canadian state claims as its own exposes its colonial nature. No wonder it seeks to eliminate this evidence, namely the Indigenous communities.
Consequently, to conceal its status as a settler colony, the "Canadian state" develops a narrative and associated policies. This narrative creates a stereotypical image of the "Indian" frozen in the past, while the discourse presents colonization as a thing of the past and reconciliation as a current concern (Government of Canada, 2024, para. 1). In 1969, the White Paper attempted to implement "egalitarian" policies that removed the specific legal recognition of Indigenous peoples within Canadian law, and similar efforts have followed. Furthermore, the Canadian state produces statistics, data, and reports to document its relations with Indigenous peoples, thereby diluting the Indigenous perspective on their own history. The "knowledge" created by the Canadian state, which favours its own position, generates a "non-knowledge" that ignores Indigenous perspectives on the history of colonization. This phenomenon has been termed by some people as "epistemicide". Moreover, when implementing economic development projects such as Coastal Gaslink, so-called Canada claims to have consulted with the Indigenous peoples affected by them. However, in reality, these consultations are often insufficient and take place with individuals whose views are hardly representative of the broader community. In short, these performative policies promote a façade of "reconciliation," but in no way disrupt the colonial structure that underpins the Canadian state.
Conclusion
This article has sought to define settlement colonialism and explore how a state imposes itself on an ever-expanding share of territory by defending harmful and polluting projects while pushing back communities that stand in its way. In its attempt to establish itself definitively on the land it claims, the state must eliminate, whether culturally, politically, or physically, the population that it perceives as an obstacle. Thus, the logic of elimination is the primary characteristic of settler colonialism. Secondly, it involves a continuous invasion of the territory by the settlers, who impose their structures and way of life on the Indigenous peoples. Finally, the Canadian state attempts to conceal its colonial nature and incomplete sovereignty by crafting a positive narrative about itself: colonization is a thing of the past, the state now consults with Indigenous peoples, and so on. However, as demonstrated by the imposition of the colonial PRGT pipeline project on unceded Gitxsan territory, such rhetoric is nothing more than a sham.
Further information
Fanon, Frantz, 1992, The Wretched of the Earth. Gallimard.
Manuel, Arthur and Derrickson, Ronald, 2018, Decolonizing Canada, Écosociété.
Government of Canada, 2019, Reclaiming our power and our place: the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.