Bound by reconciliation? : social criticism, treaty, and decolonization

Through a survey of the politics of reconciliation in Canada and as a concept within political thought, I reconstruct a social-theoretical approach to reconciliation that asks not ‘how can we be reconciled?’ but ‘is reconciliation possible in this society?’ This calls into question the presumption that reconciliation is possible and clarifies Indigenous critiques of reconciliation as social criticism. A social critique of reconciliation is important for it politicizes depoliticized practices, institutions, and social relations that renders our form of interdependence unfree and reveals the contradictions and antagonisms within a settler colonial society that furnishes the motivation for solidarity needed for an emancipatory politics that aims to give interdependence a free form. The presumption of reconciliation has also ‘bound’ approaches to criticism and treaty interpretation. Rather than reading Indigenous treaty visions as a form of immanent critique that demands a change in social relations, treaty is read as a form of internal criticism that in appealing to the gap between Canadian norms and practices seeks to restore the community’s moral standing. This downplays that the institutionalization of the norm of self-determination in Canada has been limited to white settler self-rule while the ends of this political association are constrained by anthropocentric and capitalist social relations. Because of this, self-determination needs to be transformed not extended; treaty represents more critical innovation than the realization of underlying potentials of Canadian norms and institutions. I conclude by returning to the political economy of reconciliation as revealing a shared yet differently experienced crisis of social reproduction caused by the indirect social relations of capitalist societies where needs are subordinated to profit, and that treaty represents an answer to this problem because it aims to transform an unfree form of interdependence into a free one keyed to the flourishing of human and non-human relations. Politically, this requires reading treaty less through the politics of reconciliation and more through the framework of articulation: the treaty partner is not given but must be made. Ultimately I argue that the danger of recuperations of reconciliation – and the presumption of its possibility – is that it downplays the politics of decolonization.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat

Unsettling settler colonialism: The discourse and politics of settlers, and solidarity with Indigenous nations

Our goal in this article is to intervene and disrupt current contentious debates regarding the predominant lines of inquiry bourgeoning in settler colonial studies, the use of ‘settler’, and the politics of building solidarities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Settler colonial studies, ‘settler’, and solidarity, then, operate as the central themes of this paper. While somewhat jarring, our assessment of the debates is interspersed with our discussions in their original form, as we seek to explore possible lines of solidarity, accountability, and relationality to one another and to decolonization struggles both locally and globally. Our overall conclusion is that without centering Indigenous peoples’ articulations, without deploying a relational approach to settler colonial power, and without paying attention to the conditions and contingency of settler colonialism, studies of settler colonialism and practices of solidarity run the risk of reifying (and possibly replicating) settler colonial as well as other modes of domination

Data from: Season and site fidelity determine home range of dispersing and resident juvenile Greenland cod (Gadus ogac) in a Newfoundland fjord

We used acoustic telemetry to track age 1 juvenile Greenland cod Gadus ogac in Newman Sound, Newfoundland, from October 2010 to November 2012, in 2 consecutive 1 yr experiments. Using single (Year 1) and reciprocal (Year 2) transplant study designs, we investigated seasonal dispersal, home range area, and potential homing behaviour between coves ~3.5 km apart. We tracked individuals moving at metre to kilometre scales, using a network of 26 to 32 hydrophones. We converted tag detections to position estimates in order to calculate seasonal home ranges and individual movement patterns. Home range increased significantly with season (pre-winter, winter, and post-winter) in both study years. Mean seasonal home range area ranged from 0.29 to 3.47 km2 in Year 1 and 0.43 to 1.72 km2 in Year 2. In contrast, fish size-at-capture, capture location, and release location had no significant effect on seasonal home range. Increased movement distance during the winter and post-winter season suggests a reduction in predation pressure on age 1 juveniles at these times, challenging previous assumptions about their vulnerability. We observed variable behaviour spanning residency to kilometre-scale dispersal movements, which represent greater distances than previously assumed. Similar proportions of control and transplant fish visited the other cove, indicating an absence of homing behaviour among dispersing individuals. Juveniles of marine fishes are often characterized as key life history transition stages between vulnerable larvae and older, larger individuals which are less susceptible to predators. Our results indicate that early juvenile life stages may be substantially more mobile than presupposed and contribute to population connectivity in temperate fishes in ways not well described previously

Data from: Season and site fidelity determine home range of dispersing and resident juvenile Greenland cod (Gadus ogac) in a Newfoundland fjord. A Canadian Healthy Oceans Network Population Connectivity, PC-03

Acoustic telemetry data was collected from October 2010 - October 2011 for 42 individual age 1+ Gadus ogac individuals tagged with Vemco Ltd™ V7-4L coded acoustic tags, programmed to emit a signal at a randomized average delay of every 240 ± 70 s, and a nominal tag life of 415 days. A receiver network comprised of 26 Vemco™ VR2W and VR2 hydrophones allowed for continual detection throughout Newman Sound over a full year. The data presented have been filtered to eliminate spurious detections using both a single detection filter (eliminating lone detections for a single fish over 24 hours) and a conservative speed filter (eliminating detections > 2 body lengths/second apart which could indicate ingestion by a predator). Using known positions of the acoustic receivers, we calculated position estimates in hourly time intervals using a weighted arithmetic mean to increase precision from a presence/absence dataset to a position-based dataset. Therefore the beginning of each hour time interval is indicated in the "Date" and "Time" field. Positions are indicated in decimal degrees in the "COA_Lat" and "COA_Lon" fields of the CSV files. Also included are the ArcGIS defined "POINT_X" and "POINT_Y" fields using a NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_21N projection. Individual fish IDs are included in the "Tag" field. The "Transplant" field indicates whether the individual was in the control group (site of capture = site of release) or the transplant group (site of capture ≠ site of release). Site of capture is indicated by the "Cove" field (HC = Heffern's Cove; BC= Buckley's Cove)

Season and site fidelity determine home range of dispersing and resident juvenile Greenland cod (Gadus ogac) in a Newfoundland fjord (Year 2). A Canadian Healthy Oceans Network Population Connectivity, PC-03

Acoustic telemetry data was collected from November 2011 - November 2012 for 42 individual age 1+ Gadus ogac individuals tagged with Vemco Ltd™ V7-4L coded acoustic tags, programmed to emit a signal at a randomized average delay of every 240 ± 70 s, and a nominal tag life of 415 days. A receiver network comprised of 32 Vemco™ VR2W and VR2 hydrophones allowed for continual detection throughout Newman Sound over a full year. The data presented have been filtered to eliminate spurious detections using both a single detection filter (eliminating lone detections for a single fish over 24 hours) and a conservative speed filter (eliminating detections > 2 body lengths/second apart which could indicate ingestion by a predator). Using known positions of the acoustic receivers, we calculated position estimates in hourly time intervals using a weighted arithmetic mean to increase precision from a presence/absence dataset to a position-based dataset. Therefore the beginning of each hour time interval is indicated in the "Date" and "Time" field. Positions are indicated in decimal degrees in the "COA_Lat" and "COA_Lon" fields of the CSV files. Also included are the ArcGIS defined "POINT_X" and "POINT_Y" fields using a NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_21N projection. Individual fish IDs are included in the "Tag" field. The "Transplant" field indicates whether the individual was in the control group (site of capture = site of release) or the transplant group (site of capture ≠ site of release). Site of capture is indicated by the "Cove" field (HC = Heffern's Cove; BC= Buckley's Cove)

Regional variation in otolith geochemistry of juvenile Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, in coastal Newfoundland

We examined spatial variation in otolith geochemistry as a natural tag in juvenile Atlantic cod to resolve geographic patterns during early life history. Individuals from 54 inshore sites spanned five embayments in eastern Newfoundland. Otolith composition differed at all spatial scales and related inversely to spatial scale. Classification analysis revealed increasing discrimination at coarser spatial scales: site (26-58%), bay (49%), and coast (76%). Assignment success declined by ~10% per added site with increasing sampling sites per bay, demonstrating fine-scale (The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author