Victimizing language

by Nicole Findlay

There is a persistent theme in the slow dance of land dispute settlements. In response to Native land claims, members of non-Native communities in possession of the disputed property often appropriate and repurpose rights-based language.

Through her research in current and former Commonwealth countries, Eva Mackey, a new associate professor in the School of Canadian Studies, examines how power elites and local citizens use rights-based language to effectively combat the very groups whose rights have been compromised.

At the same time, she explores how many indigeneous and non-indigeneous people are developing innovative ways to promote just relationships between people and to understand our shared histories and futures.

While characterizations of Native-land claims as invasions might appear like knee-jerk reactions that could be chalked up to ignorance of history, Mackey contends that the factors driving the response are far more complex. They result from socialization reinforced by legal, institutional and cultural processes passed on from the colonial roots of settler nations built on native land.

Funded by a Fulbright Traditional Scholar Award, Mackey is currently at Ithaca College, New York where she is researching local reaction to Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) land claims. Straddling communities in Ontario and New York, the Haudenosaunee are engaged in land rights negotiations with governments in Canada and the US. Their claims are meeting with mixed reactions from each of the two countries.

While conducting her graduate research at the University of Sussex, Mackey developed an interest in multiculturalism and how ideas about cultural pluralism and tolerance emerged in Canada, the US, and England after World War II. After completing her doctoral studies in anthropology, and publishing her book, “The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada”, Mackey moved to Australia, where she examined the intolerance with which aboriginal land rights was regarded. Her findings – that the public backlash in reaction to native rights was markedly similar in Australia, the US and Canada – inspired her current research.

During her Fulbright Fellowship, Mackey will work on a manuscript based on the research she has conducted over the past seven years, a manuscript she hopes to submit for publication this summer.

“My research, I hope, will assist local aboriginal and non-aboriginal people and policy makers to engage in dialogue that appreciates that there are no easy answers to such complex issues, but that we can, and must, learn from each other across borders and over time,” said Mackey.