Kimberly Murray wants to bring in Indigenous law, 'decolonize' empathy and imprison 'denialists'

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The federal probe on Indigenous missing children and unmarked graves, the final report of which was released last Tuesday, does touch on the topic of residential schools. Mostly, though, it’s a 1,300-page tome that sets out arguments against the Canadian state.

And because it’s so long and full of filler, few people will ever read the thing to appreciate its absurdity. Even the executive summary, at an undigestible length of nearly 300 pages, defeats its own purpose. Canadians, this $10.4-million essay project isn’t for you. It’s for governments and lawyers to use as support for future billion-dollar payouts and future arguments in court for more colonial concessions.

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The special interlocutor who authored this report, Kimberly Murray, never outright states that Canada has no right to exist. She instead talks around it by laying out various lines of logic supported by citations to decolonial scholars throughout hundreds of pages which, if taken together, seem to conclude that reconciliation will only be achieved when Canadian sovereignty is extinguished.

It starts with Murray’s concept of nationhood: Canada, to her, seems to be a colonial blanket atop a bedrock of Indigenous fundamental rights. “Where Treaties were signed, Indigenous Nations agreed to share their lands with settlers, and where no Treaties exist, they have never ceded their sovereignty over their homelands. In either case, they have never relinquished their right of self-determination to the Canadian State.”

It’s not true. For the Canadian state to exist as a sovereign country, it must hold that fundamental title to the land. That land was either settled upon, traded for (that some Indigenous groups in treaty negotiations didn’t have a concept of property rights in land, or only rudimentary ones, doesn’t make the trade illegitimate), or otherwise conquered. If Indigenous groups wanted to re-assert sovereignty, they could fight or trade; though, these are unattractive and costly.

Murray’s own methodology presumes Canada’s illegitimacy: she takes an “anti-colonial” approach that recognizes the “inherent sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples.” Colonialism, she says, is a distinctly European phenomenon, a convenient categorization that saves her from the mess of excusing away the Chinese and Moroccan genera. Colony nations (those spawned from Europe, at least) only achieve sovereignty by “removing or undermining the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples and replacing it with colonial claims to the lands and waters.”

Today, countries like Canada “have not fully decolonized because they continue to assume and assert sovereignty over Indigenous Peoples and lands.” Logically then, full decolonization can only happen........

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