Programme full

PLENARY
COLIN SAMSON
Thursday 16 April, 17:15 - 18:45
CARNEGIE LECTURE THEATRE, CHARLES OAKLEY BUILDING
THE IDEA OF PROGRESS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: CONTEMPORARY LEGACIES OF AN ENDURING
EUROCENTRIC PROPHECY
The will to transform non-Europeans has a long lineage in Western thought. It was crucial to the Enlightenment
metaphor of progress outlining a definable, singular and desirable unveiling of knowledge in one direction. By the 19th
century influential philosophers, scientists and politicians began to extend the metaphor further by prophesizing that
history also had a specific direction, one consistent with that of Western Europe. It was no accident that this imagery
and the prophecy of a greater world destiny coincided with colonial expansion of Europe and the establishment of the
North American settler states. The widespread acceptance of the idea of progress informed policies implemented
across the colonial world to induce change among indigenous peoples whose societies were thought to be infused
with error and backwardness. In North America, the forced removals, assimilation campaigns, confinement to
reservations, and induction into wage labour were the remedies.
Today indigenous groups who were spared these changes are now undergoing a parallel application of the idea of
progress through the industrialization of their lands. Peoples outside the main corridors of European colonization are
the focus of what Michael Klare calls, ‘the race for what’s left.’ I will illustrate this contemporary process, often termed
‘economic development,’ from my work with the Innu peoples of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula in Canada. There
and in other places, supposedly positive changes to indigenous peoples’ wellbeing are being associated with
acceptance of resource extraction capitalism. The imposition of this agenda is made to be inevitable, not necessarily
by abstract principles, but by presenting it as a human rights measure and giving indigenous peoples no meaningful
right of refusal. I will suggest that the situation of indigenous peoples in remote areas today starkly illustrates the
disastrous consequences of a Eurocentric doctrine; the prophecy that human betterment can only be achieved
through a singular path and that other ways of being and knowing are erroneous and backward.
I would like to make this presentation in memory of my teacher at the University of California, Berkeley, Kenneth Bock,
who taught me to always be sceptical of ideas purporting to know human nature or be universal.
Colin Samson's research examines the relationships between indigenous peoples and
the states and settler populations that have colonised them. This broad focus on the
space between the colonized and the colonizer is based on 20 years’ experience
working with the Innu of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula since 1994. His associations
with them led to co-authoring the widely-cited human rights report Canada's Tibet: the
killing of the Innu which won the Italian Pio Manzo peace prize in 2000. His book A Way
of Life that Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu won the Pierre
Savard Award in 2006. His most recent book is A World You Do Not Know: Settler
Societies, Indigenous Peoples and the Attack on Cultural Diversity looks at the
architecture of European thought, the disastrous implementation of it in North America,
and indigenous peoples’ cultural persistence in response to it. Colin has also worked in
creative partnerships with filmmaker Sarah Sandring (‘Nutshimit’, 2010, ‘Nutak’ 2013,
both for Nirgun Films). In 2014, he was a guest of the American Indian Studies Center
at the University of Wyoming, and a keynote speaker at the Atlantic Provinces Political
Science Association in Newfoundland.
Chair: Rampaul Chamba, BSA Membership Services Director
BSA Annual Conference 2015 22
Glasgow Caledonian University