“Indigenizing Settlement”: Investigating the Possibilities and Limitations of Indigenous-Immigrant Solidarity Through Immigrant Settlement Organizations

This dissertation investigates the possibilities and limitations of solidarity between immigrant and Indigenous communities when mediated through the immigrant settlement sector. I conducted participant observation, interviews, and sharing circles in a program I call the Indigenous-Newcomer Training Program (INTP), which brings together Indigenous and immigrant youth in employment seeking, along with interviews and document analysis in the broader immigrant serving sector in Saskatoon, SK, Canada. In my first empirical chapter, I find that contrary to previous literature on immigrant-Indigenous relations, the sector is deeply invested in acknowledging the First Peoples of the land and resisting anti-Indigenous racism among immigrants. While these organizations are taking steps toward building relationships with Indigenous communities, they also face limitations in terms of funding, overburdening Indigenous colleagues, and maintaining Western ways of knowing. My second empirical chapter investigates the ways INTP’s employment programming demonstrates alternatives to neoliberalism and settler colonialism by drawing on Indigenous ways of knowing. I argue that INTP resists the neoliberal self-reliance that other state-funded programs attempt to inculcate in immigrant and Indigenous job seekers by focusing on healing at individual and community levels instead of individual skill development. Yet, because of the constraints presented by INTP’s reliance on state funding, the extent to which they can resist is limited. In my final empirical chapter, I turn to the ways Indigenous and immigrant youth come to (re-)interpret each other through the frames provided by INTP. I find that when immigrants compare settler colonialism in Canada to the colonialisms their home countries went through, rather than building solidarity, these comparisons reveal resentment of Indigenous people. I argue that rather than using colonial comparison to absolve themselves of settler complicity, immigrants make these comparisons to become settlers themselves. Overall, this dissertation argues for analysis in migration studies that keeps settler colonialism in view and takes Indigenous solidarity as an imperative. By conceptualizing the empirical case of INTP as an opportunity to reconstruct theory on settlement agencies and immigrant-Indigenous relations, my study brings the literature up to speed with this reality on the ground, and offers an empirical case study in a largely theoretical field.

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