Éléna Choquette, "Land and the Liberal Project: Canada’s Violent Expansion" (UBC Press, 2024)

Summary

New Books Network: Éléna Choquette on "Land and the Liberal Project: Canada’s Violent Expansion" (UBC Press, 2024) Podcast Date: December 6, 2025 Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher | Guest: Dr. Éléna Choquette

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Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Éléna Choquette discussing her new book, Land and the Liberal Project: Canada’s Violent Expansion, with host Dr. Miranda Melcher. The conversation explores the profound and rapid expansion of Canada’s territory in the late nineteenth century, focusing on how political, legal, and rhetorical strategies supported settler colonialism at the expense of Indigenous peoples. Dr. Choquette examines the myths of peaceful Canadian expansion and investigates the ideological foundations—particularly "colonial liberalism"—that justified this land appropriation and enduring violence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Author's Background and Motivations

• [02:46] Dr. Choquette introduces herself as an Associate Professor at Université du Québec en Outaouais. Her interest stems from her experiences in Quebec and British Columbia, focusing on land, settler-Indigenous relations, and constitutional questions.
• Quote:

  "I got interested in the case study of the Canadian prairies, which appeared historically as the largest piece of land that was settled right after Confederation."
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [03:48]

2. Challenging the 'Peaceable Canada' Myth

• [07:45 — 10:05] The book interrogates the notion that Canada’s expansion was peaceful, contrasting this with the subtle and overt violence of nation-building.
• Dr. Choquette seeks to uncover the "coded war" beneath the "peace" by drawing on Foucault and historical discourses.
• Quote:

  "I wanted to look more closely at that history and see beneath kind of the peace that we think we're seeing...look at the war that was raged underneath."
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [08:34]

3. Distinctiveness of Canadian Expansion (Timeline and Comparison)

• [11:26 — 17:01] The Canadian case is compared to the United States and Australia:
  • US expansion occurred over a longer, more protracted period; Australia’s expansion was more straightforward.
  • Canada expanded dramatically in about 30 years: from 1857 (when Canadian politicians claimed the Northwest) to 1885 (military defeat of the Metis and First Nations).
• Quote:

  “The specificity of the Canadian case is that enlargement happened over a very short period of time right after confederation...that really is the time period that I'm looking at.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [14:52; 17:01]

4. Ideology of Colonial Liberalism

• [19:54 — 26:29] Dr. Choquette argues that "colonial liberalism"—the use of supposedly liberal ideals for colonial purposes—was central to justifying land appropriation and violence:
  • Principles like liberty, private property, self-government, and peace were invoked as justification.
  • “Improvement” was a recurring rationale, applied to both land and Indigenous peoples, echoing Lockean ideas.
• Quote:

  “I do qualify that liberalism as being of a colonial kind...it’s the main ideological engine of settler appropriation and violence.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [22:25]

5. How Expansion Became a Political Priority

• [27:20 — 32:07] The shift in the 1850s marked a critical juncture:
  • Canada moved from not prioritizing western expansion to framing it as necessary for survival against US rivalry.
  • Science (expeditions assessing agricultural potential) and law (restructuring legal mechanisms for annexation) enabled and justified expansion.
• Quote:

  “At that, the very first, that very first step was resisted by Louis Riel and eventually the provisional government...They contested and challenged it.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [37:32]

6. Law, Confederation, and Exclusion of Indigenous Peoples

• [33:04 — 35:07] Confounding the myth of peaceful legal transition:
  • Confederation functioned as a legal device for expansion, yet Indigenous peoples were excluded from these foundational debates.
  • The creation of Manitoba was fraught with Indigenous resistance, leading to adjustments in settler tactics and further repression.

7. Indigenous Resistance: Red River and Northwest Resistance

• [36:15 — 42:42]
  • Red River (1869-70): The Metis and First Nations resisted Canadian-sanctioned land surveys and political declarations. Louis Riel led forceful pushback, prompting Canada to negotiate, but ultimately responded with military force and constitutional designs privileging white settlers.
  • Northwest Resistance (1885): More violent, driven by broken promises, dire living conditions engineered by the Canadian state, and further attempts to consolidate settler control.
• Quote:

  "We see that kind of cycle of Canada claiming indigenous peoples resisting and Canada using that resistance to justify violent repression."
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [41:46]

8. Residential Schools as Colonial Strategy

• [44:49 — 50:38]
  • The logic of “improving” Indigenous peoples led to the residential school system, modeled after the US, aiming to assimilate through forced separation, language loss, and church-state partnership.
  • Not inevitable, but deeply linked to the prevailing ideology of colonial liberalism.
• Quote:

  “The project was to kill the Indian in the child. So really targeting the children to make assimilation quicker and...cheaper also.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [49:35]

9. Enduring Legacies

• [55:14 — 58:15] Canadian assertions of sovereignty and jurisdiction are not just historical but persistently impact Indigenous autonomy, jurisdiction, and stewardship of land today.
• Quote:

  “What is Canada if not a particularly large and well armed claims club?” (Robert Nichols, cited)

• Dr. Choquette argues for recognizing the violent origins and ongoing contestation of these claims, advocating for shared jurisdiction and meaningful engagement with Indigenous leadership.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Peace and Violence:

  “Beneath the peace that we think we're seeing, look at the war that was raged underneath, kind of what we're understanding Canada today.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [08:34]

• On Liberal Ideals:

  “I connect these values to what we understand today as being liberal discourse...but it’s a particular kind of liberalism. It's designed and figured for colonial purposes.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [22:25]

• On Red River and Sovereignty:

  “When [William McDougall] happened inside, he was marginalized and pushed out of the colony...he had no one else listening. But we can see how that second tactic was resisted and just ignored entirely.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [38:32–39:00]

• On Residential Schools:

  “So the project was to kill the Indian in the child...targeting the children to make assimilation quicker and...cheaper also.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [49:35]

• On Power and Today's Canada:

  “Canada still claims to be second largest country in the world and to exercise sovereignty...What I want to show is that historically...Indigenous peoples were living beyond and outside Canadian official sovereignty.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [55:14–56:29]

• Summing Up Purpose:

  “It's a story of power, of jurisdiction, of sharing, of living with better. I think that's kind of what I wanted my book to be.”
  — Dr. Éléna Choquette [58:15]

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Key Timestamps

• [02:46] Dr. Choquette on her background and academic journey
• [07:45] Tackling the myth of "peaceful" Canada and the reality of colonial violence
• [11:26] Comparing Canada’s expansion to US and Australia; focus on 1857–1885
• [19:54] Colonial liberalism: ideology underpinning land appropriation
• [27:20] Scientific expeditions and political debate in the 1850s
• [33:04] The role of confederation in facilitating territorial acquisition
• [36:15] Metis and Indigenous resistance at Red River—details and implications
• [44:49] The origin, logic, and structure of the residential school system
• [51:16] The 1885 Northwest Resistance and its deadly consequences
• [55:14] Contemporary implications: sovereignty, land claims, and decolonization

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Tone & Style

The discussion is rich, thoughtful, and nuanced, with a scholarly yet accessible tone. Dr. Choquette speaks with care and precision, referencing both archival research and current debates, while Dr. Melcher facilitates with curiosity and clarity.

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Conclusion

Choquette’s analysis urges a re-examination of Canada’s self-image, foregrounding the violent roots and ongoing effects of settler colonial expansion. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of listening to Indigenous voices, enabling true stewardship, and reimagining jurisdiction—laying out both the historical reality and a call to action for a more equitable Canada.

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For those interested in the complex and contested story of Canadian nationhood and its ongoing legacies, Land and the Liberal Project provides both a meticulous historical account and vital contemporary insight.

Transcript

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[New Books Network Intro Host]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Elena Choquette about her book titled Land and the Liberal Canada's Violent expansion published by UBC Press in 2024. Looking at a whole range of things that used by officials in Canada to make the their ideas of a Canadian nation actually a reality. So that's obviously political policies, but that's also laws. That's also political discourses and rhetorical tactics used to get to a point in honestly not that much time from Canada being kind of small compared to what it is now to being really quite the large landmass that we recognize today. So this book is going to take us back in time, though maybe not as far back as you might suspect to help kind of make sense of this transformation. Elena, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Thanks for having me.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book? I mean, what sorts of myths are you tackling with it?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yes, thank you. So I am an associate professor at the Francophone Universite du Quebec in Utawe. So that's a small university right by Ottawa, which we're going to discuss, which I discuss in my book and we're going to discuss today. And this book stems from the work that I did in my PhD thesis at the University of British Columbia. And it really is about the puzzle that you set up right at the beginning, which is about territorial expansion, which happened over a small period of time. And it intrigued me. And maybe I can say a bit more about how I came to this puzzle. Having grown up in Quebec, I speak French. And most of my political courses I did my undergraduate studies and my master's in Quebec universities in Montreal, and most of my political courses and political theory courses would lead me to think about the special place, the distinctive place of Quebec within the larger Canadian Federation. But at that point, I didn't feel like I had much to contribute to that very interesting and powerful discussion. But when I moved into my PhD studies in British Columbia, so much elsewhere in Canada, I was introduced with my very powerful mentors and professors in that institute institution to the questions of land and of sharing power, but not between Quebec and Canada, but between Indigenous peoples and non Indigenous peoples on this vast territory and land. And this question was to me a very powerful it really engaged my curiosity and work. And I got interested in the case study of the Canadian prairies, which appeared historically as the largest piece of land that was settled right after Confederation. But that really was the site, if I'm to borrow the words of Duncan Bell, which I've worked with when I did my postdoc in Cambridge University, the site of the expansionist dreams of Canadians. So at Confederation, Canada was a relative, as you said, relatively small country. It was centered around the St. Lawrence river and on the northern banks of the Great Lakes, with the addition, of course, of the Atlantic Provinces at Confederation, but still relatively small area that was centered on the areas that were settled by New France, but also the British in America. But when they came together, so the the province of Canada in the Maritime Provinces during Confederation, even though they discussed other subjects, really their vision or mandate for the for the young Dominion, that's what they would be called within the British Empire, the young Dominion of Canada, the young country. It was to so confederation was a project to unite for the purpose of expanding. And expansion happened really quickly after the confederation of 1867. It happened. So annexation of what was called the Northwestern Territories, and they were called that because they laid to the west and to the north of the new capital of Ottawa. So these territories really all of the land that lay beyond The British North American colonies had to be appropriated, that had to be annexed to the young country. And that would go through what we know today as the prairie is provinces, or the province of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. And that became my case study because it was really the site. There would be other lands in other contexts, but just after confederation, that really would be the site of the expansionist dream. That was sort of, that's what I argue in the book Constitutionalized at Confederation. And that annexation and expansionism kind of came with myth. And that's part of your question.

We think we know Canada today as a relatively peaceable, tranquil or calm.

Middle range power. On the international scene. On the international scene. And that's true of mainstream political discourse.

I'm a Canadian in France at the moment because I'm on sabbatical. And when I say I'm Canadian, most people will look at you favorably, especially perhaps in the contemporary circumstances of the US being more turbul than.

In other years. But still, this reputation or this favorable outlook from the outside.

Of Canada as being kind of a good peacemaking peacekeeping model stems from a particular idea of how expansionism was done, if we are to compare to how appropriation was done in the US context. But I wanted to look more closely at that history and see beneath kind of the peace that we think we're seeing. If we are to tackle the words of Foucault, see this piece as coded war, or to look beneath the peace that we think we're seeing, look at the war that was raged underneath, kind of what we're understanding Canada today. And may I say in passing too, that it's not this myth of Canada as peaceable kingdom. That's the expression that's been used before historically, but also still until today. That's in mainstream political discourse, but also in political science textbooks. We understand Canada as having had few fights or few conflicts internally, externally. But I wanted to tackle a question the history, especially with regards of the appropriation of indigenous lands and also displacement of incestuous lifeways, for example. So that's really what I'm doing with this book.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That is a very helpful introduction. Thank you for giving us the foundation of the book and also the sort of behind the scenes of how it developed in your own thinking. I always find that a really interesting aspect to understand before we get into the details of the project. So great way to start there. I think the other foundational piece that we need is a little bit more on this time period aspect because of course, when we're talking about Expansion and settler colonialism. Obviously, that's relevant to Canada, but that's also something we talk about in other countries. Right. You've mentioned the US Already. Of course, if we're thinking about the British Empire, Australia often comes to mind. And I want to make sure that we're kind of aware of those comparisons, but not falling into the trap, the kind of assuming that the way they play out in those places is also what happens in Canada, making sure we sort of understand the specifics and the nuance here. And to me, at least, coming in as not a Canadian history expert, the time period is a really interesting part of what makes the story you're telling in this book quite specific. So can you tell us more about the time period you focus on and why this narrow range is actually quite significant? Like, it's not just you as a researcher going, oh, I don't want to do 200 years, like, there's a reason it's so small. And that's part of the story. Right?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Absolutely. And it's a very useful place to look, to appreciate the distinctiveness of Canadian history. So if we are to use, as you proposed, and of course, that's the kind of natural comparison to make Canada, the US And Australia, three spectacularly expensive countries that come from this process that I call in the book, relying on rich literature that comes. That qualifies the colonialism that happened in these contexts as settler colonialism. So it's a different kind that happened elsewhere, for example, in the British Raj or even in South Africa, though that needs to be discussed a bit more. But still, settler colonialism is a specific kind of colonialism where. So European settlers from Europe settled over time up to a point where they became a demographic majority on indigenous lands, and they implanted agrarian capitalism, all kinds of institutions that came from Europe onto indigenous lands. And in the process, they appropriated indigenous lands and.

Displaced them and forced them to change their life ways on ancestral lands, because that was not anymore possible. They stood in a way. They stood in the way of the development of settler countries.

And if we are to compare the Canadian history to that of the US And Australia. So the settlement in Canada and the US Started around the same time, with New France and the British Empire being also present with other empires too. We can think in America of the Spanish and even Portuguese empires. So lots of rivalry and competition between these empires. But though it started around the same time, the history of US Expansionism is a more protracted, complicated, long process. It started earlier. And of course, as we know, US foundation is older than Canadian foundation. And if we are to look at the map, the kind of official appropriation of indigenous lands happened over a much longer period of time, starting maybe with, of course, US foundation and the Treaty of Paris in 1783, where the size, the official claimed size of a mayor of the United States would double. It would Double again in 1803 with the purchase of, quote, unquote, the purchase of Louisiana from France. And it would enlarge again with a series of different, different measures over the course of the 19th century. So it's a longer, more complicated history. In the case of the US in the case of Australia, settlement was more recent. And it was also less complicated in a way because only the British Empire was involved. So every enlargement or consolidation of Australian power would be made only.

From the British Empire. And it happened later over the. The end of 19th and early 20th century with Federation in 1901. And as we know, the settlers, they clustered really only in a few sites and they traveled short distances into the interior. Whereas. So the specificity of the Canadian case is that enlargement happened over a very short period of time right after confederation. So I'm looking really at about. About 30 years in the book, starting in 1857, when the province of Canada made its first denunciation, that it should be the political entity making the appropriation. So not the US not the British Empire, but really something like what's going to be born at a confederation in 1867. So that is the dominion of Canada. So Canada should be the entity doing the appropriation of. Of all of the Northwest Territories, which were mostly under the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company, which was a fur trading company operating from London. So Canada should be doing the appropriation of those indigenous lands until. So I'm looking from 1857 until 1885, which is the military defeat of the Metis and First Nation that challenged.

Most explicitly and also militarily Canada's claim to some of these lands and what's going to become the province of Saskatchewan. So I'm really looking between first enunciation of Canadian claims to those lands, to the dominion, saying, I defeated all competing claims to sovereignty over all of the Northwest and Northwestern territories. And this is when Canada kind of claimed.

To have achieved this landmass sovereignty to what we know today, Canada as being the second largest country in the world. That kind of happened in official discourse in 1885. So over the period of 30 years. And that really is the time period that I'm looking. Yeah, looking at the holidays.

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[Dr. Elena Choquette]

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[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

To locate us in the timeline, especially in the comparative timeline. So thank you for that. Is there anything further we need to understand about the goals of colonial liberalism in Canada to achieve this and the methods that they were willing to talk about and use?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yeah, so what the argument that I make in the book, because what I was most interested in is answering the. The question, how could that appropriation happen? How could Canadian settler authorities, official authorities.

Kind of convince themselves that it was fine to just appropriate all of those lands that were Indigenous lands inhabited by.

Various Indigenous peoples from times immemorial? How could they tell themselves or convince themselves that this was. That this was meant to happen, or that this was right and that they were the right people to do it? Because it really appeared as a puzzle to me. How can you do something.

So important to the lives of Indigenous peoples who had been inhibiting inhabiting these countries from very long time? So that's kind of what I was looking for in the archives and in the various documents that I'm looking at, is what are the arguments? What's the discourse on these lands and its appropriation by Canadian dominions and how.

The different tactics that would be used.

To make it legitimate, so not only legal, but also legitimate and, and right to the British empires and to the new Canadian population. And what I found were mostly so in official discourses. What I found are mostly liberal principles. What we would understand today and not necessarily what we want to understand then, because liberalism as a coherent ideological apparatus really was really self identified as liberal in the second half of 19th century, but really in Canadian context, that happened by the end of the 19th century. So though that didn't self identify then as particularly instinctively liberal, those the values that are proposed in official discourse, such as liberty, private property, self government, peace, those, they loom very large in official discourse.

That made it. That justified Canadian appropriation. And so I connect these values to what we understand today as being liberal discourse. I do qualify that liberalism as being of a colonial kind. So the expression that I use in the book is colonial liberalism, because it's a particular kind of liberalism. It's designed and figured.

For colonial purposes for the purpose of appropriating Indigenous lands and making them available, those lands available for cultivation and extraction of natural resources. But what I do in the book is kind of reconstruct that discourse that I find in the archives and document as colonial liberalism. In I, I argue that it's the main ideological engine of settler appropriation and violence. So in other words, I find that the Liberals doing that appropriation are the most vocal and most efficient architect of settler expansionism and that they would use that rhetoric and discourse of again, of freedom of private property, of dividing the land so that it could be owned privately by small farmers and their families, and that they could self govern and implement peace on these small tracts of land. All of that I group together and name colonial liberalism. And what that colonial liberalism does, really the single word that I found most often was that of improvement. What colonial liberalism wants to do is improving indigenous lands. Because the idea wanted that if those lands are left to the indigenous peoples or to the Hudson's Bay Company that works with them for fur trading purposes, if all of these lands are left into their hands.

The lands are going to lay waste. They're wasted because they're not appropriated, they're not cleared of lands, they're not cultivated, they're not extracted of their. Of the resources. So all of the prosperity and development that come from appropriation and exploitation is just wasted. So unless a settler power like Canada appropriates and annex those lands.

It'S just wastage that's going to come as conclusion. And we can see in those images of waste and of development the words of the vision of Locke.

In this liberal kind of affiliation that comes from the ideas that America could be peopled and appropriated by Europe because in these ways.

There will be more value mixed into the land with the labor of settlers, so that all of that territory would now.

Would now be valued more. So that idea of improving the lands, but also the peoples. And we can come back to that idea, Canada really thought it justified that it annexed all of the indigenous lands because it could also improve these peoples that were left. If left to themselves, they would stay wild and uncivilized. But if accompanied by the Canidian dominion, they could develop their various capacities and faculties. And that would need to happen through. We can discuss that later. That can happen through the residential schools. But again, this very idea or value of improvement is distinctively colonial liberal.

It's deployed everywhere in the discourse that I'm studying in the book.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

This is, I think, something that's going to come up a number of times, as you said, because it is so heavily embedded. But I want to talk a little bit about that process of it becoming embedded, because as we've discussed with timing, it's not like from the very beginning of settler colonialism in Canada, these ideas are kind of showing up at that point. There's actually kind of quite a clear moment of change around expansion kind of even being on the table. The 1850s, you talked earlier about kind of the range here. So why are they changing their minds at this point? How are things like science and law factoring into this discourse kind of suddenly opening up in a different way?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yeah, that's very interesting.

I think around that time, the settlement were dense and entrenched enough institutionally, politically, that they would look for further development. And that would mean autonomy from the British Empire and expansion from the lands that were settled originally. And.

That happened slowly, progressively. But during the. Around the 1850s, that kind of mission or vision for expansion and appropriation of the Northwest kind of matured and became kind of deployed more fully. And that happened in 18. As I said, 1857 is really a key year because.

At least three things happened during that year. First of all, there was the HBC hearings. So in London, London had to decide whether the monopoly that was afforded to the Hudson's Bay Company was to continue or to come to an end. And Canada then sent some delegates to say that Canada was the best candidate for.

Possessing these lands because, as I said, the HBC was wasteful of all of its resources. There then came two distinct expeditions, one commissioned by the British and one commissioned the Canadian.

By the province of Canada. And both expeditions had as a mandate to collect information because we knew very little about all of these lands that lay west, but we had to collect information, geological information, ecological information. And though the first British expedition, the Palliser Expedition, was rather pessimistic about the extractive potential of these lands, the Canadian counterpart, the Hind expedition, was very optimistic. And its conclusion was the Dominion of Canada needs to own all of these lands really quickly because otherwise the American are going to capture these resources. So if some Canadians were hesitant at first because it seemed like a big endeavor to be colonizing all of these lands, at some point it became evident that if they were not the ones doing it, then the American would appropriate these lands and it would be at a loss for the Canadian authorities. So as we know, John A. MacDonald would become the first Canadian prime minister. And first of all, he was kind of against the idea of expanding northwest Rest. But when it came, when. When the river rivalry with the US Empire became more evident, he said, okay, let's go, because otherwise the Americans will go and we need to beat them at their own game In. In. In a way. So it. It became. That's. That year was the year that was enunciated the. The position Canada, the Canada's position that it was the most favorable power. It was. It was a favorable position to own the northwestern lands.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, really key year indeed. Was there more you wanted to tell us on that?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

So, yeah, I did say a bit about the science behind it, because the two expeditions were really scientific expeditions, so gathering many peoples that would be experts on the soil and on the different resources, the trees, the grain growing capacities. And they would make comparison that would be. Was actually a fun read to just be comparing. Some of the experts would compare the soils of what we know now as Alberta to the sunny plains of Italy that were very fertile. So all of that was about how fertile these lands are, how much cultivation there could be. Lidl was still about mineral extraction. That would come later. Most of it was about. About agrogarian kind of small scale farms, but also eventually at a more industrial scale. But as I said, the Canadian expedition was very optimistic about all of that potential.

Of those lands to contribute to the Canadian industry, development and eventually prosperity.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Definitely a key thing to keep in mind. The science piece definitely comes off and I can imagine how interesting it would have been to kind of read through this and go, wait a second, this is related to these other things, right? So for one thing, it's related to laws made to kind of act on what is coming through in these scientific reports. And of course we can talk about sort of individual laws, and we very well might. But of course, confederation is in some senses like a law. Obviously it's many other things. It's a declaration, it's politics. But how much was it at its core, maybe like actually about creating the legal structures to enable the acquisition of these territories where these expeditions had been using violence if needed.

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yeah, there was little in written documents that kind of filtered through the debates that happen around confederation. But when we actually read the founding debates, that's where it kind of. It becomes really clear to us how much confederation was about expansion and was about creating new provinces, Though that only translated in a small clause.

That would prepare for the creation of other provinces that would be made in the like of the older provinces. So if we only look at the British North American agreement, there is very little about expansionism. But if we're interested in the founding debates, it was never about the indigenous peoples whose lands would be appropriated, but it was very much about the appropriation. Though it wasn't around confederation that they would anticipate.

How much resistance there would be to that appropriation. That would come later, around the time of confederation. Really expansionism was foreseen or was anticipated as being something really only of a. We could say legal or even an administrative matter. It would only be the HBC lands being from British ownership to Canadian ownership. But then that was not anticipating all of the resistance from the Metis, from the first nations concerned, because they were not around confederation. They were not consulted, they were not confederation partners. They were not Part of the debates, though, they would become. Because, as we're probably going to be discussing next, the first province to be founded in the Northwest was to be Manitoba. Though it didn't look like the Manitoba we know today, which is a very large scale.

Province. It was a very small.

Stamp post. It was a really small province because it was designed to only correspond to.

The whitest settlements in the region. But that was.

When that was debated, the founding of Manitoba in 1870. So that was only three, three years after Confederation. It became clear that the Metis and First nations had to be partners in the conversation of founding provinces in the Northwest. Though that wasn't anticipated. It came at the cost of.

Organized, coordinated resistance by the Metis and First Nations.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I definitely want to talk more about that. Resistance and pushback is kind of one thing, but to what extent was there sort of effective Indigenous resistance? For instance, one of the places you talk about is Red river, which I believe is Winnipeg today.

What did that resistance look like? Can we go into more detail there?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yes. So, yeah, as I was saying, it was really the gateway to the largest Northwestern territories. So. So the founding of Manitoba was really key to Canadian expansionism. And Canada tried to appropriate. Probably the first step was just negotiating with the British Empire how much that would cost transferring the claims to sovereignty over these lands from British Empire to Canadian dominion. But then the real negotiation happened after.

When Canada sent surveyors there, it thought it would only be administratively surveying and plotting these lands. But then at that, the very first, that very first step was resisted by Louis Riel and eventually the provisional government that it would form around his leadership. They contested, challenged even that very first, what Canada supposed was only merely administrative. They contested and challenged it.

Such that Canada kind of had to reorient and adjust its appropriation to go secondly into a second tactic, which was sheer political declaration. So it sent, maybe I'm going to use the word diplomat. So William McDougall was sent from Canadian dominion to operate this appropriation. And seeing the resistance that there was on the site of Red river, the Red River Colony, what would become, as you said, as you correctly said, is Winnipeg today. When he happened inside, he was marginalized and pushed out of the colony. He had to exile to the United States for safety, for his safety and the safety of his family that traveled with him. And from the United States, from his position of exile and distance, he declared he just made a sheer political declaration that Red River Colony was to become a Canadian province. It would constitutionalize it as properly Canadian. But of course, that declaration, which was made not in front of the Red river people. It was made really, as was written by one historian. It was made to the stars because he had no one else listening. But we can see how that that second tactic was resisted and just ignored entirely by the local inhabitants of the colony that was concerned by the appropriation. So again, Canada had to adjust and change tactics. It would be forced to negotiate with the Metis and the First Nations. So we organized and they sent delegates to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of Manitoba's founding and entry into Canadian confederation. So we can see how Indigenous resistance to resistance to Canadian appropriation kind of forced the hand of Canada to negotiate and really take them seriously as constitutional partners into this conversation. But then, even though that was done, Canada still decided to send in military expedition that was to be headed by Colonel Wley as just a display of Canadian force into these territories to seal, to consolidate this, the sovereignty claims over le lands by Canada at the expense of the Metis and First nations that live there. And I can say a few words about how.

As I said just a bit before, but Manitoba is constitutionally kind of designed so that the power would be more white than either Metis or Cree or Sinibuan or any First Nation. The power would mostly be in the hands of the white population that was there and from Ottawa. As I said, it was designed to be a very small province so that it would only contain the white cell. It would almost only contain the white population that was settled there. But also it would have power over lands. All jurisdiction on land and on natural resources would be decided in Ottawa. And that was as opposed to all of the other provinces that were part of Canadian confederation at that time. And that would be also true for all of the western provinces that would came after. That would come after because it was the power over Crown or public lands, as we call them in Canada. It. It was so important and crucial to the Canadian project for the Northwest that it had to be decided from the capital and not regionally or not provincially. So all of these kind of maneuvers, or in the very constitutional design of the province, it was thought to.

Enlarge the power of settlers at the expense of the Metis First Nation.

So we can see that settler powers claiming Indigenous lands, the Indigenous peoples resisting that power. And that would kind of fuel. And we'll see that later with the second resistance, not the Red river resistance, but the second one, which is Northwestern resistance, which was more violent, There were more confrontation, and that would fuel Canadian repression kind of even more. So we see that kind of cycle of Canada claiming indigenous peoples resisting and Canada using that resistance to justify violent repression. So that's what we see. Even though Canada claims to be peacemaking and peacekeeping on these plans on the plains, what really it is doing is violently repressing resistance to its schemes.

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[Dr. Elena Choquette]

I don't think so.

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[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I think that combination of things is really key, right? What's being said and the way in which the law is being sort of stated and used in a like public relations way versus what's actually written there in terms of who has what power. And then this cycle that you've mentioned, and we're definitely going to talk about that second moment of indigenous resistance. But before then, I want to bring in something you mentioned briefly earlier because it's a key part of this as well. The establishment of residential schools was that given what you've just laid out for us, kind of at this point, almost inevitable as part of this repression and Taking of territory.

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yeah, it happened in a second time.

The first step was establishing sovereignty over these lands and treating with some of the first nations to clear the way for development and settlement. And then the second imperative of colonial liberalism, as I said, first imperative is improving lands. So that is appropriating them, clearing them of the trees, cultivating them, installing settlers on these lands. But this second component of colonial liberalism was improving the peoples on those lands. So the Metis and First nations and residential schools as part of that second process, was it inevitable? Certainly not. But we know that it happened in other contexts. We know of the US Context, certainly. And it's the US model that inspired the Canadian, Canadian system of residential schools. As I make clear in the book. Canada commissioned a report, the Daven Report of 1879, which was. So the commissioner was sent to an industrial school in the US and came back with conclusion as to what system that Canada should organize and for its. That would be well suited to its circumstances. And the circumstances were relatively similar. That is, we should be. Now that we've quote, unquote, secured sovereignty over these lands, we need to deal with the peoples that are displaced on these lands because we wanted to clear Indigenous peoples of these, of their ancestral lands to allow for the settlement of the white settlers that would come from Western Europe. And so these Indigenous would be. Indigenous peoples would be displaced in reserves. And so that we can, to use the words of Duncan Campbell Scott, which was Indigenous Indian affairs commissioner for a very long period of time, what he, the words that he used that are famous in Canadian history now and maybe beyond is that Canada needs to kill the Indian in the child. And this was the way that assimilation would. And the so called improvement of Indigenous peoples would happen, is targeting children, Indigenous children. And so doing it would have various characteristics to enable the project of assimilating them. It would need to be run, it would need to be founded by the state. So its principal, its main function in the residential, residential school system would be to fund, to provide funding for these schools. But the schools would be run by the churches, as had been done historically in Canada. In the US Very early on in the process of colonization, various kinds of school would be run by various churches.

In earlier history. But at that point Canada would partner with various schools that would run with various areas, sorry, churches that would run the residential schools. The state would fund it. And then.

Most of these schools would be built outside of reserves so that the children could really be isolated from their families to break.

The connection between generations so that the language, ancestral languages would be lost and English would be spoken so that the cultural connection between the generations would be severed by the, by the residential schools. So that's the, that's the project that, that fitted the ideology, as I said, of colonial liberalism, this idea of implanting the values of the individual, individualistic values of freedom, of cult, of cultivating, of industrial, of working in industry or working the land agriculturally like the Europeans would do it. So the residential schools would shape these children like the Europeans that settled the region. And that would really be, as I said, the project was to kill the Indian in the child. So really targeting the children to make assimilation quicker and.

Cheaper also. So it wasn't inevitable that could have been otherwise. But because of the ideology prevalent in the models.

That were available to the authorities deciding and because these schools had been part of the colonial history for a long time, it was around that time, around that time the residential school system was organized around these core components so that church run, state funded and that would be done outside of reserves. And there were many, many, very numerous schools implemented around the plains region. That's where they were most concentrated and important. And it's because that area was just settled and it was kind of a running of an experiment that would be be enlarged elsewhere.

Throughout Canada later.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, it's definitely a really important piece of Canadian history as well as of course, the story, the specific piece of Canadian history that you've been telling us about. And especially given the kind of extreme nature of what you've described. Right. Like there's no gray area here. Right. The policy was meant to be very, very specific about eradicating entire cultures. That doesn't necessarily create a lot of surprise then that there'd be resistance to this. Like it's a very blatant policy. There's nothing subtle or hidden about the goals here. So can you tell us now about the second instance of Indigenous resistance you briefly mentioned earlier?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yes, that didn't have to do with residential schools properly because it was in the number treaties that were signed, negotiated and signed, though the negotiation wasn't fair, of course to first nation parties or to, to the meaty parties because they were signed and negotiated in circumstances of extreme poverty and of diseases and of the food being very scarce. And that was all engineered by the Canadian state. And that's not me saying it. It's an excellent book that has been discussed extensively in Canadian debates and probably beyond to the book by Dashuk, which is called Clearing the Plains. It shows meticulously with solid data that the Canadian Dominion engineered.

The poverty and.

The difficulty of living around that time. So aside from the larger political official history and the history of residential schools, just the conditions of lives on the plain around the 1885 was really difficult.

And that was a context in which the treaties would be assigned and negotiated. But that created a lot of frustration.

And repeated asks and demands by First Nation leaders and Metis leaders for renegotiation.

For urgent aid in times of urgent need. And those demands were never met with reaction or.

With the presence or the leadership of the Canadian dominion. Really, at that time. It failed. And that led to the Northwestern Resistance, which we've mentioned before, of 1885, which was more. So. There were more violent confrontations, more death. In the first case, in the case of the Red River Resistance, there was only one death. But in the second case, there were more than 200. And as we know, it ended with Louis Riel, so that the Resistance leadership being tried and executed. But while we know about Riel, we tend not to know as much about the First Nation leaders that were also tried and some of them executed.

And I was interested also in the trials and what we would accuse them of, which was treason, which is the most extreme form of treason. That was of lack of loyalty to a Crown that was unresponsive to their needs and that had imposed the terms of their inclusion into Confederation. But still, that episode was one of the deadliest conflicts in Canadian history on lands that were Canadianized by force by the Canadian officialdom. Official. Yes, official Canadian officials.

And. Yeah, I think that answers your question.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, no, that definitely answers my question. Obviously, the book has way more detail, but I can't ask you to spend 12 hours here, right. Reading it all out loud. So I think that definitely gives us a sense. And obviously, a number of the things that we've discussed in our conversation have clear legacies even today in Canada. Right. I mean, we mentioned. And Red river is now called Winnipeg. Obviously, the legacies of the residential schools are still very much in the Canadian political consciousness and discourse at the moment. Are there any other ways in which you see this history you've been telling us about showing up in Canada now?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Well, one very obvious way is we still depict the standard. The standard map of Canada today is really, we say in Canada from ocean to ocean to ocean. Canada still claims to be second largest country in the world and to exercise sovereignty and full power over lands and natural resources. And there aren't any blanks or smudges on that map. But what my story is contributing is making evident, more visible the challenges to Those claims. Because what Canada is. I don't think I've mentioned that before, but it's a citation by Robert Nichols that I like very much. What is Canada if not a particularly large and well armed claims club? So Canada is claiming, along with the provinces and territories, full sovereignty and power over Indigenous lands. But what I want to show is that historically it wasn't a very long time since that was before that wasn't really the case because Indigenous peoples were living beyond and outside Canadian.

Official sovereignty. And still to this day there is very much autonomy in power and lives being lived.

Authentically or without a Canadian intervention. And that should flourish and be allowed to live and expand more outside of Canadian legislation and intervention and adverse claims to the resources and the lands and the animals and the waters and the rivers that are so dear and sacred and important to some Indigenous communities and some lives and families.

And bands. And I think they should. What the story I want to tell is about the birthing, the violent birthing of Canada so that we can remember its origins and.

Revise the current circumstances in accordance with what Indigenous peoples have been saying all along, which is these lands are. Some of these lands are ours and we should cherish and steward, be the stewards of these lands, take care of them, be mindful of, of the peoples that have lived over these lands for so long. And that if Canada is to decolonize or to indigenize, it needs to pay attention, to listen, to take Indigenous leadership and claims very seriously and to respond, to engage them so that the land is shared more equitably and that the. The resources are.

Not. They're taken care of, with Indigenous peoples having a full say over how that should happen. So it's a story of power, of jurisdiction, of sharing, of living with better. I think that's kind of what I wanted my book to be.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

At least.

I think that's a very good place to conclude our discussion on the book because that's a great summary statement of the project. As a final question though, I'm curious what you might be working on now that this is done. Is there anything currently on your desk, related or not, that you want to give us a brief sneak preview of?

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Yeah. So if my book is interested in the case study of what became the plains in Canada, my next project kind of takes me home. So I want to still study some of the same processes.

Over the same time period. The high watermark of colonialism, which is the 19th, 20th century, up to this day. But I want to take it closer to where I live and work. So I'm interested in the color and the texture and the distinctiveness of colonial processes, but on the land that are claimed by Quebec. And it adds another kind of layer, complexity, or as I said, kind of texture to the colonial processes that are unfolding there because of the minoritized situation of the original French settlers now, today.

What they self identify as Quebecois. So the Quebecers, those who live in Quebec, but their relationship to land, how the Quebec project of claiming and of extracting the potential and some of the resources of that land. So I have different ways in which this project is a different way that this project is going to take me also on the question of the French language, how it's been imposed on some indigenous peoples on Quebec land and how.

How that makes it difficult to think of French as a minoritized and endangered language in the context of America, but also as a colonial language that was imposed on indigenous peoples. So that makes coloniality even kind of more difficult to think in the situation of a minoritized colonial project within a larger.

Majority kind of colonial projects. So that's what is. That's what's keeping me busy during these times.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I can imagine that will keep you very busy. Good luck with the project.

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

Thank you.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

While you are doing it, of course, listeners can read the book that we've been talking about titled Land and the Liberal Canada's Violent expansion, published by UBC Press in 2024. Elena, thank you so much for joining me on podcast.

[Dr. Elena Choquette]

It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.