2nd annual Reconciliation Talk of the School of Political Studies

Guest Speaker:

Yann Allard-Tremblay is Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at McGill University. He is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universities of St Andrews and Stirling. His current research is focused on the decolonization and Indigenization of political theory. His research has recently featured in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Constellations, and Political Studies.

Moderator:

Robert Sparling is Associate Professor in Political Theory at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Description:

I argue that Indigenous governance and jurisdictions are grounded and require a form of reciprocal responsiveness with the land. This reciprocal responsiveness is distinctively absent from dominant Euro-modern views of governance. These Euro-modern views of governance are rather said to float free from the land—a useful and telling expression I learned from Brian Burkhart (2019)—and to express an ethos of mastery. I offer an assessment of mastery as distinctively problematic given its lack of reciprocal responsiveness. As a mode of governance, mastery is bound to fail because it is unable to jeopardize the role and position of those who exercise power in response to received feedback. To put it differently, the entitlement of the “master” to power cannot be questioned, such that the implication of the master in whatever problem is faced cannot be perceived and remedied. This is illustrated with a reference to the current ecological and climatic crisis.

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