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“Personally, I think this is utterly impossible to implement. There wouldn’t be any resource revenues if you implemented this political vision because nothing would ever get done. How would stuff get approved? How would pipelines get approved? How would railways function, crossing all these sovereign territories, having to get approval from 600 sovereign nations?”

Just as exposing white privilege is a key strategy of anti-racist campaigners, so is exposing settler guilt a key strategy of decolonization theory.

But whereas “white guilt” leads to moral paralysis, and is no help to anyone, Prof. Alfred said the concept of “settler guilt” contains an implicit recognition of inherited privilege, which implies a responsibility to address it and make amends.

“It’s the opposite of guilt, which paralyzes. This is the creation of a sense of responsibility for action,” he said.

He said many Indians identify as Canadians, though not to the degree that American Indians identify as Americans, which he sees as a regrettable, cautionary tale. He said that whether an Indian identifies as Canadian is largely determined by whether his nation is satisfied with its treaty, and that the idea of Canada as a “colonial” power stems from a recognition that the historical autonomy of Indians has been undervalued.

“From that perspective, you have an injustice that occurs when our existence as autonomous people … is disrespected,” Prof. Alfred said. “That’s where the colonialism comes in, when our resources are used against our ownership, when our rights are ignored, when our ability to make laws and to run our affairs in the way that we always have been running them, on our own authority, when that’s all disrespected in favour of an idea that we are under the authority of a people who came here after us, to which we never agreed.”