:
Social and Political Sciences
Topic:
Crosby, A., & Monaghan, J. (2018). Policing Indigenous movements: Dissent and the security state. Fernwood publishing.
Book Review: Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and The Security State
Please try to write in your own words and write in simple language and read the provided pdf of i instructions carefully.
It is a critical book review essay so the book that must be used for the essay is
• Crosby, A., & Monaghan, J. (2018). Policing Indigenous movements: Dissent and the security state. Fernwood publishing.
Academic references must be integrated throughout the paper (i.e., at least two relevant chapters from the Daschuk et al. text and at least two relevant peer reviewed journal articles);
Remaining instructions are given in the pdf which I am attaching
Citing your sources:
Academic references must be integrated throughout the paper (i.e., at least two relevant chapters from the Daschuk et al. text and at least two relevant peer reviewed journal articles); you must appropriately cite the sources of your information.
1. You are required to use APA 7th edition as your citation and referencing style. Note: this version of APA notes that page numbers are preferred whether or not you are using a direct quotation or paraphrasing information. For this class, page numbers are required for both quotations AND paraphrased material.
a. Although APA 7th does not use footnotes or endnotes, if you use either of these as an aside within your paper they also require appropriate references.
b. Your reference list must also be complete and must include all sources cited in your paper.
2. All direct quotations in your paper must be in quotation marks. However, at maximum you can only have 2-3 SHORT direct quotes in your entire paper.
a. If you omit a few words or pages in a quotation, put the quote in quotation marks and connect the two segments by ellipses (i.e., three dots). If you change one or two words in a quotation put your word(s) in square brackets. Phrases which are direct quotes must be put in quotation marks.
3. Both quotations and paraphrases must be followed by its source and the page at which they are located.
a. When quoting or paraphrasing cases with paragraph numbers, use the para. number, where it exists (e.g., para. 142).
b. If using on-line articles use PDF versions whenever possible so that a page number is available. If a PDF version is not available, use the pages as they appear when the online article is printed in HTML format.
4. A paraphrase (a restatement of someone’s idea in your words) must be followed by a reference to the source and page (or para. number, for legal cases and some on-line articles) of the idea.
a. If your paraphrase is almost identical to the original source, use a direct quotation. When paraphrasing from a case, use the paragraph number instead of the page number, where it exists.
b. Note: Formats which state that a page number is optional are not acceptable in this class. Page numbers are required for both quoted and paraphrases.
5. Understand – changing only a few words or the order or words is a form of plagiarism commonly referred to as patch writing. It is unacceptable and is considered a form of academic dishonesty.
6. Using websites as references. Provide a complete citation (name of author and article) and a website address for all material obtained from the web when a PDF version is not available.
7. Submitting the same or similar assignments in two different courses is a form of academic dishonesty, even if you wrote the paper.
Introduction and Summary
In recent decades there has been a rise in several protests within Canada. The rising acts of defiance and protests being witnessed across the country have emerged owing to detrimental developments made in the logging, oil, and heavy industry that have increasingly resulted in the depletion of resources and quality land necessary for indigenous people’s survival. Indigenous people have critically become leaders in some of the most high-profile movements fighting for social justice and environmental justice within Canada. While most of their protest has worked successfully to slow down some of the resource extraction, it has also presented them as limitation and security risk various. Their struggles have been epitomized in the book Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and The Security State by Crosby and Monoghan. The book places the reader directly in the middle of Canada’s controversial policing and surveillance practices of indigenous people relative to their participation in protests against the big industries and big government projects.
Using the Access to Information Act law, Crosby and Monoghan critically examine the extent to which policing and surveillance are being used to deter indigenous people and label them as terrorists. The book identifies that the Canadian government has historically criminalized, targeted, and labeled indigenous people as terrorists on various occasions. This is a major claim propagated within Crosby and Monoghan’s book, further identifying a profound settler-colonial mentality that works to justify targeting and surveillance of indigenous people as a threat to the state. The state of affairs concerning indigenous people’s rights and freedom relative to their native and sacred land; political and cultural rights concerning those of the Canadian government have from time to time clashed at the expense of the indigenous peoples. The book critically analyses police and other agencies’ role in four critical indigenous social and justice movements. The movements include the Algonquins of Barriere Lake conflict, the Northern Gateway Pipeline opposition, the Idle No More movement, and the anti-fracking movements around the Elsipogtog First Nation. Summarily, the book explores the increasing role of extractive capitalism in the destruction of indigenous land and values and the role of the police indirectly limiting the voices of indigenous people.
Indigenous People and their Perception of Land
The settler and the indigenous relationship and perception of the land are central to how the state perceives the indigenous people’s uprising differently. Their protests are treated in hostility because both camps have a competing interest. This is manifested at the beginning of the book when the author presents indigenous policing and surveillance by the state. The Algonquins of Barriere Lake blockade has been critical in embarrassing Canada settler state ambition that sought to destroy the Algonquin forest for the exclusive benefit of the settler society (Crosby and Monoghan, 2018, p55). The blockade is identified as a symbol of indigenous sovereignty against the settler’s ambition. In this regard, police were deployed to regain control and manifest the power of the state and also used to subdue indigenous interests. This was for the benefit of the state, and the extraction industry, categorically marginalizing indigenous people. This move categorically was used to justify the need for the expansion of the security apparatus against the indigenous people and at the same time justify normalization of surveillance of the indigenous people by the state. It signified the dawn of a unique relationship between the police (a state agency) and the extraction industry.
In the book, Crosby and Monoghan agree that the role of nature is central to the indigenous people’s cultural value system. They state that since time immemorial, indigenous people have used land and occupied the land for their traditional activities based on conservation and harmony with mother nature (Crosby and Monoghan, 2018, p47). Land essentially dictates how they perceive the world around them and how they gain sustenance from the world—as such, giving back to the planetary systems that sustain their living is central to their existence and purpose. Protest against the destruction of their land for the benefit of the extraction industry is presented as a key way to give back to the land and preserve its importance. Giving back to the planetary system is an aspect that is recognized even by the Supreme Court of Canada, which identified that the First Nation relationship and ownership to the land should be legally recognized and constitutionally protected in Section 35 of the Constitutional Act (Slattery, 1992, p263). Additionally, as a United Nations Member State, Canada recognizes Article 25, which is the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous. In this regard, indigenous people have a right to maintain and grow their unique spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned and sacred land, territories, and waters. This is not just a duty they have but a responsibility they have for their future generations.
Duty to the land is a responsibility for the indigenous people and responsibility for a majority of the people who gain from their environment. Crosby and Monoghan (2018) identify some sought of agency brought about by the first nation’s need to maintain adequate care for the planetary systems, which has worked to keep them at the forefront of the struggle against extraction. Extraction capitalism works directly to deter all people’s well-being, and indigenous people become the first casualty of this form of economic expansionism, as their livelihood is directly dependent on the planetary systems. In the book, This Changes Everything, Capitalism Vs. Climate Change, the author identifies that “our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature” (Klein, 2014, p34). Extraction capitalism, as an economic system as such, becomes a major threat to the indigenous way of life and deters their ability to look after their land and sustain it not just for them but for their future generations. In the 1980s, the author identifies that for the people of Algonquin, the capitalist companies had already started to spray pesticides that destroyed and sickened both people and animals alike—identifying a grim state of affairs that propagated them to protests and blockade.
The book identifies a negative result of protests in Algonquin: the expansion of security apparatus aimed at limiting the movement and freedoms of the indigenous people. Crosby and Monoghan also identify forced third party administration set up in various indigenous territories to normalize police and state surveillance aimed at limiting social movements and control resource use. They start in Algonquin Lake, where a deal was reached within the state; where third party management controlled by the private sector firm which is selected by the colonial bureaucrats and tasked with administering the first nation’s resources (Crosby and Monoghan, 2018, p87). Overall, Crosby and Monoghan reinstate that the relationship between the state and the indigenous people does not necessarily take the indigenous people’s perspective, as its own but rather as an alternative to the state interests, despite accepting the indigenous peoples as part of the people that comprise the state. This critically presents the state at odds with its people.
In the subsequent protests and blockades by the indigenous peoples, the book identifies a close relationship between the police and energy corporations that manifests, which is illegal and critical in marginalizing and undermining the native people’s voices. In the Northern Gateway Pipeline opposition, the RCMP is identified to form close cooperation with the energy companies. This is because the state’s perspective of land and land use vastly differs from that of the indigenous people, as already mentioned before. Crosby and Monoghan identify that the settler state security strategy is deeply embedded in extraction capitalism. This mindset promotes hyper-extraction of natural resources for the vast accumulation of wealth by non-indigenous people at the first people’s expense. Reports on the controversy state that the people of the first nation were in opposition to the pipeline project primarily because “their ‘[t]erritory is not a commodity to be bought and sold’ but a landscape to which ‘Dakelh people hold both rights and responsibilities to ensure territorial integrity and ongoing stewardship and use” (McCreary and Milligan, 2014, p119). The approach in which the state approaches the indigenous people does not recognize their opposition but seeks to change their mindset for the extraction and energy organization’s benefit. The corporation between the security apparatus and the energy company presents the indigenous people as a threat. Rather than listening to their needs and understanding “no” implies no, the government wants to coerce the indigenous people to accept their terms at all cost. The government has been encroaching on their lands, setting up surveillance against the indigenous, and even actively targeting indigenous community members and labeling them as terrorist threats.
Crosby and Monoghan, in their book Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and The Security State, show criticism of the state’s position and their constant opposition to indigenous people’s rights to how their land is used. State agencies such as the police are sighted to play a very important role in propagating the settler state’s plan, whose mindset is heavily embedded with a colonialist perspective. From actively blocking protest to arresting and limiting indigenous people’s movement, the police are a key tool in stifling indigenous people’s movement and voices. The book shows an increased security presence and indigenous territories and normalization of police surveillance against indigenous people. The settler state is heavily dependent on extraction capitalism, which has been a key wealth earner for the non-indigenous people, as such opposition to such expansion is presented as a threat. The benefit of extraction capitalism is also a key aspect that has boost police (being a settler institution) relationship and cooperation with energy companies. Crosby and Monoghan identify that this perspective has made it increasingly easy to criminalize dissent. Surveillance has been employed as a key tool to monitor and identify any form of opposition to state action.
References
Crosby, A., & Monaghan, J. (2018). Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and The Security State. Fernwood Publishing.
Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything. Penguin Books.
McCreary, T., & Milligan, R. (2014). Pipelines, permits, and protests: Carrier Sekani encounters with the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project. Cultural Geographies, 21(1), 115-129. Retrieved February 25, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26168545
Slattery, B. (1992). First Nations and the Constitution: A Question of Trust. The American Journal Of Comparative Law, 32(2), 361. https://doi.org/10.2307/840473
