Defining a Nation: Métis Nation Building in the Face of Epistemic Injustice

Abstract: Over the past four decades, Indigenous political claims "in" Canada have come increasingly to assume a nationalist form. Efforts at instilling a national identity play an abundantly clear role in Indigenous nation (re)building: they hold the potential to concretize internal solidarity, mobilize community to pursue long-term goals, and they aid in overcoming a host of collective action problems. However, for national claims to play such a role, it is necessary that outside groups recognize a community's national identity and accept it as distinct. That is to say, nationhood must be thought about in terms of its occurrence in an (unequally) relational context: claims to a national distinction occur in competition with other claims, in a field of struggle and competition in which actors possess varying abilities to enforce/support claims and to have those claims recognized by others. In this regard, the concept of epistemic injustice is especially useful to engage with the differential capacity of communities to claim and enforce national claims unto others. Our analysis, which focuses specifically on the case of the Métis, pays particular attention to the widespread misrecognitions that occur when a dominant social group marginalizes Métis claims to nationhood. Through this exploration, our article contributes to a better understanding of relational conditions overall and the ways in which identity and nationhood can support the process of Indigenous nation building.