Canada's Other Red Scare: Indigenous Protest and Colonial Encounters during the Global Sixties

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Indigenous activism in Kenora, Ontario, gained national attention, including a four-hundred-person march and a two-month-long armed occupation of a park. Canada's Other Red Scare explores this period, highlighting the importance of linking the local and global to broaden narratives of resistance. Scott Rutherford reconstructs a period of turbulent protest and the responses it provoked, advocating for a wide range of issues and drawing inspiration from global currents to challenge settler-colonialism. The book makes the case that Indigenous political protest during this period should be thought of as both local and transnational, an urgent exercise in confronting settler-colonialism.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 17 December 2020
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press

Indigenous activism in the 1960s and early 1970s brought small-town northern Ontario to the forefront of national attention. Kenora, Ontario, witnessed a historic four-hundred-person march, known as Canada's First Civil Rights March, and a two-month-long armed occupation of a small lakefront park. Canada's Other Red Scare highlights the significance of connecting the local and global to broaden narratives of resistance during the 1960s. Rather than viewing these events as isolated occurrences disconnected from the present, this history emphasizes decolonization as a continuous process. Scott Rutherford delves into the Indigenous political protest and social struggle that unfolded in Northwestern Ontario and Treaty 3 territory from 1965 to 1974. Drawing on a wealth of archival documents, media coverage, published interviews, memoirs, and social movement literature, as well as his personal experiences growing up in Kenora, Rutherford reconstructs a period of turbulent protest and the responses it elicited, ranging from support to disbelief to outright hostility. Indigenous organizers employed a diverse range of tactics, including marches, cultural production, community organizing, journalism, and armed occupation, to advocate for a wide spectrum of issues, from improved employment opportunities to the recognition of nationhood. They drew inspiration from global currents, such as black American freedom movements and Third World decolonization, to challenge the inequalities and racial logics that shaped settler-colonialism and daily life in Kenora. Canada's Other Red Scare is an accessible and comprehensive work that argues for the recognition of Indigenous political protest during this period as both local and transnational. It emphasizes the urgency of confronting settler-colonialism in places and moments of protest, when its logic and acts of dispossession are most evident. By examining the experiences of Indigenous activists in Kenora, this book contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexities and challenges of decolonization and the ongoing struggle for justice and equality in Canada.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780228004066