Invested Indifference: How Violence Persists in Settler Colonial Society

Invested Indifference challenges the notion that Canadian society is indifferent to violence against Indigenous women and girls, arguing that it is rooted in a deep-rooted and affective investment in framing specific lives as disposable.
Amnesty International criticized Canadian society for its indifference to high rates of violence against Indigenous women and girls in 2004. Kara Granzow's book, Invested Indifference, challenges this notion by examining practices during three different periods in Edmonton and demonstrating that violence against Indigenous peoples has become symbolically and politically ensconced in the social construction of Canadian nationhood.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 284 pages
Publication date: 08 March 2021
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press

Amnesty International's 2004 report on violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada highlighted the country's apparent indifference to the issue. Twelve years later, the Canadian government finally launched a national inquiry, which seemed to confirm this assessment. However, Invested Indifference, a book by Kara Granzow, offers a different perspective by examining practices during three different periods in the city of Edmonton, juxtaposing early settler texts, documents related to the former Charles Camsell Indian Hospital, and contemporary online police materials. Granzow's conclusion is shocking: what we perceive as societal indifference is not a lack of feeling but rather a deep-rooted and affective investment in framing certain lives as disposable. Granzow demonstrates that violence against Indigenous peoples has become symbolically and politically entrenched in the social construction of Canadian nationhood through mechanisms such as the law, medicine, and control of land and space.

Dimension: 216 x 140 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780774837446