Joseph Weiss, "Irreconcilable: Indigeneity and the Violence of Colonial Erasure in Contemporary Canada" (UNC Press, 2026)

Mar 17, 2026

Joseph Weiss, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University and author of Irreconcilable, examines settler-driven reconciliation in Canada and how it can perpetuate Indigenous subordination. He discusses legal paradoxes like Aboriginal title, museum repatriation fine print, renaming and empty symbolism, criminalization of land defenders, and Haida-led practices that assert sovereignty.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Disavowal Is The Legal Technology That Sustains Colony

Disavowal lets settlers simultaneously know colonial violence and act as if it is not true, preserving legal and national legitimacy.
Weiss traces Aboriginal title as a legal compromise that recognizes Indigenous rights yet places them under Crown authority, sustaining disavowal.

ANECDOTE

A Judge Admits The Crown's Legitimacy Is Fictive

Weiss cites Justice Kent's B.C. decision admitting crown legitimacy is fictive yet unable to act on that knowledge because the court's authority depends on the fiction.
The judge's paradox exemplifies how legal actors perform legitimacy despite recognizing foundational illegitimacy.

INSIGHT

Land Defense Gets Recast As Terrorism To Justify Force

Acts of Indigenous land defense are reframed by the settler state as terrorism to justify police and military force.
Weiss draws on Joanne Barker and Audra Simpson to show refusal is cast as savage criminality, enabling violent suppression.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Since the early 2000s, the Canadian government has attempted reconciliation with Indigenous Nations through varied efforts: treaty processes, government commissions, rebranding campaigns for settler-owned businesses, workshops for state and local officials, school curriculum changes, and a recently christened national holiday. However, Joseph Weiss argues, these state-driven initiatives reinforce Indigenous subordination to the settler state. This incisive study of the varied responses from both Indigenous Nations and individuals illuminates how reconciliation is implicated in ongoing colonial erasure.
Critically engaging with a variety of fields, including Indigenous studies, anthropology, history, political theory, semiotics, and museum studies, Weiss captures the multiple scales at which these contested dynamics unfold and explores their underlying technologies of erasure. Irreconcilable: Indigeneity and the Violence of Colonial Erasure in Contemporary Canada (UNC Press, 2026) unpacks how reconciliation offers amends for anti-Indigenous violence while disavowing responsibility for that violence, and argues that settler promises of reconciliation cannot be reconciled to the fact of Indigenous sovereignty. Nevertheless, Weiss illustrates how Indigenous Peoples refuse erasure at every turn, instead building alternate futures and lived worlds that are not always already colonially overdetermined.

Joseph Weiss is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, American Studies, Science and Technology Studies at Wesleyan University and where he also chairs the anthropology department. He is also the author of Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii: Life Beyond Settler Colonialism

Elliott M. Reichardt, MPhil, is a PhD Candidate in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at Stanford University. Elliott's research interests are in capitalism, colonialism, and socio-ecological health in North America. Elliott also has long standing interests in medical anthropology and the history of science and medicine.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network