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Invested Indifference

How Violence Persists in Settler Colonial Society

by (author) Kara Granzow

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2020
Subjects
Indigenous Studies, Gender Studies, General, Discrimination & Race Relations
Categories
About indigenous people or experiences , About Alberta
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774837460
    Publish Date
    Jun 2020
    List Price
    $32.99

Library Ordering Options

Description

In 2004, Amnesty International characterized Canadian society as “indifferent” to high rates of violence against Indigenous women and girls. When the Canadian government took another twelve years to launch a national inquiry, that indictment seemed true.

 

Invested Indifference offers a divergent perspective by examining practices during three different periods in the place we now call Edmonton, juxtaposing early settler texts, documents concerning the former Charles Camsell Indian Hospital, and contemporary online police materials. Kara Granzow reaches a startling conclusion: that what we see as societal indifference doesn’t come from an absence of feeling but from a deep-rooted and affective investment in framing specific lives as disposable.

 

Granzow demonstrates that through mechanisms such as the law, medicine, and control of land and space, violence against Indigenous peoples has become symbolically and politically ensconced in the social construction of Canadian nationhood.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Kara Granzow is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta.

Editorial Reviews

Granzow has produced a must-read book on Canada’s murdered and disappeared indigenous women… This book is highly recommended, as it will surely lead to excellent discussions and insights into issues of continued colonization.

CHOICE