Contested Colonialism: The Rise of Settler Politics in Yukon and the Northwest Territories

Despite forty years of institutional innovation across Northern Canada â including the creation of Indigenous governments and Nunavut â why do the governments of Yukon and the Northwest Territories (NWT) so closely conform to the established norms of Canadian parliamentary and bureaucratic governance? In this study, I argue that these governments reflect the political preferences of non-Indigenous settlers, and that these preferences were embedded in the design of territorial institutions during their formation in the 1960s and 1970s. The institutional legacy of this period continues to structure political and economic dynamics in the territories today. To make this argument, I develop the theoretical concept of contested colonialism, which explains the distinct position of non-Indigenous peoples in Northern society as actors who simultaneously bring colonialism to the North, while also contesting elements of that same colonial order. It is marked by the emergence of a stable settler society, the structural alignment of settler interests with those of colonial federal administrators, and the capacity of settlers to take advantage of political opportunities to further their own interests. Using interpretivist and qualitative methods, including extensive archival research, I trace the rise of settler politics through the prism of liberal autonomy movements and the development of responsible government in both territories. Demographic, geographic, and economic factors account for differences in the effectiveness of settler movements across Yukon and the NWT.Ph.D.2018-07-08 00:00:0