Global and Transregional Studies Research Group Seminar: Children of the State: Age, Race and Settler Colonialism in Canada (Kristine Alexander, University of Lethbridge)

This talk, held by Kristine Alexander, from the University of Lethbridge, will bring the insights of critical childhood studies into conversation with scholarship on liberalism, settler colonialism, and the history of “Indian policy” in Canada. Placing mid-nineteenth to early twentieth-century Canada in a broader imperial context, I aim to better understand how a particular modern understanding of children (as malleable, vulnerable, and potential threats to the social order) and adults (as rational and autonomous actors, possessed of a natural authority) allowed Canadian politicians and policymakers to position Indigenous peoples as legal minors and wards of the ‘adult’ settler state.

The talk will take place on Wednesday 1 May, 3-4pm in NDH2018 (second floor of Nicola de la Haye Building)

Story submitted by Alyson Wharton
AWharton@lincoln.ac.uk