Indigenous healing is a paradox in the liberal settler colony where efforts to foster well-being can simultaneously undermine distinct Indigenous societies. This book examines the prominence of “Indigenous healing” in Canadian public discourse through a historical and ethnographic lens. It focuses on late twentieth-century Indigenous social histories in Treaty 3 territory and cities in northern and southern Ontario to show practices of re-membering—drawing on traditional ways of being and knowing for social repair and collective rejuvenation—against the backdrop of the social dismemberment of Indigenous Peoples. Expansion of re-membering is often enabled by tactical engagements with the settler state which have fuelled an Indigenized biopolitics from below. Maxwell offers an analysis of the possibilities, tensions, and risks inherent to these biopolitical tactics. Informed by Indigenous feminist scholarship that emphasizes relationality, care, and the everyday, as well as the intimate workings of settler colonialism, this book aims to enrich critical conversations about reconciliation and resurgence politics and challenge their perceived dichotomy.

Krista Maxwell is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. A settler scholar, her research focuses on Indigenous social and political organizing around healing, care, and child welfare from the mid-twentieth century to the present. These interests are motivated by an analysis of the biopolitics of liberal settler colonialism as both a mode of assimilative governance and social dismemberment, and affording space for tactical Indigenous agency.

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"Indigenous Healing as Paradox is a sophisticated study that explains how Indigenous encounters with settler colonial healthcare systems that could potentially improve their lives also threaten to destroy their collective wellbeing. Beautifully written and tightly focused, it follows Indigenous biopolitical actors navigating this paradox through tactical engagements with the settler state." Maureen Lux, author of Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada

"Maxwell is attentive to the complexities of Indigenous people's responses to the insidious violence of settler colonial intrusion and governance. Indigenous Healing as Paradox is an important book that takes an original stance." Alexandra Widmer, York University

"Indigenous Healing as Paradox is an important contribution to the historiography of Indigenous health and social wellbeing. Maxwell offers a critical lens on the perils of adopting reconciliation and healing discourses that focus on historic injustices and the individual in need of treatment at the expense of ongoing systemic issues." Kim Anderson, University of Guelph