The Relationships Between Racialized Immigrants and Indigenous Peoples in Canada: A Literature Review

This literature review assesses the current status of Indigenous and racialized newcomer relations in Canada and provides recommendations for future research, government policy, and grassroots organizing. In Canada, as is other “white settler-societies”, there is a strict separation between two intersecting debates surrounding identity, citizenship, and belonging—one revolves around the immigrant experience and the other around Indigenous peoples. To break down the barriers separating these two debates, this paper will explore what the nature of the relationship is between immigrants and Indigenous peoples through a review of the literature using postcolonial and decolonized anti-racist frameworks. This literature review attempts to contribute to the unsettling of insider/outsider, minority/majority, Indigenous/settler, and black/white binaries, which are pervasive within the racialized and colonized Canadian society, and build dialogue and cross-cultural collaboration in anti-racist activism and scholarship.