‘SPEAKING THE STRONG WORDS’

Abstract

This essay examines performative elements in northern Dene political assemblies and meetings in Canada. Of special interest are the politics of speech and particularly the use of speech to draw together or enact or perform contemporary indigenous community. The critical site of interrogation is a key strategic meeting that took place in 2006 between two Kascho'got'ine communities in the Sahtu region of the Northwest Territories in order to consider resource extraction on Dene lands. A discussion of that meeting's protocols unfolds a range of issues about speech ethics, communicative competence and embodied communication.

Keywords:

• Dene
• ethics
• indigenous
• politics
• speech

Notes

¹See Attorney General of Quebec v. Régent Sioui (1990) and Marshall v. Her Majesty the Queen (1999).