Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics-one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization.

Introduction : Subjects of empire -- The politics of recognition in colonial contexts -- For the land : the Dene nation's struggle for self-determination -- Essentialism and the gendered politics of aboriginal self-government -- Seeing red : reconciliation and resentment -- The plunge into the chasm of the past : Fanon, self-recognition, and decolonization -- Conclusion : Lessons from Idle no more : the future of indigenous activism.