'Presencing of the Present'

T his paper is an exploration of refusal. Refusal as a philosophy, a practice, and a politics, is a theme permeating a particular brand of Indigenous thinking (and living) regarding the "impossible but therapeutic fallacy of reconciliation" 1 in what is now Canada. It argues against reducing Indigenous visions of justice to state recognition. From the Eastern Canadian context, it is Audra Simpson's biting analysis of Indigenous-settler relations that offers a way into this enquiry, and it is with her rejection of recognition as "the sine qua non if not the end point, the orgasm of justice today," 2 that this paper will begin. Denying and transgressing the boundaries of settler-colonial logic, by which Indigenous subjects have been placed within certain histories and geographies created and maintained by state power, refusal becomes a new mechanism for "dismantling the systems of colonial domination." 3 Taking seriously Neal McLeod's assertion that Indigenous dispossession through colonial presence is both a "spatial and a spiritual exile," 4 and Leanne Simpson's insistence that land is "constructed and defined by our intimate spiritual, emotional, and physical relationship with it," 5 the following discussion will trace the spiritual dimension of refusal, in order to embed refusal in a broader set of spiritual commitments which ultimately tie this radical politics-as-presence both to the past -and to the imagined future.