Spectacle of royal visit evoked a model of national identity at odds with efforts to confront Canada’s own violent history of colonization
King Charles’s speech to Canada’s parliament this week was framed as a subtle rebuke to Donald Trump’s threats of annexation and an assertion of the country’s sovereignty.
But for many Indigenous people, the elaborate spectacle of the royal visit – with its protocol, regalia, thrones and mounties in pith helmets – evoked a model of national identity at odds with ongoing efforts to confront Canada’s own violent history of colonization and dispossession.
