Assembling Unity: Indigenous Politics, Gender, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs by Sarah A. Nickel (review)

in assembling unity: Indigenous Politics, Gender, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Sarah Nickel offers a welcome and important study of a crucial Indigenous political organization from its founding in 1969 to the early 1980s. In this exemplary work, she demonstrates the rich results of integrating insights from critical Indigenous studies and feminism into historical practice. Nickel brings a sophisticated theoretical framework and methodological approach to bear on her sources, which include the rich archival record of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) and, crucially, interviews with dozens of UBCIC members past and present.

Although the name of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs is provincial, its sphere of interest and influence extended from its inception to national, transnational, and international arenas. When representatives of 140 of the 192 bands in the province assembled for the organization's inaugural meeting in 1969, it was the largest-ever gathering of the diverse Indigenous peoples whose unceded territories "British Columbia" claims as its own. Nickel carefully situates this historic event not as the beginning of Indigenous unity efforts in the province but as a landmark moment in a long history of protest. The federal government unintentionally boosted these efforts in 1969 with the "White Paper," a policy proposal akin to termination in the United States that aimed to eliminate "Indians" and "Indian rights." Forged in response to this national issue, the UBCIC went on to launch numerous national and international campaigns.

Having begun her study by situating the UBCIC within the context of previous Indigenous organizing (chapter 1), Nickel proceeds to examine the UBCIC's efforts to establish its authority (chapter 2); its adaptation to and subsequent withdrawal from government funding structures (chapters 3 and 4, respectively); its radicalization and direct action campaigns (chapter 5); and its engagement with conversations around sovereignty and the patriation of the Canadian Constitution (Chapter 6).

Any historian of Indigenous politics in this period faces two conceptual challenges: one revolves around solidarity, the other around gender. Instead of dodging these issues, Nickel locates them at the center of her concern throughout. She deftly writes over and against earlier scholarly traditions that denigrated intra-Indigenous politics by branding them "factionalism," an approach dependent on the discriminatory assumption that the normative condition for Indigenous people and peoples is somehow one of singular agreement. Nickel instead takes up unity as a central analytic concept. She interrogates how, as in many political communities, unity was simultaneously aspirational goal and political tool, the meaning, nature, and implications of which were shifting and contested. That is, unity was challenging to achieve and maintain not simply because people found it difficult to agree but because they found it difficult to agree even on what agreement looked like. Through her refusal to take "unity" for granted, Nickel is able to show the complex ways in which the politics of recognition and refusal functioned within Indigenous political and activist circles.

Nickel's treatment of unity in turn forms the basis of her approach to her project's other central challenge: how to address the role of women and gender in a history of a male-dominated, heteronormative organization. Scholars long structured the history of Indigenous political movements in Canada in terms of a misleading dichotomy between "women's" rights and "Indigenous" rights, with Indigenous women's organizations fighting to repeal sexist clauses in the Indian Act, on the one hand, while organizations like and including the UBCIC fought for sovereignty and against amending the Indian Act, on the other. Dispensing with simplistic, normative assumptions about Indigenous unity sets Nickel up beautifully to reveal the much more complicated reality. She locates Indigenous women where many other scholars have failed to see them: engaged, often through their own organizations, with and against UBCIC debates, policies, and campaigns. She carefully shows the trajectories of Indigenous women's action, organizing, and political orientation over time. Indigenous women activists were engaged in...