On July 26, 2021, Mary May Simon was proclaimed the Governor General of Canada, the first Indigenous person to hold the position. As she ascended the throne, the Governor General’s flag was hoisted, a 21-gun salute thundered outside, and a brass quintet from the Canadian Armed forces launched into the “Grand March” from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida. The “Grand March,” a triumphal, florid piece, was apt for the occasion. The march, the salute, the flag, and the throne celebrated an august order, a diverse nation presided over by an eternal, if archaic, monarchy.

Except this is not the whole story. In Act 2, Scene 2 of Verdi’s opera Aida, the “Grand March” honors not a monarch’s installation but an imperial triumph. In the scene, Radames, the Ancient Egyptian military commander, celebrates his crushing domination of the Ethiopians in war. The scene features a parade held in Radames’s honour. It is an unabashed display of military conquest, complete with captured prisoners in chains.^[3]

Almost certainly, the organizers of Simon’s installation picked the “Grand March” for its pomp and circumstance and not its imperial affiliations. Indeed, the ceremony was an explicit celebration of multiculturalism and inclusion. Diversity was put on parade and an Indigenous woman was installed as a foreign monarch’s representative. In this moment, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared, “of walking forward on the path of reconciliation,” Mary Simon’s leadership presented an opportunity to “reach out and build a brighter future for all.”^[4]

While this vision of harmonious interconnection may appear to be the path to a post-colonial relationship, it is dangerous to take it at face value. Rather than commend those in power for embracing terms that suggest transformation, we should interrogate power and illuminate the complexities that remain below the surface to reveal domination in all its forms.^[5] As James Tully notes, “we are entangled in a more complex web of imperial relationships than the defenders and critics of imperialism suggest.”^[6] It is possible to rely on settler colonialism in practice even while opposing it in intent.^[7]

While well intentioned, the ceremony’s multicultural triumphalism belies a settler colonial triumphalism. Simon’s ceremony, by maintaining that it is Canada’s job to order together diverse peoples in harmony, inadvertently celebrated and worked to naturalize settler colonialism. Intriguingly, therefore, the use of Verdi’s “Grand March” in Simon’s ceremony was particularly apt, serving as a compelling metaphor for how Canada, in celebrating the coexistence of its diverse populations, reaffirms its rule over them. In what follows, I use Jodi Byrd’s concept of cacophony^[8] in conjunction with Edward Said’s contrapuntal analysis^[9]to show Canada’s “Grand March” at work in Simon’s installation ceremony.

My analysis rests on a key concept: constitutionalism. A constitutionalism lies at the foundation of political community. Political community, put simply, is the governance of a group of people in practice. I use the term “political community,” rather than “state” or “government,” or even “institutions of government,” because a political community does not necessarily need a state or even an overarching government. Political community is “persons practising governance together” according to a certain “logic and structure.”^[10]

Political community, as I use it here, can occur at any scale—even within or over other political communities. For a community to be distinctly political, however, it must be predicated on a certain “logic and structure” that animates and constrains identifiable forms of governance.^[11] In turn, a constitutionalism is that “logic and structure” underpinning political community.^[12] Derived from foundation myths, a constitutionalism is the reasoning that “creates, sustains, and justifies” a political community.^[13] A constitutionalism is animated by a bundle of narratives, assumptions, and values. Constitutionalisms, therefore, are cultural products: they are not predicated on universal truths, but, like works of art, are of the world.^[14] To use Edward Said’s words on canonical texts, they are built on structures “of attitude and reference”^[15] that draw from the rich resources of human history. Like any good myth, fable, or novel, a constitutionalism is not necessarily based on fact but often based on shared sentiments, experiences, and discourses.

For the purposes of this essay, therefore, I understand settler colonialism to be a type of constitutionalism: colonial constitutionalism. Colonial constitutionalism is the logic and structure underpinning settler colonial political community. This logic and structure, as I will show, necessitates a hierarchical government that resides upon and dominates Indigenous land and bodies to ensure order and prosperity. Colonial constitutionalism is derived from imperialism, which Edward Said defines as “the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory.”^[16] Colonial constitutionalism draws from these imperial practices, theories, and attitudes so as to maintain settler control over Indigenous land, bodies, and political orders. Understanding settler colonialism as a type of constitutionalism is vital, but it is not all settler colonialism is and can be. To avoid confusion, from here on I call settler colonialism, as I am exploring it in this chapter, colonial constitutionalism. Any further use of “settler colonialism” is intentionally broad and not restricted to constitutionalism. Accordingly, Canada’s “Grand March”—as exemplified in Simon’s Ceremony—is a celebration and reaffirmation of colonial constitutionalism.

Vitally, settler colonialism is not the only type of constitutionalism on these lands. Indigenous peoples have been constituting political community for thousands of years. Indigenous constitutionalisms have been developed alongside and with the land, and many animate political systems that are based around radical interdependency, mutual aid, and non-hierarchal governance.^[17] Although suppressed by colonial constitutionalism, Indigenous constitutionalisms persist.

Canada’s Diversity as a Product of Colonization

The climax of Simon’s ceremony saw the coalescence of a disparate multiplicity: on Algonquin Anishinaabe land, in what was formerly Ottawa’s central train station, an Inuk woman took her place as the first Indigenous representative of Canada’s Head of State (a British monarch), accompanied by an opera depicting Ancient Egyptian imperial grandeur, written by an Italian nationalist for Egypt, which at the time was a rapidly Europeanizing African state. Furthermore, the rest of the ceremony was punctuated throughout with musical performances representing distinct cultures across Canada, such as Newfoundlanders, Québécois, and Métis peoples.

This coalescence was no accident or coincidence; it was, plainly, a choice to arrange the ceremony in this manner. Explicitly, the ceremony was an opportunity to celebrate and showcase Canada’s rich diversity. “Perhaps more than any other place on earth,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proclaimed in the ceremony, “we are defined by our diversity… This is a big place; this is a diverse place.” For Trudeau, having Mary Simon, an Inuk woman, serve as Governor General would be a step towards “the Canada to which we all aspire: A Canada of diversity and inclusion, a place where everyone is respected, and everyone can thrive.”^[18]

But what is it that makes Canada big and diverse? How did we get to this point where we can now bring together, celebrate, and “respect” so many diverse people? Before first contact, the land that would become what is known as Canada today—spanning a continent and holding hundreds of Indigenous nations—was already big and diverse. However, it is because of imperialism, settlement, and colonization that Canada came to be one united political community. Empires, Edward Said emphasizes, provided “the ability to be in far-flung places, to learn about other people, to codify and disseminate knowledge, to characterize, transport, install, and display instances of other cultures… and above all rule them.”^[19] This was certainly the case with Canada, which was created—at least in part—by the British Empire, the largest empire in history. And as Canada gradually gained autonomy within the British Empire, the tools of empire increasingly became the tools of the settler state. “We are a country,” Trudeau said, “of vast arctic spaces and busy city skylines, of prairies and coasts, of French and English, and of Indigenous languages.”^[20]  Canada’s size and diversity is no accident, no fluke of nature: it is a product of colonization.

Settlement and colonization made Canada, but settlement and colonization are not and never were unidirectional processes. Settlers did not shape an inert, untouched wilderness full of passive Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples reckoned with the arrival of settlers—and the eventual solidification of colonial rule—with nuance, heterogeneity, and rich dialogical debate.^[21]

Individually, settlers and Indigenous peoples understand and experience settlement differently, each group with their own rich internal diversity. Jodi Byrd, in Transit of Empire, uses the term cacophony to describe the how these understandings and experiences exist in a simultaneous and uneasy relationship. Cacophony, Byrd writes, is the “discordant and competing representations of diasporic arrivals and native lived experiences” in what is known as North America.^[22] Settlement and colonization, therefore, are cacophonic: a chaotic jumble of understandings and experience. Rather than a formative “native” identity of land and bodies that is swept away by the ceaseless march of Western progress and civilization, everything is everywhere all at once, settler and Indigenous alike.^[23]

We can think of the individual and group experiences in cacophony as melodies: musical themes that take place temporally and spatially. When all these melodies play simultaneously in the same place, they produce a combination that is harsh or discordant, like the noise of a hectic rush hour or a packed market. “Cacophony,” therefore, aptly describes the intertwined and cumulative experience of settlement and colonization.

While Byrd focuses on the United States’ imperialism and settler colonialism, cacophony—as both a metaphor and a theoretical framework—is also ideal for understanding how the melodies constitutive of Canadian settler colonial expansion and consolidation are rich, diverse, and discordant. The formation and continued existence of Canada ought to be understood as a shared, conflicting, and often contradictory relationship.^[24] It makes sense, therefore, that the climax of Simon’s installation saw the coalescence of so many different and disparate parts. In celebrating Canada’s size and diversity, cacophony takes centre stage.

Composing Cacophony

To live in Canada is to live in cacophony. How then, have settler colonial governments been relatively successful in forming and maintaining a coherent, sovereign, and bounded political community? If the climax of Simon’s installation ceremony was the coalescence of so many disparate parts, so many melodies, why was it a harmonious and triumphant affair, rather than dissonant chaos? The answer to both these questions is that settler colonial political communities have been very good at making cacophony appear well-ordered.

In fact, even though it was created by settler colonialism, cacophony is central to colonial constitutionalism’s underlying “structure of attitude and reference.” Colonial constitutionalism, in its attitude to cacophony, sees settler colonial political community not as a dominating force sowing violence and discord, but as a civilizing and conciliating benefactor.

Colonial constitutionalism’s attitude to cacophony can be identified in a letter that Giuseppe Verdi, the composer of the opera Aida (from which the “Grand March” in Simon’s installation ceremony was taken), wrote to Giulio Ricordi in 1871. “I don’t concede the right to ‘create’ to singers,” declared Verdi. Allowing singers to “create” ultimately means that they will “bungl[e] [their roles] and produc[e] all sorts of contradictions… it is a principle that leads into the abyss.”^[25] Singers are free to sing their melodies, but the overarching power of composing—how those singers will interact and perform alongside one another—must remain with a central composer. Any other approach tempts a plunge into disorder. Verdi’s opinion on composing is precisely what animates colonial constitutionalism: non-Indigenous governments must reside upon and dominate Indigenous lands and bodies to ensure order and prosperity. Canadian cacophony is like a great “atonal ensemble,”^[26] that, because of its inherent chaos, must be composed by a capable authority. By “composing,” I mean that settler colonial governments maintain ultimate authority over the structure of political community and the range of political possibility it enables. Indigenous peoples, therefore, are not afforded the same power as settler governments but are held in a subordinate position: only as singers, not composers. This means that Indigenous political communities are supressed: Indigenous communities must live subject to colonial constitutionalism.^[27]

The Canadian Supreme Court case of R v. Van der Peet is an excellent example of the kind of ultimate authority that colonial constitutionalism necessitates. According to the Supreme Court in that case, section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, which states that “[t]he existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed,” is only applicable when Indigenous constitutionalisms are “framed in terms cognizable to the Canadian legal and constitutional structure.”^[28] Indigenous constitutionalisms, therefore, are permitted only as long as they stay relegated to a role within the logical and structural parameters of colonial constitutionalism.^[29]

Colonial constitutionalism’s “structure of attitude and reference” draws on cacophony in two ways. These two aspects appear to be in opposition with each other, but they both work in conjunction to animate a coherent logic and structure underpinning settler colonial political community.

First is the view—held by European empires—that sees Indigenous lands as terra nullius: empty and lacking any ‘civilized’ forms of governance. Indigenous people, Frantz Fanon states, are framed as “listless beings wasted away by fevers and consumed by ‘ancestral customs,’ ” forming part of a “virtually petrified background.”^[30] Put in the register of music melodies, the idea of terra nullius is a refusal to contend with Indigenous melodies as viable melodies. Instead, Indigenous melodies in cacophony are seen as background noise, like the sound of birds, crickets, or wind in the trees. They are not to be used to compose but are to be drowned out or otherwise ignored. The view of Terra Nullius sentences Indigenous peoples to abjection, deeming them to lack even the ability to maintain order over their own lands and bodies.

In turn, settler colonial governments are positioned to bring order and prosperity to a land framed as having neither. This move is what Jodi Byrd calls “transit”: Indigenous lands and bodies, imbued with a political emptiness, justify settler colonial governments to move in and fill this absence, often using extreme violence to do so.^[31] “The colonist,” Fanon writes, “makes history. His life is an epic, an odyssey. He is invested with the very beginning, ‘We made this land.’ He is the guarantor for its existence.”^[32] Colonial constitutionalism frames Indigenous lands and bodies as needing civilization brought to them.^[33] This belief of terra nullius makes settler colonial governments appear to be much needed composers in a land previously devoid of music.

This understanding of settler colonialism—as a chauvinistic and racist project of invasion and replacement^[34]—is accurate but it is not all that colonial constitutionalism is. Because Indigenous lands were not empty, and because Indigenous peoples never passively accepted overt settler colonial domination,^[35] transit has only further deepened cacophony.^[36] Melodies have only been brought further together and are harder to ignore.^[37]

Consequently, the second central component of colonial constitutionalism’s “structure of attitude and reference” is largely a consequence of the first. When and where cacophony is too loud to ignore, accommodation has been an alternative strategy of settler colonial consolidation.^[38] Indeed, Canadian history is marked by traditions of accommodation that continue into the present.^[39] For instance, in 1763, in contrast to terra nullius, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation, recognizing Indigenous presence, mandating that title to land must be secured through negotiation, which in turn laid the foundation for subsequent treaty-making.^[40] Canada, as a settler colonial state, was formed through negotiation and treaty, as well as racism and conquest.^[41]

In this more accommodating aspect of colonial constitutionalism, settler colonial governments are not conquerors but conciliators: it is their job to bring settlers and Indigenous peoples together in harmony, not enmity. As such, so that both settlers and Indigenous peoples can live together peaceably, settler colonial governments are there to be the ultimate authority that orders political community: they compose cacophony.

Mary Simon’s ceremony matches this second approach to cacophony. During his speech, Trudeau repeatedly stressed the need to come together as Canadians. After emphasizing Canada’s size and diversity, Trudeau stated that, “we need people who build bridges and bring ourselves together.”^[42] Trudeau singled out Simon as the ideal bridge builder, praising her for her role in negotiating the first land claims agreement between Canada and Indigenous peoples. “We need people like Ms. Simon,” said Trudeau.^[43] This speech was indicative of the worldview embodied in the ceremony: Canada is big and diverse, and an ideal Canada is one where everyone is brought together as Canadians under one constitutional framework. The coalescence of such a disparate multiplicity in Simon’s installation affirmed that not only is Canada big and diverse, but, when its size and diversity is composed by a stable hand, settler colonial governance appears harmonious, right, and good for all.

Composing Cacophony is a Fiction

By turning to Edward Said’s method of contrapuntal reading, we can see in more detail how composing cacophony is a fiction that lies at the heart of colonial constitutionalism—and is therefore a fiction central to colonial governments’ domination over Indigenous lands and bodies.

Drawing from counterpoint in Western classical music, in which multiple independent melodies overlap interdependently, Said argues that imperialism ought to be read “with a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts.”^[44] Like melodies in counterpoint, the independent melodies of domination and resistance are interdependently audible within the historical experience of imperialism.

Cacophony, likewise, ought to be understood contrapuntally. We can understand the diverse experiences and understandings of cacophony—its melodies—as existing both independently and interdependently. “Partly because of empire,” Said writes, “all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic.”^[45] Indigenous and settler realities, as Aaron Mills states, are already “deeply interwoven” with each other.^[46]

Critically, a contrapuntal approach does not mean that categories like settler and Indigenous are nonsensical and emptied of significance. We cannot claim that Canada is a “Métis nation.”^[47] Identities, whether cultural or racial, still have lived effects that cannot be ignored. There are still independent (and group) experiences and understandings—melodies—but they manifest interdependently.

Imagine many melodies sounding out in the same concert hall. It is tempting to see cacophony as the interaction between musicians playing these melodies. Based on this understanding, if we instruct the musicians to play in the right way, we can turn cacophony into a beautiful, ordered, symphony. But critically, cacophony is not the interaction of musicians, it is the interaction of the melodies themselves. While it is tempting to imagine that there are discernable musicians playing these melodies, this is to abstract cacophony a step too far. The musicologist Wouter Capitain notes that, “throughout Said’s elaborations on counterpoint, the common theme is that multiple voices interact; they are irreducible to one another, but cannot be separated either as they resonate with each other in the historical, political, biographical, or musical experience.”^[48] As a result, we need to understand that there are no discernable musicians in cacophony, all we have is the music itself. In turn, to say that we can compose cacophony is to invent a fiction of identifiable musicians where none exist in practice. Thus, colonial constitutionalism’s belief that cacophony is something that can be composed narratively carves false lines between lands and people.^[49] By taking a contrapuntal approach to cacophony, we can see beyond the fictive confines of this discourse. There is not an “us” and “them” that can be ordered in the correct way to ensure harmony. There is only a cacophonous “we” shot through with relations of power and control.

However, even some of the strongest theories of cultural difference, when applied to the politics of multicultural societies, still assume that cacophony is made up of discrete parts that ought to be ordered in the correct way. A “multicultural state” is one that contains a plethora of different cultures and nations^[50]—the kind of “cacophony” described above. Multiculturalism, in turn, is about how to best govern this cacophony: how multicultural states ought to accommodate difference while ensuring political stability.^[51] In “The Politics of Recognition,” Charles Taylor argues that other cultures—especially ones that are “sufficiently different” from “ours”—appear “strange and unfamiliar.”^[52] Rather than judge their understandings from our perspective, we ought to learn their understanding from their perspective. What needs to happen, therefore—drawing from Gadamer—is a “fusion of horizons.” “We learn to move to a broader horizon,” Taylor states, “within which what we have formerly taken for granted as the background to valuation can be situated as one possibility alongside the different backgrounds of the formerly unfamiliar.” In turn, by fusing horizons, we can “transform our standards.”^[53] While Taylor’s use of the “fusion of horizons” is helpful for understanding cultural differences in an abstract conceptual sense, this view rests on the assumption that cultures are separate containers of values in practice. When applied to the politics of multiculturalism and the cacophony that it contends with, Taylor’s understanding mistakes the music for the musicians. As soon as we understand cacophony contrapuntally, we see that these cultures, in practice, are not discernable containers of value at all but constitutive parts of cacophony. As mentioned above, they “are irreducible to one another, but cannot be separated either as they resonate with each other in the historical, political, biographical, or musical experience.”^[54]

As an additional illustration of what I mean here, in 1989, both Said and Taylor commented on the Rushdie Affair. In an article in the journal Public Culture, Taylor describes Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses as a “profoundly Western book.”^[55] For Taylor, Rushdie’s novel is part of the venerated “Western” tradition of religious criticism. Rushdie erred because he failed to take the other—Muslim—melody seriously, which takes far greater offence to unbelief and blasphemy. “Rushdie’s book,” Taylor writes, “is comforting to the western liberal mind, which shares one feature with that of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the belief that there is nothing outside their world-view which needs deeper understanding, just a perverse reflection of the obviously right.”^[56] Said, in an article in the journal The Black Scholar, understands The Satanic Verses differently. Rushdie’s book, for Said, “is an astonishing and prodigiously inventive work of fiction. Yet it is, like its author, in history, the world, the crowd and the storm.”^[57] The novel is not a musician but is representative of the music. “There is,” Said writes, “no pure, unsullied, unmixed essence to which some of us can return…Rushdie’s work is not just about the mixture; it is that mixture itself.”^[58]

Viewed contrapuntally, addressing settler colonialism, or “walking forward on the path to reconciliation”—as Trudeau put it^[59]—is not a question of “how do we come together,” but of asking ourselves: “now that settlement and colonialism has created cacophony and we’re in this together, what forms of political community can we enact that do not necessitate domination over Indigenous lands and bodies?” Contrapuntal analysis shows settler colonial domination to be an inclusive, rather than exclusive system, but one that structures interdependence on its own terms, using its own power and narratives to enforce boundaries that limit political possibility.

Concealing and Legitimating Domination

Canada—as a settler-state—was formed out of an ability to bring people together. Once we understand that settler colonialism has already brought people together and shapes the conditions for political possibility, we can see that rather than “composing,” settler colonial governments are instead consolidating their authority. Theories of multiculturalism like Taylor’s do a lot of good work unpacking chauvinistic and relativistic positions that underpin intercultural relations. In the Canadian context, however, when cacophony is still assumed to be something that can and ought to be composed—when bringing diverse people together under a sovereign authority is taken to be the assumed upon framework for political stability and prosperity—colonial constitutionalism becomes self-legitimating.^[60]

When used to enter treaty negotiations, to hold a continent-wide nation together, or to maintain Indigenous self-government and autonomy, the power to “compose” diverse people may appear to be a force for good. Pluralistic and autonomous acts of imperialism, however, like the Royal Proclamation, protected Indigenous rights while also asserting that the British Empire was the one providing, ensuring, and enforcing those rights.^[61] As such, even with pluralistic and decentralized policies, settler colonial governments still retain ultimate authority. Importantly, as Tully stresses, there is still considerable “room for maneuver” within settler colonial political community. Limited self-government, cultural recognition, and compensation are possible, but it is false to call this “decolonization” or even “reconciliation.”^[62] This is because settler colonial governments, wielding overwhelming power, are the only authority capable of maintaining a sense of “bounded order.”^[63] As such, the state cannot divest its ultimate authority lest its citizens bungle their roles—just as Verdi noted in his letter to Ricordi. Colonial constitutionalism requires a monopoly not just on violence but on composing diversity. Someone must be in charge, and since settler colonial governments are able to be in charge, and are the ones currently in charge, they present themselves as rightfully in charge. The more entrenched settler colonial governments become, the more that colonial constitutionalism validates colonial authority.

In turn, this success has bolstered the belief that colonial constitutionalism is not just necessary but natural. Colonial constitutionalism’s assertion that divesting the power to create would lead to the abyss is no longer seen as one structure of “attitude and reference” but the way of the world overall.^[64] Canada—as it is currently enacted politically—is seen as the only viable way to live in cacophony on these lands. James Tully, drawing from Glen Coulthard, refers to this as the “hegemony problem,” where the terms of the Canadian state “dominates the field, yet it is presented as grounded in the (hypothetical) rational consent of all those subject to it.”^[65]

Even if Simon and Trudeau were the only people present at the ceremony, the pomp and triumphalism of Canada’s “Grand March” would have been enough to reassure them that they were on the right path and using their powers for good. Indeed, Verdi’s opera Aida—from which the “Grand March” used in Simon’s ceremony was taken—worked in a similar way to legitimate domination. Aida—and the conditions surrounding its creation—embodies “the authority of Europe’s version of Egypt at a moment in its nineteenth-century history.”^[66] Accordingly, Simon’s installation ceremony celebrated a colonial fiction of cacophony that sees it as something to compose. And by performing that fantasy, the ceremony worked to legitimize it.

In Authority: Construction and Corrosion, Bruce Lincoln argues that authority, rather than being an entity, is an effect that requires cultivation and the collaboration of legitimizing identities. Authority, therefore, is “produced by a specific conjunction,”^[67] the right combination of setting, timing, actors, and performance. Simon’s ceremony is hardly unique. The British Empire—ruled by monarchs whom Simon now represents—affirms its authority with “royal pageantry on full display with its literal and symbolic reminders of empire. Such rituals,” writes Caroline Elkins, “unfolded on distant shores where, time and again, they reminded British subjects of the benevolent hand that ruled over them.”^[68]

When settler colonial governments “compose,” when they order cacophony to maintain harmony, what they are really doing is maintaining the settler colonial status quo and ensuring that that status quo appears harmonious. Such stability greatly benefits those who thrive on the political status quo but punishes those who are harmed by it.^[69] Capitalism and extractivism, for instance, are maintained by the stable hand of colonial composition. Those who benefit from the status quo may feel that colonial constitutionalism does bring stability and prosperity. Many, however, notably Indigenous peoples on whose land capitalism and extractivism rely on, suffer deeply and are unable to escape. For them, this is not stability, but imprisonment.

For instance, we can examine the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975 (JBNQA), Canada’s first modern land claims agreement—negotiated in part by Mary Simon and invoked by Trudeau during her installation ceremony as “bridge-building” in practice.^[70] The negotiations had been initiated because of push-back to Québec’s proposal for a massive hyrdo-electric development in the north,^[71] and led to hunting rights, financial compensation, and a degree of recognized self-governance for the Inuit and Eeyou (Cree). The power, responsibility, and authority to distribute and maintain these benefits, however, has remained with the Canadian state. The Inuit and Eeyou, in order to receive the benefits of the agreement, were made dependent on, not independent from, settler governments. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the JBNQA has been provided and administered through byzantine government bureaucracies, which have only further entangled and entrapped the Inuit and Cree in structures of settler colonial control.^[72] Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come of the Eeyou of Eeyou Istchee (James Bay Cree), reflecting on the JBNQA’s legacy in 1991, called it a “shameful reminder of Canada’s duplicity and ingratitude.” Depriving the Eeyou of the ability to meaningfully enact alternative forms of political community, the treaty “has become infamous as Canada’s first modern broken treaty.”^[73]

Conclusion: Living in Dissonance

Mary Simon’s installation ceremony was precedent-setting, and it was a celebration of Canada’s immense size and diversity, but it was also a settler colonial triumph. “The Grand March” from the opera Aida, which was played at the climax of Simon’s ceremony, was apt for the occasion. The march celebrated an august order, a diverse and harmonious nation presided over by settler colonial governments that maintain domination and call it civilization. As contrapuntal analysis has shown, the need to order multiplicity and bring everyone together—compose cacophony—is a myth that naturalizes colonial constitutionalism. So long as we continue to see cacophony as something that must be composed, settler colonial governments stand as the strongest, most capable, and most successful political institutions to achieve this goal, to the point that alternative constitutionalisms do not even seem possible.

In many ways, the Canadian state provides Indigenous peoples with tangible benefits. Treaty relationships, Indigenous Rights, and a degree of self-governance and autonomy are all maintained and protected by the state. Settler colonial states do hold off some of the worst atrocities of unbridled settler expansion, unfettered capitalism, and vampiric extractivism.^[74] At the same time, however, settler colonial governments also prevent meaningful decolonization and Indigenous alternatives to settler governance. Capitalism, extractivism, and genocide may be tamed but they are also maintained.

Thus, colonial constitutionalism’s stability can be beneficial, but it cannot be transformative. Instead of trying to compose cacophony, we ought to see cacophony as already providing all we need for living well together. Aaron Mills, drawing from Anishinaabe constitutionalism, contends that the foundation of political community should begin with “creation itself, in all its vast complexity.”^[75] Settler colonialism created the world in which we live now, but it is up to us, not colonial constitutionalism, to rebuild the world anew within—not over—cacophony.

We can see cacophony as offering us gifts of transformation. Rather than understand cacophony as chaos and anarchy that needs ordering, we can understand it as transformative dissonance. Kimberly Hutchings describes this kind of dissonance as occurring when we run into “a particular limit imposed by an alternative mode of being in the world.”^[76] Dissonance, if confronted, forces us to contend with how and why we constitute political community.^[77] Accordingly, for Hutchings, dissonance questions the very notion of what living together entails.^[78] Leaning into dissonance, we should turn to Indigenous constitutionalisms to illuminate and imagine practices of governance prohibited by colonial constitutionalism. In doing so, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can see other ways of living that draw the foundations of political community from thousands of years of deep interrelationship with the living earth.^[79]

The spectacle and security of Canada’s “Grand March,” in the absence of any tangible alternatives, seems to be the way of the world. When we unquestioningly accept colonial constitutionalism’s “structure of attitude and reference,” cacophony appears to be chaos in need of a strong and imperious hand to manage it. However, by cultivating dissonance, by turning our attention to the texture, complexity, and vibrancy of human interdependency, we can begin to see beyond the fictions of colonial constitutionalism to other constitutionalisms. Colonial constitutionalism is powerful and persuasive, but it is not inevitable. Cacophony provides us with far more ways of living well together.

 

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