The Weight of Silence: Colonial Erasure and the Politics of Being Silenced

Abstract

This paper explores the political dimensions of silence in Indigenous resistance and mourning, particularly among Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQ+ people in Canada. Drawing on the concept of quiet theatre (Kazubowski-Houston, 2018), anonymous care (Stevenson, 2014), refusal (Simpson, 2014), and Granek’s (2014) analysis of activist grief, it examines how silence can be both a survival strategy and a symptom of systemic violence. The REDress installations and public vigils serve as an example of the ways in which silence is used to expose injustice while simultaneously reflecting the failure of institutions to listen. This paper critiques how symbolic gestures of “listening” can be assimilated by settler states as performances of empathy rather than meaningful responses, and why pain has to be performed in order to be acknowledged. Silence, whether chosen or imposed, must be understood as political; true justice means to dismantle the conditions that demand silence in the first place. 

Keywords: Silence, resistance, colonialism, mourning, refusal