Event Date: March 17, 2026 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the International Theory Network (ITN)

Many assume state sovereignty to be a settled fact. As the basis for our international system of sovereign states, it represents some of the firmest ground on which we have built our societies. However, critical engagements with sovereignty point to the delusion of this way of thinking. Moreover, settler colonial states, such as Canada, further highlight the tensions contained by our assumptions over sovereignty’s settledness: Indigenous peoples continue to affirm their own underlying claims to authority.

This raises the question: how has sovereignty come to be assumed as natural? And what do settler colonial states tell us about these processes? Drawing from Settler Colonial Sovereignty: Visions of Improvement and Indigenous Erasure, this talk presents settler colonial worldmaking as a foundational aspect of this process. Dr. Midzain-Gobin argues that settler colonial worldmaking is organized around a logic of improvement, which imposes settler cosmological conceptions of dominion onto the still-existing Indigenous relationships to their lands and waters. Centring the ongoing reproduction of Canadian settler sovereignty, Dr. Midzain-Gobin shows how this imposition enabled the collapsing of an international collection of Indigenous sovereignties into today’s state of Canada. Ultimately, better understanding the cosmological foundations of our international offers a window into the possibilities of otherwise.

Learn more about his book, Settler Colonial Sovereignty: Visions of Improvement and Indigenous Erasure:

Speaker:

Liam Midzain-Gobin is a settler scholar who studies the ongoing remaking of settler colonial sovereignty and Indigenous responses to it. Dr. Midzain-Gobin is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Brock University and an associate editor with Critical Studies on Security. He is the author of Settler Colonial Sovereignty: Visions of Improvement and Indigenous Erasure (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025) and his work has also appeared in Security Dialogue, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, the American Review of Canadian Studies, and other journals and outlets.

Chair:

Kevin McMillan is a professor of international relations at the School of Political Studies, and since 2012 has co-coordinated the CIPS International Theory Network. His book, The Constitution of Social Practices, makes a case for a systematically historical and relational approach to the study of political practices.