Troubling Conceptions of Indigenous Youth

First Nations children and young people, as the present manifestation of an Indigenous futurity, have always been integral sites where the settler colonial project of elimination has attempted to unfold. This chapter references the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody of Aboriginal People report and closing the gap rhetoric to argue that by framing First Nations people as intractably damaged the ongoing impacts of settler colonial harm are continually and reiteratively used against First Nations people, particularly young people, to justify further settler colonial intrusion often through the criminal justice and education systems. In making this point, I urge scholars in youth and critical Indigenous studies to seek out future imaginaries where First Nations children and young people are not knowable as deficient or damaged. To do so requires scholars to speak back to and research beyond and outside of racialized and normative conceptions of Indigenous youth, conceptions that are still overwhelmingly evident in current literature.