Settler ColonialismAlicia CoxLAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0029IntroductionSettler colonialism is an ongoing system of power that perpetuates the genocide and repression of indigenous peoples and cultures. Essentially hegemonic in scope, settler colonialism normalizes the continuous settler occupation, exploiting lands and resources to which indigenous peoples have genealogical relationships. Settler colonialism includes interlocking forms of oppression, including racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism. This is because settler colonizers are Eurocentric and assume that European values with respect to ethnic, and therefore moral, superiority are inevitable and natural. However, these intersecting dimensions of settler colonialism coalesce around the dispossession of indigenous peoples’ lands, resources, and cultures. The evolving field of settler colonialism studies arose from scholarship in Native American and indigenous studies that engages with postcolonial studies and critiques the post- in “postcolonial” as inappropriate for understanding ongoing systems of domination in such places as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where colonialism is not a thing of the past because the settlers have come to stay, displacing the indigenous peoples and perpetuating systems that continue to erase native lives, cultures, and histories. Foundational theories in settler colonialism studies distinguish settler colonialism from classical colonialism through work that demonstrates that settler colonizers destroy indigenous peoples and cultures in order to replace them and establish themselves as the new rightful inhabitants. In other words, settler colonizers do not merely exploit indigenous peoples and lands for labor and economic interests; they displace them through settlements. In his groundbreaking theory of the “logic of elimination,” Patrick Wolfe shows that settler colonialism is a system, not a historical event, and that as such it perpetuates the erasure of native peoples as a precondition for settler expropriation of lands and resources, providing the necessary conditions for establishing the present-day ideology of multicultural neoliberalism. Show
General OverviewsWolfe 1998, Wolfe 2006, and Veracini 2011 distinguish settler colonialism studies as an academic field by defining settler colonialism’s differences from classical colonialism. Veracini 2010 fills a gap in national and imperial historiographies by addressing the global and transnational nature of settler colonialism. Wolfe 2006 articulates the organizing “logic of elimination” that structures settler colonialism as a perpetual system of indigenous erasure rather than a historical event.
PostcolonialismCheyfitz 2002 is representative of scholarship in indigenous studies that calls postcolonial studies to task for neglecting issues of colonialism in the United States and points out that the post- in postcolonial does not apply to the political situation of indigenous peoples for whom colonization is certainly not a thing of the past. Hoxie 2008 and Byrd and Rothberg 2011 suggest ways that postcolonial studies and indigenous studies may usefully intersect. Byrd 2011, Lowe 2015, and Vizenor 1999 engage postcolonial scholarship such as Bhabha 1994 to explore articulations of indigeneity and the global implications of settler colonialism.
Indigenous SovereigntyThe legal definition of indigenous sovereignty is based in the history of treaty making between the United States and tribal nations. This history positions US federal Indian policy in the context of international law and establishes the right of tribes to deal with the United States on a nation-to-nation basis. Since the era of treaty making ended in 1871, the US government has repeatedly redefined indigenous sovereignty through official policy changes. As Bruyneel 2007 and Cook-Lynn 1997 show, the definition of indigenous sovereignty remains highly contested in the academy, although it has served as a unifying goal for native nations and native scholarship to resist colonial domination. Alfred 1999, Corntassel and Witmer 2008, and Morgensen 2011 address the ways that native nationalism shores up the US nation-state and its status as an overriding sovereign because US recognition and conferral of indigenous sovereignty often requires native nations to adopt US forms of nationalism (including heteropatriarchy, privatization of lands, corporatism, and racialization). These critics point out that the US model of nationalism is not traditional to indigenous systems of governance and has been shown, moreover, to be oppressive of individuals among native communities, particularly women, sexual minorities, and “mixed-race” Indians. Some native scholars call for theorizing indigenous self-determination beyond “sovereignty.” Others attempt to redefine “sovereignty” to render it useful for native peoples and distinguish indigenous sovereignty as distinct from settler state power. Barker 2005a and Barker 2005b define indigenous sovereignty as always contingent on history and location.
US Federal Indian PolicyUS federal Indian policy constitutes the legal conditions of indigenous sovereignty in the United States. Adams 1995, Lomawaima 1994, and Million 2013 explore indigenous peoples’ experiences of and responses to policies designed to forcibly assimilate native peoples into settler culture, including compulsory education in Indian boarding schools in the United States and residential schools for First Nations peoples in Canada. Ramirez 2007 examines the social and cultural positions of urban natives in the wake of the Termination and Relocation era of federal Indian policy. Rifkin 2012 examines queer native authors’ engagement with the legal concept of indigenous sovereignty as “self-determination.” Hixson 2013 uses settler colonialism as a frame of reference for understanding American history and the rise of the United States to global dominance.
Ideological Sovereignty and Indigenous EpistemologyScholars of Native American studies have located indigenous sovereignty not only as a legal position but also in indigenous peoples’ art, land, languages, and sexual and gender identities. Deloria 1998, Huhndorf 2001, and Raheja 2011 explore the problems of settler colonizers’ appropriations of indigenous images and cultures and assert the sovereign right of indigenous peoples to represent themselves. Warrior 1994; Weaver, et al. 2006; and Womack 1999 articulate the aims and methods of American Indian literary nationalism, which may be understood as a Native American form of new historicism (see the Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory article “New Historicism” by Neema Parvini). Lyons 2000 and Lyons 2010 address the paradox of writing as a tool both of native peoples’ dispossession and indigenous sovereignty struggles.
RaceAccording to Patrick Wolfe, race is an “organizing grammar” that divides humans into ethnic categories and normalizes white supremacy to justify indigenous genocide and settler colonialism (see Wolfe 2006, cited under General Overviews). Settler colonizers employed contradictory racialization processes to eliminate American Indian peoples and replace them with enslaved Africans whose progeny inherited a black racial identity, regardless of the presence of white or native parentage, to proliferate the population of slaves, exploit their labor, and extract value from lands possessed through the displacement of native peoples. By contrast, settler colonialism’s logic of elimination encourages native miscegenation with white people to “breed white” indigenous peoples over time and enervate their claims to indigenous identity and therefore land. As a key element of settler colonialism, the ideology of white supremacy justifies European settlers’ dispossession of indigenous peoples’ lands and asserts that white settlers are more deserving. Understood as the “manifest destiny” of Protestant Christians to bring salvation to the savages, settler colonialism functions instead as the justificatory narrative for taking possession of native lands. RacializationBeginning in 1887 with the implementation of the General Allotment Act, the United States imposed blood quantum requirements for citizens of native nations. The quantification of “Indian blood” defined indigenous peoples’ identities on the basis of colonial categorizations of racial heritage. For instance, a person with two Indian parents was a “full-blood” Indian, while a person with one Indian and one white parent was a “half-blood Indian,” and the child of a half-blood Indian and a white person was a “quarter-blood” Indian, and so on. Jaimes 1992 and Kauanui 2008 examine how this system of racialization assumes that, through miscegenation, indigenous peoples’ legal identity claims (and therefore land claims) will progressively decrease over the generations, leaving all land and resources for settlers. TallBear 2013 examines how DNA is replacing blood as the biological stuff of Indian racial identity, and Banivanua-Mar and Edmonds 2010 explores the development of settler-colonial spaces through processes of racialization that meant to dispossess indigenous peoples’ places throughout the Pacific Rim.
Settlers of ColorAlthough white supremacy is a key component of settler colonialism as it is constituted by European imperialism throughout the globe, not all settlers are white. After the end of slavery in the United States, for example, black Americans moved to Indian territories and occupied lands from which native peoples had recently been removed; indentured servants from China worked to build the railroads that were used as weapons of Native American removal, frontier homicide, and cultural destruction; and immigrants from countries around the world still appeal to the United States for citizenship, recognizing and therefore perpetuating US power as a settler-colonial nation-state. Discourses on “settlers of color” explore the distinctions among immigrants, imported laborers (whether enslaved or indentured), and refugees in settler-colonial territories, who, consciously or unconsciously, and although they may be minority or oppressed populations within the settler-colonial state, nonetheless participate in the structure of settler colonialism in a way that maintains the settler nation-state and proliferates injustices for indigenous peoples, as noted in Fujikane and Okamura 2008 and Trask 2000. Amadahy and Lawrence 2009 and Miles and Holland 2006 attend to the interrelationship of black Americans and Native Americans.
DecolonizationDecolonizing theories and narratives reject the notion of Western superiority. Decolonization remains an evolving concept that assumes we may transform current colonial conditions and work to build indigenous peoples’ futurity in the face of ongoing settler-colonial attempts to eliminate native peoples. Haunani-Kay Trask (Trask 1999) and other scholars define decolonization as the theory and practice of working to achieve indigenous peoples’ empowerment and justice. Some scholars contend that the de- in decolonization falsely suggests that we can undo the processes of colonization and return to a pure, authentic precolonial way of being indigenous. This fantasy is a dangerous one not only because it is impossible but because it excludes indigenous people who don’t meet traditional standards of native identity. Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua 2013 addresses the difficulties of putting decolonization theories into practice. Arvin, et al. 2013 and Smith 2012 argue that decolonization involves indigenous peoples’ interventions in scholarship about native peoples and the creation of alliances to transform settler-colonial processes in the academy. Brooks 2008 and Silva 2004 highlight native peoples’ use of writing to provide revisionist histories of settler colonization.
Recognition and RefusalCoulthard 2007, Coulthard 2014, Simpson 2014, and Simpson 2007 argue that struggles for decolonization require the implementation of indigenous sovereignty beyond settler-colonial state recognition of it because, paradoxically, recognition by the settler state perpetuates settler-colonial domination.
Gender and SexualityInterventions of gender and sexuality studies in Native American and indigenous studies assert that gendered forms of violence—including the imposition of heteronormativity and patriarchy—are key components of the structure of settler colonialism. Indigenous Feminist TheoriesSettler-colonial processes sought to destroy indigenous matriarchal systems and institute European patriarchy as the law of the land. Indigenous feminist scholarship such as Gabriel 2011 acknowledges the ways that indigenous communities often internalize the settler-colonial ideology of heteropatriarchy. Allen 1986 and Goeman and Denetdale 2009 note the erasure of Indian women as significant figures in scholarship on indigenous history and culture. Smith 2015 demonstrates that gender violence is an inherent quality of settler colonialism, and sexual violence is a prime method of American Indian genocide. Indigenous feminist theories assert that domestic violence against indigenous women is an aspect of settler colonialism, contesting the view that indigenous sovereignty and gender justice are separate political goals. Goeman 2013 characterizes settler colonialism as a system of gendered spatial violence, while Green 2007, Hall 2009, Ramirez 2007, and Smith 2008 argue that gender justice must be part of any strategy or theory of decolonization. Barker 2006 explores a notorious case in which politically powerful native men appealed to indigenous sovereignty to justify legal discrimination against native women.
Queer Indigenous StudiesQueer indigenous studies is a burgeoning field that explores the critical intersections of Native American studies and queer theory. Scholarship in queer indigenous studies such as Rifkin 2011 explores how settler colonialism institutionalizes heteronormativity—an ideology that assumes that heterosexuality is normal, males should be masculine, females should be feminine, and alternative sexual orientations or gender identities or expressions are abnormal or pathological—through legislation that liquidates communal land ownership and coerces society into patriarchal, patrilineal, private-property-owning nuclear families. Morgensen 2011 is representative of analyses by scholars in queer indigenous studies who call gay liberation movements to task for appealing to the United States for civil rights, thereby supporting state power that continues to colonize and dispossess indigenous peoples of their land and even to appropriate traditional indigenous nonheteronormative gender and sexual identities. Driskill 2004; Driskill, et al. 2011; Justice, et al. 2010; Miranda 2010; Rifkin 2012; and Tatonetti 2014 explore strategies for decolonizing indigenous peoples’ genders and sexualities.
Global Indigenous PerspectivesGlobal perspectives of indigeneity have flourished in the wake of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Allen 2012 studies indigenous cultural works in relation to each other and argues that transindigenous literary study resists the indigenous/settler binary. Barker 2005; Driskill, et al. 2011; Green 2007; Limbrick 2010; Laidlaw and Lester 2015; and Shigematsu and Camacho 2010 apply scholarship in settler-colonial studies to global contexts, consider the issues of indigenous peoples around the globe in relation to each other, or both. Rodinson 1973 and Sharif 2016 examine settler colonialism in the State of Israel.
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English colonizers attempted to justify appropriating Indian lands based on the idea that
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