What is Settler Colonialism?

According to the Oxford Dictionary colonialism is “the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.”

Settler colonialism more specifically is a term for when the colonizer comes to stay and as such the distinction between the colony and the imperial nation is lost. Settler colonialism as a structure requires genocide. It is enacted through practices like the creation of reserves, residential schools, enfranchisement and abduction into state custody as well as practices like the extraction of natural resources through mining, pipelines and more. In settler colonialism “colonizers impose their own cultural values, religions, and laws, make policies that do not favour the Indigenous Peoples. They seize land and control the access to resources and trade.”

Settler colonialism involves the total appropriation of Indigenous life and land rather than the selective appropriation for profit (as is the case in other forms of colonialism). It is also distinct from other forms of colonialism because the colonizer comes with the intention of making a new home on the land and as such insists on “settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain.”

In settler colonialism the most important thing is land (water, earth, and air), because it is the source of capital and the new home of the settlers. It is also key to settler colonialism because “the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence.” This violence continues with every day of occupation as settler colonialism is a structure and not an event.

Beyond this the colonizers, in the process of settler colonialism, redefine the relationships between people and land as only being those of an owner to his property. All other relationships and connections to land are made to be pre-modern and backward as land is recast as property, a resource, and nothing more. This is done by the settlers through the destruction of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities and Indigenous peoples’ claims to land under settler regimes. In order for settler colonialism to occur, land is seen as a ‘resource’ and Indigenous peoples are erased so that the settlers can “truly claim ownership” of the land.

Settler colonialism as a structure requires genocide: the removal and erasure of Indigenous populations, communities, and nations that pre-exist the arrival and creation of the settler nation. Settlers have a responsibility to be part of dismantling the structures that preserve settler colonialism, because to preserve or reinforce these structures makes one complicit in genocide. Understanding settler colonialism can help non-Indigenous folk better support the global movements for Indigenous sovereignty which are central to dismantling settler colonialism and replacing this structure with something more just and sustainable.

Sources: 

“Decolonization is not a Metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (link)

“Colonization” in Pulling Together: Foundations Guide by Kory Wilson (link)