scholarly journals Working for Justice in Food Systems on Stolen Land? Interrogating Food Movements Confronting Settler Colonialism

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Bohunicky ◽  
Charles Levkoe ◽  
Nick Rose
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Food Movements ◽  
Northwestern Ontario ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Political Economic

The evolving practice and scholarship surrounding food movements aim to address social, political, economic and ecological crises in food systems. However, limited interrogation of settler colonialism remains a crucial gap. Settler colonialism is the ongoing process of invasion that works to systematically erase and replace Indigenous Peoples with settler populations and identities. While many progressive and well-intentioned food movements engage directly with issues of land, water, identity, and power, critics argue they have also reified capitalism, white supremacy, agro-centrism and private property that are central to the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous Peoples. Scholars and advocates have called for greater accountability to the contradictions inherent in working towards social and ecological justice on stolen land. We write this paper as three settler activist-scholars to interrogate ways that social movements are responding to this call. A community-engaged methodology was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with individuals working in settler-led food movement organizations in Northwestern Ontario, Canada and in Southern Australia. We present our findings through three intersecting categories: 1) Expressions of settler inaction; 2) Mere inclusion of Indigenous Peoples and ideas; and, 3) Productive engagements and visions to confront settler colonialism. To explore the possibility of deeper engagements that confront settler colonialism, we suggest a continuum that moves from situating our(settler)selves within the framework of settler colonialism to (re)negotiating relationships with Indigenous Peoples to actualizing productive positions of solidarity with Indigenous struggles. We argue that this work is essential for food movements that aim to transform relationships with the land, each other, and ultimately forge more sustainable and equitable food futures.

Domestic Colonies in Canada: Rethinking the Definition of Colony

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-519
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Mentally Disabled ◽  
Uncultivated Soil ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractWhat is a colony? In this article, I reconsider the meaning of colony in light of the existence of domestic colonies in Canada around the turn of the twentieth century. The two case studies examined are farm colonies for the mentally disabled and ill in Ontario and British Columbia and utopian colonies for Doukhobors in Saskatchewan. I show how both kinds of colonies are characterized by the same three principles found in Lockean settler colonialism: segregation, agrarian labour on uncultivated soil and improvement/cultivation of people and land. Defining “colony” in this way is theoretically interesting as it is different from the definition found in most dictionaries and post-colonial scholarship. There is also an inherent contradiction within domestic colonies as they both support state power over indigenous peoples, Doukhobors and the mentally ill and disabled but also challenge the principles of domination, individualism, private property and sovereignty upon which the Canadian settler state was founded.

From Locke to Slots: Money and the Politics of Indigeneity

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica R. Cattelino
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
American Indians ◽  
New World ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Constitutive Exclusion ◽  
Theories Of Money ◽  
The Impact

AbstractWith ongoing consequences for American Indians, the New World Indian has been a pervasive figure of constitutive exclusion in modern theories of money, property, and government. This paradoxical exclusion of indigenous peoples from the money/property/government complex is intrinsic to, and constitutive of, modern theories of money. What is more, it haunts the cultural politics of indigenous peoples’ economic actions. In Part I, I establish that, and how, indigeneity has been constitutively present at the foundation of modern theories of money, as Europeans and settlers defined indigenous peoples in part by the absence of money and property (of which money is a special form). In turn, and more to the point here, they defined money and property in part as that which modern non-indigenous people have and use. These are not solely economic matters: the conceptual exclusions from money/property were coproduced with juridical ones insofar as liberal political theory grounded the authority of modern government in private property (and, in turn, in money). To show how this formation of money and indigeneity has mattered both for disciplinary anthropology and for American public culture at several historical moments, Part II traces how the dilemmas expressed by these texts haunt subsequent debates about the function of wampum, the logic of potlatch, and the impact of tribal gaming. Such debates inform scholarship beyond the boundaries of anthropology and, as each case shows in brief, they create harms and benefits for peoples in ways that perpetuate the (il)logics and everyday practices of settler colonialism.

scholarly journals Settler allies are made, not self-proclaimed: Unsettling conversations for non-Indigenous researchers and educators involved in Indigenous health

2021 ◽  
pp. 001789692110092
Author(s):  
Tricia McGuire-Adams
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Indigenous Health ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Self Reflection

Background: While many settler allies are eager to help towards the goal of disrupting racism, a clearer understanding of how best to harness this eagerness is required within the field of Indigenous health, a field currently comprised mainly non-Indigenous scholars, researchers and educators. Purpose: Responding to this challenge, this article aims to identify ways of working towards disrupting settler colonialism and addressing racism in all of its manifestations by building settler allyship and adopting an anti-racist lens within the field of Indigenous health. The article describes how to approach building settler allyship by implementing anti-racist acts. Method: By using anti-racist scholarship and showcasing recent public examples of anti-Indigenous racism, the author describes how settler allies can approach developing unsettled, critical and anti-racist conversations with one another and in respectful ways with Indigenous peoples. As many Indigenous peoples continue to identify ongoing racism, there is a need for informed, unsettled, anti-racist allies willing to challenge their own complicity to then take action when anti-Indigenous racism occurs. Actions include critical self-reflection, confronting white supremacy and implementing demonstrably anti-racist acts. Conclusion: Findings provide the basis for amplifying unsettling conversations between engaged settler allies to develop anti-racist ways of fostering and extending relationships with Indigenous people and scholars.

scholarly journals Resurgence, refusal, and reconciliation through food movement organizations: A case study of Food Secure Canada’s 2018 Assembly

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Heather Elliott ◽  
Monica Mulrennan ◽  
Alain Cuerrier
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Black People ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
National Leader ◽  
Food Movements ◽  
Food Movement

Indigenous food systems have been sites of deliberate and sustained disruption in the service of the settler colonial project on Turtle Island. The revitalization of traditional foodways is a powerful and popular means through which Indigenous Peoples are practicing cultural and political resurgence. We are at a crucial moment of societal reckoning reinforced by recent anti-racist uprisings and Indigenous Land Back actions. In this context, food movements have an important role to play in addressing ongoing colonial impacts on Indigenous food systems by supporting Indigenous Food Sovereignty as a way to advance reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous Peoples. Since its founding in 2005, Food Secure Canada (FSC) has become a national leader in food movements in Canada and its biennial Assembly is arguably the largest food movement event in the country. Despite its sustained engagement with Indigenous Peoples and significant efforts toward inclusion, its 2018 Assembly saw Indigenous people, Black people, and other people of color expressing important concerns, culminating in a walk-out on the last day. To understand how these events might guide transformative reconciliation in and through food movements, we analyzed 124 post-Assembly qualitative questionnaires, held 10 interviews, and analyzed organizational archives, in addition to conducting participant observation throughout the following year. This research portrays the actions taken at the Assembly to be a refusal of settler structures and processes, and the creation of a caucus space for Indigenous people, Black people, and other people of color as an act of resurgence. Engagement with FSC by a number of those involved with the protests throughout the year that followed, and the resultant commitment to center decolonization in FSC’s work, reveal the intimate connection between resurgence and reconciliation. These acts of generative refusal and resurgence are an essential part of efforts toward reconciliation without assimilation, aligned in a shared struggle toward the decolonized futures at the heart of food sovereignty for all.

Indigenous Planning: From Forced Assimilation to Self-determination

2021 ◽  
pp. 088541222110266
Author(s):  
Michael Hibbard
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Indigenous Planning ◽  
Indigenous Land Rights ◽  
Indigenous Land

Interest in Indigenous planning has blossomed in recent years, particularly as it relates to the Indigenous response to settler colonialism. Driven by land and resource hunger, settler states strove to extinguish Indigenous land rights and ultimately to destroy Indigenous cultures. However, Indigenous peoples have persisted. This article draws on the literature to examine the resistance of Indigenous peoples to settler colonialism, their resilience, and the resurgence of Indigenous planning as a vehicle for Indigenous peoples to determine their own fate and to enact their own conceptions of self-determination and self-governance.

Jeremy Bentham: Pauperism, Colonialism, and Imperialism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
BARBARA ARNEIL
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor ◽  
First Contact

Using two recently published folios by Jeremy Bentham, I draw out a fundamental but little-analyzed connection between pauperism and both domestic and settler colonialism in opposition to imperialism in his thought. The core theoretical contribution of this article is to draw a distinction between a colonial, internal, and productive form of power that claims to improve people and land from within, which Bentham defends, and an imperial, external, and repressive form of power that dominates or rules over people from above and afar, that he rejects. Inherent in colonialism and the power unleashed by it are specific and profoundly negative implications in practice for the poor and disabled of Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries subject to domestic colonialism and indigenous peoples subject to settler colonialism from first contact until today. I conclude Bentham is best understood as a pro-colonialist and anti-imperialist thinker.

scholarly journals Origins: Colonies and Statistics

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 735-754
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
English Language ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Mass Survey ◽  
Waste Land ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn this address, I examine the lexical, geographic, temporal and philosophical origins of two key concepts in modern political thought: colonies and statistics. Beginning with the Latin word colonia, I argue that the modern ideology of settler colonialism is anchored in the claim of “improvement” of both people and land via agrarian labour in John Locke's labour theory of property in seventeenth-century America, through which he sought to provide an ideological justification for both the assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. This same ideology of colonialism was turned inward a century later by Sir John Sinclair to justify domestic colonies on “waste” land in Scotland—specifically Caithness (the county within which my own grandparents were tenant farmers). Domestic colonialism understood as “improvement” of people (the “idle” poor and mentally ill and disabled) through engagement in agrarian labour on waste land inside explicitly named colonies within the borders of one's own country was first championed not only by Sinclair but also his famous correspondent, Jeremy Bentham, in England. Sinclair simultaneously coined the word statistics and was the first to use it in the English language. He defined it as the scientific gathering of mass survey data to shape state policies. Bentham embraced statistics as well. In both cases, statistics were developed and deployed to support their domestic colony schemes by creating a benchmark and roadmap for the improvement of people and land as well as a tool to measure the colony's capacity to achieve both over time. I conclude that settler colonialism along with the intertwined origins of domestic colonies and statistics have important implications for the study of political science in Canada, the history of colonialism as distinct from imperialism in modern political thought and the role played by intersecting colonialisms in the Canadian polity.

Re-presenting Genocide: The Canadian Museum of Human Rights and Settler Colonial Power

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Kaur Dhamoon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
Forced Movement

AbstractIn settler societies like Canada, United States, and Australia, the bourgeoning discourse that frames colonial violence against Indigenous people as genocide has been controversial, specifically because there is much debate about the meaning and applicability of genocide. Through an analysis of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, this paper analyzes what is revealed about settler colonialism in the nexus of difficult knowledge, curatorial decisions, and political debates about the label of genocide. I specifically examine competing definitions of genocide, the primacy of the Holocaust, the regulatory role of the settler state, and the limits of a human rights framework. My argument is that genocide debates related to Indigenous experiences operationalize a range of governing techniques that extend settler colonialism, even as Indigenous peoples confront existing hegemonies. These techniques include: interpretative denial; promoting an Oppression Olympics and a politics of distancing; regulating difference through state-based recognition and interference; and depoliticizing claims that overshadow continuing practices of assimilation, extermination, criminalization, containment, and forced movement of Indigenous peoples. By pinpointing these techniques, this paper seeks to build on Indigenous critiques of colonialism, challenge settler national narratives of peaceful and lawful origins, and foster ways to build more just relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

Protecting the Empire's Humanity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Laidlaw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
British Colonialism

Rooted in the extraordinary archive of Quaker physician and humanitarian activist, Dr Thomas Hodgkin, this book explores the efforts of the Aborigines' Protection Society to expose Britain's hypocrisy and imperial crimes in the mid-nineteenth century. Hodgkin's correspondents stretched from Liberia to Lesotho, New Zealand to Texas, Jamaica to Ontario, and Bombay to South Australia; they included scientists, philanthropists, missionaries, systematic colonizers, politicians and indigenous peoples themselves. Debating the best way to protect and advance indigenous rights in an era of burgeoning settler colonialism, they looked back to the lessons and limitations of anti-slavery, lamented the imperial government's disavowal of responsibility for settler colonies, and laid out elaborate (and patronizing) plans for indigenous 'civilization'. Protecting the Empire's Humanity reminds us of the complexity, contradictions and capacious nature of British colonialism and metropolitan 'humanitarianism', illuminating the broad canvas of empire through a distinctive set of British and Indigenous campaigners.

Investigating Corruption in the Afghan Police Force

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Singh
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Police Corruption ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Political Economic

This book provides a unique study on the lower ranks of the Afghan police force due to the lack of empirical evidence of what attributes to the causes, practices and consequences of corruption in this institution. The book is divided into a number of sections. It commences with an understanding of how corruption, and narrowly police corruption, impact on the police force, state legitimacy and the strategies in place to mitigate such problems as part of broader security and post-conflict reconstruction initiatives. The theoretical framework comprises political, economic and cultural drivers of police corruption by drawing on semi-structured interviews with elites and a survey and structured interview conducted with street-level police officers. The findings infer that weak oversight and low pay are causes of police corruption which intensify bribery and roadside extortion. The lack of professionalism, partly due to short and unclear training, and patronage are deemed as meanings of police corruption. In terms of motivation, there is no sense of pride in Afghan policing to fulfil a clear mandate. Moreover, non-meritocratic recruitment is prevalent which exacerbates local influences, loyalties and job buying in either high-drug cultivating or urban areas. To curb patronage, police officers are rotated to distant provinces but economic hardship is further increased when catering for large families with fewer breadwinners. The book concludes that the problems with police corruption and failure to combat it results in low public confidence and state illegitimacy which can support violent opposition groups to create further instability in war-torn societies.

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