Ongoing Colonial Violence in Settler States

Response to J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, “A Structure, Not an Event: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity,” published in Lateral 5.1. Jafri articulates how a critical race feminist/queer lens makes possible thinking that sees the repetitions of racialized, gendered, sexualized colonial violence. In this post, I extend J. Kēhaulani Kauanui’s incisive Lateral essay on the analytic of settler colonialism. Kauanui’s discussion underscores implications of understanding settler colonialism as a structure, rather than an event, while insisting on the centrality of indigeneity to discussions of settler colonialism. In line with that discussion, I re ect here on my own introduction to, and relationship with, settler colonial studies, offering an alternate trajectory and context for this work that makes visible some of the distinct stakes for those of us who are engaged in queer/feminist of color and decolonizing research and activism. I outline some of the distinctions between early work on ongoing colonialism by critical race and Native feminist scholars that preceded the institutionalized formation of settler colonial studies, while also distinguishing both of these from the approaches found in Indigenous Studies. For fellow scholars engaged in settler colonial studies, I emphasize the signi cance of developing scholarship that is invested in addressing entangled forms of racialized and colonial violence, rather than reproducing elds or disciplines. When I began a project on coalition building between Indigenous peoples and people of color as an MA student in Canada in 2005, “settler colonial studies” was not yet established as a eld. However, I was able to draw on the work of scholars such as Bonita Lawrence, Enakshi Dua, Sherene Razack, Patricia Monture and Lee Maracle to speak of ongoing colonial violence in white settler societies. Maracle’s I Am Woman develops an early Native feminist framework through an account of everyday colonialism and its gendered intersections; Monture’s Journeying Forward presents a critique of the notion of self-determination, arguing instead for the independence of First Nations; Lawrence’s Real Indian and Others situates the tensions surrounding “mixed-blood” Natives in terms of the Canadian Indian Act, which regulates Indigenous identity and access to treaty rights; Lawrence’s highly provocative essay, co-written with Enakshi Dua, “Decolonizing Antiracism,” argues that theories of race, diaspora, and postcoloniality, along with antiracism activism, reproduce the colonial discourses and ideologies of settler states; Razack’s edited collection, Race, Space and the Law draws on critical race and gender studies to examine the spatial violence of white settler societies. Maracle and Monture do not use the language of “settlers,” “settler-colonials,” or “settler state.” Razack, Lawrence, and Dua use these terms primarily to describe the patterns of capitalist development that are particular to the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand: White settlement of these lands required the erasure and displacement of Indigenous peoples 1