Theorizing Settler Colonialism: Alternative Indigenous Methodologies

Abstract

Feminist Studies 45, no. 2/3. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 455 Jennifer McLerran Theorizing Settler Colonialism: Alternative Indigenous Methodologies In Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism, Chickasaw scholar Jodi Byrd asserts that US imperialism propagates itself, expanding into new territories through a “transferable ‘Indianness .’”1 Positioning those it wishes to dominate and whose land and resources it seeks to appropriate as “savage” facilitates its project. Building on the theories of Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe, Byrd asserts that this process continues into the present through settler colonialism .2 Byrd notes, “How we have come to know intimacy, kinship, and identity within an empire born out of settler colonialism is predicated upon discourses of indigenous displacements that remain with the present everydayness of settler colonialism, even if its constellations have been naturalized by hegemony.”3 Wolfe argues that settler colonialism, which is predicated on the disappearance of the Indigenous subject, is a structure, not an event; and, because it structures modern Western culture in seemingly intractable ways, it remains with us today. Byrd 1. Jodi A. Byrd, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 5. 2. Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London: Continuum International , 1999); Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409; Patrick Wolfe, “Structure and Event: Settler Colonialism, Time, and the Question of Genocide,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008), 102–132. 3. Byrd, xviii. 456 Jennifer McLerran Books Discussed in This Essay Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. Edited by Joanne Barker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (Indigenous Americas series). By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. asserts, “Our contemporary challenge is to theorize alternative methodologies to address the problems imperialism continues to create” (xxvi). She explains, “The challenge facing indigenous studies in the academy is not just the need to negotiate the Western colonial biases that render indigenous peoples as precolonial ethnographic purveyors of cultural authenticity instead of scholars capable of research and insight, but also the need to respect the local specificities, histories and geographies that inform the concept of indigeneity” (xxix). The best Indigenous critical theory, Byrd asserts, is first grounded in Indigenous epistemologies and the specific beliefs and practices of the communitiesfromwhichtheyoriginateandwhichtheysustain.Founded on an Indigenous base, such theory may then be productively explored in relation to European cultural and legal systems. Byrd explains, “Indigenous critical theory could be said to exist in its best form when it centers itself within indigenous epistemologies and the specificities of the communities and cultures from which it emerges and then looks outward to engage European philosophical, legal, and cultural traditions in order to build upon all the allied tools available . . . indigenous critical theory has the potential in this mode to offer a transformative accountability ” (xxx). Indigenous scholars have risen to this task, grounding Indigenous theory in local epistemologies, transforming the discourse, and opening Jennifer McLerran 457 new avenues of inquiry. Works by three innovative theorists, Lenape scholar Joanne Barker, Native Hawaiian J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, and Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson are reviewed here. Each explores Indigenous strategies of resistance to settler colonialism. Barker advocates for a heuristic based on a “polity of the Indigenous,” which she describes as “the unique governance, territory, and culture of Indigenous peoples in unique and related systems of (non)-human relationships and responsibilities to one another” (5). Positioning her arguments in the context of critical Indigenous, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, Barker stresses the importance of sovereignty and self-determination as well as critical exploration of the ways in which these values are represented, conceived, and exercised. Barker begins with a discussion of the terms and debates that comprise the intellectual genealogy of “critical Indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies” (5). Her introduction and the essays comprising...