Round 1 – Texas

1AC

Same as USC

2AC Perm best way to solve- decolonizing option opens a space for strong-allied criticism- even if it’s just a theoretical questioningKovach 09

(Margaret, Indigenous Methodologies, Ch. 4: “Applying a Decolonizing Lens within Indigenous Research Frameworks,” Pg. 86//wyo-mm)

Knowing our history, the politics of our oppression, and the desire for reclamation, it is difficult to imagine an Indigenous methodology , at this time, without a decolonizing motivation . Such a perspective is functional. It can act as a bridge between two worlds , for it is a terrain where the Western academy best understands what we are saying. Not all those in the academy necessarily agree

with such an Indigenous stance, but the decolonizing discourse is one with which both cultures are familiar. It is here that we are able to access some of the strongest allied theoretical critiques . Non-Indigenous critical theorists are strong allies for Indigenous methodologies. They can assist in making space for Indigenous methods (protocols, ethics, data collection processes), but also for the epistemic shift from a Western paradigm that Indigenous methodologies bring. In this effort, critical theorists will be asked to consider a worldview that holds beliefs about power, where it comes from, and how it is manifested, which will, at times, align with

Western thought and at other times not. While this may pose a challenge, it is likely that even if critical theorists cannot fully embrace Indigenous methodologies , they would argue that doing so can be a legitimate option.

It is possible to speak about racism from privileged positions as long as they are tied to a position of reflexivity- failure to acknowledge racism is worse and leads to the abdication of political responsibility Crenshaw 97

(Carrie, Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech Communication , University of Alabama, Western Journal of Communication, “Resisting whiteness' rhetorical silence,” 1997, Taylor and Francis) /wyo-mm

Another difficulty related to talking about race is what Alcoff has called "the problem of speaking for others." White people's voices have always been privileged, even if they are attempting to resist racism. If one pretends one's own privileged social location has no impact on her ability to make epistemic claims, the result may very well be the continuation or (re)production of oppression. Indeed, one part of the experience of oppression is to be (mis)represented by others who enjoy the power to speak and to be heard by virtue of their social location.

Another is to go unheard in an overwhelming cacophony of privileged voices (Alcoff 6-7). On the other hand, a retreat from argument may constitute a kind of privileged narcissism that abdicates political responsibility and social interconnectedness in favor of political apathy . It is safer for a white privileged person to walk away from these issues or to refuse the discussion of racialized personal experience in abstract conversation about racism. Even if the choice to be silent is principled, it can often lead to political inefficacy. Refusing to talk about white privilege will not make it

go away . Worse still, a retreat may only serve to " conceal the actual authorizing power of the retreating intellectual " (Alcoff 22), and thus, constitute nothing less than complicity with whiteness' rhetorical silence. The question we must answer, then, is this: can white scholars speak to the issue of racism without speaking for or crowding out the voices of people of color? It is important to find a way to answer this question affirmatively because otherwise, in the wake of white critics' retreat into political apathy and social

disconnectedness, all the moral and political work of resisting racism is left solely to people of color. Both of these problems, the impact of this scholarship and the problem of speaking for others, reflect a concern for whether critical race scholarship will become “white assimilated.” White assimilation occurs when critical race scholarship is coopted by privileged academics who conduct research to further their own careers but do not question the institutional structures that reflect the precise relations of oppres sion they are criticizing (hooks, Yearning 54—55). It also occurs when our students coopt the recognition of the social construction of race into arguments for color-blind models that maintain silence about white privilege. The major difficulty is that most white people do not see themselves as racist and, therefore, do not recognize forms of institution alized racism because of the ideological invisibility of both institutional ized racism and personal white

privilege stemming from it. As a result, many authors have argued convincingly that anti-racist scholarship and teaching must be guided by a commitment to resist both institutional and personal forms of racism (e.g., Brah; Giiroy; hooks, Killing). Specifically, critical race scholars have advocated a strategy of self-reflexivity in research and teaching as a way of grappling with these problems (e.g., hooks,

Yearning 51—55; Nakayama and Krizek 303—305). In this study, I have suggested that Moseley Braun’s choice of an enactment strategy may offer one way to think about self-reflexive ideological resistance to racism in our scholarship and teaching.

Testimonials key- opens up space for sex workers to be actively involved in spaces and affect change in ways that suit their needsMeulen 11

(Emily van der, Action Research, “Action research with sex workers: Dismantling barriers and building birdges,” 2011, Safe Publications) /wyo-mm

These incongruent ideological positions can lead to opposing methodological stances and positions. Local stakeholder Julia was articulate in her arguments for inclusive research with sex workers: ‘Looking at the history of research that has been done on sex workers and how sex workers are almost invariably represented as degraded or victimized . . . speaks to the need for sex workers to be much more involved in any research about sex workers or the sex industry .’ Indeed, when sex workers are seen solely as victims of oppression, ‘outsider’ research on sex work tends to situate prostitution as a moral issue and focuses on how to eradicate the sex industry. Conversely,

when sex workers are respected as active agents of change, capable of making informed decisions, research tends to be much less imbued with moralism and instead includes sex workers’ own experiences and suggestions for improvements. An action research framework, where sex workers are actively involved in the research design, implementation, analysis, and dissem ination, can be a highly effective way to challenge problematic conceptualizations and to ensure that the voices of the community are not overshadowed by ideology.

Visibility is good even if there’s some commodification—1 risk means you vote affKleinman et al 96

(Arthur and Joan Kleinman. “The appeal of experience; the dismay of images: Cultural appropriations of suffering in our times,” Daedalus. Winter 1996. Vol.125, Iss. 1; pg. 1-24)

It is ¶ necessary ¶ to balance the account of the ¶ globalization ¶ of ¶ commercial and ¶ professional

images ¶ with a ¶ vastly ¶ different and ¶ even more ¶ dangerous ¶ cultural ¶ process ¶ of ¶ appropriation: ¶ the totali ¶ tarian state's erasure of social ¶ experiences ¶ of ¶ suffering through ¶ the ¶ suppression ¶ of ¶ images . ¶ Here the ¶ possibility ¶ of moral ¶ appeal through ¶ images ¶ of

human ¶ misery ¶ is ¶ prevented, ¶ and it is their absence that ¶ is the source of existential ¶ dismay . ¶ Such is the case with the massive starvation in China from 1959 ¶ to 1961. This ¶ story ¶ was not ¶ reported ¶ at the time even ¶ though ¶ more ¶ than ¶ thirty ¶ million Chinese died in the aftermath of the ruinous ¶ policies ¶ of the Great ¶ Leap Forward, ¶ the ¶ perverse ¶ effect of Mao's ¶ impossible ¶ dream of ¶ forcing

¶ immediate industrialization on ¶ peas ¶ ants. Accounts of ¶ this, ¶ the world's most ¶ devastating famine, ¶ were ¶ totally suppressed ; ¶ no stories or ¶ pictures ¶ of the ¶ starving ¶ or the ¶ dead were ¶ published. ¶ An internal ¶ report ¶ on the famine was made ¶ by ¶ an ¶ investigating ¶ team for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist ¶ Party. ¶ It was based on a detailed ¶ survey ¶ of an ¶ extremely poor region ¶ of ¶ Anwei Province that was ¶ particularly brutally ¶ affected. The ¶ report ¶ includes this ¶ numbing ¶ statement ¶ by ¶ Wei ¶ Wu-ji, ¶ a ¶ local ¶ peasant ¶ leader from Anwei: ¶ Originally ¶ there were ¶ 5,000 people ¶ in our ¶ commune, ¶ now ¶ only ¶ 3,200 ¶ remain. When the ¶ Japanese ¶ invaded we did not lose this ¶ many: ¶ we at least could save ourselves ¶ by running away! ¶ This ¶ year ¶ there's no ¶ escape. ¶ We die shut ¶ up ¶ in our own houses. Of ¶ my ¶ 6 ¶ family members, ¶ 5 are ¶ already dead, ¶ and I am left to ¶ starve, ¶ and I'll ¶ not be able to stave off death for ¶ long.30 ¶ Wei ¶ Wu-ji ¶ continued: ¶ Wang Jia-feng ¶ from West ¶ Springs County reported ¶ that cases of ¶ eating ¶ human meat were discovered. ¶ Zhang Sheng-jiu said, "Only ¶ an evil man could do such a ¶ thing!" Wang Jia-feng said, ¶ "In ¶ 1960, ¶ there were 20 in our ¶ household, ¶ ten of them died last ¶ year. My ¶ son ¶ told his mother Til die of ¶ hunger ¶ in a few ¶ days.'" ¶ And indeed he ¶ did.31 ¶ The ¶ report ¶ also includes a ¶ graphic image by ¶ Li ¶ Qin-ming, ¶ from ¶ Wudian ¶ County, Shanwang Brigade: In ¶ 1959, ¶ we were ¶ prescheduled ¶ to deliver ¶ 58,000 jin ¶ of ¶ grain ¶ to the ¶ State, ¶ but ¶ only 35,000 jin ¶ were ¶ harvested, ¶ hence we ¶ only ¶ turned ¶ over ¶ 33,000 jin, ¶ which left ¶ 2,000 jin ¶ for the commune. We ¶ really ¶ have ¶ nothing ¶ to eat. The ¶ peasants ¶ eat ¶ hemp leaves, anything they ¶ can ¶ possibly ¶ eat. In ¶ my ¶ last ¶ report ¶ after I ¶ wrote, ¶ "We have ¶ nothing ¶ to ¶ eat," ¶ the ¶ Party ¶ told me ¶ they ¶ wanted to remove ¶ my ¶ name from the ¶ Party ¶ Roster. Out of a ¶ population ¶ of ¶ 280, ¶ 170 died. In our ¶ family ¶ of ¶ five, ¶ four of us have died ¶ leaving only myself. ¶ Should I ¶ say ¶ that ¶ I'm not broken hearted?32 ¶ Chen ¶ Zhang-yu, ¶ from ¶ Guanyu County, ¶ offered the ¶ investigators ¶ this terrible ¶ image: ¶ Last ¶ spring ¶ the ¶ phenomenon ¶ of cannibalism ¶ appeared. ¶ Since Com ¶ rade Chao Wu-chu could not come ¶ up ¶ with ¶ any good ways ¶ of ¶ prohibiting it, ¶ he ¶ put ¶ out the order to ¶ secretly imprison ¶ those who ¶ seemed to be at death's door to combat the rumors. He ¶ secretly ¶ imprisoned ¶ 63 ¶ people ¶ from the entire ¶ country. Thirty-three ¶ died in ¶ prison.33 ¶ The official ¶ report ¶ is ¶ thorough ¶ and detailed. It is classified ¶ neibu, ¶ restricted use ¶ only. ¶ To distribute it is to reveal state secrets. Pre ¶ sented ¶ publicly ¶ it would have ¶ been, especially ¶ if it had been ¶ pub ¶ lished in the ¶ 1960s, ¶ a fundamental ¶ critique ¶ of the Great ¶ Leap, ¶ and ¶ a moral and ¶ political delegitimation ¶ of the Chinese Communist ¶ Party's ¶ claim to have ¶ improved ¶ the life of ¶

poor peasants. ¶ Even ¶ today ¶ the authorities ¶ regard ¶ it as ¶ dangerous. ¶ The official silence is ¶ a nother form of ¶ appropriation. ¶ It ¶ prevents public witnessing. ¶ It ¶ forges ¶ a secret ¶ history, ¶ an act of ¶ political ¶ resistance ¶ through keep ¶ ing ¶ alive the ¶ memory ¶ of ¶ things ¶ denied.34 The totalitarian state rules ¶ by ¶ collective ¶ forgetting, by denying ¶ the collective ¶ experience ¶ of ¶ suffering , ¶ and thus creates a culture of terror . ¶ The absent ¶ image ¶ is also a form of ¶ political appropriation; ¶ public ¶ silence is ¶ perhaps ¶ more ¶ terrifying ¶ than ¶ being ¶ overwhelmed ¶ by public images ¶ of ¶ atrocity. ¶ Taken ¶ together ¶ the two modes of ¶ appropriation ¶ delimit the extremes in this cultural ¶ process. 35 ¶ CODA ¶ Our ¶ critique ¶ of ¶

appropriations ¶ of ¶ suffering ¶ that do harm does not ¶ mean that no ¶ appropriations ¶ are valid. To conclude that would be o undermine ¶ any attempt ¶ to ¶ respond ¶ to human ¶ misery. ¶ It would ¶ be much more destructive than the ¶ problem ¶ we have ¶

identified; ¶ it ¶ would ¶ paralyze ¶ social action. We must draw ¶ upon ¶ the ¶ images ¶ of ¶ human ¶ suffering ¶ in order to ¶ identify ¶ human needs and to craft ¶ humane ¶ responses.

Rejecting Identity is based on western conceptions of individual freedom that ignore the way that Indigenous peoples form their identity ties with the land, causes same forms of colonial dominationSandy Grande. “American Indian Geographies of Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and

Mestizaje.” Harvard Educational Review, 70:4. Winter 2000.

In addition, the undercurrent of fluidity and sense of displacedness that permeates, if not defines, mestizaje runs contrary to American Indian sensibilities of connection to place, land, and the Earth itself. Consider, for example, the following statement on the nature of critical subjectivity by Peter McLaren: The struggle for critical subjectivity is the struggle to occupy a space of hope - a liminal space, an intimation of the anti-structure, of what lives in the in-between zone of undecidedability - in which one can work toward a praxis of redemption .... A sense of atopy has always been with me, a resplendent placelessness, a feeling of living in germinal formlessness .... I cannot find words to express what this border identity means to me. All I have are what Georgres Bastille (1988) calls mots glissants (slippery words). (1997, pp. 13-14) McLaren speaks passionately and directly about the crisis of modern society and the need for a "praxis of redemption." As he perceives it, the very possibility of redemption is situated in our willingness not only to accept but to flourish in the "liminal" spaces, border identities, and postcolonial hybridities that are inherent in postmodern life and subjectivity. In fact,

McLaren perceives the fostering of a "resplendent placelessness" itself as the gateway to a more just, democratic society. While American Indian intellectuals also seek to embrace the notion of transcendent subjectivities, they seek a notion of transcendence that remains rooted in historical place and the sacred connection to land. Consider, for example, the following commentary by Deloria (1992) on the centrality of place

and land in the construction of American Indian subjectivity: Recognizing the sacredness of lands on which previous generations have lived and died is the foundation of all other sentimen t. Instead of denying this dimension of our emotional lives, we should be setting aside additional places that have transcendent meaning. Sacred sites that higher spiritual powers have chosen for manifestation enable us to focus

our concerns on the specific form of our lives.... Sacred places are the foundation of all other beliefs and practices because they represent the presence of the sacred in our lives. They properly inform us that we are not larger than nature and that we have responsibilities to the rest of the natural world that transcend our own personal desires

and wishes. This lesson must be learned by each generation. (pp. 278, 281) Gross misunderstanding of this connection between American Indian subjectivity and land, and, more importantly, between sovereignty and land has been the source of numerous injustices in Indian country . For instance, I believe there was little understanding on the part of government officials that passage of the Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978) would open a Pandora's box of discord over land, setting up an intractable conflict between property rights and religious freedom. American Indians, on the other hand, viewed the act as a invitation to return to their sacred sites, several of which were on government lands and were being damaged by commercial use. As a result, a flurry of lawsuits alleging mismanagement and

destruction of sacred sites was filed by numerous tribes. Similarly, corporations, tourists, and even rock climbers filed suits accusing land managers of unlawfully restricting access to public places by implementing policies that violate the constitutional separation between church and state. All of this is to point out that the critical project of mestizaje continues to operate on the same assumption made by the U.S. government in this instance, that in a democratic society, human subjectivity - and liberation for that matter - is conceived of as inherently rightsbased as opposed to land-based.

Indigenous claims to sovereignty and decolonization of land are incompatible with the notion of fluid identity, fluid identity has been used as justification throughout colonialism to assimilate indigenous people. Sandy Grande. “American Indian Geographies of Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and

Mestizaje.” Harvard Educational Review, 70:4. Winter 2000.

To be fair, I believe that both American Indian intellectuals and critical theorists share a similar vision - a time, place, and space free

of the compulsions of Whitestream, global capitalism and the racism, sexism, classism, and xenophobia it engenders. But where critical scholars ground their vision in Western conceptions of democracy and justice that presume a "liberated" self, American Indian intellectuals ground their vision in conceptions of sovereignty that presume a sacred connection to place and land. Thus, to a large degree, the seemingly liberatory constructs of fluid ity, mobility, and transgression are perceived not only as the language of critical subjectivity, but also as part of the fundamental lexicon of Western imperialism. Deloria (1999) writes: Although the loss of land must be seen as a political and economic disaster of the first magnitude, the real exile of the tribes occurred with the destruction of ceremonial life (associated with the loss of land) and the failure or inability of white society to offer a sensible and cohesive alternative to the traditions which Indians remembered . People became disoriented with respect to the world in which they lived. They could not practice their old ways, and the new ways which they were expected to learn were in a constant state of change because they were not a cohesive view of the world but simply adjustments which whites were making to the technology they had invented. (p. 247). In summary,

insofar as American Indian identities continue to be defined and shaped in interdependence with place, the transgressive mestizaje functions as a potentially homogenizing force that presumes the continued exile of tribal peoples and their enduring absorption into the American "democratic" Whitestream . The notion of mestizaje as absorption is particularly problematic for the Indigenous peoples of Central and South America, where the myth of the mestizaje (belief that the continent's original cultures and inhabitants no longer exist) has been used for centuries to force the integration of Indigenous communities into the national mestizo model (Van Cott, 1994).

According to Rodolfo Stavenhagen (1992), the myth of mestizaje has provided the ideological pretext for numerous South American governmental laws and policies expressly designed to strengthen the nationstate through incorporation of all "non-national" (read "Indigenous") elements into the mainstream. Thus, what Valle and Torres (1995) previously describe as "the continent's unfinished business of cultural hybridization" (p. 141), Indigenous peoples view as the continents' long and bloody battle to absorb their existence into the master narrative of the mestizo.

Deconstructing binaries doesn’t solve – historization is key to combat colonialism – this is in opposition to their openness to the future

Wuthnow ‘02

[U Canterbury 2002 Julie "Deleuze in the postcolonial: On nomads and indigenous politics" feminist Theory Sage publishing//wyo-hdm]But is the nomad’s ostensible deconstruction of binaries an adequate¶ response to the task of undoing the violence based on these

categorizations?¶ A number of critics suggest otherwise. In Questions of Travel, Caren Kaplan¶ calls for ‘versions of poststructuralism that destabilize colonial discourses ¶ as overtly as they deconstruct logocentrism’ (1996: 24). She also argues that¶ postmodern/poststructuralist configurations may not be as far removed¶ from their modernist forebears as one might assume, and refers to ‘[t]he¶ interdependency of modernist and postmodernist techniques

of representation’ (1996: 10). In order to disrupt these unwitting reproductions of the ¶ modern and their concomitant associations with imperialist projects, one ¶ of the strategies Kaplan advocates is a historicization of terms such as ¶ ‘ nomad’ and ‘traveller’ in order to discern their operation within colonialist discourses.¶ Radhika Mohanram’s discussion of racialized embodiment begins to give ¶ a sense of why this task is important and what is at stake if it is neglected .¶

According to Mohanram, disembodiment and mobility have a long history ¶ as significant features of constructions of the subjectivity of white settlers ¶ in colonial contexts, something that becomes particularly evident when ¶ they are juxtaposed with indigenous peoples constructed as embodied, ¶ immobile and objectified : ¶ While t he indigene’s body comes into being and is shaped by native bioregions, ¶ the settler as exotica spreads like a weed but becomes disembodied not only ¶ because he is not in his native bioregion, but also because the Europeanization of ¶ the Neo-Europes makes the European the Universal Subject . . . . The Caucasian is ¶ disembodied, mobile, absent of the marks that physically immobilize the native .¶

(Mohanram, 1999: 15)¶ By failing to historicize the concept of mobility and its links to concrete ¶ practices of colonization, models of subjectivity that embrace nomad ¶ thought as a defining feature necessarily bring very problematic political ¶ baggage along for the ride. As mobile and disembodied, the nomadic ¶ subject is not locatable; as unlocatable, the nomadic subject cannot be held ¶ accountable for its social location, whether it be one of privilege or marginalization.

1ARI am not only white, but I am a white settler which means that I have a unique responsibility to narrarate a politics of accountability and use my settler privilege to open up spaces for indigenous scholarship to begin the process of decolonization Morgensen ’14

[Scott L., Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. He is the author of Spaces between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). "White Settlers and Indigenous Solidarity: Confronting White Supremacy, Answering Decolonial Alliances", 5-26-2014, < http://decolonization.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/white-settlers-and-indigenous-solidarity-confronting-white-supremacy-answering-decolonial-alliances/ > //wyo-hdm]

White settlers who seek solidarity with Indigenous challenges to settler colonialism must confront how white supremacy shapes settler colonialism, our solidarity, and our lives. As a white person working in Canada and the United States to challenge racism and colonialism (in queer / trans politics, and solidarity activism) I am concerned that white people might embrace Indigenous solidarity in ways that evade our responsibilities to people of color and to their calls upon us to challenge all forms of white supremacy. This essay presents my responsibilities to theories and practices of decolonization that connect Indigenous and racialized peoples. I highlight historical studies by Indigenous and critical race scholars — notably, those bridging black and Indigenous studies — as they illuminate deep interlockings of white supremacy and settler colonialism. I call white settlers to become responsible to these, and related projects, so as to challenge the authority we might claim, or have conferred upon us, to appear to lead discussions of

decolonization. White settlers do not lead the work of decolonization , in practice or in theory. I want white settler critics to act as respondents to projects that displace whiteness: here, theories and movements generated from struggle by Indigenous and racialized people who are pursuing solidarity and decolonization. By writing this essay, I illuminate how these stakes drove my prior scholarship, and I recommit to ensuring that they express clearly in my ongoing work.¶ The concerns I address arose in Canada where, amid rising interest in Indigenous solidarity, engaged white people identified with and critically deployed the singular term “settler.” This term carries important legacies in Indigenous studies, as a trenchant tool to expose power relations, cultural logics, and subjects formed by white-supremacist settler colonialism. As well, Indigenous and racialized scholars elaborate how the term is creased by racialization. For instance, after Haunani-Kay Trask (Hawaiian Nation) called for solidarity from those whom she termed “settlers of color,” Candace Fujikane responded by inviting Asian-Americans in Hawai’i to critically account for themselves as “Asian settlers.” In another instance, Jodi Byrd (Chickasaw Nation), in The Transit of Empire, examines the relations linking Indigenous

peoples both to “settlers,” a status imbued by whiteness, and to “arrivants.” [2] By using “arrivant,” Byrd signals that racialized non-natives inhabit Indigenous lands while experiencing colonial and racial subjugation, and that her accounts of their participation in colonization and their responsibilities to Indigenous decolonization call for a term distinct from white people . These accounts acknowledge close ties of “settler” status to whiteness while they trace distinctive relations to settler colonialism borne by variously-situated non-native peoples of color.¶ If white people who practice Indigenous solidarity miss, or never consider these nuances when invoking “settler” status, I am concerned that we then leave its whiteness normalized and unchallenged within our theories and activism. Reflecting on this has led me to a number of questions about how white people embracing the singular or uniform term “settler” may obscure differences among non-natives and reinforce our formation by white supremacy. For instance, if white people self-define through an oppressor role with respect to Indigenous people, does our emphasis on this let us evade naming our oppressor roles with respect to peoples of color? Or, if we think that these latter roles are subsumed or explained by the term “settler,” do our analyses and actions then demonstrate how this is so? Furthermore, if we ever use the term “settler” to refer to people of color, does our initial definition of the term by reference to ourselves project whiteness as our basis for explaining our relations with people of color and their locations as arrivants? Notably, if white people ever assign “settler” identity to black people, how does this enact the white-supremacist violence of anti-blackness that we, as namers, already represent? In effect, if on identifying as “settlers” white people then apply the term uniformly to people of color, or school people of color in their capacity to oppress Indigenous people, how do these acts perform white supremacy, and the epistemic violence of whiteness as foundational to

knowledge of the human? I am interested in these moves not just to challenge their potential violences, but to ask how they may perform what George Lipsitz called “possessive investments in whiteness.” White people may participate in Indigenous solidarity as a way to shore up our political authority, whereby addressing one violence seems to relieve us of addressing our culpability in others, while our self-presentation as anti-colonial insulates us against criticism of our racism.¶ What if white people who practice Indigenous solidarity recognized that settler polities in the Americas also formed through sustained practices of transatlantic slavery and the subjugation of diasporic black peoples? Or that whiteness arises here through these and more relationships that both intersect and exceed our ties to Indigenous peoples? One example of such integrative thinking appears in Sunera Thobani’s challenge to Canada’s founding upon the necropolitical erasure of Indigenous peoples. Thobani invokes a process (“necropolitics”) that Achille Mbembe traced to the Atlantic world’s subjection of Africans and Indigenous peoples of the Americas to spaces of death.[3] She then argues that colonial legacies in Asia and in the Americas inform how Asian migrants to Canada become subject to white settler citizenship, which both marginalizes them and offers its embrace if they participate in Canada’s erasures of Indigenous existence. Following Thobani and Walcott, and the work of Jodi Byrd, how can white settler critics address how, in the Americas, white supremacy depends upon anti-blackness, Orientalism, and Indigenous genocide acting together to produce settler whiteness? How can our aspirations for decolonization effectively lead us to challenge all forms of racism and colonialism that produce white settler power and rule?¶ In recent years, as I considered these matters with colleagues and in public discussions, I found a useful tactic for drawing white people to address white-supremacist settler colonialism multidimensionally in a term from critical race and Indigenous studies: “white settler.” Like Sherene Razack’s use of “white settler state,” my application of “white settler” invokes a nexus of racial and colonial power. With it, I do not propose a terminological shift in either Indigenous or critical race studies, where the term “settler” continues to be useful. Instead I suggest a potential tactic in current discussions to illuminate the power relations producing white settlers, our investments in the singular term “settler,” and how our use of that term can reinforce rather than challenge our power. Also, as a social researcher, I am less inclined to define statuses than to sustain inquiry: by asking how social

conditions in a given time or place invest persons with the power to represent or enact settler colonialism.[4] I finally invoke “white settler” here for two purposes: to call white people in Indigenous solidarity to challenge our desires to be central to decolonization; and to direct us towards the leadership of Indigenous and racialized people who challenge white supremacy and settler colonialism connectively while forming solidarities that displace whiteness . ¶ For instance, while Idle No More targets the Canadian state as the engine of white settler capitalism and nationalism, Indigenous people and people of color are dialoguing about relational responsibilities and are contesting state efforts to incorporate them.[5] Harsha Walia, a co-founder of Vancouver’s No One Is Illegal, addressed such ties in 2012 when she wrote “being responsible for decolonization can require us to locate ourselves within the context of colonization in complicated ways, often as simultaneously oppressed and complicit.” As an example, she argued that within No One Is Illegal “we go beyond demanding citizenship rights for racialized migrants” and “challenge the official state discourse of multiculturalism that undermines the autonomy of Indigenous communities.” In “Building Connections Across Decolonization Struggles,” Luam Kidane and Jarrett Martineau (Cree/Dene) recently critiqued co-optations of black and Indigenous revolutionary movements by state reformism, and argued instead that in black and Indigenous communities, “we need to seriously, purposefully and with urgency begin to look to each other — not to the state — for our self-determination.” In these

examples, solidarity around decolonization within settler states generates theories and movements that displace white settler agency by centering ties among Indigenous peoples and racialized non-natives. ¶ As I study critiques of white settler power, I also answer accounts of colonization in the Americas that address the linked subjugations and, potentially, linked decolonizations of black and Indigenous peoples. For instance, Frank Wilderson argues that white supremacy in the Americas creates the “Settler/Master” as a foundation of law and humanity on these lands, through the connected dehumanizations of black and Indigenous peoples. In their works Shona N. Jackson and Tiffany Lethabo King trace how white settler capitalism and law offer false humanizations to black and Indigenous people. Jackson critically examines how, in Guyana, the effects of settler colonialism, transatlantic slavery and global capitalism ground Creole postcolonial nationalism in “native displacement … as the necessary or enabling condition of black being” (p. 28). Jackson calls for Creole subjectivities to be transformed by defying the racial and colonial logics of modernity: through responsibility to Indigenous decolonization, and “a rejection of being in terms of capitalism and its continued requirement of master/slave modes of being,” which “cannot account for Amerindian epistemologies” (p. 215). In her recent dissertation, King shows how centering black female embodiment will “tell us more about how the landscapes of slavery and settler colonialism are created” (p. 15). Reflecting on possibilities for black and Native feminist alliance, such as in the history of INCITE Toronto, King connects black and Indigenous critical theories to ask: “How are the imagined and material spaces that are currently over determined by a discourse of conflict (genocide, sovereignty) between white Settlers and Natives also shaped by black presence? How are the landscapes and analytics of slavery that currently are over determined by Master and Slave relations also structured by Native genocide and settler space-making practices?” Centering Indigenous and black critical agency, these projects interrogate logics of labor and property that make persons and land fungible; and they invoke relational forms of humanity based in decolonization. By negotiating tensions and ties among black and Indigenous communities, they also resonate with extensive U.S.-based literatures that address enslavement, removal, disenfranchisement, settlement practices, and black-Indigenous intermixture under white settler rule.[6] I review them to highlight how they synergize black and Indigenous critiques, theorize white supremacy and settler colonialism, and in these ways challenge the power of settler whiteness.¶ While the cited works raise complex insights for deeper discussion, I close by tracing how

these and other projects decenter white settlers not only in Indigenous solidarity but also in the critique of settler colonialism. As a white scholar of settler colonialism, I emphasize this point to indicate how I understand solidarity to impact knowledge production. The recent rise of conversations surrounding “settler colonial studies”

raises the stakes for considering how critiques of settler colonialism will proceed. In Indigenous studies, longstanding “Indigenous critiques of colonialism” (to use Byrd’s phrase) and their ties to other anti-colonial projects inform how Indigenous scholars theorize settler colonization.[7] As noted above, recent works in black and Asian diaspora studies explain white settler colonialism by tracing power-laden ties among Indigenous and racialized peoples. When white settlers critique settler colonialism, do we or do we not acknowledge and center such works and their fields of

study? This question also bears on how our work gets cited. If Indigenous scholars adapt our work to serve decolonial knowledge, then the work is resituated within and made responsible to Indigenous projects that exceed our own. But if non-natives in particular trace the critique of settler colonialism only to white scholars, how are Indigenous critiques of colonialism erased, and white epistemic authority entrenched, in the very attempt to challenge colonial power?¶ I ask these questions because they direct me to revisit my work, notice if turns within it re-center

whiteness, and confront how the power of whiteness does not cease: even, or especially once I try to challenge it. My reflexivity is inspired by those who came before me — Allan Bérubé, Mab Segrest — by practicing, and

interrogating white anti-racism § Marked 11:12 § within queer and feminist politics.[8] Like them, I engage critical race and Indigenous studies by answering the intersectional work of Indigenous and women of color feminisms, queer / trans of color theories and activisms, and Indigenous LGBTQ / Two-Spirit movements. In my book

Spaces between Us and other past and upcoming works, I narrate a politics of accountability to projects that are prior to and greater than my own, and to which mine present as secondary responses. I sought to ground my work not only in the substantive matter of white settler colonialism, but also in the methods through which white knowledge production confronts the demands of decolonization . To cite my claims about settler colonialism but not the responsibilities they name to Indigenous and racialized feminist / queer / trans / Two-Spirit theories and movements is to miss part of their full meaning and the reason for their existence. With this in mind, I end by asking: how can critiques of settler colonialism proceed so that white scholars do not appear to be their origin, their proper authors, or their possessors? I intended this essay to argue and model how a white settler critic might answer Indigenous people and people of color whose linked anti-colonial and anti-racist projects precede, exceed, and contextualize any contributions we make. By writing questions and open-ended reflections, I signal that these issues exist within living dialogues, and that the work to which I am calling myself and other white settlers does not end. Rather than a conclusion, then, I offer a

continuation: white settlers redoubling our efforts to challenge white supremacy in our lives and work as we become responsible to movements for decolonization.