Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native

Gender and indigenous–immigrant encounters and entanglements

“…This oppositional understanding reinforces what Wolfe sees as a feature basic to settler colonialism: disentitlement of the Native from the land reifies the settler as agriculturally proficient while typifying the Native as 'unsettled, nomadic, rootless, etc.' 19 On their part the Dakota people, according to Hansen, did not conceive themselves as having consequential relationships with Scandinavian immigrants but rather the 'protracted conflicts' they confronted was with U.S. state representatives and policies. What Hansen convincingly argues is that the two populations have uneven, inequitable relationships to citizenship and belonging: rather than attend public day schools, Dakota children were removed from their parents; the Dakotas' relation to territory was through state-mandated use and policy rather than as freeholders; their ability to sustain their ancestral languages distinctly different.…”

“…'"Blacks" were racialized in distinct, opposing, ways from Indians to reflect antithetical roles in the formation of US society' with the respective particularities of race 'made in its targeting.' 15 These dynamic, long-term processes of differentiation have been reflected in the separate lines of historical inquiry established in Ethnic Studies and Indigenous and Native American Studies and in Canadian and American history more generally. However, as the experience of the Cosgroves suggests and recent scholarship demonstrates, exploring gender and Indigenous-Immigrant encounters and entanglements can correct misinterpretations, shed new light on settler state formation in Canada and the United States, and unearth previously obscured historical realities as well as the actions and agency of these groups.…”

“…13 Patrick Wolfe is decisive in his consideration of the violent effects of settler colonialism, reminding us of its ever-changing embodiment as colonialism adapts to localized formations of race and place. 14 Wolfe further highlights how, in North America, the racialization of the colonial subject varies in accordance with the needs or appetite of the settler. For example, in the case of Africans, the settler extracted profit by enslaving 'Blacks' as laborers, whereas in the case of the Indian, the settler appropriated land and correspondingly sought to dispossess or remove them.…”

“…8 From the start of the English invasions of North America in the 1600s, Native Americans, as the Indigenous inhabitants of the continent, have been targeted for collective elimination through various racial, social, economic, and geographic schemes-genocide, dispossession, forced removal, and forced assimilation-that have allowed the expanding settler state to acquire their land and resources. 9 Equally important, in the white-Indian binary central to cultural logic of Anglo settler colonialism, Native peoples have long been denied a place in modernity-in the modern nation-state. 10 Other racialized groups-such as those of Asian, Mexican, and African ancestry-have also been targets, though in a different fashion.…”

“…but access to territory.' 7 The mechanisms of racial hierarchies and cultural binaries by which the modern settler state functions in relation to the various non-Anglo immigrant groups lies at the heart of Anglo settler colonialism. 8 From the start of the English invasions of North America in the 1600s, Native Americans, as the Indigenous inhabitants of the continent, have been targeted for collective elimination through various racial, social, economic, and geographic schemes-genocide, dispossession, forced removal, and forced assimilation-that have allowed the expanding settler state to acquire their land and resources.…”