Round 1 Texas

1AC

Same as USC

2AC
Perm best way to solve- decolonizing option opens a
space for strong-allied criticism- even if its just a
theoretical questioning
Kovach 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

It is here that we are able to

access some of the strongest allied theoretical critiques . NonIndigenous 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 .
discourse is one with which both cultures are familiar.

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

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.
not.

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

the impact of this

scholarship and the problem of speaking for others, reflect a concern
for whether critical race scholarship will become white assimilated .
resisting racism is left solely to people of color. Both of these problems,

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 5455). 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

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

have argued convincingly that

55; Nakayama and Krizek 303305). In this study, I have suggested that Moseley Brauns 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 needs
Meulen 11
(Emily van der, Action Research, Action research with sex workers:
Dismantling barriers and building birdges, 2011, Safe Publications) /wyo-mm
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
These

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 theres some commodification1

risk means you vote aff
Kleinman 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

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

necessary

perverse

effect of Mao's

impossible

dream of

forcing

immediate industrialization on

peas

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
ants.

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

official silence is another 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
dangerous.

The

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 domination
Sandy 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,

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 fluidity, 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
classism, and xenophobia it engenders.

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 doesnt 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 nomads ostensible deconstruction of binaries an adequate response to the task of undoing the

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
violence based on these categorizations? A number of critics suggest otherwise.

not be as far removed from their modernist forebears as one might assume, and refers to [t]he

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 Mohanrams 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 the indigenes body
comes into being and is shaped by native bioregions, the settler as
interdependency of modernist and postmodernist techniques of representation (1996: 10).

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.KK

1AR
I 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 Queens 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-andindigenous-solidarity-confronting-white-supremacy-answering-decolonialalliances/ > //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

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,
decolonization.

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 Hawaii 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.

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
[2] By using arrivant,

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
Thobanis challenge to Canadas founding upon the necropolitical erasure of Indigenous peoples. Thobani
invokes a process (necropolitics) that Achille Mbembe traced to the Atlantic worlds 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 Canadas 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 Razacks 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

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
persons with the power to represent or enact settler colonialism.[4]

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 Vancouvers 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

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
other not to the state for our self-determination. In these examples,

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

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 Byrds 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
white settlers not only in Indigenous solidarity but also in the critique of settler colonialism.

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

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
and their fields of study? This question also bears on how our work gets cited.

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.

inspired by those who came before me

practicing,

11:12

and

interrogating

white

My reflexivity is
by

Allan Brub, Mab Segrest

anti-racism

within queer and feminist politics .[8]

Marked

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

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
my book Spaces between Us and other past and upcoming works,

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

white settlers redoubling our efforts to

challenge white supremacy in our lives and work as we become
responsible to movements for decolonization.
conclusion, then, I offer a continuation: