Decolonizing Resistance, Challenging Colonial States

Introduction IN A RECENT ARTICLE IN SOCIAL JUSTICE, DECOLONIZING ANTIRACISM, BONITA Lawrence and Enakshi Dua (2005) argue that antiracist theory and practices have historically excluded concerns of Aboriginal peoples. The result, they claim, is twofold: Aboriginal cannot see themselves in contexts and Aboriginal activism against domination takes place without of color as allies. (1) They further argue that antiracist praxis has actually contributed to active colonization of Aboriginal peoples (pp. 122-123). Indeed, they contend that antiracism is premised on an ongoing colonial project (p. 123, emphasis added) and on colonizing social formation (pp. 129-130). (2) Examples of antiracist complicity, according to Lawrence and Dua, include postcolonial critiques of national liberation strategies and social constructivist critiques of or nationalisms. They maintain that such analyses further secure colonization of indigenous by contributing to the ongoing delegitimization of Indigenous (p. 128). Moreover, since indigenous nationhood is understood in ethnicized terms, Lawrence and Dua also claim that critiques, such as those of Stuart Hall, against ethnic absolutism are destructive of indigenous national identity and struggle (p. 131). (3) Like other nationalist arguments that read existence of contemporary nationalized polities back into time immemorial, Lawrence and Dua maintain that such critiques are attacks against both pre-colonial identity of indigenous and of their contemporary efforts at achieving sovereignty. Since their critique is broadly focused on thought and practice as it affects indigenous in Canada, Lawrence and Dua discuss what they see as implication of nonwhites within colonial project. One of their central arguments is that people of color are settlers. Broad differences exist between those brought as slaves, currently working as migrant laborers, are refugees without legal documentation, or emigres who have obtained citizenship. Yet of color live on land that is appropriated and contested, where Aboriginal peoples are denied and access to their own lands (p. 134). (4) In this article, we would like to respond to two of these arguments. First, we challenge conflation between processes of migration and those of colonialism. We ask whether it is historically accurate or analytically precise to describe as colonialism forced movements of enslaved Africans, movement of unfree indentured Asians, or subsequent Third World displacements and migrations of from across globe, many of them indigenous themselves. (5) Are there particular sets of relationships that make one a settler colonist, or are all migrants by necessity part of this group? What are political consequences of seeing various forced, less-than-voluntary or even fully voluntary migrants and/ or their descendents as colonists? What work do these ideas do in today's political movements for justice for indigenous and for migrants? What are consequences of naturalizing an ethnicized, racialized, and nationalized relationship between and with land? Second, we interrogate claim that may be secured through nationalist project. Is it possible for indigenous nationalisms in Canada or elsewhere to succeed where no others have actually secured what can be called decolonization without seriously distorting term? Do efforts at that rely on ideas of nationhood, this time centered on autochthonous discourses of Native rights, result in a transformation of colonial rule with its particular definitions of territory, polity, and governance, or do they simply reverse (or loosen) binary of power while maintaining dualism? Are critiques of naturalized nationhoods and nationalisms tantamount to support for colonialism? …

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