Settler colonialism as eco-social structure and the production of colonial ecological violence

ABSTRACT

Settler colonialism is a significant force shaping eco-social relations within what is called the United States. This paper demonstrates some of the ways that settler colonialism structures environmental practices and epistemologies by looking closely at some of the institutional practices of state actors, and at the cultural practices of mainstream environmentalism. By considering a range of settler projects aimed at Indigenous erasure and highlighting linkages between these projects and eco-social disruption, I also advance the term colonial ecological violence as a framework for considering the outcomes of this structuring in terms of the impacts on Indigenous peoples and communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Settler-colonialism
• environmentalism
• Indigenous rights
• violence
• social movements
• Indigenous-settler relations

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the many people committed to defending lands and waters, the author has had the opportunity to work with and learn from along the way.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The economic partner of settler colonialism in the United States is capitalism and there is much work needed to tease out how settler colonialism and capitalism support and structure each other particularly in their conflicts with traditional Indigenous socio-ecologies.

2. When I refer to Indigenous eco-social relations I intend this term to be closely aligned with what is often called Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) but with an added emphasis on the social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of human-nature relations (which are also inherent in TEK, but tend not to be emphasized). I also include other forms of eco-social relations, which may not be strictly “traditional” by some definitions.

3. While I began developing this concept in 2013, it first appeared in print as part of a collaboration with Dr. Kari Norgaard, Reed and Bacon (2018).

4. While I see the wisdom in avoiding damage-centered research, I cannot ignore the very real risks posed by land occupation and ecological degradation. I believe this term will complement works by Fenelon (1998), Coulthard (2014), and Brooks (1998) whose writings have demonstrated connections between land, settler colonialism, and violence.

5. Outside of demographers – who have long seemed interested in sizes of Native populations – some clear exceptions exist (e.g. Fenelon, Steinman, and Norgaard).

6. There is a need for work analyzing how the settler-colonial structuring of eco-social relations impacts inter-group relations in the United States. I do not simply mean between Native groups and environmental organizations, nor even between Native peoples and settlers, but more broadly. I believe that settler colonialism plays a role in structuring other forms of hierarchical social relations within the United States. Just as scholars like Coulthard and Fenelon have drawn ample connections between settler colonialism and capitalism, I would suggest that since settler colonialism is a system which imposes and naturalizes various other systems of power – class, race, heteropatriarchy – it is a structure that ought to be included in all intersectional analyses (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill 2013).

7. I wish to acknowledge that extensive work in the area of tribal self-determination, which is in many respects still accelerating. Nothing in this paper should be understood as ignoring or contradicting this, but rather as an effort to call attention to how settler colonialism has in many ways attempted to impede Indigenous life, rights, and sovereignty (Deloria and Lytle 1984; Smith and Warrior 1996; Brunyeel 2013).

8. Since the Dakota Access struggle, McKibben has been more active in talking about Native peoples, but it is a sad comment on the state of environmentalism that it took such a massive act of resistance to awaken anything more than romantic nostalgia for Indians in the environmental community.

9. Although tribal water rights were upheld in the 1908 ruling Winters v. United States, enforcement has been irregular, and the BOR has repeatedly undertaken projects harmful to Native peoples.

10. Intergenerational trauma itself is initiated by spectacular and traumatic episodes (e.g. genocide, forced removal, and interpersonal violence) yet the pernicious effects of this trauma passed on to future generations might be thought of as a form of slow violence to the extent that it is the ongoing long-term effects of events and processes no longer apparent yet undoubtedly harmful.

11. Ecological damage, taken to extremes, is clearly a threat to the well-being of everyone alive but in this case, I am pointing to the loss of culturally important sites and species which people from the dominant culture might not notice the loss of or feel imperiled by regardless of actual risk.

12. Some studies already suggest this connection without explicitly considering the relationship to settler colonialism (e.g. Bell and York 2010; Miller 2004).

13. While advocating for sociological work in these areas I acknowledge that this work is well underway in other disciplines (e.g. Baldy 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J.M. Bacon

J.M. Bacon is a Ph.D. candidate in the ESSP program at the University of Oregon. Their work focuses on Indigenous-settler relations and environmental movements.