Colonialism, Coloniality and Settler Colonialism

Colonialism has been defined as systems and practices that “seek to impose the will of one people on another and to use the resources of the imposed people for the benefit of the imposer” (Asante, 2006, p. ix). The acts of political, physical, cultural, spiritual, and intellectual occupation of space by the often-forceful displacement of Indigenous populations, gives rise to colonialism, settler-colonialism, neo-colonial relations, and coloniality.

In unpacking colonialism, it is important to recognize that Locke’s (1967) theories of property rights and the doctrine of terra nullius (‘nobody’s land’) have operated as moral justifications for European colonial thought and empire. Additionally, understanding the legacy and effects of imperialism, Orientalism, and xenophobia also provide insights into the ways in which coloniality insidiously continues to influence ideas about nations, lands, race, culture, class, gender, and sexuality. Smith (1999) speaks about social fragmentation and issues of Indigeneity as the consequences of imperialism, which she refers to as the subjugation of peoples and/or their knowledge(s). The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007) states:

Indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result of, inter alia, their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, thus preventing them from exercising, in particular, their right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests (p. 3).

In relation to actualizing the principles of UNDRIP, Glen Coulthard shares that affirming and carrying out nation-to-nation reconciliation within the colonial constitution of Canada raises questions about whose rights are seen as supreme, almost always being those of the settler colonial state (Gardner and Clancy, 2017).

The positioning of the supremacy of settler rights over Indigenous rights is a result of continued/reimagined colonization where settler logics operate as a force that continues to rule nations of this land to reap the resources of the land. Imperialism, a process where power is established over nations by military, economic, or political force has taken on a new orientation. Imperialism reflected in global interconnectedness maintains the demographic and psychological complexities of colonial subjugation of peoples (Wolfe, 2013). In a letter to Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes that four centuries of colonialism has created similar harmful conditions for Indigenous peoples living across the globe in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe. She exposes some of the shared consequences of colonialism and the resiliency of Indigenous peoples as she states the following:

Wolfe (2006) explains that settler colonialism is a system which perpetuates the destruction and elimination of Indigenous peoples. It is a form of colonization in which uninvited outsiders come to the land inhabited by Indigenous peoples and claim it as their own [in perpetuity] (Tuck & Yang, 2019). Therefore, it is not just a vicious act of the past; it exists as long as settlers are living on appropriated land, as is the case in Canada (Hurwitz & Bourque, 2014). Wolfe (2006) notes that as settlers see themselves dominating the land based on their notions of doctrine of discovery, they see Indigenous peoples’ rights to the land as that of occupancy and not of sovereignty. As such, the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land and livelihoods is maintained across generations of settlers (Wolfe, 2006).

Distinctions between colonialism and settler-colonialism are evident when examining the historical capture and forced enslavement of pan-African individuals who were forcibly brought to Turtle Island and the Caribbean. In speaking to the ways in which colonialism as a form of conquest is co-constituted by the genocide of Indigenous people and the enslavement of Black people, Black studies scholar Tiffany Lethabo King (2020) invites us to make space for Black studies and histories in white settler colonial studies. In doing so, King (2020) considers possible conversations and engagements among scholars in Black studies, Native studies, ethnic studies, settler colonial studies, and other critical discourses when we return to the logics of conquest. Nonetheless, all non-Indigenous individuals, to varying degrees, benefit from the white, settler-colonial state as it stands today (Hurwitz & Bourque, 2014). As such, it is important that we see the critical connections between colonialism, settler colonialism, the enslavement of Black people, caste, imperialism, and global capitalism as systems that uphold one another.

Colonization did not only occur through physical seizing and displacement of peoples from land, but also through the colonization of minds (Asante, 2006). Coloniality refers to the control and management of knowledge by “universals” of Western modernity, Eurocentrism and global capitalism (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). As such, Eurocentric knowledge and practices are deemed neutral, universal, and apolitical, and have led to the erasure of entire knowledge systems. Imperial and colonial practices have created “truths” of the colonizers’ stories, gazes and accounts of the ‘Other’, that are reinscribed in ideologies, discourses, institutions, scholarship, and imagination (Smith, 1999). Scholars from the Global South recognize the importance of connecting modernity and coloniality (Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2007).  As Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti explains, the politics of modernity are inseparable from colonialism because of a “single story of progress, development, and civilization” (Hospicing Modernity: A Conversation – Journal #139, n.d.) that produced the devastation that is part of the current political and social landscape. A focus on the connection between modernity and coloniality is centered around recognizing the interconnectedness of people, species and the planet to examine the ways we have been harmed and the ways we contribute to the harm of others through the conditions created by settler-colonialism.  Disinvestment from settler-colonialism requires staying with complexities, paradoxes, and contradictions to attend to what de Oliveira Andreotti calls the “colonization of our unconsciousness” (Hospicing Modernity: A Conversation – Journal #139, n.d.)

Imperialism and colonization also include the erasure of knowledge and knowledge holders from the Global South that provide “moral justification” for European knowledge and knowledge systems to take supremacy. At times, through acts of war and other forms of force, the intellectual landscape is eradicated to establish settler knowledge. Arundhati Roy, an Indian author and activist recognizes the logics of settler colonialism and imperialism that continue to destroy traditional ways of knowing and being within India itself despite the departure of the British. She asks for what she calls a “new modernity” that protects traditional ways of knowing which ensures survival.  Roy states “people have the right to resist annihilation” in explaining the need to support Indigenous communities in India (Kandasamy, 2023).  Knowledge holders, such as Arundhati Roy, who are from the Global South face political silencing from forces within and outside their borders. This silencing contributes to the erasure of the knowledge of the Global South or to Karma Naulsi’s concept of scholasticide which is the intentional destruction of knowledge/educational systems of a group of people (Desai, 2024). It is through various forms of scholasticide that settler colonialism continues to operate within the political, sociological, cultural, values and systems of a place/land/peoples long after the end of occupation by the colonizers.

In critiquing the logics of colonialism and coloniality, we consider the following:

1. Cognitive imperialism: In repudiating other knowledge systems, “cognitive imperialism denies people their language and cultural integrity by maintaining the legitimacy of only one language, one culture, and one frame of reference” (Battiste, 2005, p. 13). We see this happening in Gaza through the destruction of education and knowledge systems (Desai, 2024). In part, cognitive imperialism is upheld when knowledges lack a critical analysis of power, history, and socio-political contexts, and when thinkers and scholars in the Global South are erased.

2. Knowledge production, the pursuit of knowledge: The idea that something does not exist unless it is “discovered”, particularly by those who have the positional power, identities, or titles to legitimize the “discovery” (Patel, 2016). From this frame, knowledge is seen as property to be discovered and owned, and there is only one truth.  

3. “Natural” order: Colonial projects associate the “truth” of humanness and the differential value of human life with one’s proximity to more/less desirable land and one’s ability to own land, which serves as justification for a “natural” order (Wynter, 2003).

4. Fragmentation and separation: In seeing ourselves as separate from each other, the living and non-living, and the past and future, we create the conditions for dehumanization, conquest, imposition, power over, violence, environmental degradation, genocide, and slavery.

By disrupting colonial approaches to leadership, we consider several questions:

1. What might leadership look like that supports Indigenous self-governance and self-determination in education?
2. How might non-Indigenous leaders engage deeply with their responsibilities as treaty people, to their ancestors and to future generations?
3. How might we conceive of leadership that is premised on relationality, community and interconnectedness?
4. How might approaches to leadership engage in naming, critiquing and dismantling historical and contemporary material manifestations of colonialism and intersecting systems of oppression?
5. How might multiple knowledge systems influence our understandings, enactments, and assessments of leadership, such as exploring the role of spirituality and healing in leadership?

References

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Battiste, M. (2005). Indigenous knowledge: Foundations for First Nations. WINHEC: International Journal of Indigenous Education Scholarship, 1, 1-17.
 https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/winhec/article/view/19251
 
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Dei, G. J. S. (2019). Foreword. In A. Zainub, Decolonization and Anti-colonial Praxis (pp. vii-x). Brill.

Desai. C.  The war in Gaza is wiping out Palestine’s education and knowledge system. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-war-in-gaza-is-wiping-out-palestines-education-and-knowledge-systems-222055

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