Adam J. Barker

Five hundred years. A vast geography. And an unfinished project to remake the world to match the desires of settler colonizers. How have settlers used violence and narrative to transform Turtle Island into what is currently called North America? What does that say about our social systems, and what happens next?

Deploying analytical tools from diverse disciplines, and drawing on sources ranging from archives to pop culture and personal experience, Making and Breaking Settler Space addresses pressing questions left by the complex and obscured process of colonization. Adam Barker articulates a dynamic analytical model to explain how settler spaces have developed and continue to evolve. He traces the trajectory of settler colonialism, drawing out details of its operation from the imperial colonization of Turtle Island in the 1500s to contemporary contexts that include problematic activist practices by would-be settler allies.

Making and Breaking Settler Space proposes an innovative, unified spatial theory of settler colonization in Canada and the United States. In the process, it uncovers systemic weaknesses that can inform the decolonization efforts of resurgent Indigenous nations and settler activists alike, and argues for relationships founded on solidarity and shared acknowledgment that the settler project is a failed one.

This thought-provoking work will be of great use not only to scholars and students of settler colonialism but also to activists and political commentators concerned with Indigenous people’s future beyond the settler colonial society.

Reviews
“Making and Breaking Settler Space offers a comprehensive analysis of the colonial spatialities inherent to the settler state. It is an innovative interpretation of the affective dimensions of settler colonialism, from its obsessive drive for ownership, control, and transcendence to the possibilities that come from failing to meet these expectations.”— Soren Larsen, University of Missouri

Educator Information
Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Cores and Peripheries: From Imperial Contact to Settler Colonial Claims

2 Spatialities of Settlement: Remaking Landscapes and Identities

3 Remaking People and Places: States, Suburbs, and Forms of Settlement

4 Revolutionary Aspirations? Social Movements and Settler Colonial Complicity

5 The Efficacy of Failure: Advancing Struggles in Support of Indigenous Resurgence

6 Affinity and Alliance: Breaking the Boundaries of Settler Colonial Space

Notes; References; Index

Additional Information
312 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 2 photographs, 7 diagrams, 1 map | Hardcover 

Canada has never had an “Indian problem”— but it does have a Settler problem. But what does it mean to be Settler? And why does it matter?

Through an engaging, and sometimes enraging, look at the relationships between Canada and Indigenous nations, Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada explains what it means to be Settler and argues that accepting this identity is an important first step towards changing those relationships. Being Settler means understanding that Canada is deeply entangled in the violence of colonialism, and that this colonialism and pervasive violence continue to define contemporary political, economic and cultural life in Canada. It also means accepting our responsibility to struggle for change. Settler offers important ways forward — ways to decolonize relationships between Settler Canadians and Indigenous peoples — so that we can find new ways of being on the land, together.

This book presents a serious challenge. It offers no easy road, and lets no one off the hook. It will unsettle, but only to help Settler people find a pathway for transformative change, one that prepares us to imagine and move towards just and beneficial relationships with Indigenous nations. And this way forward may mean leaving much of what we know as Canada behind.