Conversations with a Settler Colonialism Scholar

In debate, we often encounter discourses on the way settler colonialism impacts the United States and different policy proposals. However, these arguments can sometimes fall into the trap of being too totalizing or essentialist. Therefore, it is crucial to always inject nuance into the discussions we have in the debate community about the settler state. 

To get an expert opinion and shed more light onto the issues we debaters speak about at many tournaments, I reached out to settler scholar Dr. Phil Henderson, a Postdoctoral Fellow at York University, the University of Toronto, and Queen’s University as well as a professor at Carleton and YorkU. As an author of several research papers and an upcoming book on contemporary theories of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, his educational career—currently focused on Canadian-Indigenous relations—has pushed forward our understanding of interrelations between indigenous communities and the settler state. I believe that his academic experience can be of great benefit for debate as a community when we talk about serious issues of coloniality. 

So, without further ado, I present my conversations with a scholar of settler colonialism, Dr. Henderson. 

But first, a qualifying note from Dr. Henderson: Thanks for reaching out and for your interest in this topic. Your questions are good ones, and important for understanding these issues. Hopefully my answers aren’t too equivocating, but I think to all the questions you’ve asked I’d say “it depends.” As that’s not very helpful, I’ll expand a bit in each case. 

Q: Is political engagement of any benefit for the advancement of indigenous rights, or is purely social movement sufficient? Rather, is working with the state harmful? 

A: Your first bunch of questions on “political engagement” are insightfully touching on a major point of scholarly and social movement debate (see Audra Simpson’s discussion of the “politics of refusal” in her Mohawk Interruptus (2014)). Political engagement can be of benefit for the advancement of Indigenous rights, but so too can refusal. For instance, in Canada, Indigenous rights were finally recognized in our Constitution Act in 1982, during the run up to this event various Indigenous communities and groups took different tactics—including engagement and refusal, leading to some tension within Indigenous movements and communities (see Dancing Around the Table Part 1 and Part 2). And, by contrast, engaging can lead to negative outcomes—such as siphoning potentially millions of dollars into negotiations or legal arbitration that may ultimately prove unsuccessful. Ultimately, the question of engagement vs. disengagement is a strategic one, that must be made in context and not as a matter of abstract principles. In short, it’s political above all else. 

Q: Are there any distinctions between US federal Arctic policy and other policies the federal government has taken with indigenous groups in terms of progress? 

A: I’ll preface by saying that I’m a specialist in Canadian politics (not American) and that even in that context I focus more on southern Canada than on the north. The core distinction that I see is that settlement is a much less significant dynamic in the colonial relationship with Indigenous nations of the north. Instead, these relationships often seem to be more defined by resource colonialism (akin to the descriptions offered by Kwame Nkrumah in his book Neocolonialism (1965), see also Andrew Curley’s Carbon Sovereignty (2023) which focuses on Dine resource nationalism). You could also check out a recent book about this question in the Canadian context by my colleague Rebecca Hall. This shift in emphasis in the north from settlement to extraction means that different forms of engagement may become possible (for instance, in Canada, Nunavut is a majority Indigenous territory with limited forms of self-government), but also carry certain risks with them too (as alluded to in response to question (1)).

Q: Is the usage of indigenous advocacy and pain by non-indigenous debaters a viable way to spread indigenous advocacy, or is it simply for the win? Are there perhaps better ways to advocate for the self-determination of indigenous groups and for decolonization? 

A: This question I take to be primarily concerned with whether a focus on suffering when advocating for social change is (a) ethical and (b) effective. A useful response likely begins by simply stating the obvious: most non-Indigenous people are almost entirely ignorant about the histories of colonialism and the ongoing realities that Indigenous peoples face today. So there is an important line to be drawn here about, on the one hand, the necessity of actually making those realities visible to an ill- or mis-informed public, while on the other hand not simply reducing real human experiences to a rhetorical flare to gain cheap points. 

In this matter, I think two principles should be upheld. First, allow Indigenous voices to narrate their own experiences wherever possible—in the context of a debate, this would mean inviting Indigenous discussants, highlighting Indigenous authors, testimonies, reports made by Indigenous organizations, etc. Second, to always highlight the role of Indigenous struggle against colonialism in order to show/educate your audience that Indigenous peoples are their own protagonists. Importantly, this also shifts the terrain from trying to elicit sympathy in your audience, to one of challenging the audience to stand in solidarity with peoples leading the way to their own liberation. Some of these are themes that I’ve explored in another recent piece where I critique discourses of “allyship” for not being sufficiently committed to the sort of transformative politics that Indigenous struggles necessitate. 

Q: How much pragmatic and epistemic impact can high school debates have on indigenous advocacy?

A: Taking this question as formulated, I think the answer is unfortunately that there is relatively little impact high school debates can have on Indigenous advocacy. Now, if we broaden the question to be about how much impact can such debates have on the social conditions in which Indigenous struggles occur, the answer is that they can potentially be very important. Not, per se, in their character as debates, but rather in the role that they might play in educating and raising the political consciousness of a broader (mostly non-Indigenous) public. This again, however, depends on the specific nature of the interventions. Those that remove Indigenous agency in favour of narratives that privilege non-Indigenous saviourism may ultimately be harmful in and of themselves. 

Q: Should protest for self-determination and sovereignty of indigenous groups have pragmatic solutions to be considered effective, or is attempting to rupture colonial thought in high school debate enough to make improvements? 

A: Similarly, if I take the dichotomy of the question as written (protest vs debate), I fall squarely on the side that social mobilization is essential to achieving actual change (not least because contexts of sustained social mobilization are themselves processes of consciousness raising/educative). 

But let’s focus on the first part as it’s a question in itself, and as the second half of this question is already largely answered by my response above in (3). This question of “pragmatic solutions” is an interesting one on several levels, but the most pressing one is that it implies social movements must have clear and “pragmatic” policy demands. This has been asked of many social movements (for example, Occupy), and a lack of prepared demands or a policy framework from movements has often been a key criticism levelled by opponents. 

On the one hand, it should be noted that such criticisms fundamentally mistake what a social movement is. They are not policy-making bodies: especially in the post-1980s era, they lack the sort of permanent institutional apparatuses by which policy decisions could even be debated and arrived at democratically, and moreover they often do not seek to occupy the existing systems of governance whereby they could impose a policy agenda. So, we could first say that while social movements and protests certainly articulate opposition or a general demand, they do not themselves tend to carry pragmatic solutions and nor should we expect them to. 

On the other hand, there’s a broader question about what “pragmatic” might even mean in the context of Indigenous critiques of settler colonialism. Certainly there are immediate, discrete, and resolvable issues that could be addressed in response to many demands from Indigenous movements (eg. boil water advisories on-reserves). But broader questions of self-determination, sovereignty, and decolonization are by their very nature not necessarily pragmatic, they are about a different conception of the good and of political life. In the same way that every transformative or rupturous social movement has been declared unreasonable or unrealistic until it succeeds, “pragmatism” is more often a rhetorical cudgel than it is a meaningful social scientific measurement. 

Finally, on the other other hand, I do also think that this preceding discussion might still dodge the core question at the root here: how to translate social movement energy into social transformation. There is a school of thought that has been quite dominant with academia and social movements for the past 30+ years that advocates for “changing the world without taking power,” believing that the force of a social movement alone can be sufficient to radically transform society. I think that there’s plenty of very solid evidence at this point that this sort of anti-political politics (where the question of contesting for hegemonic institutions of power is avoided) has been a failure. Rather than focusing on the question of pragmatics, however, I would say that social movement strategy needs to tie a parliamentary strategy (that is a political vehicle such as, but not limited to, a party) that can actually contest existing institutions to the extra-parliamentary movement base that is its core constituency. 

Q: Are political simulations, such as debate, beneficial for indigenous debaters and advocacies in building practical policy plans and learning to engage with the state, or should all such engagement be foreclosed? 

A: I think again the answer here is likely a disappointing “it depends.” Such experiences can certainly be very good training grounds for all that I’ve discussed above, alternatively they may be spaces where people are trained to narrow their horizons and lower their expectations. I think it all hinges on how such exercises fit within a broader political program, within institutions that are themselves geared towards more transformative politics, and in relationship to movements and popular social forces. 

Q: My debate partner and I often work with and encounter the work of Martin Savransky, mainly regarding his advocacies for ending the known Western world and shifting to indigenous knowledge systems. I've been wondering about your opinion, as a scholar who often writes about settler colonialism and its effects in academia, about Mr. Savransky's viewpoint and whether it stands to be overly pessimistic about the possibilities of political outcomes for indigenous communities, as well as whether pushing for the end of the Western world is worth breaking the rules and norms of debate and academia overall. 

A: I wasn’t familiar with Savransky’s work prior to your highlighting it, so thanks for sharing this—I’ve skimmed it before replying, but will read fully later. My initial response to the framing of “ending this world” as a political project is twofold. On the one hand, a firm yes—specifically on the point that a radically transformative vision is necessary to respond to not only the apocalypse of settler colonialism, but to all the other crises that co-constitute

the current moment (climate change, nuclear war, corporate oligarchy, fascism, etc.). 

My absolute favourite thinker, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, puts it as follows: “we need to change one thing, which is everything.” But my second response to Savransky’s framing is to quibble with the philosophy and politics of it. To make a longer debate somewhat brief, Savransky’s reading of Aimé Césaire is one that’s informed primarily by literary studies and postmodern French philosophy; by contrast, I read Césaire as an anti-colonial Marxist. The difference that results from these interpretations is one of both analysis and political action. Firstly, I’d emphasize the need to abolish the conditions of class domination that racial/colonial capitalism necessitates, rather than the “world” that it creates. To me, this shifts from the relatively abstract and overly homogenizing framing of a “world,” and regrounds the conversation in concrete practices and structures of domination. And in doing so, it reveals the various ways in which actual struggle to change concrete conditions occurs—so suddenly, rather than opposing “worlds” we see opposing interests and the possibilities of coalitions and alliances between different factions or segments of the previously homogenous “worlds.” 

In short, my philosophical commitments to historical materialism lead me to emphasize more concrete modes of struggle over the conditions of everyday life and how people/groups relate to one another, rather than focusing on grander narratives of “worlds” which often feel very removed from social struggle (though I fully appreciate that such narratives inform how people act). 

Q: You stated in your 2015 paper "Imagoed communities: the psychosocial space of settler colonialism" that resistance to settler colonialism occurs in "reiterative and disruptive practices, presences, and speech acts". Are speech acts (especially in high school debate) sufficient to fight against the settler state or is advocating for robust decolonization of physical land and resources also necessary?

A: The shortest answer to this question is no: speech acts alone cannot be sufficient to fight against settler power. This is for reasons very similar to what I’ve laid out above in my trepidation around idealism vs materialism as a philosophical grounding. Historic change comes about via changes in material relations, and speech acts can contribute to this (via the raising of consciousness, the solidifying of political programs and practices, the strengthening or formation of new coalitions, etc.). But on their own they cannot compel change. Carrying this logic further, your question suggests that in opposition to speech acts “advocating for robust decolonization” may be a better strategy. If I take your use of “advocating” in the most expansive sense possible, that’s certainly the case. However, advocacy itself cannot remain confined to the realm of speech acts alone; for instance, writing to one’s Congressperson, or to a corporate board of governors, or even non-disruptive marches/rallies, are—as we see every day—unlikely to yield meaningful results. Advocacy needs to be in the form of demands, backed up by sufficient social power, if it is to result in meaningful change that contests currently dominant forms of social organization. This can be easily seen in the forms of social action taken by the Indigenous Land Back movement (such as railway and highway blockades) or in the resurgence of labour union organizing, as both tactics interrupt the flow of capital and create crises of profitability that compel the state and industry to respond to demands. 

Q: In your opinion, what is the best possible way for ordinary people to break down and combat settler colonialism? 

A: The best possible way to combat settler colonialism is to join an organization that is (a) committed to progressive social transformation and (b) dedicates significant time to organizing its members and surrounding communities in pursuit of those aims. It is impossible to pursue anti-colonial politics on one’s own, but since colonialism structures every element of our lives that means there are plenty of spaces through which we can begin to organize against it. Organizations like solidarity/affinity groups (eg. The Red Nation or Migrant Justice), trade unions, tenant unions, or progressive political parties (eg. DSA), are all vehicles by and through which to build power that can actually confront colonialism today. 

Q: Are there any final thoughts you have for the high school debate community regarding the settler state? 

A: I don’t have much to add in conclusion, only to thank you for these great questions. Moreover, to make note of the fact that I appreciate and take great encouragement from the fact that you’re having these discussions with such a high degree of rigour and care. As I’ve suggested throughout, my hope is that you’ll all be able to take these concerns from the space of debating societies out into the broader work of educating and organizing; the point, as ever, is not merely to debate the conditions of the world, but to change them. 

Final interviewer note: A huge thank you to Dr. Henderson for taking the time and effort to answer a very curious debater’s questions. I hope that our discourses can help make every debater across America (and even in other nations) better political intellectuals. 

Mingyu Kim 

Arizona