‘Settler’ and ‘internal’ colonialism in ‘Canada’: Reconciling competing conceptual approaches to Canadian Colonialism in the North

Abstract

Spanish

Geography scholarship about Indigenous politics in Canada frequently draws upon ideas from the field of settler colonial studies (SCS). Yet, criticisms of SCS and the application of its concepts to Canadian contexts are becoming increasingly common. Such criticisms include: an overly rigid distinction between settler colonialism and so-called ‘franchise’ colonialism, a tendency to rely on a small number of non-Indigenous scholars as foundational thinkers in the field and a lack of attention to the ways in which Canadian colonialism has varied across space-time. This article argues that re-engaging the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ – an older approach that focuses on identifying parallels between the imperialist domination of the third world and the colonial subjugation of peoples that are ‘internal’ to nation states – can help advance our understanding of Canadian colonialism.

Keywords

Settler colonialism internal colonialism uneven geographic development Canada indigenous

Recent research into the geography of Canadian colonialism frequently uses the concept of settler colonialism to characterize Indigenous-settler relations in Canada (Perry, 2023; Hall, 2021a; Liboiron, 2021; Shipley, 2020; Coulthard, 2014), including scholarship in the field of human geography (Townsend and Roth, 2023; McCreary and Milligan, 2021; Hall, 2021b; Youdelis et al., 2020; Bernauer, 2020; Erickson, 2020; Dorries et al., 2019; Daigle, 2019; Kipfer, 2018; Wilson & Inkster, 2018; Peyton and Keeling, 2017; Hulgill, 2017; Stanley, 2016; Cameron, 2015). This approach, which is usually traced to the work of Patrick Wolfe (1994/2006) and Lorenzo Veracini (2010/2011), emphasizes the unique nature of settler colonialism.

For Wolfe (1994: 93), settler colonialism can be contrasted with what he calls ‘franchise or dependent’ colonialism. While franchise colonialism refers to formations that are primarily interested in the exploitation of colonized peoples’ labour and resources, settler colonialism is focused on dispossessing Indigenous people's territory to establish new settler societies (Wolfe, 1994). As a result, settler colonialism and franchise colonialism have different underlying ‘logics’: while franchise colonialism is premised on a logic of inequality between colonizer and colonized, settler colonialism is rooted in a logic of elimination of the colonized by the colonizer. Settler colonialism is therefore not a ‘master–servant relationship’, which requires the maintenance of inequality between the colonizer and the colonized, but is rather a phenomenon characterized by the ‘replacement’ of Indigenous societies (Veracini, 2010: 7). While elimination/replacement can take different forms – including physical genocide, spatial displacement, cultural erasure and assimilation – the logic of elimination is, for Wolfe and Veracini, a fundamental and seemingly unique aspect of settler colonial societies.

Settler colonial studies (SCS) – a field of research that tends to treat Wolfe and Veracini as intellectual founders – emphasizes the enduring nature of settler colonial orders. For Wolfe (2006: 390), the settler colonial invasion of Indigenous territory was not an ‘event’ that occurred in the past, but is rather a ‘structure’ that remains fundamental to all settler societies. This is said to contrast with the imperialist domination of the Global South, which was ephemeral, insofar as formal political control of the Global South by European states has mostly given way to ‘neocolonial’ relationships. Because of the unique logic underlying settler colonial orders, as well as their enduring nature, SCS argues that the concepts and categories used in post-colonial studies and third world Marxism are of limited value for understanding the dynamics of settler colonial formations (Wolfe, 1994; Veracini, 2010; Veracini, 2011).

Recently, SCS has come under criticism for its emphasis on the central ideas of the work of Wolfe and Veracini, both non-Indigenous scholars and the treatment of their work as both authoritative and foundational. This has had the effect of displacing the work of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars whose work Wolfe and Veracini built upon (Carey and Silverstein, 2020; Dorries et al., 2019; Snelgrove, Dhamoon and Corntassel, 2014).

Scholars have also criticized an apparently rigid distinction SCS draws between franchise colonialism (for labour/exploitation) and settler colonialism (for land/dispossession), with a growing number of scholars arguing that the conceptual rigidity is limiting (Speed, 2017). For example, Englert (2020) demonstrates that settler colonial formations can shift back and forth between logics of dispossession/elimination and exploitation/inequality. Kelley (2017) argues that the European slave trade (a form of franchise colonialism) also included a logic of elimination. According to Dorries et al. (2019), many of the concepts and categories scholars use to understand and explain ‘franchise’ colonialism are more useful in settler colonial contexts than these distinctions imply.

There is also growing criticism of the ways in which Wolfe and Veracini's work has been applied to Canadian contexts. According to Cole Harris (2020), the concept of settler colonialism is useful for understanding colonialism in some regions of Canada (especially urban and agricultural spaces), but this utility declines in northern and other peripheral areas. For historian Alan Greer (2019), settler colonial theory is useful for understanding settler colonialism during specific periods in Canadian history (especially periods of agricultural settlement and urban expansion) but declines in utility for other time periods (including the present, which Greer argues is dominated by ‘extractive’ colonialism).

This article aims to advance debates over settler colonialism in Canada by arguing for the ongoing relevance of the concept of internal colonialism – an older approach that emphasizes the parallels (rather than distinctions) between the imperialist domination of the Global South and the colonial domination of Indigenous peoples that are ‘internal’ to nation states like Canada (Das, 2020; Hicks, 2004). By reviving debate about internal colonialism, I hope to add nuance to the ways in which we conceive of colonialism in places like Canada, where settler colonial processes become articulated with colonial patterns of uneven geographic development and social inequality.

This article begins with an overview of ‘internal’ and ‘settler’ approaches to understanding Indigenous subjugation, their application to Canadian contexts and prominent criticisms of both approaches. Next, a case study of Nunavut demonstrates both the limitations and possibilities associated with each approach. The conclusion argues that in some historic and geographic contexts the concepts and categories associated with internal colonialism theory – especially uneven geographic development and an ethnic division of labour – can serve as important supplements to ideas from SCS.

Canadian colonialism, internal and settler

The concept of internal colonialism is premised on identifying parallels between the imperialist¹ domination of the Global South and the experiences of marginalized peoples who are ‘internal’ to colonial states (Das, 2020; Hicks, 2004). Public figures and scholars alike have used it to describe and explain the injustices faced by a wide variety of different social groups. Famously, civil rights leaders like Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr., drew comparisons between African Americans and the peoples of the Global South, by referring to the former as an ‘internal’ or ‘domestic’ colony of the United States (Das, 2020). Internal colonialism has guided research into the political, economic and cultural domination of Black and Latino peoples in the United States (Blauner, 1969; Blaut, 1974), the ‘Celtic fringe’ in the United Kingdom (Hechter, 1975) and Indigenous peoples in the Americas and Australia (Casanova, 1965; Stavenhagen, 1965; Hartwig, 1978). Drawing substantially on dependency and world systems theories, these scholars used the internal colonialism paradigm to emphasize the roles of social inequality and uneven geographic development in defining and perpetuating colonial relationships. While the concept has declined in use globally since the 1990s (Das, 2020), geographers continue to draw upon it to understand a wide array of phenomena, including gentrification in the United States (Maharawal, 2023), Indigenous struggles in Bolivia (Laing, 2012), disaster relief in the United States and Nicaragua (Cupples & Glynn, 2014), urban development in the Philippines (Crabb et al., 2024) and infrastructure development in Mexico (De Coss-Corzo, 2023).

In the 1970s and 1980s, internal colonialism was a dominant approach in scholarship that aimed to understand Indigenous experiences in states that are now widely considered to be ‘settler’ colonies, including Canada (Adams, 1995; Coates, 1985; Usher, 1982; Dacks, 1981; Watkins, 1977; Usher, 1976. During this period, Indigenous community leaders and organizers also frequently drew comparisons between the imperialist domination of the third world and the colonial subjugation of First Nations, Metis and Inuit people in Canada. For example, the Dene Declaration – a foundational statement about colonialism and decolonization from the Dene Nation – was premised on comparisons of this sort (Dene Nation, 1977).

Classic scholarship about internal colonialism in Canada demonstrated how northern and other ‘frontier’ regions (where Indigenous peoples often constitute a demographic majority) serve as economic peripheries for more developed metropolitan regions in southern Canada, where non-Indigenous settlers form a demographic majority. The economies of Canada's internal peripheries tend to be dominated by the extraction of primary resources (including minerals, hydrocarbons, hydroelectricity and forestry), activities which tend to disproportionately benefit and be controlled by, non-Indigenous people and institutions based in metropolitan centers in southern Canada (Coates, 1985; Dacks, 1981; Watkins, 1977; Usher, 1976). Scholars using the internal colonialism approach to the study of Canadian history and geography have also demonstrated that Canadian society is characterized by an ethnic division of labour, wherein Indigenous peoples tend to disproportionately occupy the lowest positions of the Canadian class-system (Brody, 1975; Adams, 1975; Usher, 1976). While this approached was mostly overshadowed by the concept of settler colonialism in the 21st century, a handful of scholars have continued to draw on the concept of internal colonialism to explain the relationships between resource extraction and colonialism in northern Canada (Bernauer, 2022; Bernauer, 2019; Hall, 2013; Gordon, 2010).

SCS emerged, in part, as a response to the shortcomings of the internal colonialism approach of identifying parallels between the colonial subjugation of Indigenous peoples and the imperialist domination of the Global South. According to Wolfe (1994), unlike franchise or dependent colonialism (which is premised on the exploitation of labour and relations of inequality), settler colonialism is premised on the dispossession of territory and a logic of elimination. Because of settler colonialism's unique logic and because most former European colonies in the Global South have now secured formal political independence, Wolfe (1994) and Veracini (2011) argue that comparisons with imperialism are often unhelpful for examining colonial situations where the colonizers never left. The uncritical application of the categories and concepts used to understand imperialism to settler colonial contexts had, they contend, led to a failure to appreciate the unique logic of settler colonialism and therefore produced distorted understandings of settler colonial formations.

Starting from this premise, Wolfe and Veracini approach settler colonialism as fundamentally different from so-called ‘franchise’ colonialism. For Veracini (2010), the distinctive nature of settler colonial orders is rooted in the motivations of settlers, their desires and mentalities, including their understandings of sovereignty and national history. While franchise colonizers seek to exploit labour and/or plunder resources, he argues, settlers are driven by a desire to acquire land and establish new societies (ibid). Moreover, while franchise colonizers (what Veracini calls ‘colonial sojourners’) intend to return to the metropole, settler colonizers come to stay.

Veracini (2019: 2) rejects the application of internal colonialism theory to Indigenous contexts. Like post-colonial theory, Veracini argues, internal colonialism treats colonialism as a phenomenon that requires the reproduction of ‘the fundamental inequality that separates colonizer from colonized’ (see also: Veracini, 2011:1). By contrast, settler colonialism ‘supersedes rather than reproduces’ these inequalities: ‘settlers win by discontinuing unequal relationships rather than maintaining them’ (Veracini, 2019: 2).

Wolfe's and Veracini's contributions have become foundational to scholarly understanding of Indigenous peoples’ experiences of Canadian colonialism and have influenced a substantial body of scholarship that is critically important to our understanding of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada, within the field of geography and beyond. It has been applied to urban (Simpson and Hugill, 2022; Dorries et al., 2019; Tomiak, 2017) and northern/rural (Wilson & Inkster, 2018; Daigle, 2016; Cameron, 2015; Coulthard, 2014) contexts. It has influenced research into the relationships between settler colonialism and resource extraction (Leddy, 2022; Schmidt, 2022; McCreary and Milligan, 2021; Hall, 2021a), waste management (Liboiron, 2021; Hird, 2021; Stanley, 2008), conservation (Townsend and Roth, 2023; Youdelis et al., 2020), food (in)security and sovereignty (Burnett and Hay, 2023; Daigle, 2019), labour studies (Camfield, 2019) and international relations (Shipley, 2020).

The value of this work notwithstanding, the field of SCS is not without its limitations. For example, by contrasting the enduring nature of settler colonialism with the supposed ephemerality of franchise colonialism, SCS significantly overstates the latter. Global imperialism has been no less enduring than settler colonialism (King, 2021).

The field's dualism between colonization for labour and colonization for land has also been identified as problematic (Englert, 2020; Dorries et al., 2019; Kelley, 2017; Speed, 2017). The rigidity of this distinction is especially notable in Veracini's work. For Veracini (2010:4) settler colonialism is not a subset of colonialism, but a different phenomenon altogether: ‘settler colonialism is not colonialism.’ This rigidity seems to flow from the fact that Veracini defines settler colonialism and colonialism as not just different, but fundamentally opposed to one another. For example, Veracini (2011: 3) argues that colonialism and settler colonialism are ‘not merely different, they are in some ways antithetical formations.’ Veracini sees this antagonism manifest in the conflicts that tend to develop between settler societies and the colonial powers from whence they came, which develop as settlers seek to create autonomous orders: ‘Whereas colonialism reinforces the distinction between colony and metropole, settler colonialism erases it’ (Veracini, 2011).

Veracini qualifies these statements to some extent, acknowledging that these two logics often become intertwined and are sometimes compatible. However, he does not provide us with the conceptual tools to analyze contexts where an imperative of exploitation and a logic of inequality become intertwined with settler colonial processes of dispossession and elimination. In cases such as these, Veracini's concepts must be supplemented with ideas from other approaches including, in the case of Canada, internal colonialism theory.

I also agree with some of the criticisms of how the concept of settler colonialism has been applied specifically to Canadian contexts, most notably Harris (2020) and Greer's (2019) contentions that the concepts developed by Wolfe and Veracini are more useful in some geographic spaces and historic periods than others. There are long periods of history where Indigenous-settler relations were premised on labour exploitation, most notably during the fur trade. Further, the shift from ‘franchise’ to ‘settler’ colonialism was and remains geographically uneven. While large settlements developed in New France as early as the 15th century and in British North America during the late 16th century, settler colonialism's logic of elimination did not structure all subsequent relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in what is now Canada. The fur trade – an enterprise that drained value from Indigenous societies through unequal exchange and labour exploitation rather than territorial dispossession – continued to structure Indigenous-colonizer relations in what is now Western Canada well into the 19th century (Ray, 1974). In many parts of northern Canada, the fur trade was the primary engine of capital accumulation until after the Second World War (Ray, 1990; Tester & Kulchyski, 1994; Usher, 1998). Because Indigenous labour was necessary for the success of the fur trade – and because the fur trade required Indigenous societies to remain reliant on the Indigenous hunting mode of production – the state's assimilatory agenda was not fully applied to areas where the fur trade remained dominant (Ray, 1990; Tester & Kulchyski, 1994).

That said, I also agree with some of criticisms of the use of the internal colonialism approach to understanding Canadian colonialism, from SCS scholars and others, especially the need to understand the unique nature of Indigenous subjugation in settler colonial states. Focusing solely on parallels with imperialism obscures the unique characteristics of Canadian settler colonialism. Moreover, while I do not share Veracini's (2019) rejection of the application of internal colonial theory to Indigenous contexts, I do agree that uncritical analyses of inequality in settler colonial contexts can support dispossession and elimination. According to Kulchyski (2016) arguments about inequality are commonly used to justify policies and other interventions that undermine Indigenous hunting ways of life in northern Canada. However, Kulchyski does not reject the core concepts of internal colonialism theory (uneven development and the ethnic division of labour), but instead applies them in a broader context of struggles over the reproduction of Indigenous hunting modes of production.

While classic scholarship on internal colonialism in Canada paid attention to processes of assimilation, these scholars failed to appreciate the extent to which the Canadian state was and is structurally bound to cultural assimilation (Nadasdy, 2003). Classic scholarship on Canadian internal colonialism also failed to adequately grapple with the gendered dimensions of Canadian colonialism, paying little heed to Indigenous women's distinct experiences. By contrast, foundational scholarship in SCS treats settler colonialism as an inherently gendered form of oppression (Wolfe, 1999). Much of the classic internal colonialism scholarship also fundamentally mischaracterized the place of Canada in the capitalist world system, treating it as a peripheral or semi-peripheral state, rather than an imperialist state and metropolitan center (Shipley, 2020; Kellogg, 2015).

In what follows, I use a case study of colonialism in the territory of Nunavut to demonstrate how concepts associated with the internal colonialism literature can be used in conjunction with concepts and categories from SCS to understand the complexities of the subjugation of Indigenous societies. A jurisdiction in Arctic Canada, the Nunavut territory makes a suitable case study. As I explain further below, while Inuit have been subjected to the settler colonial state's assimilatory policies and have experienced territorial dispossession, the concepts associated with SCS do not fully capture the injustices Inuit have suffered and continue to suffer, at the hands of colonial states and capital. As a result, it is an illustrative example of a region where other ancillary approaches (in this case, internal colonialism) are necessary to supplement the concepts and categories from SCS.

Internal and settler colonialism in Nunavut

Nunavut is part of Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit homeland in Canada. Created as a result of the 1993 Nunavut Agreement (a modern treaty between Nunavut Inuit and Canada) Nunavut is a territory of the federal Government of Canada with a majority Inuit population (Hicks and White, 2015). Inuit are an Arctic Indigenous people with a homeland stretching from Greenland to Siberia. A hunting people, Inuit in Canada historically derived most of their food and fuel – as well as materials to make clothing, tools and dwellings – from the harvest of marine mammals, caribou and fish (Bennett & Rowley, 2004). While decades of colonial interventions have significantly changed the Inuit economy, many households continue to rely on the hunting mode of production to partially meet their subsistence needs, especially with regards to food (QIA, 2018).

Inuit labour, uneven development and internal colonialism in Nunavut

The concepts and categories associated with internal colonialism – especially uneven development and an ethnic division of labour – remain indispensable for understanding colonial relationships in Nunavut, especially historically. Sustained contact between Nunavut Inuit and colonizers began in the middle of the 19th century as a result of commercial whaling. European and American whalers relied on seasonal Inuit labour (paid in trade goods) to harvest and render bowhead whales, as well as to provision whaling camps with fresh meat (Eber, 1996; Ross 1979). The whale oil extracted from the Arctic was used as lubricant in industrial machinery and therefore helped facilitate industrialization in Europe and North America (Andreasson and Ruback, 2021). Yet whaling left a legacy of devastation in Inuit territory, including a collapse of the bowhead whale population (due to over-harvesting) and a significant decline in the Inuit population (due to new diseases introduced by whalers) (Paluszkiewica-Misiaczek, 2010). By the early 20th century, declining bowhead whale stocks and the replacement of whale oil by petroleum products caused the commercial whaling industry in Nunavut to collapse (Eber, 1996; Ross 1979).

The collapse of commercial whaling was followed by the arrival of fur traders, drawn north in search of lucrative Arctic Fox pelts. As with whaling, the fur trade in Nunavut relied almost entirely on Inuit labour to harvest furs, until non-Indigenous trappers entered the region in large numbers during the Great Depression of the 1930s (Ray, 1990). By the onset of the Second World War, the fur trade had deeply entrenched Inuit dependence on imported technology, as manufactured rifles, cookware and other tools became staples of Inuit life (Tester & Kulchyski, 1994; Ray, 1990). Shortly after the war ended, the market price of Arctic Fox pelts plummeted, leading to an economic crisis across Arctic Canada (Tester & Kulchyski, 1994).

The Government of Canada responded to the decline of the fur trade by promoting industrial extraction – mining, hydroelectric development and hydrocarbon extraction – as part of a broader agenda to ‘modernize’ the north (Nungak, 2017; Tester & Kulchyski, 1994; Duffy, 1988). In the latter half of the 20th century, Industrial extraction reproduced and sustained the unequal relationship between southern metropolitan centers and northern peripheries that characterized whaling and the fur trade. Most economic benefits from extraction were captured by the metropole, including profits, royalties, taxes and employment opportunities (especially well-paid technical and professional positions) (Usher, 1974). Moreover, the economic linkages that drive diversified development (procurement of equipment, provisioning of supplies, contracting opportunities and value-added secondary production) were also mostly captured by the metropole (Watkins, 1977). At the same time, most of the negative implications of extraction remained in the north, including economically and socially disruptive ‘boom-bust’ cycles, environmental damage and the degradation of Indigenous modes of production (Usher, 1998).

Extractive industries in the north were also characterized by a racialized or ethnic division of labour. Most employment opportunities went to settlers that did not permanently reside in the north, especially well-paid, permanent and ‘skilled’ or ‘professional’ jobs at mines, oil rigs and hydroelectric projects. By contrast, Indigenous peoples were usually left with poorly-paid, temporary and ‘unskilled’ positions, if they were hired at all (Kulchyski, 2016; Watkins, 1977; Usher, 1976; Brody, 1975).

Since the 1970s, Indigenous political mobilization has resulted in political and legal changes that provide northern Indigenous communities with mechanisms to capture greater shares of the wealth produced by extraction. Such mechanisms include the constitutional entrenchment of Indigenous rights and the negotiation of modern treaties and self-government agreements (Southcott et al., 2018; Alacantara, 2013; Slowey, 2008). The 1993 Nunavut Agreement contains provisions for royalty sharing, impact and benefit agreements and co-managed environmental impact assessment (Hicks and White, 2015).

Yet colonial patterns of uneven development persist. Significant shares of the profits, royalties, employment opportunities and economic linkages associated with extraction in many parts of the north continue to be captured by non-Indigenous people and institutions based in southern Canada (Bone, 2016). Nunavut is no exception. As Rodon (2018: 3) notes, ‘the main employer in the region is the public administration and there is a very limited private sector, so the Arctic communities are prone to economic leakage with little capacity to retain wealth, with the exception of the few regional centres.’ According to Bernauer (2019), in the 21st century, the majority of profits, employment opportunities and contract opportunities associated with mining in Nunavut – along with a significant share of royalties – continued to accrue to other jurisdictions. Bernauer also identifies a continuity in the ethnic division of labour associated with extraction, whereby most ‘unskilled’, temporary and casual positions continue to be filled by Inuit. The workforce at mines in Nunavut is also stratified along gendered lines, with women more likely to fill positions that are traditionally gendered female (e.g., housekeeping, kitchen work) (Czyzewski et al., 2014).

Dispossession, assimilation and settler colonialism in Nunavut

At first glance, the concept of settler colonialism appears to fit awkwardly in the context of Nunavut. With regards to basic demographics, non-Indigenous peoples hardly outnumber Inuit in their homeland, with the latter comprising over 83% of Nunavut's population (Statistics Canada, 2017). Moreover, if we strictly adhere to the categories that Wolfe and Veracini have developed, Nunavut is not a settler colony. Colonial interventions in the far north, including Nunavut, have rarely been motivated by a quest for land for settlers to live on, but instead have focused on extracting and exporting primary commodities (Hall, 2021a; Bernauer, 2019), as well as the military-strategic value of the Arctic (Abele, 1987). Most non-Indigenous Canadians living in the Arctic are not present as settlers according to Veracini's definitions. Rather than coming to the north to stay, most come as colonial sojourners – as mine workers, administrators, clergy and police officers – with the intention to eventually leave.

Yet Nunavut Inuit have nonetheless been subjected to settler colonial dispossession and elimination, albeit somewhat later than many other Indigenous peoples in Canada. During the whaling and fur trade eras, the Canadian State maintained a laissez-faire approach to Inuit policy, leaving governance largely in the hands of fur traders and a handful of scattered police outposts (Brody, 1975; Tester & Kulchyski, 1994). For the most part, assimilationist policies like residential schooling were not initially applied to Inuit, as whaling and the fur trade were both premised on the reproduction of the Indigenous hunting mode of production.

However, after the Second World War this policy approach was reversed as the state began to intervene more directly into Inuit society. Responding to the economic and social crisis created by the decline of the fur trade – as well as anxieties about Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic – state policy became oriented towards ‘modernizing’ the Arctic (Tester & Kulchyski, 1994; Duffy, 1989; Brody, 1975). While early interventions – including the now-infamous High Arctic relocations – assumed that Inuit would continue living on the land as hunters, a policy of assimilation and population centralization later coalesced (Cameron, 2015; Tester & Kulchyski, 1994). Classic tools of settler colonialism were applied to Nunavut Inuit, including the removal of children from their families for schooling by the church or state (TRC, 2015; QTC 2010a).²

Through a variety of means, by the late 1960s Inuit were coerced to leave behind their life on the land and move into the new settlements the government was establishing (QTC, 2010b; Tester & Kulchyski, 1994; RCAP, 1996). As Wenzel (1991) explains, the centralization of Inuit into permanent settlements created new dependencies on imported motorized transportation, as boats and snowmobiles were required to access distant hunting grounds. The Indigenous hunting mode of production was further burdened by new conservation measures. Introduced by the Government of Canada, these measures both regulated Inuit hunting and dispossessed Inuit territory (Sandlos, 2007; Kulchyski & Tester, 2008) Although Inuit continued to travel, hunt and camp throughout their traditional territory, the land was effectively cleared of permanent inhabitants, paving the way for extractive industries. Industrial extraction itself is frequently experienced as dispossession and elimination. Such activities are associated with disruptions to land-based harvesting practices, as well as the degradation of the wildlife resources that land-based economies depend upon (see Leddy (2022) and Hall (2021a) for analyses of extraction as settler colonialism in other jurisdictions in Canada).

While the provisions of the Nunavut Agreement provide Inuit with mechanisms to protect their culture and heritage, processes of dispossession and elimination continue. The agreement itself advanced dispossession because Inuit ‘ceded’ their title to their homeland in exchange for specified rights and benefits (Hicks and White, 2015). The co-management arrangements created by the agreement provide Inuit with opportunities to participate in decisions about conservation and extraction. However, in both Nunavut and other northern regions, co-management structures have failed to adequately protect wildlife habitat for specifies that are foundational to the Indigenous hunting mode of production (Cameron & Kennedy, 2023; Parlee et al., 2018). Moreover, as Nadasdy (2003) shows, co-management tends to reproduce processes of cultural and political assimilation by bureaucratizing northern Indigenous societies.

Conclusions

Concepts associated with settler colonial theory are indispensable for understanding Canadian colonialism. Broadly speaking, Canada is a settler colonial state founded on the dispossession of Indigenous territory and the elimination of Indigenous nations. This foundational dispossession and elimination continue today through modern treaties, extractive industries and other mechanisms.

Settler colonial theory also offers several corrections to shortcomings in internal colonialism theory. SCS properly centers dispossession and elimination and identifies a structural predisposition to ongoing dispossession and elimination. Moreover, SCS pays greater attention to gender, treating settler colonialism as an inherently gendered form of domination.

However, settler colonial theory does not account for many of the inequities embedded in the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In this regard, the concept of internal colonialism can play a useful ancillary role, especially in northern Canadian contexts where settle colonial processes of dispossession and erasure are articulated with uneven development and an ethnic division of labour. It is helpful to think of Canada as a settler colonial social formation, where dispossession and elimination are the dominant (but by no means exclusive) logics or processes that structure Indigenous-settler relations. However, the internal colonialism concept can help illuminate some of the injustices and conflicts that, while not captured by settler colonial theory, are nonetheless an important part of the subjugation of Indigenous peoples in northern North America. Most notably, it can help geographers better appreciate the roles of social and geographic inequalities in such subjugation. While the analysis in this article focuses on Indigenous experiences with Canadian colonialism, its arguments and conclusions have relevance to other states where settler colonialism is articulated with colonial patterns of uneven development and social inequality.

However, even when combined, ‘internal’ and ‘settler’ approaches do not fully capture the injustices Indigenous peoples face. In this regard, theories of colonialism must be combined with other approaches – including Marxism, feminism and queer theory – to account for articulations with class, gender and sexuality. Both bodies of theory lack substantial analysis of world system dynamics and capitalist geopolitics, which can be corrected with engagement with theories of imperialism. It is also important to note that both approaches are more descriptive than they are analytical. As such, while they help us better understand colonial relationships and processes, they are limited when it comes to changing them. For this, we must turn to the now significant body of critical literature by Indigenous authors regarding decolonization, reconciliation and resurgence.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Ethical consideration

The author(s) declared that ethical approval was not necessary for this study

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Warren Bernauer

Notes

Author Biography

Warren Bernauer is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of Manitoba. His research examines the relationship between Canadian colonialism and extraction, conservation, and energy transitions. Bernauer has a PhD in Critical Human Geography from York University (Canada).

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