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Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada
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, 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.
Through an engaging, and sometimes enraging, look at the relationships between Canada and Indigenous nations, 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.
158 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2015
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393 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 1, 2021
This is written by two Settlers, for other Settlers.
I'd say this is a must-read for Settlers, but with a caveat: the prose is exceptionally dense & obscure. In some ways this detracts from one of their stated messages -- decolonizing our ways of knowing. A book of those labyrinthine academic sentences that you gotta read ten times is just not the best way to get this information across to a general population. There was another way to write this --- that comes across quite clearly in Ch. 5, when a series of stories is recounted. The almost shocking contrast between how engaging that section was vs the struggle of the rest of the book is telling.
Yes, this kind of narrative & information is absolutely, and should be, hard to read about. But it shouldn't be hard to read, period. The only people I can see sticking through this are Settlers who are already convinced of the overall argument, and who want other context/information/confirmation.
So, you know. Read it, if you're a Settler. But we need to stop having these conversations in ivory tower language. It's not helping anyone and the points don't need to be made in this way, all coloured by difficulty of linguistic access. There is a world in which this book was truly excellent, and it's all to do with decolonizing its prose. <3
I'd say this is a must-read for Settlers, but with a caveat: the prose is exceptionally dense & obscure. In some ways this detracts from one of their stated messages -- decolonizing our ways of knowing. A book of those labyrinthine academic sentences that you gotta read ten times is just not the best way to get this information across to a general population. There was another way to write this --- that comes across quite clearly in Ch. 5, when a series of stories is recounted. The almost shocking contrast between how engaging that section was vs the struggle of the rest of the book is telling.
Yes, this kind of narrative & information is absolutely, and should be, hard to read about. But it shouldn't be hard to read, period. The only people I can see sticking through this are Settlers who are already convinced of the overall argument, and who want other context/information/confirmation.
So, you know. Read it, if you're a Settler. But we need to stop having these conversations in ivory tower language. It's not helping anyone and the points don't need to be made in this way, all coloured by difficulty of linguistic access. There is a world in which this book was truly excellent, and it's all to do with decolonizing its prose. <3
May 26, 2018
This is an important book, one every settler Canadian should read. The problem with this book, however, is that settlers mostly won't read it. Part of that is because, as Lowman & Barker explain in detail, settlers don't want to confront what it means to be a settler, or how we could do it differently. But even people who want to take that step forward are probably not going to be able to read this book unless they have a university education. I would love to see something like this that meets people where they are at, across different levels of education and familiarity with Indigenous/settler relations. While I commend the authors for their clear writing - it's clear for academic writing. They are academics and this is ultimately an academic book that uses terms like "always already" "epistemology" "ontology" etc.
This book is primarily theoretical in nature. From the start and throughout it gestures towards a different way to be a settler but gives no pragmatic blueprint of this. In this, it reminded me of anarchist writings (and a quick perusal of the authors' other work suggests that at least Barker comes from an anarchist tradition). We need a different society, but we can't tell you what that would look like, because it needs to be determined in relationship with Indigenous people. I get that, I do. But most people are going to be looking for something a bit more tangible. What does it look like to show up meaningfully in the struggle against colonialism on an ongoing basis? I am no less asking that question now than before I read the book.
That said, this is a good book for changing how you think. It is a thinky book. Despite the fact that I have been thinking about Indigenous/settler relations for some time, and have read more than most in this area (let me say that's a low bar though) this book offered me new insights. I was particularly struck by its (in this case quite tangible!) exploration of Indigenous relationships with the land vs. settler relationships with the land. This provided food for thought for me as a settler of primarily western European origin who does feel a deep connection with the land I live on (Robinson Superior Treaty territory), where my family has been for 4 generations. In reading the chapter on land, I could see that though my connection goes beyond a feeling of 'ownership,' or 'use' it is still not the same as what the relationship the Anishinaabeg people (on whose traditional territory I reside) have with the land.
This book is primarily theoretical in nature. From the start and throughout it gestures towards a different way to be a settler but gives no pragmatic blueprint of this. In this, it reminded me of anarchist writings (and a quick perusal of the authors' other work suggests that at least Barker comes from an anarchist tradition). We need a different society, but we can't tell you what that would look like, because it needs to be determined in relationship with Indigenous people. I get that, I do. But most people are going to be looking for something a bit more tangible. What does it look like to show up meaningfully in the struggle against colonialism on an ongoing basis? I am no less asking that question now than before I read the book.
That said, this is a good book for changing how you think. It is a thinky book. Despite the fact that I have been thinking about Indigenous/settler relations for some time, and have read more than most in this area (let me say that's a low bar though) this book offered me new insights. I was particularly struck by its (in this case quite tangible!) exploration of Indigenous relationships with the land vs. settler relationships with the land. This provided food for thought for me as a settler of primarily western European origin who does feel a deep connection with the land I live on (Robinson Superior Treaty territory), where my family has been for 4 generations. In reading the chapter on land, I could see that though my connection goes beyond a feeling of 'ownership,' or 'use' it is still not the same as what the relationship the Anishinaabeg people (on whose traditional territory I reside) have with the land.
December 14, 2024
To help decide if you want to read this, here’s an excerpt:
First, Canadian sovereignty - constructed as absolute, invested in a state territory, and codified in the Constitution, common law, and regimes of property - cannot stand. In present form it simply has no legal or ethical basis and needs to be reformulated. Second, Settler Canadians must exist in a system that does not perpetuate narratives that marginalize Indigenous presence, generating contemporary excuses echoing the fiction of "empty land." Third, the spaces that Settler people occupy cannot be based on the imagined geographies of settler colonialism, but instead should correspond to spaces of Indigenous political and social life on the land. That is the barest set of conditions that must be met in order for Settler people to find ways to belong on the land that do not rely on the structures of settler colonialism.
First, Canadian sovereignty - constructed as absolute, invested in a state territory, and codified in the Constitution, common law, and regimes of property - cannot stand. In present form it simply has no legal or ethical basis and needs to be reformulated. Second, Settler Canadians must exist in a system that does not perpetuate narratives that marginalize Indigenous presence, generating contemporary excuses echoing the fiction of "empty land." Third, the spaces that Settler people occupy cannot be based on the imagined geographies of settler colonialism, but instead should correspond to spaces of Indigenous political and social life on the land. That is the barest set of conditions that must be met in order for Settler people to find ways to belong on the land that do not rely on the structures of settler colonialism.
September 22, 2021
little dense at times, but really helpful reflections!
October 22, 2019
For many years, those of us whose scholarly or political work included attention to colonialism have distinguished between colonies of settlement and colonies of extraction; some of us also might have noted the distinctiveness of colonial outposts that were held for strategic reasons – Gibraltar, American Samoa, Macao and so forth. Whereas we saw colonies of extraction as places where value was extracted (obviously!) from resources and labour, colonies of settlement accrued value by occupying the land (and in doing so dispossessing Indigenous peoples). Amid all the drives to decolonise since the Second World War, however, colonies of settlement have been an anomaly, claiming independence (decolonisation – most doing so before 1939) while remaining resolutely colonial – at least from the point of view of Indigenous peoples. Even so, there was not terribly much work done to identify what it was that made settlement colonies distinctive beyond the occupation of the land of Others, even as those Others resisted militarily, politically, culturally and in so many other ways. In retrospect, this gap in our analyses seems even more striking given the rise of international networks of Indigenous peoples from the late 1970s and the articulation from not long afterwards of a notion of these nations and a 4th World.
In the late 1990s this began to change as notions of Settler Colonialism began to be theorised: we see this in disciplines such as anthropology in the wake of the ‘turn home’ or in global histories with ideas of the ‘British World’, where analysts began to identify what it was those colonies had in common. This developing body of academic and activist theorising tied in to a growing body of work in international networks, some linked to Indigenous struggles such as those of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, straddling the Mexican and Guatemalan borders, some linked to international organisations including the push for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (with the unfortunate acronym UNDRIP). Yet, amid all this there was very little focus on settlers; sure there was attention to settlement but little if any on what it meant to be a settler – to be from elsewhere but at home ‘here’, when that home had been appropriated usually under the most dubious of circumstances. Amid all of this there was the recurring problem that even for those who recognised the injustice of their coloniser status, there was little sense of what could be done – often because it all just seemed so big, and not only was it hard to work out where to start, but there was also little sense of where to go, of what the goal of a decolonised settlement colony looked like.
This is, in a sense, where Emma Battell Lowman and Adam Barker start in this compelling analysis of Settler-dom in contemporary Canada, but with clear transferability to other similar settlement colonies – Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the USA; it’s a little trickier to see the transferability to South Africa (a distinct kind of British settlement colony) let alone the former Spanish Empire or the Russian settlement of the East (although there are likely to be similarities in parts of the Russian settlement zones such as Kamchatka where a distinctively identifiable colonised Indigenous nation can still be identified, as is the case in parts of the Caucuses – but that’s going down a different path). Lowman & Barker build their argument in three stage; first, they explore what it means to be a settler including why the label matters and the structural characteristics of settlement in Canada (there are powerful historical parallels here with Aotearoa New Zealand, and contemporary parallels to Australia and the USA).
In these opening two chapters they build on two central notions; the first is that Settler identity is “situated, process-based and pervasive” (p15) meaning at there are distinctive local conditions based on relations with the land, and is defined by and through its relationships to Indigenousness and Indigenous peoples. The second key notion is that not all newcomers are Settlers, and here they develop an argument similar to that advanced by Lorenzo Veracini (in The Settler Colonial Present ) regarding sovereignty, where some groups are able to impose forms of sovereignty on others. The outcome of this is a three part population group in settlement colonies: Settler Colonisers, Indigenous Others and Exogenous Others; these three groups exist in a context Lowman and Barker describe as marked by ‘non-discrete, non-binary dualism’. This is not their easiest concept (and it is adapted from a philosopher of language, Anne Waters), but it identifies power relations in a fluid setting with shifting dualistic relations between the three groups.
The second stage of the argument is that at the core of settler colonialism is relations with and occupation of land, including efforts where ‘resolution’ of differences between Indigenous Others and newcomers almost always turns on resolution of the land question. There is more to it that this; this discussion opens up issues of settler complicity (the claim that contemporary settlers did not commit the ‘dubious’ acts so how can they/we be complicit?), guilt and the benefits of historical occupation and descent. In this they build on the argument widely deployed in these analyses that settler colonialism is not an event but a structure, an order of being. Crucial to these aspects of the analysis is the continuing efforts of contemporary settlers to assert innocence, to divert benefits making the key point that no matter how aware we are of being settler colonials, a failure to act leaves us complicit. It is, for many, a challenging set of things to work through. What I like about this discussion is how it resonates so powerfully with I have watched and been part of since the early 1980s when these issues really started to come to the fore in Aotearoa New Zealand and with the recurrent question of how to be an ally, how to work with Indigenous peoples to overcome the settler colonial order. It also includes a powerful critique of the equation of confronting settler colonial relations with anti-racism and anti-capitalist activity, noting the blindness of some of these movements to the specificities of the structures of settler colonialism.
This is where the final two chapters come in as Lowman and Barker emphasise doubt, uncertainty, discomfort and fear that goes along with the prospect of moving beyond the established way of things. Running through this is recurrent reminder that acting on settler colonialism means changing the terms of the relationship between Settler and Indigenous, shifting the terms of engagement with the land and all that comes with it. It is a challenging discussion, and refreshingly un-programmatic – except to note that disrupting the settler colonial order requires a radical reconfiguration of the conditions of life in the place currently marked by that order.
It is, for many as noted, a difficult read, framing Settler identities in the conditions of settler colonialism where the object is to replace Indigenous peoples with a new people so requiring the extinguishment of Indigenous nations and the absorption/assimilation of Indigenous people into a new identity (this analysis is well developed in Lorenzo Veracini’s wider body of work). It may also act as the sacrificial text grappling with both the character of Settler existence and a programme of action/mode of activism needed to unsettle that Settler existence.
All in all, this excellent analysis is a powerful step beyond the ‘Indian’ problem to make clear that the issue is Settlers, and therefore what Settlers should be doing to deal with the oppression resulting from their systemic nature of their presence. It is still an issue that seems so big that it is hard to grapple with, but it also an analysis that shows where to begin, and that, if nothing else, makes this an essential read for activists, academics and others grappling with what it means to be a settler in a settler colony.
In the late 1990s this began to change as notions of Settler Colonialism began to be theorised: we see this in disciplines such as anthropology in the wake of the ‘turn home’ or in global histories with ideas of the ‘British World’, where analysts began to identify what it was those colonies had in common. This developing body of academic and activist theorising tied in to a growing body of work in international networks, some linked to Indigenous struggles such as those of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, straddling the Mexican and Guatemalan borders, some linked to international organisations including the push for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (with the unfortunate acronym UNDRIP). Yet, amid all this there was very little focus on settlers; sure there was attention to settlement but little if any on what it meant to be a settler – to be from elsewhere but at home ‘here’, when that home had been appropriated usually under the most dubious of circumstances. Amid all of this there was the recurring problem that even for those who recognised the injustice of their coloniser status, there was little sense of what could be done – often because it all just seemed so big, and not only was it hard to work out where to start, but there was also little sense of where to go, of what the goal of a decolonised settlement colony looked like.
This is, in a sense, where Emma Battell Lowman and Adam Barker start in this compelling analysis of Settler-dom in contemporary Canada, but with clear transferability to other similar settlement colonies – Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the USA; it’s a little trickier to see the transferability to South Africa (a distinct kind of British settlement colony) let alone the former Spanish Empire or the Russian settlement of the East (although there are likely to be similarities in parts of the Russian settlement zones such as Kamchatka where a distinctively identifiable colonised Indigenous nation can still be identified, as is the case in parts of the Caucuses – but that’s going down a different path). Lowman & Barker build their argument in three stage; first, they explore what it means to be a settler including why the label matters and the structural characteristics of settlement in Canada (there are powerful historical parallels here with Aotearoa New Zealand, and contemporary parallels to Australia and the USA).
In these opening two chapters they build on two central notions; the first is that Settler identity is “situated, process-based and pervasive” (p15) meaning at there are distinctive local conditions based on relations with the land, and is defined by and through its relationships to Indigenousness and Indigenous peoples. The second key notion is that not all newcomers are Settlers, and here they develop an argument similar to that advanced by Lorenzo Veracini (in The Settler Colonial Present ) regarding sovereignty, where some groups are able to impose forms of sovereignty on others. The outcome of this is a three part population group in settlement colonies: Settler Colonisers, Indigenous Others and Exogenous Others; these three groups exist in a context Lowman and Barker describe as marked by ‘non-discrete, non-binary dualism’. This is not their easiest concept (and it is adapted from a philosopher of language, Anne Waters), but it identifies power relations in a fluid setting with shifting dualistic relations between the three groups.
The second stage of the argument is that at the core of settler colonialism is relations with and occupation of land, including efforts where ‘resolution’ of differences between Indigenous Others and newcomers almost always turns on resolution of the land question. There is more to it that this; this discussion opens up issues of settler complicity (the claim that contemporary settlers did not commit the ‘dubious’ acts so how can they/we be complicit?), guilt and the benefits of historical occupation and descent. In this they build on the argument widely deployed in these analyses that settler colonialism is not an event but a structure, an order of being. Crucial to these aspects of the analysis is the continuing efforts of contemporary settlers to assert innocence, to divert benefits making the key point that no matter how aware we are of being settler colonials, a failure to act leaves us complicit. It is, for many, a challenging set of things to work through. What I like about this discussion is how it resonates so powerfully with I have watched and been part of since the early 1980s when these issues really started to come to the fore in Aotearoa New Zealand and with the recurrent question of how to be an ally, how to work with Indigenous peoples to overcome the settler colonial order. It also includes a powerful critique of the equation of confronting settler colonial relations with anti-racism and anti-capitalist activity, noting the blindness of some of these movements to the specificities of the structures of settler colonialism.
This is where the final two chapters come in as Lowman and Barker emphasise doubt, uncertainty, discomfort and fear that goes along with the prospect of moving beyond the established way of things. Running through this is recurrent reminder that acting on settler colonialism means changing the terms of the relationship between Settler and Indigenous, shifting the terms of engagement with the land and all that comes with it. It is a challenging discussion, and refreshingly un-programmatic – except to note that disrupting the settler colonial order requires a radical reconfiguration of the conditions of life in the place currently marked by that order.
It is, for many as noted, a difficult read, framing Settler identities in the conditions of settler colonialism where the object is to replace Indigenous peoples with a new people so requiring the extinguishment of Indigenous nations and the absorption/assimilation of Indigenous people into a new identity (this analysis is well developed in Lorenzo Veracini’s wider body of work). It may also act as the sacrificial text grappling with both the character of Settler existence and a programme of action/mode of activism needed to unsettle that Settler existence.
All in all, this excellent analysis is a powerful step beyond the ‘Indian’ problem to make clear that the issue is Settlers, and therefore what Settlers should be doing to deal with the oppression resulting from their systemic nature of their presence. It is still an issue that seems so big that it is hard to grapple with, but it also an analysis that shows where to begin, and that, if nothing else, makes this an essential read for activists, academics and others grappling with what it means to be a settler in a settler colony.
April 12, 2016
Should be required reading for every new Canadian ("new" meaning 'any time after 1st contact'). These authors tackle issues from every direction and unpack responsibility for change from the individual to the societal level. Excellently done.
August 4, 2016
Excellent
June 15, 2017
Changed my perspective on Canada and what it means to be Canadian. Must read!
November 1, 2020
This book is sort of like the postcolonial equivalent of critical masculinity studies--it grows out of a recognition that in order to achieve liberation it's not sufficient to study the experiences of oppressed peoples (often still situating those experiences in relationship to their oppressors), but we also need to understand in careful and critical ways the experiences of those who benefit from socio-cultural power structures. And so, as Settler Canadians dedicated to the fight for Indigenous resurgence, the authors here have set out to understand the Settler colonial experience, mindset, and identity.
Essentially, the key element of Settler identity is--like Indigenous identity--land. Both Settlers and Indigenous people are profoundly shaped by their relationships to the land, but in different ways. For Indigenous people the connection to land is a deep spiritual link to place broadly conceived, including reciprocal connections with plants, animals, water, geography, etc. all of which are seen as co-existing in systems of mutual respect, support, and sustainability. For the Settler, by contrast, land is much more akin to property, and the possession of land is particularly important because the Settler has either direct or ancestral memory of being severed from a land (through immigration, exploration, enslavement, expulsion, etc.). And so possession of the land (and the legitimization of that possession through various cultural forms like national narratives, "legal" documents, and disavowal of competing Indigenous claims to the land) becomes an existential requirements to avoid the experience of being once again dislodged from a territory.
One of the points the book makes is that Settlers often react in strongly emotional ways to being confronted with the evidence of their--our, as I'm also a Settler in a settler colonial society, the USA--own participation within systems of settler colonialism. These reactions can be quite varied, but they often manifest in anger (i.e., "I didn't steal anybody's land," the same as "I didn't own slaves" here in the US to disavow the benefits accrued by white people as a result of slavery), guilt that becomes a pretext for demanding acknowledgment in ways that center the Settler's affective experience rather than leading to productive action to decolonize, or dissociation with colonialism through faux Indigenous identification or symbolic abandonment of the settler colonial society.
Although the majority of the book is spent on establishing the Settler mindset and showing how even people who don't think of themselves as Settlers are implicated in the settler project, the book does offer arguments for how Settlers can begin building a more ethically just society through decolonization. Much of this involves giving up the formal structures through which the Canadian (or US, or Australian, or New Zealand) government asserts exclusive sovereignty over Indigenous peoples' territories, and instead working out schemes of co-existence that would honor and foreground Native relations to the land. The authors acknowledge that this would represent a seismic shift in how settler societies actually function, but they also argue that it would produce more ethical, sustainable, and equitable societies freed from the anxiety induced by the settler colonial terror of displacement and the guilt over the violence used against Indigenous peoples.
Essentially, the key element of Settler identity is--like Indigenous identity--land. Both Settlers and Indigenous people are profoundly shaped by their relationships to the land, but in different ways. For Indigenous people the connection to land is a deep spiritual link to place broadly conceived, including reciprocal connections with plants, animals, water, geography, etc. all of which are seen as co-existing in systems of mutual respect, support, and sustainability. For the Settler, by contrast, land is much more akin to property, and the possession of land is particularly important because the Settler has either direct or ancestral memory of being severed from a land (through immigration, exploration, enslavement, expulsion, etc.). And so possession of the land (and the legitimization of that possession through various cultural forms like national narratives, "legal" documents, and disavowal of competing Indigenous claims to the land) becomes an existential requirements to avoid the experience of being once again dislodged from a territory.
One of the points the book makes is that Settlers often react in strongly emotional ways to being confronted with the evidence of their--our, as I'm also a Settler in a settler colonial society, the USA--own participation within systems of settler colonialism. These reactions can be quite varied, but they often manifest in anger (i.e., "I didn't steal anybody's land," the same as "I didn't own slaves" here in the US to disavow the benefits accrued by white people as a result of slavery), guilt that becomes a pretext for demanding acknowledgment in ways that center the Settler's affective experience rather than leading to productive action to decolonize, or dissociation with colonialism through faux Indigenous identification or symbolic abandonment of the settler colonial society.
Although the majority of the book is spent on establishing the Settler mindset and showing how even people who don't think of themselves as Settlers are implicated in the settler project, the book does offer arguments for how Settlers can begin building a more ethically just society through decolonization. Much of this involves giving up the formal structures through which the Canadian (or US, or Australian, or New Zealand) government asserts exclusive sovereignty over Indigenous peoples' territories, and instead working out schemes of co-existence that would honor and foreground Native relations to the land. The authors acknowledge that this would represent a seismic shift in how settler societies actually function, but they also argue that it would produce more ethical, sustainable, and equitable societies freed from the anxiety induced by the settler colonial terror of displacement and the guilt over the violence used against Indigenous peoples.
September 18, 2021
An important book to read for any none-indigenous Canadian who wants to improve relationships with First Nations but is uncertain how they can participate. We should identify as "Settler Canadians" as this book makes the case that unless you acknowledge your role in perpetuating colonization, we will never get to benefits of "decolonization" for indigenous people and society in general. It shows how Settler Canadians can be too focused on what they lose in the process of decolonization as opposed to what we could all gain. One other point I found of interest; those who want to be allies of the indigenous people should think of the word "ally" as a verb and not a noun. We should all try to improve the situation by doing thing that support First Nations in their effort to re-assert their culture. There are things I have done in the past which I now realize were guided by a "Colonial" perspective that could be done in a more effective way by improving my relationship with indigenous partners and understanding their point of view. Food for thought and action and challenging our preconceptions. Well worth the read.
September 17, 2020
An accessible (not overly-burdened by extraneous theory) resource for settlers pursuing meaning in the settler identity, realizing the colonial overtones of life and character in a settler state, and accepting the non-justifiable complexities of being an anti-colonial settler.
February 18, 2021
I’m learned a lot but I gotta admit, reading this is a slog. I really had to push myself. Still, this gets into the nitty gritty of settler colonial thinking which is super useful to know. Definitely worth a reread, although I wish I had a physical copy I could scribble in.
May 23, 2022
Could be required reading for adults. It was uncomfy though necessary.
Read
December 12, 2025did not finish 😬
March 30, 2020
[4.5]
Lowman's book is the kind that I want to make my family read. Very timely.
Lowman's book is the kind that I want to make my family read. Very timely.
July 10, 2016
Short, dense, invigorating. Can't say I understood it all, can't say I agreed with it all, but it says so much that needs to be said and does it well.
Read the footnotes. Go on to read all of the related works cited. A good place to start, then keep going.
Read the footnotes. Go on to read all of the related works cited. A good place to start, then keep going.
May 4, 2016
This is a book I need to read again and again. So much packed in! What an incredible resource to help me understand my own identity of Settler Canadian. Much to continue to think on...
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews