Settler-Colonial Sovereignty: Visions of Improvement and Indigenous Erasure

Knowledge production in the Anglosphere depends on the erasure of non-Western ways of knowing – especially ways of knowing oneself, the lands and waters, and the relationships between these entities. In settler-colonial states those in power seldom question this erasure, despite the ongoing presence and power of Indigenous nations. In this groundbreaking work, Liam Midzain-Gobin illuminates how the logic of improvement animates this epistemological ignorance, both historically and currently. By creating a new world based on settler views, the settler state augments its own power. This way of thinking drives government actions and even influences how settlers and the state imagine what is possible. Examining knowledge production through governance processes, Settler-Colonial Sovereignty studies three policy areas: First Nations reserve policy, land and resource monitoring frameworks, and the Indigenous Peoples Survey. Throughout, Midzain-Gobin shows how state sovereignty is never stable but continually being reaffirmed. Inspired by the interaction of Indigenous knowledge with cosmological assumptions to provide different understandings of our place in the world, Settler-Colonial Sovereignty imagines how we might move past improvement as a basis for Indigenous-settler relations.