Colonialism and the Racialization of Indigenous Identity

Abstract

This chapter traces the emergence of “race” as a handmaiden to colonialism and the consequential racialization of Indigenous Peoples. We argue that colonialism and the ideas that inform colonial structures, such as race, not only serve to hide their existence but also to legitimate the power relations that they establish. As a consequence, the larger context of colonialism created and required “race” to justify the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous Peoples. Here, dispossession and displacement carry a number of meanings, from territorial expropriation to the usurpation and replacement of Indigenous self-identifications. The chapter also calls attention to the process of racialization and the historical legacies of racialized science to make appreciable how colonialism reinscribes both Native nations and their members as racialized subjects.