Indigenous Peoples and Colonialism: Global Perspectives

Indigenous peoples have gained increasing international visibility in their fight against longstanding colonial occupation by nation-states. Although living in different locations around the world and practising highly varied ways of life, indigenous peoples nonetheless are affected by similar patterns of colonial dispossession and violence. In defending their collective rights to self-determination, culture, lands and resources, their resistance and creativity offer a pause for critical reflection on the importance of maintaining indigenous distinctiveness against the homogenizing forces of states and corporations. This timely book highlights significant colonial patterns of domination and their effects, as well as responses and resistance to colonialism. It brings indigenous peoples' issues and voices to the forefront of sociological discussions of modernity. In particular, the book examines issues of identity, dispossession, environment, rights and revitalization in relation to historical and ongoing colonialism, showing that the experiences of indigenous peoples in wealthy and poor countries are often parallel and related. With a strong comparative scope and interdisciplinary perspective, the book is an essential introductory reading for students interested in race and ethnicity, human rights, development and indigenous peoples' issues in an interconnected world.

Politics & Social Sciences

Samson, Colin

Gigoux, Carlos

Social Sciences

Polity

Indigenous peoples have gained increasing visibility in their fight against longstanding colonial occupation and domination by nation-states. In defending collective rights, their creativity and resilience offer a pause for critical reflection on the relationships between indigenous peoples and powerful states and corporations around the world.

Review\nWell written, and frequently fascinating. As a detailed ethnography of an individual people's experiences, it makes an important contribution to the broader corpus of North American Aboriginal studies. It also provides a useful corrective for those otherwise convinced of Canada's essential goodness. - Colin Samson, Community, Environment and Population - Community, Environment and Population\nThis book is about the social and political processes involved in the extinguishment of a unique way of life of the Innu people of Nitassinan, the Labrador-Quebec peninsula. In the 1950s and 60s, the Innu were prompted by Canadian authorities to abandon permanent nomadic hunting, the way of life that had made them independent and self-reliant occupants of the Subarctic. These people, who had occupied a territory the size of France, and for whom the land, waterways and animals provided physical, moral and spiritual sustenance, were settled in government-built villages in Northern Quebec and Labrador. Sustained efforts to impose Euro-Canadian authority upon the Innu have had the effect of seriously eroding not only a distinct way of life, but a unique view of the self, society, and the cosmos. Such efforts have also resulted in rates of suicide, alcoholism, and other forms of self-destructive abuse that are among the highest in the world. 
By observing interactions between the Innu and the Euro-Canadian institutions imposed upon them, Samson examines how the attempt to destroy the Innu way of life has actually operated. The book looks in detail at Innu relations with the Canadian state, developers, explorers, missionaries, educators, health-care professionals, and the justice system.

A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu (Social and Economic Studies)

History

Americas

ISER Books

Imprint unknown

The Colonialism of Human Rights: Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Liberalism

Do so-called universal human rights apply to indigenous, formerly enslaved and colonized peoples? This trenchant book brings human rights into conversation with the histories and afterlives of Western colonialism and slavery. Colin Samson examines the paradox that the nations that credit themselves with formulating universal human rights were colonial powers, settler colonists and sponsors of enslavement. Samson points out that many liberal theorists supported colonialism and slavery, and how this illiberalism plays out today in selective, often racist processes of recognition and enforcement of human rights.&nbsp; To reveal the continuities between colonial histories and contemporary events, Samson connects British, French and American&nbsp;colonial theories&nbsp;and practice to the notion of non-universal human rights. Vivid illustrations and case studies of racial exceptions to human rights are drawn from the afterlives of the enslaved and colonized, as well as recent events such as American police killings of black people, the treatment of Algerian&nbsp;harkis&nbsp;in France, the Windrush scandal in Britain and the militarized suppression of the Standing Rock Water Protectors movement. Advocating for reparative justice and indigenizing law, Samson argues that such events are not a failure of liberalism so much as an inbuilt racial dynamic of it.

Do so-called universal human rights apply to indigenous, formerly enslaved and colonized peoples?\nThis trenchant book brings human rights into conversation with the histories and afterlives of Western colonialism and slavery. Colin Samson examines the paradox that the nations that credit themselves with formulating universal human rights were colonial powers, settler colonists and sponsors of enslavement. Samson points out that many liberal theorists supported colonialism and slavery, and how this illiberalism plays out today in selective, often racist processes of recognition and enforcement of human rights.\nTo reveal the continuities between colonial histories and contemporary events, Samson connects British, French and American colonial theories and practice to the notion of non-universal human rights. Vivid illustrations and case studies of racial exceptions to human rights are drawn from the afterlives of the enslaved and colonized, as well as recent events such as American police killings of black people, the treatment of Algerian harkis in France, the Windrush scandal in Britain and the militarized suppression of the Standing Rock Water Protectors movement. Advocating for reparative justice and indigenizing law, Samson argues that such events are not a failure of liberalism so much as an inbuilt racial dynamic of it.

Based on extensive historical research and fieldwork in Labrador over many years, A Way of Life that Does not Exist brings to light the scale of the tragedies that have overtaken the Innu, giving rise to international human rights concerns.Colin Samson looks in detail at Innu relations with the Canadian state, developers, explorers, missionaries, educators, health-care professionals, and the justice system. Although the Innu have lost land and lives in the attempts to assimilate them, Samson demonstrates that many have also resisted the official state policy of ‘extinguishment’ through both political channels and by maintaining a resilient belief in their distinctiveness and their attachment to the land.

A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu

Verso

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Samson, Colin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Samson, Colin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Samson, Colin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Indigenous Peoples and Colonialism: Global Perspectives

Indigenous Peoples and Colonialism: Global Perspectives

A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu (Social and Economic Studies)

Indigenous Peoples and Colonialism: Global Perspectives

The Colonialism of Human Rights: Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Liberalism

The Colonialism of Human Rights: Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Liberalism

A Way of Life That Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu