Dystopia or Survival: Settler Colonial Expansion, Dispossession, and Resistance By Native Americans and Palestinians

The driver of the global changes that have led to the Anthropocene can be at least in part attributed to what Bacon (2016) referred to as the eco-social violence of settler colonialism – the transformation of landscape and biodiversity to favor settler and colonial expansion in place of indigenous peoples. This paper argues that critical venues for investigating the roots, consequences, and challenges of environmental injustice are at the spaces of modern settler colonial expansion into the frontier – where private actors, aligned with nation-states, implement land grabs for territorial acquisition and resource extraction. Building on the literatures of settler colonialism (Wolfe 2006; 2011), frontier capitalism (Patel and Moore 2018), and the theory of transitional justice (Ribot and Peluso 2003), this paper uses two cases to demonstrate how settler colonial networks of aligned private interests with the protection of the state move into frontier territories: attempts to establish new mining activity in the Menominee Nation of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; and colonization and expulsion of Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Both cases demonstrate the role of assemblages of non-state and state actors and technologies in facilitating land grabs and exploitation through legal and narrative devices. Further, they demonstrate the role of such activities in creating dystopian futures of profound dispossession for some and enrichment of others. Both also demonstrate the role of movements of local and international solidarity that are mobilized to resist expansion into the frontier. While these cases remain unsettled, the context of stage of colonization, and existing legal constraints may well condition outcomes. These observations from these cases are used to offer new theoretical insights.