Description
From their origins in challenging ongoing colonialism, both Indigenous studies and settler colonial studies have developed important bodies of understanding regarding our colonial present, and the possibilities for decolonization. Despite early interventions, both have trended towards centring individual cases, and operating within the context of existing states and the state system. Both challenges potentially limit the fields’ possible contributions.
To move away from these limitations, this roundtable brings together participants to propose a 'middle range' transnational approach. We argue transnationalism offers great possibility for the fields to view the interactions and exchanges that take place outside of currently-dominant contexts. By looking across cases, sites, and settler states, we can better understand the intertwined phenomena of settler colonialism and Indigenous organizing and governance, including the enduring importance of Indigenous nations that have been historically linked to each other and other polities and social movements. Participants’ interventions will highlight how a transnational perspective will help recover and study these links.