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Introduction
IN A RECENT ARTICLE IN SOCIAL JUSTICE, "DECOLONIZING ANTIRACISM," BONITA Lawrence and Enakshi Dua (2005) argue that antiracist theory and practices have historically excluded the concerns of Aboriginal peoples. The result, they claim, is twofold: Aboriginal people "cannot see themselves in antiracism contexts and Aboriginal activism against settler domination takes place without people of color as allies."1 They further argue that antiracist praxis has actually contributed to the active colonization of Aboriginal peoples (pp. 122-123). Indeed, they contend that "antiracism is premised on an ongoing colonial project" (p. 123, emphasis added) and on "a colonizing social formation" (pp. 129-1 3O).2
Examples of antiracist complicity, according to Lawrence and Dua, include postcolonial critiques of national liberation strategies and social constructivist critiques of nationhood or nationalisms. They maintain that such analyses further secure the colonization of indigenous people by contributing to "the ongoing delegitimization of Indigenous nationhood" (p. 128). Moreover, since indigenous "nationhood" is understood in ethnicized terms, Lawrence and Dua also claim that critiques, such as those of Stuart Hall, against ethnic absolutism are destructive of indigenous national identity and struggle (p. 131).3 Like other nationalist arguments that read the existence of contemporary nationalized polities back into time immemorial, Lawrence and Dua maintain that such critiques are attacks against both the pre-colonial identity of indigenous people and of their contemporary efforts at achieving sovereignty.
Since their critique is broadly focused on antiracism thought and practice as it affects indigenous people in Canada, Lawrence and Dua discuss what they see as the implication of nonwhites within the colonial project. One of their central arguments is that "people of color are settlers. Broad differences exist between those brought as slaves, currently working as migrant laborers, are refugees without legal documentation, or émigrés who have obtained citizenship. Yet people of color live on land that is appropriated and contested, where Aboriginal peoples are denied nationhood and access to their own lands" (p. 134).4
In this article, we would like to respond to two of these arguments. First, we challenge the conflation between processes of migration and those of colonialism. We ask whether it is historically accurate or analytically precise to describe as settler colonialism the forced movements of enslaved Africans, the movement of unfree indentured Asians, or the...