Settler Colonialism and Primitive Accumulation

Academics who differentiated colonialism and settler colonialism

Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini

Colonialism

Based in exploration of labour and inequality

Settler colonialism

Based in dispossession and elimination

Glen Coulthard

Dene scholar who applied framework for settler colonialism to struggles in Northern Canada

Settler Colonialism is a..

Structure, not an event

Karl Marx

Developed theories on the origins of capitalism and Primitive Accumulation

Freedom in a double sense

Free from serfdom to access the labour market, free from the land and subsistence

Enclosures

Laws and agreements between lords. Involved clearing peasants off land to get pastures with hired workers

Settler Colonialism in Canada

Indigenous people’s land taken away so settlers can get resources, efforts to eliminate or assimilate indigenous peoples

Primitive Accumulation in Canada

Taking indigenous people off their land, but no freedom from serfdom as culture was egalitarian (no benefit, just pain)