Lubna Alli

This week’s readings by Leeuw on residential schooling in BC, Canada and by Lunstrum and Ybarra on security threat narratives on displacement in Mozambique and Guatemala brought forward thought provoking ideas about the relationship between land, geography and property to the politics of race and space. Who truly has the power, and what continues to reinforce these systemic power dynamics?

The readings got me to think about the colonization of land and peoples and the subsequent displacement of these populations across the world, and not just within the context of the cities mentioned in the reading. It seems as though human history has a complicated and unfair relationship with the past, which continues to reinforce ideals around right to body, mind, and spirit of another. Leeuw states, “space became an agent of colonial ideology” which is telling of the violent relationship between land and ownership. Space, materially and literally, was violently transformative of First Nations children, inscribing them upon a sense of inferiority that they would never achieve the (White) ideals demanded by them by colonial powers.

“space became an agent of colonial ideology”

(de Leeuw, 2009)

That thought, in particular, resonated with me, as I have experienced this same feeling when it comes to my relationship with Whiteness and spatiality. How do I fit into the discussions of race and space as someone that is the product of colonial violence? As a settler that is also a perpetrator of this colonial violence? These relationships are complex and the answers may not be as clear cut, but the first step is acknowledging the pain, the hurt, the trauma. The displacement of people, the battle for land and space, as shown in Guatemala with what is now Mexico’s Campeche and Chiapas, and the blanket of state intervention under the pretext of security and environmental protection is a stark reminder that the relationship between the geographies of land and the autonomy of people is one that continues to make way for discussion about the power and politics of ownership and ownership rights.

How to navigate these conversations to move forward? Looking backwards first. 

Sources:

Sarah de Leeuw. 2009. ‘If anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young’: Colonial Constructions of Aboriginal children and the geographies of Indian residential schooling in British Columbia, Canada. Children’s Geographies. 7 (2): 123–140.

Elizabeth Lunstrum and Megan Ybarra. 2018. Chapter 4: Deploying difference: Security threat narratives and state displacement from protected areas. In Land Rights, Biodiversity Conservation and Justice: Rethinking Parks and People. Edited by Sharlene Mollett and Thembela Kepe. London: Routledge. 21 pages.