Disrupting Settler-Colonial Capitalism: Indigenous Intifadas and Resurgent Solidarity from Turtle Island to Palestine
Keywords: 
settler colonialism
racial capitalism
Indigenous peoples
Canada
Israel/Palestine
Solidarity
resurgence
social movements
Abstract: 

This article explores the resurgence of Indigenous/Palestine solidarity during the Wet’suwet’en land sovereignty struggle in Canada that took place around the same time Donald Trump’s Middle East “peace plan” was released in early 2020. Historicizing this resurgence within a longer period of anti-colonial resistance, the article attends to the distinct historical, polit-ical-economic, and juridical formations that undergird settler colonialism in Canada and Israel/Palestine. It contends with the theoretical limits of the settler-colonial framework, pushing back against narratives of settler success, and shows how anti-colonial resistance accelerated economic crises that led both settler states to enter into “negotiations” with the col-onized (reconciliation in one case, and peace talks in the other) as a strategy to maintain capitalist settler control over stolen lands. The analysis also sheds light on a praxis of solidarity that has implications for movement building and joint struggle.

Author biography: 

Chandni Desai is assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Desai is working on her first book, tentatively titled Revolutionary Circuits of Liberation: The Radical Tradition of Palestinian Resistance Culture and Internationalism. Her research interests include comparative settler colonialism, anti-colonial thought, resistance culture, liberation politics, state violence (carceral politics, securitization, and militarism), political economy, internationalism, abolition, and decolonization. She coedited a special issue on decolonization and Palestine for the journal Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society. Desai hosts the Liberation Pedagogy Podcast.