The Mainlander: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

Review of Glen Sean Coulthard's RED SKIN, WHITE MASKS.

Red Skin, White MasksPart of the history of the last five centuries on these territories is the story of Europeans displacing Indigenous peoples for economic gain. It is this history that Glen Coulthard, in his new book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, calls the “violent transformation of noncapitalist forms of life into capitalist ones.” This form of primitive accumulation, through violent dispossession, has since given way to quieter, less visible, structures of constant displacement. In the pointed words of Patrick Wolfe, cited by Coulthard, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event.”

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Published in: The Mainlander
By: DANIEL TSEGHAY