Settler Colonialism Summary

To explain settler colonialism is to describe how foreign people move into a region of the world and allow an Imperial government to have administrative power temporarily, until the lands have been sufficiently colonized. Sufficiently colonized would mean the removal of the native people from their lands. Often these lands are being colonized for their resources and the colonizers are people who believe they are superior to the native inhabitance and are therefore better able to utilize the resource. U.S. policies for settler colonialism were those which had begun under British rule and continued after American independence to clear the United States of its indigenous people and settle it with Europeans. James Belich explains in part 1 of his book, Replenishing the Earth the Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo World 1783-1939, that the expansion of Europeans took three forms. First was “networks, the establishment of ongoing systems of long-range interaction, usually for trade; empire, the control of other peoples, usually through conquest; and settlement, the reproduction of one’s own society through long range migration.” This road map for settler colonialism was a tried and true method which had worked in the past and was used effectively

It is the story of a 17th century attempt to assimilate an Innu child in North America into a French religious order. The odyssey of this young man and the failure of assimilation. Many attempts came throughout the centuries, but not successfully as Anderson states, “Like Pastedechouan's, their education systemically estranged them religiously and culturally from their natal communities, even as racism often precluded their acceptance in the white world they had been groomed to join (Barman et al. 1986; Frank