Transnational Modernity/Coloniality: Linking Punjab’s Canal Colonies, Migration, and Settler Colonialism for Critical Solidarities in Canada

Authors

  • Jaspreet Ranauta

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v14i2.2272

Keywords:

Indigeneity, coloniality, British Columbia, Punjab, migration, solidarity

Abstract

This paper offers a transnational analytical framework to inform contemporary anti-racist solidarity building in what is now called Canada by engaging with migration, colonialism, and indigeneity. In particular, I trace the historical entanglements of modernity/coloniality from the British Empire’s Canal Colonies project in Punjab to colonial policies in what is now called British Columbia while centring land and Indigenous sovereignty.

References

Acker, A., Kaltmeier, O., & Tittor, A. (2016). The social production of nature between coloniality and capitalism (Introduction). fiar, 9(2), 5-24.

Agnihorti, I. (1996). Ecology, land use and colonisation: The Canal Colonies of Punjab. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 33(1), 37-58.

Ali, I. (1987). Malign growth? Agricultural colonization and the roots of backwardness in the Punjab. Past & Present, 114(1), 110-132.

Arvin, M. (2019). Indigenous feminist notes on embodying alliance against settler colonialism. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 18(2), 335-357.

Ballantyne, T. (2012). Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand's colonial past. UBC Press.

Black, K. (2017). An archive of settler belonging: Local feeling, land, and the forest resource on Vancouver Island [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Carleton University.

Byrd, J. A. (2019). Weather with you: Settler colonialism, antiblackness, and the grounded relationalities of resistance. Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies, 5(1), 207-214.

Casas, T. (2014). Transcending the coloniality of development: Moving beyond human/nature

hierarchies. American Behavioral Scientist, 58(1), 30-52.

Chatterjee, S. (2019). Immigration, anti-racism, and indigenous self-determination: Towards a

comprehensive analysis of the contemporary settler colonial. Social Identities, 25(5), 644-661.

Snelgrove, C., Dhamoon, R., Corntassel, J. (2014). Unsettling settler colonialism: The discourses and politics of settlers, and solidarity with Indigenous nations. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(2), 1-32.

Coulthard, G. (2014). Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. University of Minnesota Press.

Darling, M. L. (1925). The Punjab peasant in prosperity and debt. Oxford University Press.

Dempsey, J., Gould, K., & Sundberg, J. (2011). Changing land tenure, defining subjects: Neo-liberalism and property regimes on Native reserves. In A. Baldwin, L. Cameron, & A. Kobayashi (Eds.), Rethinking the Great White North: Race, nature, and historical geographies of whiteness in Canada (pp. 233-255). UBC Press.

Dhamoon, R. (2015). A feminist approach to decolonizing anti-racism: Rethinking transnationalism, intersectionality, and settler colonialism. feral feminisms, 4, 20-37.

Gilmartin, D. (2003a). Water and waste: Nature, productivity and colonialism in the Indus Basin. Economic and Political Weekly, 38(48), 5057-5065.

Gilmartin, D. (2003b). Migration and modernity: The state, the Punjabi village and the settling of the Canal Colonies. In I. Talbot & S. Thandi (Eds.), People on the move, A century of Punjabi local, regional and international Migration. Oxford University Press.

Grewal, R. (2013). Colonialism and urbanization in India: The Punjab region. Manohar.

Grosfoguel, R. (2012). Decolonizing Western uni-versalisms: Decolonial pluri-versalism from Aimé Césaire to the Zapatistas. TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(3), 88-102.

Haluza-DeLay, R., O’Riley, P., Cole, P., & Agyeman, J. (2009). Introduction. Speaking for ourselves, speaking together: Environmental justice in Canada. In J. Agyeman, P. Cole, R, Haluza-DeLay, & P. O’Riley (Eds.), Speaking for ourselves (pp. 1-26). UBC Press.

Hamilton, P. (1996). The Enlightenment and the birth of social science. In S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert, & K. Thompson (Eds.), Modernity: An introduction to modern societies (17-70). Wiley-Blackwell.

Indian Summer Festival. (2017, May 31). Taike: South Asian + Indigenous programming. www.indiansummerfest.ca/2017/05/31/taike-south-asian-indigenous-programming/

Jafri, B. (2012). Privilege vs. complicity: People of colour and settler colonialism. Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. http://www.ideas-idees.ca/blog/privilege-vs-complicity-people-colour-and-settler-colonialism

Jagpal, S. S. (1994). Becoming Canadians: Pioneer Sikhs in their own words. Harbour Publishing.

Lawrence, B. & Dua, E. (2005). Decolonizing antiracism. Social Justice, 32(4), 121-138.

Maldonado-Torres, N. (1997). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a

concept. Cultural Studies 21(2), 240-270.

Mawani, R. (2012). Specters of Indigeneity in British-Indian migration, 1914. Law & Society Review, 46(2), 369-403.

Mawani, R. (2018). Across oceans of law: The "Komagata Maru" and jurisdiction in the time of Empire. Duke University Press.

Maynard, R. (2017). Policing Black lives. Fernwood Publishing.

McGregor, D. (2012). Traditional knowledge: Considerations for protecting water in Ontario. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 3(3), 1-21.

Mignolo, W. (2009). Dispensable and bare lives. Coloniality and the hidden political/economic

agenda of modernity. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge,

(2), 69-88.

Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press.

Mooney, N. (2013). The yeoman Jats of Punjab: Time, expertise and the colonial construction of Jat Sikh identity. Anthropologica, 55(2), 277-290.

Nayar, K. E. (2012). The Punjabis in British Columbia: Location, labour, First Nations, and multiculturalism. McGill Press.

Phung, M. (2011). Are people of colour settlers too? In A. Mathur, J. Dewar, & M. DeGagne (Eds.), Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the lens of cultural diversity (pp. 289–298). Aboriginal Healing Foundation Series.

Puri, H. K. (1993). Ghadar movement: Ideology, organisation, and strategy. Guru Nanak Dev University Press.

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215-232.

Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 168-178.

Sehdev, R. K. (2011). People of colour in treaty. In A. Mathur, J. Dewar, & M. DeGagne (Eds.), Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the lens of cultural diversity (pp. 263–274). Aboriginal Healing Foundation Series.

Sharma, N., & Wright, C. (2008/2009). Decolonizing resistance: Challenging colonial states. Social Justice, 35(3), 120-138.

Talbot, I. A. (2007). The Punjab under colonialism: Order and transformation in British India. Journal of Punjab Studies, 14(1), 1-10.

Tirmizey, K. A. (2018). Learning from and translating peasant struggles as anti-colonial praxis: The Ghadar Party in Punjab. Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes, 13(2), 134-153.

Tuck, E. & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, 1(1), 1-40.

Tuck, E. & McKenzie, M. (2015). Place in research theory, methodology, and methods. Routledge.

Upadhyay, N. (2019). Making of ‘model’ South Asians on the tar sands: Intersections of race, caste, and Indigeneity. Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, 5(1), 152-173.

Verma, A. B. (2002). The making of Little Punjab in Canada: Patterns of immigration. Sage Publications.

Downloads

Published

2021-01-07

Issue

Section

Migration and Indigenous Sovereignty in a Chronically Mobile World