The Settler Complex

Book excerpt: Nonfiction. Native American Studies. The essays in this volume confront the assimilationist agendas in settler- colonial states around the world that seek to erase the distinct histories and current status of Indigenous peoples as sovereign peoples. In the introduction, editor Patrick Wolfe provocatively asks whether the repudiation of binarism by non-Native scholars constitutes a colonizing perspective. Questions of identity form part of the ongoing process of settler colonialism that seeks to eliminate the Native. In various ways, by no means unanimously, the articles in this collection address these and related issues.