Making and Breaking Settler Space

Five hundred years. A vast geography. And an unfinished project to remake the world to match the desires of settler colonizers. How have settlers used violence and narrative to transform Turtle Island into “North America”? What does that say about our social systems, and what happens next?

Drawing on multiple disciplines, archival sources, pop culture, and personal experience, Making and Breaking Settler Space creates a model that shows how settler spaces have evolved. From the colonization of Turtle Island in the 1500s to problematic activist practices by would-be settler allies today, Adam Barker traces the trajectory of settler colonialism, drawing out details of its operation and unflinchingly identifying its weaknesses.

Making and Breaking Settler Space proposes an innovative, unified spatial theory of settler colonization in Canada and the United States. In doing so, it offers a framework within which settlers can pursue decolonial actions in solidarity with Indigenous communities.