Читать книгу Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law - Natsu Taylor Saito - Страница 33

Early Angloamerican settlers were unable to envision systems of shared land tenure and governance, and unwilling to adapt themselves to extant Indigenous polities. As a result, the elimination of Native peoples became essential to their mission. Employing the fiction that the land was “vacant,” the colonists quickly set about making it so. While more subtle means have been utilized subsequently, it is important to acknowledge that the settlers’ preferred method, at least initially, was simply to kill those who lived here—men and women, children and elders. The “absence” of these peoples continues to be invoked by settler society to legitimize the occupation of their lands, and the strategies employed to diminish their presence continue to inflict harm on Indigenous individuals and communities.