Making Humanitarians on Indigenous Land: Relationalities and Othering in Settler Civilizing Projects

• In Event: 81.014 - Native and Indigenous Conceptions of Time, Space, and Place

Abstract

This paper argues that settler colonial logics are constitutive to the fields of humanitarianism and international development. Through autoethnography, literature review, and analysis of media produced by humanitarian and international development organizations, the author explores how settler colonial and neoliberal logics permeate humanitarianism, to limit and shape the relationships between those being “helped” and those “helping” by perpetuating notions of a strange “other” and centering whiteness. Examining how epistemologies in these fields hinge on liberalism, Indigenous erasures and notions of who is human, this work juxtaposes the growing chorus of critics of the global aid industry with Black and Indigenous critiques of settler colonialism and white supremacy.

Author

• Nisha Toomey, University of Toronto