“Aware-Settler” Biblical Studies: Breaking Claims of Textual Ownership Matthew R. Anderson
[email protected] ABSTRACT “Aware-Settler” is a term coined here to describe the various hermeneutics that arise as increasingly, non-Indigenous biblical scholars take seriously that their research is done on colonized Land. Paying special attention to the principle of possessiveness, the article suggests breaking stubborn Settler-scholar hid- den-default assumptions of ownership, proposing instead that biblical texts might be understood as another form of “Treaty territory.” Indigenous scholars’ common emphases on Landedness, relationality, spirituality, and community good, can inform methodologies employed by Settler biblical scholars. These hermeneutical principles, learned in a contact zone characterized by attention to reciprocity and respect, are employed in a brief look at Matthew 28:25–28. The so-called Great Commission is a foundational text of colonialism; many Indigenous scholars have judged it as “unreadable.” For that reason it provides a particularly appropri- ate test-case for applying Aware-Settler hermeneutics focussed on breaking claims of identity and owner- ship. KEYWORDS aware-settler, Indigenous, settler, hermeneutics, biblical scholarship or her Presidential address at the 2018 meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, FChristine Mitchell spoke on “Reading Biblical Conquest Stories on Treaty 4 Land: Working To- wards Reconciliation.”1 She noted that already thirty years before, Robert Warrior, an Indigenous