The Urban Politics of Settler-Colonialism
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THE URBAN POLITICS OF SETTLER-COLONIALISM: ARTICULATIONS OF THE COLONIAL RELATION IN POSTWAR MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, 1945-1975 (AND BEYOND) DAVID W. HUGILL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN GEOGRAPHY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO June 2015 © David Warren Hugill, 2015.! ABSTRACT This dissertation documents some of the ways that colonial practices and mentalities have shaped relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the historical and material conjuncture of Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a focus on the period 1945 to 1975. Building on political and geographical literature concerned with the enduring effects of settler-colonization in North American urban environments, my inquiry starts from the premise that the “colonial relation” retains a persistent structural trace in Minneapolis, manifesting through a series of practices and dynamics that operate to enforce particular forms of social, economic, and territorial domination. I begin by demonstrating that Indigenous peoples in the area were territorially and economically displaced in the construction of the newcomer settlement that became Minneapolis, which I describe by looking critically at the life of one of the city’s early “city builders,” Thomas Barlow Walker. I then expand this discussion by developing a series of arguments that demonstrate how the “colonial relation” has articulated in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis, which, for a variety of reasons, emerged as a site of significant Indigenous residential concentration and congregation in the aftermath of the Second World War. In particular, I consider how colonial practices and mentalities hastened Indigenous migration to the inner-city, constrained the knowledge practices of non-Indigenous advocacy organizations interested in alleviating urban forms of Indigenous marginalization, and shaped a culture of inner-city “racialized policing.” I then conclude with a brief and speculative look at the colonial relation in present-day Minneapolis, examining some of the ways that both Indigenous marginality and economic prosperity are bound up with broader deployments of state violence, particularly through the activities of local weapons manufacturers. Throughout, I argue that to make sense of the distinct patterns of group differentiated insecurity that disproportionately plagued Indigenous migrants to Minneapolis in the postwar period and the decades that followed, we need to think beyond the immediacy of the present and pay close heed to the ways in which colonially-inflected legacies, material distributions, and knowledge practices continue to have distinct effects. ! ii! For the rank-and-file members of our union that spent four weeks on the picket lines to render “impossible” demands a material reality. ! iii! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have gotten by with significantly more than a little help from my friends over the course of the last half decade and I want to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge a few of the many people that made this research possible. My supervisor, Patricia Wood, was a wonderful mentor, a patient reviewer, and a great friend. The other members of my supervisory committee, Stefan Kipfer and William Jenkins, made substantial contributions throughout the dissertation process. Various colleagues, professors, and friends made my time at York stimulating and productive, including Peter Brogan, Yvonne Yim, Karen Cunningham, Anne Ralph, Tyler McCreary, Heather MacLean, Nate Prier, Warren Bernauer, Sara Jackson, Ryan Hackett, William Payne, Katie MacDonald, Valerie Preston, Phillip Kelly, Ranu Basu, Raju Das, Steven Tufts, Steven Flusty, and Nik Theodore. Bruce Braun made it possible for me to spend an edifying year in the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and get to know some very cool people, including Bill Lindeke, Laura Cesafsky, Jessi Lehman, Stuart McLean, Kai Bosworth, Sara Holiday Nelson, Randall Cohn, Vinai Gidwani, Paul Jackson, Charmaine Chua, David Wilkins, Arun Saldanha, Joe Getzoff, Melody Hoffman, David Morawski, Paige Sweet, Morgan Adamson, Peter Crandall, Julia Corwin and Lalit Batra. Other friends and comrades kept me entertained, employed, and housed over the course of the Ph.D. process; I am indebted to Jo Snyder, Robbie Richardson, Karen Walker, Ian Whetter, Lisa Stepnuk, Sharmeen Khan, David Shulman, Ali Hugill, Julia Schubert, Marco Oved, Richard Newman, Wayne Douglas, Sheila Douglas, Dianne Douglas, Emilie Cameron, Jen Ridgley, Fiona Jeffries, Pablo Mendez, Iftekhar Kabir, John Rose, Jmes Burrows, Sarah Lamble, David Guillas, Jord Samolesky, Chris Hannah, Todd Kowalski, Jason Colwill, Mark Chaplin, Robin Kimball, Egil Johansen, and Evelyn Peters. My parents, Ian and Catherine Hugill, were encouraging and wonderful, as they always have been. In fact, I am not sure that I would have made it through the comprehensive-exam hazing ritual if my mom had not volunteered to serve as my life coach on a temporary basis. Stacy Douglas has been a companion of world-historic calibre, as well as a constant source of inspiration, challenge, solidarity, rent money, jokes and love. Grants and bursaries from York University, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Local 3903), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, and the Fulbright Foundation, allowed me to conduct this research in relative comfort. ! iv! TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................... ii Dedication ......................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .............................................................................................. v List of Figures ................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 Introduction: Postwar Minneapolis and the Colonial Relation ...... 1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research Objectives ................................................................................... 7 1.3 Existing Research .................................................................................... 11 1.4 Research Setting ...................................................................................... 15 1.5 Research Approach .................................................................................. 16 1.6 Plan of Dissertation ................................................................................. 19 Chapter 2 Theoretical and Contextual Foundations ...................................... 24 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 24 2.2 The Colonial Relation in Settler Colonial Societies ............................... 25 2.3 Material and Immaterial Articulations of the Colonial Relation ......... 29 Material Forms of Domination ................................................................ 30 Immaterial Forms of Domination ........................................................... 34 2.4 Transformations of the Colonial Relation .............................................. 38 Dakota Homeland .................................................................................... 39 Anishinaabe Arrival ................................................................................ 40 Borderland Hybridity .............................................................................. 42 Settler Colonization ................................................................................. 42 Disposesssive Territorialization .............................................................. 44 Reservationization ................................................................................... 46 Allotment and Territorial Alienation ..................................................... 47 Termination and Relocation .................................................................... 48 Postwar Urbanization ............................................................................. 50 Urban Challenges and the Politics of Assimilationism ......................... 51 2.5 The Contested Character of the Colonial Relation ................................ 54 2.6 Urban Articulations of the Colonial Relation ........................................ 56 Chapter 3 Urban Origins and the Colonial Relation: Notes From the Life of Thomas Barlow Introduction ............................................................ 60 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 60 3.2 The Making of a Lumber King ................................................................ 64 3.3 The Spoils of Colonial Incursion ............................................................. 76 3.4 Summary .................................................................................................. 84 Chapter 4 Metropolitan Transformation and the Colonial Relation: The Postwar City Divided ................................................................................................... 86 4.1