Coloniality and White Settler Population Anxieties

Public Lecture with Madi Day, hosted by the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing

Please join us for the hybrid public talk “Coloniality and White Settler Population Anxieties” with Madi Day hosted by Karen Soldatic, Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing. The talk will be followed by a Q&A moderated by Megan Scribe. This event is free and open to the public.

Abstract

Western European nations and their settler colonies have long-held anxieties about corrupting a white able-bodied heterosexual cisgender populace. For hundreds of years, white settlers have found new ways to  collectively fret about degenerative sexual and reproductive practices that would deplete white racial hygiene. This  talk addresses white settler anxieties around replacement and degeneracy in so-called Australia into the 21st  century. Using Indigenous thought, it frames eugenics in so-called Australia as how settlers systematically control  and contain populations they deem degenerate. It also addresses how white settlers continue to violently enact  fears of replacement on Indigenous and non-white people. On the one hand, white settlers intervene in Indigenous  lives as part of a regime of settler colonial replacement – to harm and eliminate Indigenous peoples with the goal of replacing us. On the other, white settlers are profoundly anxious about being replaced by other non-white  populations.

Biographies

Madi Day, Lecturer, Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University

Madi Day (external link)  is a trans Murri and lecturer in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University on Dharug Ngurra, also known as Sydney, Australia. Their research areas include Indigenous LGBT+ resistance, gender and colonialism, heterosexuality and white settler violence. In 2023, Day was awarded the Fulbright Sir John Carrick Scholarship for New South Wales to undertake research comparing anti-colonial approaches to gender and sexuality studies in so-called Australia and the United States.

Megan Scribe, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Education Director, Yellowhead Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University

Megan Scribe (Ininiw iskwew, Norway House Cree Nation) is an interdisciplinary Indigenous feminist researcher, writer and educator. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the education director for Yellowhead Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University. Scribe’s scholarship and community-based advocacy expose and interrogate interlocking structures of power and oppression giving rise to white settler societies like Canada. Over the last ten years, she has focused on racist and anti-Indigenous gender-based violence targeting Indigenous women, girls, and 2LGBTQQIA+ people to further draw out the ways in which cis-heteropatriarchy upholds white settler society. Scribe is a long-time council member for Aboriginal Legal Services’ Community Council Diversion Program.

Registration

Registration is not required for in person attendance. If you plan to attend virtually, please register here (external link) .

Accessibility

The venue is wheelchair accessible; Live captioning will be provided on Zoom. 

For questions and access inquiries please contact Darren Creech by April 4, 2024.