Yellowbird explained the process of unsettling settlers as akin to a death. This I believe cuts to the heart of the defiance we often come across. This is a fatality of their/our settler identity, a fragile selfhood constructed in the denial of history and current material realities, pillaring settler privilege. This identity has been stroked by all settler colonial institutions from birth, yet shatters with the smallest pebble thrown at it. Yellowbird suggested seeing this death of identity of the settler through what Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her famous book On Death and Dying, describes as the five stages of grief. These are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (4). Clearly not everyone goes through these exact stages, in this exact order, or even at all but it is still a useful analytical tool. As mentioned above, “moves to innocence” permeate through all these stages. These stages of grief mirrored my friend’s process, minus—notably—the last step of acceptance. I have seen this same process when engaging with other white settlers. After explaining to white settlers that “invasion is a structure and not an event” of the past, and that they/we are settlers on stolen land, benefiting from a continual system of settler colonialism, denial is often is the first response (5). One comes across a straight rejection of the reality of the circumstances: a denial that they/we are settlers and a claim to not profit from colonialism. This also manifests as, “if you didn’t talk about this, everything would be fine, you’re creating the problem,” i.e. a complete rejection of the facts on the ground.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 17:25:54 +0000