(Re-)Ordering the New World: Settler Colonialism, Space, and Identity

This thesis undertakes an examination and articulation of the colonial dynamics of Settler people, collectives, societies, and nations in the settler colonial northern bloc. It is geographically situated, demonstrating that settler colonialism transforms spaces and claims places in powerful, consistent ways, leaving observable patterns across five centuries and a vast continent. Canadian and American citizens today are revealed to be much like their trans-Atlantic forbears, while even radically-transformative Settler social movements are shown to often leave colonial structures and legacies intact. This project constitutes a preliminary search for libratory, decolonising potentiality within Settler understandings of place, currently situated in the framework of settler colonialism and other forms of colonising, expansive powers, each possessed of distinct geographical imaginations. The goal of this project is to render visible long-standing dynamics at the root of on-going colonisation, situating collective Settler relationships as the primary location of settler colonisation in the northern bloc. This is not intended as an accusation, but as a creative deconstruction: revealing the intimate workings of settler colonialism and identifying the inherent weaknesses and contradictions in colonial spaces is the necessary first step in fundamental decolonisation of the people and places of the northern bloc.