The White Possessive

How Academic Diversity Is Transforming Scientific Knowledge in Biological Anthropology

“…In choosing to do molecular anthropology research with an Indigenous community, it is crucial that my science address the imbalance in how Indigenous and Western ways of knowing are acknowledged in biological anthropology research by engaging with the knowledge about the natural and social world held by Indigenous communities (Kimmerer 2013). This is a way for me to confront the past exploitive nature of research on Indigenous communities (Deloria 2004;Moreton-Robinson 2015;Smith 1999) and to provide one model for a new way forward. For example, my research demonstrates how knowledge gained from interviews with community elders can teach us about past and current food resources and food culture.…”

Peril and possibility: A contemplation of the current state of migration history and settler colonial studies in Canada

“…As Lorenzo Veracini recently suggested, settler colonialism is “one mode of domination among many” (Veracini, , 7). As a result, there has been a concentrated effort to attend to the politics of settlement and the “White possessive logics” (Moreton‐Robinson, ) and diffuse the responsibility for colonial and imperial projects by making settlers themselves complicit in the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples, not just authorities in distant, imperial capitals, or ruling classes who sought to create societies in the image of their homelands through selective, and exclusionary, immigration policies (Belich, ). Such projects are captured in evocative terms such as “the settler every day” and “settler common sense” (Ishiguro, ; Rifkin, ).…”

Systems, Self, and Sovereignty: Non-Indigenous Practitioners Negotiate Whiteness in Aboriginal Partnerships

“…There is a growing space that is incorporating traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge in NRM in Australia and participants spoke about the ways in which DEWNR sought to respect and protect this knowledge. Participants were highly aware of the issue of traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge as intellectual property and challenged White possessive logic in terms of this perspective (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Joe tells a story of a biologist who ignored community policy and excitedly wrote an article about his "new discovery" of Grevillea, which led to businessman looking to secure a financial monopoly on the cultivation and sale of the Grevillea.…”