Settler colonialism
Settler Colonialism is a type of colonialism, characterized by the extermination or removal (from the land) of indigenous peoples and their supplantation with a new Nation of settlers. Some examples of settler colonialism are Israel, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and the United States.
Characteristics of Settler Colonialism
The Logic of Extermination
Settler Colonialism functions by a "logic of extermination," as the border of the new (settler) Nation is the surrounding land (inhabited by Natives). Unlike some other forms of colonialism, settler colonialism seeks to create a Nation of settlers, rather than a settler caste [1]. Contrasted with "classic" colonialism, oriented towards the acquisition of resources for the Metropole (the use of cheap indigenous labor being an opportunity to do so), settler colonialism seeks to make conditions unbearable for the native peoples (to force them to leave), if not removing them outright (sometimes through extermination, as in the case of the Nakba, frontier homicides, etc.).[1] Settler colonialism is not predicated on the exploitation of indigenous populations (as in Marxism, exploitation is not a moral term, but rather an economic relation wherein a worker is paid less than the full value of their labor). To quote Enaemaehkiw: "Settler colonialism is fundamentally a project of the elimination of Native nations and sovereignty through various overlapping means. It always was, and always will be. What settler colonialism is not, is a project of the exploitation of Native labour. Settler colonialism will use Native labour while Native people exist, but the goal is always to ultimately replace them."
Invasion as a Structure, Not an Event
"settler colonialism has both negative and positive dimensions. Negatively, it strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event" (Settler colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, Patrick Wolfe)[2]
By this Wolfe does not mean that settler colonialism is "positive" in the moral sense, but rather that it "positively" creates a new colonial society (as opposed to the destruction of native societies, the destruction being a "negative"). He also emphasizes that settler colonialism is not an event that happened in the past, but rather ongoing, through practices such as the suppression of Native self determination, in the interest of the white settler population (as a modern example, look no further than the attempts at extracting the natural resources on unceded First Nation's land).
Settler Colonial Expansion
"“[r]ather than something separate or running counter to the colonial state, the irregular activities of the frontier rabble constitute its principal means of expansion” (2016: 41). Because of this, from the perspective of Native and Black peoples, it is difficult to tease apart the broad white/settler/master population, including its lowest strata, from the anti-Black settler colonial state itself, precisely because the white/settler/master population has always been the primary agent for expansion. This was true both historically in the era of direct frontier homicide and the enforcement of chatter slavery, and still is today in the twinned processes of biocultural assimilation and exclusionary territorial population containment." (The ABCs of Decolonization, Enaemaehkiw)[3] Settler populations act as a "garrison population," "holding down" previously indigenous land (e.g., Israeli Settlements, American frontier towns).
Use of Non-Indigenous Labor
"the kidnapping of people in Africa and enslaving them in the United States is not incompatible with the idea of the U.S. as a settler colony. In fact, and I am following relatively well established settler colonial studies thinking here (mostly Patrick Wolfe) in saying that, at least in the Anglo settler-colonial world, the importation of some-kind of outside labour in order to work to build the society of the settler has been key to the process as a whole. Regarding the general connectivities between Native dispossession and elimination, and Black chattel enslavement some theorists have actually tried to deepen their entanglement. For example Tiffany Lethabo King discusses what she refers to as "Conquest" as the over arching thing that unites them (see her book "The Black Shoals"). However, while the U.S. and Canada (which likes to forget this) used stolen African people, Australia used Polynesian labour and, probably most well known, exiled prison labour. The reason they did this, rather than creating massive racially distinct plantation colonies though has a lot to do with the lessons (and fears) and they learned from the experience in the Americas (slave revolts, Haiti, etc.). Even in Israeli, which is not really part of the Anglo settler-colonial world you could look to their treatment of Sephardim and Mizrahim." (From a CuriousCat answer, Enaemaehkiw)[4]