Indigenous Materialisms and Disciplinary Colonialism

Abstract

As a starting point, this article looks at the nexus between New Materialisms and Indigenous Studies, concluding that the New Materialists' almost entire failure to interact with Indigenous knowledges and scholarship whilst employing the nomenclature ‘new’, is merely another over-exaggerated example of western claims to knowledge itself. The majority of the article discusses Indigenous Materialisms more specifically, introducing a new framework for defining eras of colonialism, namely ‘sovereignty colonialism’, ‘biopolitical’ or ‘disciplinary colonialism’, and ‘ security colonialism’. In the final third of the article, I focus on ‘biopolitical’ or ‘disciplinary colonialism’ in particular, fleshing out notions such as Indigenous materiality preceding thought, the materialism of colonisation including colonial sport, and the agency of Indigenous bodies to resist.