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Fattening settler colonialism: Szilvia Csevár , Yasmine Rugarli, ‘Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua’, Global Studies Quarterly, 5, 2, 2025, #ksaf026

20Apr25

Excerpt: Settler colonialism is best conceptualized as a structure rather than a singular historical event, underscoring its permanent, ongoing and systemic nature (Wolfe 1994, 96; Wolfe 1999, 2). Unlike other colonial formations, settler colonialism’s primary goal of elimination is not race but the expropriation of land. This process is perpetuated through various mechanisms, seeking to “destroy to replace” (Wolfe 2006, 388), which differs from genocide as it encompasses not only physical elimination but also cultural erasure, assimilation, and the systematic destruction of Indigenous identities, land fragmentation and a wide array of biocultural assimilation (O’Brien 2010). Settler colonial narratives actively erase Indigenous Peoples while memorializing them as relics of the past—perpetuating the myth of the “vanishing Indian” (Kēhaulani Kauanui 2016, 3) which serves as an ideological tool to deny Indigenous presence and rights, thereby legitimizing settler claims to land (O’Brien 2010). The colonization experiences in Southeast Asia, as well as that of several African nations, are distinct from this practice in several ways. In its most renowned work, Fanon (1963) provides a powerful analysis of colonial structures, pointing to the emergence of new post-colonial forms of imperialism and political distortions entrenching racialized forms of violence and leading to the continued exploitation of former colonies. Tracing colonial techniques and strategies, Casanova (2007) explains internal colonization as the dominance and exploitation of natives by natives. Indeed, the concept of internal colonization refers to the practice of racialized classification of minority ethnic groups as subordinate to the dominant ethnicity within the borders of a single state. Such “domestic subset of a larger colonial (or imperial) paradigm” (Chávez 2011, p. 786) bears on all social relations, including political and extractive violence. Southeast Asia is particularly suitable to illustrate the various patterns and harmful impacts of internal colonization on traditional communities, closely linked to a narrow understanding, or even non-existence, of indigeneity in the region. Post-colonial state forming in most Southeast Asian countries denied the existence of specific Indigenous groups on the territory, claiming that the concept “internationalist indigeneity” (Merlan 2009, p. 303), as developed within the UN system, is inherently linked to European domination through settler colonialism and therefore inapplicable to Southeast Asian territories, which did not experience significant European settlement. What has become known as the “Asian controversy” (Kingsbury 1998), a peculiar all-or-nothing approach to indigeneity, is a common feature in qualifying indigeneity in the region (Baird 2020). While there are notable parallels with the patterns of classic European settler colonialism, the current neo-colonial administration in West Papua clearly exhibits methods of internal colonization as well.


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