Settler colonialism is a family tradition: Madeline Rose Knickerbocker, Hilary A. Rose, ‘Unsettling our family history: critical interventions in settler Canadian pasts’ Settler Colonial Studies, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism is a family tradition: Madeline Rose Knickerbocker, Hilary A. Rose, ‘Unsettling our family history: critical interventions in settler Canadian pasts’ Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

26Jul25

Abstract: This article explores seven generations of our family’s participation in settler colonialism at different times and in different places across Canada. The ancestors we focus on came to North America beginning in 1820, and serial waves of immigration from divergent branches of our family tree followed thereafter. For each generation, we investigate our ancestors’ arrival on Indigenous lands, the histories of Indigenous presence on and use of those lands, the processes by which our relatives got access to that land, the impacts our ancestors’ presence had on Indigenous Nations of those lands and the benefits our family experienced from Indigenous dispossession and settler colonialism. Informed by decolonial critiques and interdisciplinary scholarship on histories of family and colonialism, we piece together these narratives by drawing on archival and genealogical records, settler accounts, family stories and fieldwork. Using our family as a case study, we argue that adopting a critical approach to settler family histories helps challenge the myth of Canadian benevolence, solidifies our understanding of the foundational violence of settler colonialism, and exemplifies the truth–telling that needs to come with settler reconciliation to Indigenous Peoples – a vital first step towards being able to recognize, live within and uphold Indigenous sovereignty.

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