Settler colonial carceral reprocide: Sarah A. Whitt, ‘Continuity of Spirit and the Carceral Continuum: Indigenous Women’s Experiences of Incarceration Across Settler Time and Space’, American Quarterly, 78, 2, 2026, pp. 263-288 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial carceral reprocide: Sarah A. Whitt, ‘Continuity of Spirit and the Carceral Continuum: Indigenous Women’s Experiences of Incarceration Across Settler Time and Space’, American Quarterly, 78, 2, 2026, pp. 263-288

08Jun26

Abstract: The modern history of incarceration in the United States has often been told as a story about the state exercising carceral control over populations—often, male—deemed “criminal” and confined in brick-and-mortar penal institutions. Yet Indigenous women’s divergent experiences of incarceration expand dominant historiographical renderings of “human caging” and illustrate the longevity of this settler structure, today. Reading across the grain of materials relating to a Menominee girl sentenced to the Leavenworth penitentiary in 1906 alongside letters written by incarcerated Indigenous women, published in a 1983 special issue of Sinister Wisdom, this essay illustrates the contours of a carceral continuum that has had an impact on Indigenous women across lifetimes and generations. The intimate stories examined here expand traditional definitions of the carceral and illustrate how those confined found ways to deepen the cracks of the carceral continuum, challenging the settler order.

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