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SUMMARY:The Paradox of Law and Violence:  Policing on the Frontlines of St
 ruggles against the Settler Colonial State - Dr Michael Simpson\, Universi
 ty of St Andrews
DTSTART:20220308T123000Z
DTEND:20220308T133000Z
UID:TALK170336@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Speaker to be confirmed
DESCRIPTION:From Standing Rock to Wet’suwet’en territory and across No
 rth America\, land and water defenders on the frontlines of Indigenous-led
  struggles are facing increasingly militarized and unrestrained state viol
 ence. This paper considers what this alarming trend might teach us about t
 he relationship between law and violence in settler colonial contexts wher
 e the state’s legal authority remains tenuous at best. Conventional unde
 rstandings suggest that the police serve as the coercive arm of the state 
 which enforces law within its territorial boundaries\, whereas the militar
 y defends the state from external threats extending beyond its borders. Ho
 wever\, in settler colonial contexts the relationship between the police a
 nd military is not so straightforward. In Canada\, the national police for
 ce was founded to expand the state’s territorial claims by dispossessing
  Indigenous peoples of their lands. On the edges of state power\, police i
 ncursions into unceded Indigenous territories work not to enforce the law\
 ; here\, the police precede the law\, serving to actively constitute the s
 tate’s legal authority. This points to a fundamental paradox of the stat
 e in colonial contexts – that constitutional law is unlawfully constitut
 ed. I argue that this underlying paradox helps to make sense of police vio
 lence against Indigenous peoples asserting sovereignty on the frontlines o
 f conflicts over resource extraction today. Where police forcibly remove I
 ndigenous peoples claiming legal and territorial jurisdiction over their u
 nceded lands and waters\, these actions should be understood not as law-en
 forcing violence\, but rather as the law-establishing violence of colonial
  dispossession.
LOCATION:Small Lecture Theatre\, Department of Geography
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