“Let’s help our own”

• Published in: Oñati Socio-Legal Series
• Main Author: Carmela Murdocca
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Spanish; Basque; French; Portuguese
• Published: Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law 2024
• Subjects: humanitarian governance; settler colonialism; indigenous; syrian refugees; canada; Social legislation; K7585-7595; Attawapiskat
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1067; https://doaj.org/article/2ad9e9b8100b4aa4b3bee5138a736e35

This article explores narratives of humanitarian compassion as rendered intelligible through the relational intersecting concerns about Syrian refugees and the suicide crisis in the Indigenous community of Attawapiskat, Ontario. Fuelled by a combination of anti-refugee rhetoric, racism and ongoing colonialism experienced by Indigenous people and communities, public and media discourse reveals how humanitarian governance is constitutive of the genealogy of settler colonialism. I suggest that examining the political genealogy of humanitarian governance in white settler colonialism assists in revealing the centrality of racial colonial violence in producing public and media discourse that is contingent upon the relational currencies of anti-refugee rhetoric, racism and humanitarian compassion. As expressions of a grammar of racial difference in liberal settler colonialism, these discourses ultimately reveal how racial colonial violence is constituted through the genealogy of humanitarianism.