16. Settler Colonialism Needs to Focus on Case Harms as Specific Oppression

Figure 18: Settler colonialism is another case harm, not a preclusive protest.

1. The critique treats settler colonialism as transhistorical by applying across era to modern context. Its own literature warns that this abstraction erases Indigenous peoples and sustains the domination it condemns, while excluding the case debate where we could engage to find solutions together: “studies of settler colonialism and practices of solidarity run the risk of reifying (and possibly replicating) settler colonial as well as other modes of domination. […] Similarly, for Tsalagis (Cherokees), there is a word, digadatsele’i, which means ‘we belong to each other’. […] Decontextualized conceptions of settler colonial studies, ‘settler’, and solidarity risk further eschewing Indigenous peoples and thereby reifying the stolen land each of the above is founded upon. […] Those who critique settler colonialism through transhistorical representations are then able to feel good and satisfied about their criticisms, despite their ahistoricism and decontextualization, and thus their own role in actually sustaining colonial power by failing to attend to its conditions and contingency. […] What good is solidarity if it cannot attend to the literal (and stolen) ground on which people stand and come together upon? In this paper, we have argued for a contextual approach to the questions of settler colonialism, settlers, and solidarity. It is ultimately about accountability to each other, as the Tsalagi word, digadatsele’i suggests […]. [C]olonialism will not be undone by analysis alone, but through lived and contentious engagement with the literal and stolen ground” (Snelgrove et al., 2014). The authors call for engagement with specific harms on specific land, which is exactly what case debate does. Critics caricature the permutation as John Smith and Pocahontas, but it merely proves one can support recognizing stolen land and still debate policy issues that it does not preclude. Settler colonialism should not preclude policy focus: “However, settler processes do not constitute these relationships in their entirety, and more importantly, they do not necessarily determine the range of possibilities available in our futures. It is crucial that we continue to challenge the politically convenient conflation of settler desires and reality and of the political present […] The moment that SCT reveals colonization as ongoing is not necessarily the moment we must give up hope of change. It could, in fact, be the moment that settler colonialism is revealed as one, very limited, way of understanding and organizing our reality.” (Macoun & Strakosch, 2013). Even advocates of the settler-colonial framing want it used to diagnose the root causes of specific conflicts: “What would news coverage grounded in an explicit acknowledgment of settler-colonial realities look like? It would involve consistently focusing attention on the root causes of ongoing violence, starting with ongoing efforts by the state of Israel.” (Collins, 2023). Debate is all about root causes. Debating specifics is how we learn to advance real solutions, such as Middle East peace or gradually restoring land rights under international law. Indigenous issues already enter debates when they are relevant, and they should be weighed alongside other impacts rather than used to boycott discussion entirely.

2. Land claims cannot be resolved by retroactively unwinding history. Epstein & Raskin (2026) explain that sincere apologies cannot transfer title after the fact, as once land has passed through centuries of good-faith purchasers and development, doctrines like statutes of limitations, adverse possession, and protection for bona fide buyers deliberately settle those claims so that civilization does not collapse: “Do Anglo-Saxons take England back from the Normans? That would be civilizational suicide. It is easy to call land stolen, but what about the innocent purchasers who acquired in good faith in the interim? Are they thieves? […] Beyond the fact that much land was acquired by agreement — such as the island of Manhattan — establishing ownership does not require a time machine. Fortunately, Eilish does not actually practice what she preaches, for otherwise anyone would be free to squat in her mansion, by asserting the property belongs to the Tongva.” Taken literally, the critique’s logic has no stopping point. Nearly every territory on earth has changed hands through conquest, and reopening those claims would escalate conflicts from the Middle East to Europe to East Asia. The critique would escalate grievances into many regional wars from the Middle East, to Europe, to China. It is hypocritical activism that lets teens feel edgy like a pop celebrity shouting slogans. Voting for this critique requires giving up your home, or hypocrisy sparks worse backlash and makes a mockery of the effort. We should not single out Natives as uniquely victimized: “‘Environmentalists’ insist on playing the same ‘indigenous peoples card’, instead of dealing with the awful reality that fallout from nuclear testing is color and ethnic-blind [...] Because if it is, it only plays into the hands of those responsible for the testing in the first place, and is a ‘god-send’ to them in helping to minimize the open public exposure [...] No group of victims is better, more worthy, less worthy, or better to focus and raise funds on. We are all one race -- the human race -- and we are all testing's victims.” (Truman, 1998). A ballot for a demand nobody intends to honor turns natives into a tokenized virtue signal, provokes backlash, and undermines the real accountability to solve issues. Judges are pressured to vote for whichever team reads this critique first, so teams read it to win, not out of solidarity. That is unfair to debaters, and it tokenizes Native peoples by using their suffering to stir outrage and then aiming that outrage at any plan for progress. Telling Indigenous communities they must reject all engagement with the state speaks for them, not with them. Indigenous nations litigate treaties, negotiate with governments, and win, as the Muscogee Nation did when the courts recognized its reservation in McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020).